Donald Harstad: The Big Thaw

"I hate to disappoint you," said the heavy voice, "but I have other plans."

"We all got plans, son," said Lamar. "Doesn't mean a lot."

Gabriel actually chuckled. "You've got balls, for a gimpy old fucker," he said. "I think you'd give me a lot tougher time than Special Agent Volont." The humor left his voice like he'd turned off a switch. "My plans tend to mean quite a bit," he said. "Please direct your attention to the boat." He broke the connection.

We looked. We couldn't see anything farther back than the bow. Nothing.

Suddenly, there was a cloud of yellowish brown billowing up from inside the fog, and a distant thump that you could feel in your feet.

"Shit!" Lamar turned to Volont. "Get 'em to move on the bank," he said.

Captain Olinger, the off-duty boat captain, rushed to the window.

"What? Who the hell is he?" asked Lamar. They hadn't had time to be introduced, I explained as Olinger began to describe things.

"Watch her," said the captain. "If she settles by the stern, that might be good. It looked like the smoke was from the port side, maybe aft of the paddle wheels… she should settle by the stern… yeah, see…"

It did look as if she was getting a little lower in the water, and I could have sworn I could see more of the surface of the decks than I could a few minutes ago.

There was a spreading stain on the water, emerging from the fog from the direction of the after portion of the Beauregard.

"Is that fuel coming out?" Lamar always worried about fires.

"I don't think so… no," said Captain Olinger. "What it looks like is sewage."

"Sewage?" I was surprised.

"Yeah… there's a ninety-four-hundred-gallon sewage tank, just above the propeller shafts, straddling two big void spaces… and it looks to me like she's open to the river around void five and the engine room."

"Is it sinking?" asked Lamar.

"Not yet," said Captain Olinger. "Just a minute…"

There was a sudden jet of water coming through the fog, from the side, about the middle of the boat. Low.

"Pumps," said Olinger. "Automatic."

"Will that work?" asked Hester.

"It helps. If that's it," said Captain Olinger, "then she won't sink." He pointed to the security diagram on Hester's bulletin board. "She's got six transverse watertight bulkheads," he said, "and it looks to me like the holing occurred about here…" He drew an X near the stern. "Worst case would be on both sides of the bulkhead that separates the engine room and void five." He smiled. "If that's it, then she's stable right now."

"How stable," asked Hester, "is stable?"

"Really stable. She can stay like that forever and not go down another inch."

The phone rang, and Sally put it on speaker. It was Gabriel.

"Impressed?"

Nobody answered.

"Oh, come now. Surely you appreciate the talent, here?" He sounded amused. "I'm assuming that you have somebody accessible who can tell you about the boat?"

He anticipated just about everything, I guess. Well, you would have, if you'd planned this long enough.

"This is Captain Olinger."

"Ah, Captain. As you've probably determined, I've flooded the engine room and the last compartment aft. If you haven't, you know it now."

"I had."

"Good for you." The humor was back in Gabriel's voice. "The next charge is set to open what you call void four, with the next charge after that at the generator room."

"There's a ten thousand gallon fuel tank in void four!"

"Stay calm, Captain. The charges just let in the water. They're not set to even affect the fuel tank."

"How can you be sure?" Volont stuck his two cents worth in.

"Ah, Super Asshole in Control Volont! You of all people should know I can do that."

None of us in the office spoke.

"Let my people out of the bank when they signal you to do so, allow them to proceed where they wish, and I won't set off charges two and three. Ask the good captain. Charge two will put her on the edge, and charge three will sink her. It's your call."

The phone went dead.

"Well," Art said, "it's good to know that she's only sitting a couple of feet off the bottom."

"Who told you that?" asked Captain Olinger.

"The lock and dam," I said.

"They use an average depth of the river in an area," said the Captain. "Before we ever berthed the Beau, we had to dredge a channel for her, to avoid bottom debris and to keep her props from eroding the bank. Out two hundred feet, and four hundred feet north and south."

We looked at him.

"Right now, she's sitting in forty-five feet of water. That'd be enough to submerge her to the pilothouse."

"Can we tow it to shore?" George was right on top, as usual.

"Take a lot," said Olinger. "She's got no propulsion, and she's carrying another… Oh, say, fifteen tons of water now. Not a job for your average winch." He pointed in the general direction of the Beauregard. "Find enough power, attach a good cable to that big tow ring just below the weather deck at the bow…"

We decided that the first step would be to get several hundred feet of cable rounded up, connected, and think of a way to get it to the boat in a hurry. What to attach it to on the bank, to pull such a load, was the largest problem. It was also a problem we had to solve before we went for the bad guys inside the Frieberg bank.

George wondered about a wrecker. No way. Couldn't overcome the inertia, according to Captain Olinger.

Lamar solved that one. "Sally, get hold of the railroad. See when they can have a couple of those big diesel engines on the track by the boat landing…" He turned to the captain. "That be enough?"

"Oh, it sure would," he said, grinning. "Plenty. Hell, you could water-ski behind her with that land of pull."

"Now we just got to figure a way to get cable attached to the boat without getting somebody shot." I looked at the dock area. "Can we get an iceboat up here?"

Our local iceboats were 16-foot aluminum flatbottoms, with caged aircraft engines, much like a swamp boat. Ice, water… made no real difference to the iceboats. I'd ridden in one for the first time at a drowning last winter. They just slowed a bit, hit the ice at a slant, and rode right up on it. Same thing going from the ice back to the water.

"We can probably get an iceboat here in fifteen minutes," said Captain Olinger.

"Let's do it," said Lamar. "I want everything in place when we decide to go…"

"It's time for the bank," said Volont.

Lamar looked first at Volont, then at Adams. "How long's it gonna take?"

"Ten minutes from 'Go,'" answered Adams. No hesitation.

"How are you going to do it?" I thought that was covered under "need to know."

Adams told us to look out the window toward the bank, one at a time, as he talked. He never looked, himself.

"The only operable truck they have is the one with the lift gate on the rear. Hydraulic. We can't get a good shot line on the tires. This turns out," he said, "to be a good thing."

He explained that there were a couple of blind spots in the bank. The bigger of the trucks had been the one the robbers had backed to the hole they'd blown in the wall. The hole wasn't quite large enough to accommodate the rear of the truck, so they'd had to leave a gap of about four feet between the end of the truck and the bank wall, to accommodate the powered lifting gate. His officers had been watching the robbers move the 55 gallon drums of money between the truck and the bank. They said that there was a good chance they could get in by approaching in the blind spot, creeping the wall, and just walking in through the hole in the wall when the power gate was in the down position.

They'd also had good views through some of the windows and were aware of the position of most of the hostages. Most.