To Gertie Miller in the Doughty Valley: Jeremiah is unharmed. He is in the custody of the sheriff, as much for his safety as for his duplicity in any crime. Pray for continued safety.
To Albert O. Yoder and his wife Martha: Sara is still missing. Her life has been threatened by men unworthy even to speak her name. Pray for her rescue.
To Bishop Irvin Raber: All is not lost. Call your people together. Your leadership and righteousness are needed, now more than ever. Call the people to minister to one another in spirit. To pray for courage, as Sara Yoder’s life is held in the balance. In the hands of English men, friend and foe.
And pray, most of all, for God’s hand to work in all of this. For, when have the
Gemie,
the people, ever been able to do anything more powerful than pray? When has faith mattered more? Faith that God’s mercy covers John Schlabaugh. Covers equally his family, floundering in grief. Covers the union of the body of believers. Covers the necessities of the next telling hours.
SUNDAY, JULY 25
22
Sunday, July 25
12:58 A.M.
BRANDEN and Robertson stole down the lane under cover of trees in the dark, and came within sight of a dilapidated, one-story barn lit by a halogen floodlamp mounted on the front corner. At the far limit of the broad light cast by the security flood, there stood a short, single-wide trailer on concrete blocks. Facing the barn, a small window of the trailer glowed with a faint yellow light shadowed once, then twice, by a figure moving inside. Robertson shielded Jeremiah Miller’s GPS receiver by cupping his hand over the display, and checked the coordinates. He turned to Branden and nodded. Then he pointed to the trailer’s window and whispered, “At least one in the trailer.”
As he spoke, a man in dungarees and a dirty undershirt pushed open the trailer door with his foot and came down the steps carrying a tray of food. He was strapped with a brown leather shoulder holster holding a large, black pistol.
Branden and Robertson crouched lower into the cover of the trees and watched the man walk through the patch of light and turn the corner to the front doors of the barn. Balancing the tray on the flat of his palm, Dungarees opened one of the barn doors, stepped over the sill, and switched on an interior light. He moved toward the back of the barn and disappeared beyond the illumination of the light. Inside the barn, Robertson saw long tables holding glassware and hotplates. He turned to Branden and whispered, “White’s lab.” Branden nodded.
Robertson whispered, “I’m going closer.” Just as he moved, Dungarees darted out through the barn door and ran to the trailer saying, “Jack, you need to get out here.”
A second man came to the trailer door, disgruntled, and growled, “What now?”
“She’s not breathing too good,” Dungarees said, stopping short of the trailer. Jack came out, muttering curses, and followed Dungarees into the barn.
Robertson keyed the radio microphone clipped to the shoulder strap of his uniform, and whispered, “This is it,” in mounting tension.
In short order, both men came out of the barn. Dungarees carried his tray of food back to the trailer. Jack stood under the floodlight and punched out a number on his flip phone. “It’s me,” he said. “Right. I don’t think she can last till then. She was squawking too much, so I gagged her. Now she’s puking in her gag.”
Robertson drew his Sig Sauer P220 45, stepped into the clear and roared, “Stand where you are!” as Branden said, “Go. Go. Go,” into a handheld radio.
Jack crouched, pulled out his pistol, and fired once in less time than it took Robertson to bring his 45 onto target. The slug clipped the sheriff on the round of his left shoulder and sprayed blood back into Branden’s face.
Robertson aimed one-handed, cranked off two booming shots, and hit Jack square in the chest with both shots. As Jack toppled over, Dungarees burst through the trailer door pointing a shotgun, and Robertson shot again as deputies poured from the woods on all sides of the barn. Dungarees dropped his shotgun and raised his hands over his head. Robertson advanced angrily, his gun shaking in his right hand, as Bobby Newell threw the man to the ground and tied his hands back with a plastic loop.
Urgent shouting and a volley of shots sounded behind the barn. A deputy behind Robertson yelled “Fire!” and as he turned, the sheriff saw Branden dashing through the front doors of the barn. Two loud explosions erupted inside the barn, and flames were soon flaring out the front doors.
Robertson keyed his mic, shouted “Fire! Ambulance!” and tried to follow Branden through the doors. The flames forced him back. Ricky Niell came running around a back corner of the barn, shouting, “One perp down in back.”
Robertson barked, “Two here. Branden’s inside.”
Niell eyed the flames and said, “There’s a back door. He can get out.” Robertson and Niell sprinted to the back. When they got there, the rear door was fully enveloped in flames. Sirens from a fire truck sounded out front.
At the back, Niell heard a desperate hammering on the wall of the old barn. He pulled Robertson over, and the two saw the old boards splinter outward at waist level. A booted foot kicked from inside again, and another board shattered. Holding a handkerchief to his bleeding shoulder, Robertson called men to the wall. They frantically pried away boards to open a ragged hole, and Branden handed Sara Yoder, bound hands and feet, through the opening. Then Branden pushed through, his clothes smoking, and coughed urgently, “She’s choking.”
Bobby Newell scooped her limp body into his muscular arms and ran for the front of the barn, flames bursting through the walls as he passed. He handed Sara to two paramedics and shouted over the din of the engines, “Choking!”
Branden limped into view, prudently several yards away from the flames that were moiling up the exterior wall of the barn. Niell came up behind him and told a paramedic, “We shot one in back,” and led the paramedic to the rear.
In pain, Robertson knelt awkwardly next to Sara, beside the ambulance, and said into her ear, “You hang in there, Sara.” Then he sat back on his haunches to watch the men working on her. One paramedic pushed deep chest compressions while the other used a vacuum hose to clear murky fluid from Sara’s airway. When she opened her eyes and coughed spasmodically, the paramedic stopped the chest compressions.
They put an oxygen mask over her sooty face, rolled her onto a backboard, and hefted her into the back of the ambulance. A paramedic jumped in behind her as another closed the doors and pounded a go-ahead on the doors. The ambulance backed up, turning sharply. It pulled forward in the tight space on the lane and tried to make the turn. There wasn’t enough room to make it around, so the driver put it into reverse. The backing tone sounded, and Robertson and a deputy ran down the lane, clearing a path for the ambulance.
A paramedic stopped Robertson on the lane, cut the sheriff’s uniform loose over the wound, and taped a field dressing into place. Then Robertson pushed away and started after the ambulance.
As the ambulance disappeared, Branden limped up to Robertson where he had stopped at the end of the lane. “She wasn’t breathing. I tore off her gag.”
Robertson said, “They’ve got her going now, Mike. You’ve given her a chance.”
Robertson took out his cell phone and slowly poked in the numbers for Tony Arnetto with his right thumb. When Arnetto answered, Robertson barked, “I took White’s Ecstasy lab,” and switched off.
Another fire truck appeared at the lane, and Branden and Robertson stepped back to let it pass. They walked back up the drive, rutted with tracks and straining fire hoses, and came as close to the burning barn as the fire chief would allow. Overhead, higher than the tops of the far trees, plumed a fiery orange glow. As Robertson knelt beside the lane, Branden took out a handkerchief, wet it in the thin spray from a fire hose linkage, and began to wipe soot and Robertson’s blood off his face.
23
Sunday, July 25
6:45 A.M.
THE firefighters were hosing down smoldering hot spots in the rubble of the barn until well past dawn. Smoke and steam rose in a tall, white column into the calm, blue sky. Robertson and Branden stood beside the hissing ruins and took stock of the morning’s work. Two kidnappers shot, one of them dead at the scene, the other transported to the hospital. One of their confederates captured, cuffed, and transported to the jail. Sara Yoder rescued, but perhaps not in time. No word had reached them yet of her condition.
Bobby Newell joined them, carrying a clipboard. He consulted the attached notepad and said, “We threw six shots. Am I right that three of those were yours?”
Robertson said, “Right. The first two shots hit home, and the third went wild.”
Newell wrote on his notepad. When it was clear that Robertson would have nothing more to say on the matter, Newell cleared his throat and said, “Ricky shot twice and Carter once. That’s three shots at the rear of the barn from our guys. The injured perp got off one shot, but I haven’t got his bullet. It’s probably out in the woods somewhere. Also, your third shot is not in the trailer.”
“I told you,” Robertson said, “my third shot went wild.”
“I was just thinking you should have at least hit the trailer,” Newell said, the hint of a smile lifting the corners of his mouth.
Enjoying the exchange, Branden chuckled, “Missed the trailer?”
Newell said, “I’m just saying,” smiling more broadly.
Robertson said, “OK, Bobby. That’s on me. One shot not recovered.”
Newell tapped the side of his clipboard with his pen, smiled, and ambled off toward his cruiser down the lane.
Robertson said to Branden, “I’m gonna take some ribbing about throwing a wild shot.”
Branden said, “It got the job done. They’ll forget it soon enough.”
“I’m not so sure,” Robertson said.
Ricky Niell walked over from the trailer and said, “The guy we shot out back is going to make it. He’s out of surgery already.”
Robertson nodded absently and surveyed the burned ruins of the barn. A few charred uprights stood in the middle of a mound of black ash and debris, all of it wet, some of it steaming. It’d take a day, maybe two, for the state fire marshal to go through the scene for evidence, but clearly the barn had been rigged to burn fast.
To Niell, Robertson said, “You heard the two explosions before he came out through the back door?”
Niell said, “At about the same time. He’d have to have thrown a switch just as he got to the back door. I figure they rigged it that way in case they were ever raided. Then he’s coming at us, shooting, and the whole place went up. The back door was open, and I saw two white flashes under the long tables. After that, it was just fire everywhere, and the next thing I knew, Doc was handing Sara Yoder through a hole in the wall.”
Robertson fixed his gaze on the charred ruins for a while and then said, “We’ll never recover anything from the barn. They rigged it well.”
“The trailer is a different story,” Ricky said. “We’ve got ledgers and a hard drive full of contacts in Holmes and Franklin counties. I zipped up all the files, and sent them to Arnetto’s office, like you asked.”
“He’ll be out here for the ledgers, too,” Robertson said.
“We’ve already arrested four Holmes County dealers this morning,” Ricky said. “It’s been a hard morning, but we’ll get the rest. Those listed on the ledgers, anyways. It’ll just take a few days, is all.”
Robertson toed a cinder and then crushed it under his boot. He looked around at the scene with a measure of thankfulness. Apart from him, none of his people had been hurt. Only one of the perps was dead. The action was over. The whole affair, start to finish, beginning with finding John Schlabaugh’s grave and ending with Sara’s rescue, had lasted only slightly more than forty hours. Robertson found himself wishing that the tension would wash out of him with the end of the action. But there were still matters to be finished. DEA agents to contend with. And one serious mistake that would trouble him for a very long time.
The firefighters were coiling their hoses and chopping at hot spots with their axes. The deputies were working the trailer, cataloging its contents. Dan Wilsher had the day-shift deputies out making arrests. With a grim satisfaction, he said, “We did some good here.”
Branden answered, “If you hadn’t pushed us all, Bruce, Sara would likely be dead right now.”
With ire, Robertson replied, “Arnetto’s just going to have to be satisfied with what he gets. I can’t be worried about his problems.”
Branden asked, “You called him, right?”
“Just as soon as we wrapped ’em up,” Robertson said.
“Then he should have been able to raid his places in Columbus in plenty of time.”
Robertson scowled, kicked at a charred board, and said, “I blew it, Mike. Dang! I blew it big time.”
Branden waited.
Robertson shook his head and said, ruefully, “When I shouted ‘Stand where you are,’ that guy was still on his cell phone.”
Branden thought briefly and then nodded. “Whoever was on the other end of that line heard us moving in.”
“They will have heard the whole thing, Mike,” Robertson said and produced the flip phone from his pocket. “The fool thing was still on when I picked it up.”
“OK, so what’s the worst scenario?”
“I’ll tell you, Professor. That was Samuel Red Dog White on the line with the guy I shot. Or it was one of White’s close associates. Tony Arnetto is going to show up here saying he missed White again, because I screwed up. It’s going to be my fault.”
“Sheriff,” Branden said, “you’ve got to remember you saved a girl here. That’s enough.”
“It’s going to have to be,” Robertson said.
Robertson’s cell phone rang and he took the call, eyes focused on the tree line overhead. He said, “Yes,” listened, and then switched off. He brought his eyes to Branden’s and said, “Missy. Says Sara Yoder has had a stroke. Left side paralyzed. Can’t talk. She’s a mess.” He stood straight, slapping the cell phone into his palm, shaking his head, eyes uncertain of their focus.