Manhunt by Ian Slater

Author:Ian Slater
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Thrillers
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2013-10-29T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Three

Lucky McBride was in good spirits, in defiance of the pain that radiated from a stiff neck down his arms. The duty nurse on his floor at Holy Rosary had given him Tylenol 3s but the effect had worn off hours ago. Unable to sleep, he sat instead at the small fold-down Formica table in the rear of the fourth ambulance, going over Vance’s plan, adopting a “keep it simple, stupid” approach that he’d fax to finalize the plan. He knew that of the two vehicles involved—a motor home and a semitrailer—the semi, over ten feet in height, would have to park in either lot 11 or 13 on the Arizona side of the dam. Not superstitious himself, he decided to tell the driver to go for 11, not 13. And what was absolutely crucial, he told the eight militiamen, all of them out of their fatigues and in various civilian clothes, was to keep the cargoes separate until they were only a few miles north of the dam on the Nevada side, the trip from the outskirts of Las Vegas on Highway 93 a distance of about forty-two miles. Only then could they combine the two cargoes. He also made a note of the time of the last public tour of the dam—not the usually favored twenty-five-minute tourist walk-through, but the thirty-five-dollar, hour-long hard hat tour into the guts of the dam. The drill for the semi would be to reach lot 11 at least an hour before the last tour.

“Do you think we’ll have to do it?” asked Case, one of the eight militiamen whom McBride had scheduled to help out in the semi before returning to the ambulances.

“Well, Mr. Vance doesn’t think so. He figures that the mere threat of closing down L.A. will be enough to get them to release all our POWs.”

An astute twenty-year-old who would be staying behind to guard the ambulance asked, “What do you think?”

McBride didn’t answer right away. The temptation was to lie but he’d be running the mission by radio control and he’d never lied to his men before. The truth might not always set you free, but it at least told you what to expect.

“I don’t think the federals’ll go for it.”

“So we’ll have to blow it.”

“Yes.”

“Shit! I figured the threat would be enough.”

“Hey,” McBride said in a more upbeat tone, “what do I know? Maybe you’re right, Case. But the federals have thousands of us penned up.”

“Ah,” Case protested, but more in fear than in conviction. “They’ll release our boys. The public’d never stand for it. President’ll have to release ’em.”

“Maybe,” McBride repeated.

“How much of a bang will we get?” asked another of the eight, hastily adding for the comfort of his colleagues, “if we have to blow.”

McBride exhaled heavily. “Four to five times the Murrah Building.”

“Jesus Christ!”

“Hey, look,” McBride said. “It’s like Iraq, right? If we go in, we go in hard.

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