The Ten-Mile Trials (25 page)

At the north end of the lake, the roadway turns sharply west, heading toward North Broadway, and as Hanenburger traversed this tight curve at a speed he had never attempted before, we could see him start to skid. All his iron discipline kicked in at that moment, and he turned, as he had always been taught to do, in the direction of the skid.

But he didn't have any wiggle room at all. There was an asphalt walkway on his immediate right, then a wire-and-metal-pole fence enclosing twenty feet of fluttering goose-repelling tinfoil on wires, and beyond that another fence like the first one. When Hanenburger turned in the direction of the skid he crashed right through all of it, trailing a silvery kite's tail of miscellaneous metal. It slowed his momentum just enough to allow him a flat entry into the shallow water of the lake, with maximum splash.

His air bags did not deploy, so his head hit the steering wheel and broke his nose. But he fought his way out of his sinking vehicle, and came wading toward shore as we passed him. Soaked and muddy and bleeding from the nose, he shed bits of wire, tinfoil and watercress as he walked. His lips were moving. I knew I didn't want to hear what he had to say.

The Escalade negotiated the turn successfully, but as soon as it straightened out and picked up speed again it encountered another hazard unique to the area – a single file of Canada geese strolling across the road. Local mascots their whole lives, they were so accustomed to doting humans who looked out for them that it never occurred to them to check traffic or hurry.

The Escalade blasted through the goose parade almost as fast as it had hit the speed bump. The geese got alarmed in the last five seconds and tried to take off. There was a wet
thock!
as two of them hit the windshield, scattering blood, feathers and goose parts across the SUV and the roadway. The big car's driver roared on, but now he and his passenger were seeing the world through two fist-size holes in a feathery red tracery of shattered windshield.

As I watched all the cars turn north on Broadway, I realized that from as far behind as we were we would never overtake them. I leaned forward and said, ‘Ray, we're never going to catch up in this old bucket. But listen, they're not going to go to Lake City, right? They've got connections in the Twin Cities – they're most likely to go there.'

Ray said, ‘Yeah, so?'

‘So take Elton Hills Drive to West River Parkway and we'll catch them at the pistol range.' I said it fast and just in time. Ray screeched into the turn at the last possible second. We all swallowed hard as the car tilted before it settled back down on to all four wheels. I watched the Escalade and its followers roar away to our right, where North Broadway turned back into Highway Sixty-Three.

Ray said softly, ‘Good call,' and then we all sat through an anxious, silent interval of hoping I'd guessed right about where the bad guys would go. But as we approached the last long curve that would turn toward Thirty-Seventh Street, we heard Ruskie saying ‘Turning west now toward River Parkway' and we all exhaled. The Escalade came in sight soon after, blazing fast along the southern perimeter of the pistol range. Trailing some smoke now, but still with plenty of speed, it turned north and screamed along the parkway, doing close to ninety in the right-hand lane. Ruskie was in the left-hand lane, coming up on the SUV's flank and gaining a foot now and then. Ray found an opening between the second squad and Kevin's Jeep, and we were finally part of the parade.

Then we all said at once, ‘Hey!' Because ahead of us, at the northernmost edge of the pistol range, Bo Dooley had just pulled calmly on to the roadway on his old Harley, and tucked in right behind the Escalade. As he explained later, he had been shooting some qualifying rounds on the pistol range. Like most of us, he wore both foam earplugs and Optimum 3 earmuffs – so he was really in his bubble, and when he took off the protection and heard a great wailing of sirens in town he was immediately curious. He turned on his radio just in time to hear Dispatch suggesting the chase be abandoned, and the answering protest, ‘They've got Rosie!' He turned up the sound and strained to hear every word then. When he realized the pursuit was coming his way, he got on his bike and got ready.

North of the pistol range, the Zumbro River makes a long curve that carries it close under the steep bank on the right-hand side of the road. And apparently the two men in the Escalade were beginning to feel less certain about their chances of escape, because as we passed the mink farm on our left, with its myriad furry creatures nibbling happily, oblivious to looming disasters including their own, the window on the passenger side of the SUV slid down, and a velour-covered arm began throwing things into the river. Two guns flew through the air first, and then a number of tightly wrapped packages. Kevin said softly, ‘Just look at that wretched waste of weed.'

Ahead of us, Bo had begun to make a series of swooping dodges, left and right, across the rear of the Escalade, as if he were deciding which side to go around.

‘What's he doing?' Ray said. ‘He can't possibly have speed enough to pass.'

‘Maybe not,' I said, ‘but that must be distracting as hell for the driver ahead.'

Maybe so, but the Escalade's driver, out of town now and seeing a nearly empty road ahead, must have thought his chance to outrun the pack had improved. He appeared to put the pedal to the metal in some newly motivated way, and began pulling a little away from Hruska. He just had to shake this pesky little bike rider, he must have been thinking, and he'd be gone.

But he didn't know the road as well as we all did, and maybe his eyes stayed on the motorcycle in his rear-view mirror a second too long. Where the road turned sharply left on to Fifty-Fifth Street, and the river, completing its ox-bow, flowed west alongside it, the big car had too much speed – or the driver's reflexes were getting tired. For whatever reason, he blew the turn.

Roaring straight ahead off the roadway, he passed a sign, brown with white lettering, that read ‘Entering Controlled Hunting Zone' and began to climb the bank as nimbly as a goat. A few feet farther up the slope, a similar sign had once stood, but it had been hit from behind, perhaps by a snowmobile last winter riding the top of a drift. Now the sign was gone, but the metal post remained, bent forward toward the road. The Escalade hit it straight on. It pierced the windshield somewhere on the passenger side, got scooped out of the loose soil of the bank, and carried right along.

The bank wasn't steep, so the Escalade didn't lose much speed going up. It seemed to me that maybe the driver froze at the wheel, that he'd reacted to one too many things and lost his flexibility for a few seconds, so he kept his foot on the gas instead of hitting the brake. However it happened, he kept on going, simply flew off the top and disappeared, headed down toward nine feet of dirt-laden Zumbro River. We couldn't see the plunge from where we were, but we saw the top of his mighty splash.

Bo drove a few feet up the bank, and when the bike slowed he jumped off and dropped it in the dirt. He ran fast up the rest of the slope and then he, too, disappeared. All the rest of us made the quickest job we could of pulling cars off the road and getting out – there was a rattling prattle of talk from car radios and slamming doors, and then we were all running up the bank. All except Kevin, who yelled, ‘I've got some flotation gear in my Jeep – help me get it, Ray,' and the two of them headed for his old fishing car.

I'd thought most of the damage from my gunshot wound last winter was healed, but my left leg turned to jelly on the climb, so everybody passed me. I was so disgustingly out of shape, I had to stop at the top for a breather.

I had a spectacular view of the Escalade from there. It had dropped nose first and entered the river at a steep angle. And that thing was so damn long, even with its front bumper firmly buried in the mud, it still had six or seven feet of rear end protruding above the stream. It had twisted a little to the right during its fall, or the bottom had subsided more under the right front tire, so the passenger side was deeper in the water than the driver's side.

The river bank was noisy with scrambling policemen and treacherously sliding rocks. Bo was already at the water's edge, wading in. As I started down the bank, the water reached his chest, and he began to swim.

Winnie passed everybody on the climb up, and then bombed straight down to the river at iron-woman speed. When she reached the water she ran right into it without a pause, and in a few seconds she was swimming, too. By the time Bo reached the Escalade, Winnie was right behind him.

Realizing that we didn't know who might come out of the vehicle, or what shape they'd be in, I limped down the bank yelling, ‘Wait, the rest of you wait! Cover the car till we see if anybody comes out!' At first they said, ‘What? What's he saying?' But as they reached the water and thought about jumping in, they also began to think about the need for backup with dry weapons. By the time I reached them, they were all bracing on the wet sand with their Glocks in their hands.

‘OK, Gary and I can cover it now,' I said when I reached them. ‘You watch the passenger side, Gary, I'll take the driver. The rest of you, make a line, huh? As far out as you can get without swimming, so you're ready to help when they bring her out.' They stacked their weapons behind me and edged into the water. Ruskie was tallest; he reached a wobbly foothold about halfway to the car.

Bo swam alongside the upstream side of the vehicle till he could reach the roof rack, where he hoisted himself aboard in one gutsy move that must have taken all the muscle he had. The car settled a little more to the right but held its place in the current, and he pulled himself quickly along the sloping roof, toward the rear end.

When his head was out over the tailgate he looked in through the glass panel at the top, nodded down at Winnie in the water, and tried the door handle with no success. He twisted sideways and pulled his radio out of its holster. His arm rose once, twice, three times. Pieces flew off the radio but a hole appeared in the middle of the glass. He dragged himself upright on to the roof rack, managed to sit up at a crazy angle, and kicked with the heel of his boot until the hole was bigger.

I heard him tell Winnie, who was clinging to the wheel well on the high side, ‘Wait right there.' He reached in through the shattered glass, groped till he found the handle, and turned the latch. He said ‘Now!' and jumped into the water with blood streaming from his arm. Winnie pushed up and the liftgate rose. The two of them scrambled into the open back hatch.

Ray and Kevin, panting hard, came crashing down the bank carrying line and floats. They plunged into the stream, which by now was so mud-filled it afforded no visibility at all. Clinging to the floats, they had plenty of buoyancy but poor forward momentum – they had to kick furiously, with their eyes above water, just to avoid floating away. The men in the water began to grab them and push them forward toward the car, and they paid out line as they went.

There was a little rocking motion at the open hatch, and then Bo and Winnie crouched in the opening, holding Rosie between them. She had her eyes open, she seemed to be having some trouble standing but I could see she was talking – didn't it figure she'd be already talking? Kevin yelled, ‘Let her go, we'll catch her,' and then the rear end of the car settled a little more. All of us who were watching made a collective sound, a spontaneous, terrified, ‘Aaah,' because it looked like the three in the car might not get out; the car was going under and they'd be swept away.

I quit worrying about that when first Rosie and then the other two splashed into the river, and the water became a muddy froth full of bodies reaching, swimming, calling out, and pulling on lines; everybody was in the water but Gary and me. I was just about to put my weapon down so I could go and help, when in the slowly sinking open space at the rear of the Escalade two arms clad in vomit-yellow velour appeared, holding the long dark barrel and curving clip of an AK-47.

A squinting bewhiskered face sighted along the barrel, and I saw the man in the velour suit swing the weapon in a broad arc as he began firing bursts. Shots too fast to count spattered into the water and threw up sand along the shore. The mother of all bees stung the edge of my right foot and another one out of the same hive bit my left arm. I glanced down and saw blood running down my side. There was blood in the water too, and somebody yelling down there. Gary cried out when a bullet thunked into his vest, but he kept shooting and so did I, until the terrible man in the ugly suit dropped his weapon and plunged forward into the water.

He lay still there, bobbing in the confused churning eddies made by the many swimmers, until the current reasserted itself and he began to float away toward the Mississippi. Kevin, in the clear suddenly, saw him start to go. He said, ‘Oh, no, you don't, you bastard,' and reached him in a couple of long-armed strokes. He seized a fistful of velour, dog-paddled left-handed till he could plant his own feet in the mud, and tugged him up on to the beach.

He stood over the muddy body gulping huge, ragged breaths of air for a few seconds before he bent and turned the man over. Then he straightened, met my eyes and smiled, made a circle of his thumb and forefinger, and said, ‘Nice shot.'

I started to give him the same signal back but stopped, mesmerized by a row of bright-colored round blobs popping up along the edge of a low hill behind him. The blobs rose jerkily, like ducks in a shooting gallery, and faces began to appear below them. As they drew nearer, the faces began to wear expressions of extreme surprise and shock, rendered comical by the gleaming red and green helmets above them, and the Day-Glo orange, aqua and purple jackets below.

Attracted by the noise of our calamity, a crowd of kayakers had come up from their launching site just downstream. Their black neoprene splash-skirts hung above their bare knees and zippered booties like awkward tutus cut by an unskilled hand. When they saw the bloody man lying silent at the water's edge, they lined up on the brow of the hill and watched us in alarm, getting ready to flee like some new species of multi-colored wild game.