Donald Harstad: A Long December

She got an answer. “Three, I’m ten-six. Hold your traffic unless ten-thirty-three.” Somebody wasn’t paying attention.

“Comm, Three needs ten-seventy-eight, this is very ten-thirty-three, multiple ten-thirty-two, shots fired. Repeating…” Ten-seventy-eight meant that we needed assistance, the 10-33 indicated an emergency, and multiple 10-32 meant more than one armed suspect. With all the rest, 10-33 might sound redundant, but it was an official declaration of an emergency and enabled certain authority to accrue to the dispatcher automatically.

I heard the voice on the radio say, “Nation County has ten-thirty-three traffic.” That meant that everybody else had to shut up and only speak when spoken to.

“Where’s backup at?” asked Sally, speaking to me from her perch on the stairs.

“Lamar’s in Battenberg,” I said. There really wasn’t anybody else within fifty miles, at least not on duty.

“He might want to stay there for a few minutes. If we’ve got some here,” said Hester, meaning the terrorists, “there might be some where he is, too.”

All well and good, but we were dealing with very limited resources. “There won’t be more than two troopers within thirty miles of us,” I said. “Get our next-out duty officer, and local cops from Maitland and Battenberg. Call out the rest of the department after that.”

“Where’s the cell phone tower from here?” asked Hester, as Sally began talking to Dispatch again.

I pointed back toward the road. “That way.”

“Good,” she said, and pulled her phone from her jacket pocket. “I’ll get the state TAC team headed up this way.”

That was an excellent idea, and I said so. I looked back up the stairs, just in time to see Sally stick her head up past floor level to get a quick look through the big barn doors. I just started to tell her to get down, when a burst of fire ripped through the slats above her, and she ducked so fast she fell most of the way down the stairs. I thought she’d been hit.

I was over to her in four steps. “You okay?!”

“Yeah,” she said, uncertainly. “Shit. Yeah. Yeah, I think so.”

“Jesus, keep your head down.”

She stood. “Yeah, just my knee hurts…skinned it, I think. Holy shit, did you see that!?”

“I saw it all right,” I said. “That’s a good way to get killed.”

“I saw one of em,” she said, her voice wavering slightly. “Looked right at him. He was in the big shed, looked right at me. No shit. Just like a neighbor. Somebody else shot. He didn’t. He just looked.”

“Okay. Just don’t stick you head up like that again, okay?”

“No shit.” She brushed off her uniform pants. “I don’t know why you let me do things like that.”

“And if you do it again, lose the scarf. You really stand out with that.”

George and Hester were both on their cell phones, talking in muted tones and trying to get a view of whoever had been shooting at us. I did the same, but couldn’t see anybody along the whole upslope side of the barnyard. Belatedly, I remembered to pull the cocking handle of my rifle sharply to the rear. I never carried a round in the chamber and had nearly forgotten to load one in. That could have been embarrassing, to say the least. I searched my mind to see if there was anything else I should have done, or should be doing. Little mental lapses like that mean that you aren’t getting up to speed as quickly as you should, and are lagging behind events. Not permissible, if you want to survive a bad one.

Hester was off her cell phone. “Anything?”

“Nope,” I said.

“Not from back here,” said Sally. It occurred to me that she was in the position that guarded the only fast entrance to the barn, the two doors that faced out to the lane.

“Hester? Could you take this side for a sec? “I said. As she moved toward my position, I hustled over to Sally.

“You got a round in the chamber?” I asked her, touching the barrel of her shotgun.

“Oops. No.” She jacked a round in. “God, I feel dumb.”

“Don’t. I asked because I forgot to do the same,” I said. “We got to get up to speed here.” Our training emphasized that long weapons such as shotguns and rifles should not have a round chambered until absolutely necessary. Just to avoid catastrophic accidents.

“Yeah. No shit,” she muttered.

“Okay, keep a good look, and sing out if you see something. You’ve got the only place they can get in in a hurry.”

“Yeah. I thought about that. You think they’re gonna try that?”

“Not really. They’re probably hustling their asses out over the hills already. Wouldn’t you?”

She smiled. “No doubt.”

Not ten seconds later came the burst of fire that blew the nail fragment into Hester’s face.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2001 17:39

My cell phone rang. It was lamar .

“Okay, Carl. The ambulances are startin’ up towards the barn. Don’t come out yet, but get ready to go after they leave.”

“Okay.”

“The two officers with ‘em are TAC team members. Just so’s you know.”

“I feel better already,” I said, lying.

“Yeah,” said Lamar, “me, too.”

I turned to Hester. “Better get ready, the ambulances are on the way.”

She got to her feet slowly. “It hurts really bad when I stand,” she said. “Give me a minute.”

“Take your time,” I said. I could see a flickering shadow on the far wall of the barn as the ambulance headlights shone through all the cracks. “They’re just coming up the lane now.”

I motioned Sally over. “You stay with her, too. We don’t go out with her if she can do it herself.”

“I’m just fine now,” said Hester. “You guys be careful. Don’t take chances.”

“We’ll be just fine. We get to split just as soon as the HRT gives us the word. They’re here, probably gettin’ set up. Don’t worry about us.”

She nodded. The three of us stood back a bit and watched the shadows move as the ambulances came closer. When I thought they might be nearly in place, I walked over to the east wall and peered out through the crack in the door.

“They’re getting into the area under the yard light now,” I said. “Let’s get ready to move.”

My cell phone rang. It was Marty, the TAC team leader.

“Okay, as soon as the ambulance closest to you stops, you can start Hester to the rig. The officer will go toward the other ambulance. The EMTs will come to meet her as soon as they have her in sight.”

“Good,” I said, and broke the connection. Marty was going to be busy.

I watched the ambulance roll to a stop, and the passenger door for the cab open. The floodlights came on, and the back doors began to swing open. The driver angled the rig toward the road, so that the back was facing us, and came to a stop.

An officer got out the passenger side and began to walk toward the second ambulance. The driver stuck his arm out of his window and motioned for Hester to come out. We opened the door, and I accompanied her for about ten steps, as the EMTs in the back got out and broke out the stretcher. We met about halfway between the barn and the back of the rig.

They had Hester on the stretcher and were strapping her in before I could really say goodbye to her.

“We’ll get you where it’s warm,” said Diane, one of the EMTs from the Maitland ambulance. “Let’s see that…” she inspected the wound. “I’ll bet that hurts, yeah? It looks pretty good, though. The docs will…”

I stopped listening, and out of habit, grabbed one side of the stretcher and helped them over the rough ground. I knew I was breaking a rule, but I didn’t think it could be too damned important. I’d just go back into the barn when we were done.