Donald Harstad: A Long December

“I could go up into the loft,” said Sally from behind George and me, where she was tending to Hester. “Great view from up there. I’m small. Harder to see me.”

“Not with that red hair,” said George. “I’ll go up.”

Being about six inches taller and seventy-five pounds heavier than George, I simply said, “I’ll cover you from the steps.” He was a lot faster than I was.

The open stairs from the basement came through the first floor about ten feet inside the open barn doors, on the side that faced our shooters. George was going to have to emerge from the basement, run across the main floor about thirty feet to the right, and climb a vertical wooden ladder that went to the hayloft.

“How’re you going to do that? Cover me, I mean.” George tends to get right to the point. With the main barn doors standing open, he’d be in full view from the shed for the entire distance.

I looked up toward the main floor. “Why don’t you let me get about halfway up the steps. Then you go by, and I go, too. Just stick my head out of the opening. I should be able to fire at floor level at the same time you get upstairs.”

He looked skeptical. “Sure.”

“Trust me,” I said with a grin. “And rules or not, I’m gonna fire as soon as I get a shot at somebody. And screw it. If I don’t see the shooter, I’ll aim for where I think he is.” We weren’t allowed to fire unless we could see our target. A target that we could “demonstrate and elucidate” as a threat. An old machine shed that I just thought was occupied certainly wouldn’t qualify. Well, not on a normal day.

“You got more than one magazine for that thing? “he asked, indicating my AR-15. He pointedly didn’t say anything about my intention to lay down some fire. His department’s rules were much stricter than mine.

“Three. Plus the one that’s in it. That’s about a hundred and eight rounds.” I always carry twenty-seven or twenty-eight rounds in the thirty-round-capacity magazines. Easier on their springs.

“Save some for later,” he advised. “Why does everybody always seem to leave those big barn doors open?” he asked. It was rhetorical. He took a deep breath, and as he exhaled I could see his breath against the sunlight upstairs. “Well, we might as well get started.”

“You got a walkie?”

“Not one you can hear me on,” he said. The feds use different frequencies than we do.

“Sally, you better give him yours,” I said.

“Sure,” she said, but I could tell she was reluctant. She was, after all, a dispatcher first and foremost.

“Okay, never mind, I’ll give him mine,” I said, unclipping it and handing it to him. “This way,” I said to George, “you’ll have Sally on the other end instead of me.”

“And it’s a good thing, too. Let me get to the wall,” said Sally. “I’ll look over left. Do I get to shoot, too?”

“Nope. Just me,” I said. “No shots from the basement until they know we’re really here.”

She nodded and ducked over to the broken window. She patted Hester as she left her.

“Ready, Carl?” asked George.

“Yep,” I said, and moved up the stairs. “Let me call it.”

“Okay.”

I eased into a position where I thought I could get through the opening in the floor above me without taking more than one full step, and could do it with my rifle just about leveled. I checked to make sure I’d left enough room for George to get by me. It looked about right.

“Okay, go,” I said.

As my head emerged at main floor level, I felt George scramble by me and head for the ladder. I brought my rifle up, and aimed at the old machine shed. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw George trip on a bad board, then hit the old ladder about three rungs off the floor and nearly fly up and into the loft. It was over so fast, I found myself covering somebody who wasn’t there anymore.

I ducked back down into the basement. There had been no movement anywhere in my field of view. Not a shot had been fired. Either they’d not seen him, or they hadn’t had time to react. Excellent.

Sally and Hester were both looking at me. “He’s up,” I told them. “He’s really fast.”

Sally immediately put her walkie-talkie to her mouth. “George, you hear me?”

Silence.

“George? “she said, a bit louder. “George, you got a copy?”

Nothing.

She and I exchanged a glance, and I shook my head. “I know it was turned on,” I said. “I just used it to talk to the S. O”

“Were you on Info or Ops?”

A good question. On the operations channel, or Ops, you could talk walkie to walkie, and walkie to car. On the information channel, or Info, you could only talk to the office, and no other walkie or car would hear you.

I looked at her. “I don’t remember… damn, but I’ll bet it was Info.” Shit.

I headed back up the stairs. “Keep a sharp lookout,” I said to Sally. “I can’t see a lot from up here.”

“Okay.”

I crouched near the top of the steps, looking up toward the side of the loft where George had disappeared. It was a good fifteen feet above my head, and thoroughly covered with loose and baled hay. Insulation. He wasn’t going to be able to hear me.

“George,” I said in a loud voice. “George, you hear me?”

Silence.

Very cautiously, I stuck my head up past the floor level. I sure as hell didn’t want to be yelling if there was somebody with a gun standing near the door. I glanced around. Clear, as far as I could tell.

I figured that I could spend half an hour trying to get his attention without yelling, or just let out one good shout and get it over with.

“HEY GEORGE!”

About two seconds later, his face appeared at the edge of the loft.

“You’re on Info. The second button,” I said, holding up two fingers. “Turn it to channel one!” I held up my index finger. “One! For Ops!”

He nodded.

I glanced back toward the big door, just in time to see somebody run by, going to my left. “Look left!” I yelled, and ducked back down below floor level. I’d had such a brief glance, and he’d been going so fast, I couldn’t even tell what he was wearing.

Sally gave me a quizzical look.

“Tell him there’s a guy just outside, and he’s off to our left somewhere. Real close… maybe ten yards.”

She spoke softly into the walkie-talkie as I moved left toward the south wall of the basement.

“He’s over here somewhere,” I said as I passed Sally. I wished I’d gotten a better look, because it would have been nice to give George some sort of color to key on.

“He can’t see anybody,” she said to me, meaning George couldn’t make the guy from his position up in the loft. That figured. The guy was so close that George was probably going to have to lean out over the edge to see him.

“Okay…” I continued to the south wall. There were two small, quarter-framed windows at that end, probably only a foot or two above the outside ground level. There was very dirty glass in most of the frames, so it would be nearly impossible to see clearly into the gloomy basement from the outside. There were, however, two empty frames, both in the left-hand window. He’d have to go there if he was going to try to look in.

Either that, or go all the way to the back of the building, on the east side, where there was a walk-in door. The old door didn’t fit well, and I could see daylight around all four edges of the rickety thing. Maybe there. Maybe. But if it was me, I’d kind of like to get a glimpse of what was inside before I came through the door. I put my rifle to my shoulder and pointed it in the general direction of the left-hand window, trying to keep the edges of the door in my peripheral vision in case I was guessing wrong.