There were a lot of police officers hanging around the Spearfish Lake Police Department when Cody arrived. The parking lot in back was full, and he began to get some idea of why Charlie had suggested that he walk in, rather than driving. Several of the part-time officers were new to him, but he knew several others. Fred Piwowar and Leo Jarwaulski, the only two full-time officers with the exception of Charlie were there, which made this more interesting – unless Charlie did some schedule juggling his overtime budget was going to get hit.

“What’s this all about?” he asked Fred.

“Don’t know,” the older officer shook his head. “All I know is that Charlie has been working on something with the sheriff. No idea of what it is. I do know we’re still waiting on a few more guys to get here. Since you haven’t changed yet, I’m supposed to tell you to change into field clothes. That means jeans, shoes or boots you don’t mind getting dirty, and a ‘POLICE’ T-shirt or sweat shirt. I’d suggest you put on the T-shirt and take the sweat shirt with you. It might get cool later.”

“I got jeans and boots on that ought to work, like Charlie said,” Cody replied, and lightly tried to weasel a little more information out of Fred: “Sounds like it might be interesting.”

“Might be,” Fred said. “Except that with as many people coming as Charlie expects, we might not want it to be quite that interesting.”

“So what do we do?”

“Hang loose,” Fred told him. “We’re all on the clock, so at least we’re getting paid to stand around until they tell us what they want done.”

The sun was still in the sky down by the river, and people were starting to arrive, mostly in a pretty good mood. “By God, Eddie, you really came through,” Kyle Ralson said as he snagged a beer from the back of Scotty’s pickup truck. “Would you look at all that fucking beer!”

“Yeah,” Don Johansen, who had come with Kyle said as he fished one out, too. “When I heard Frenchy got thrown in the slammer I figured no party, and that was really going to be gay. But no, you came through for us!”

Alison DuQuoin and Shelly Battle had arrived with the two – it wasn’t a date, just a ride-along. Shelly got a beer out too, and handed one to Alison. “Schlader’s,” she wrinkled her nose. “Well, I guess it was too much to expect Miller’s or something.”

“It was what I could get,” Eddie replied apologetically. “I figure it beats no beer at all.”

“You got that right,” Kyle said, “and that was what was going to happen if you hadn’t been on the ball.”

“Yeah, but why did you block the road with your car?” Johansen complained. “That was really gay!”

“There’s not enough room to park down here,” Eddie explained. “If we put eight or ten cars in here, there wouldn’t be enough room for the beer, the fire, and us.”

“Well, yeah, I guess that makes sense,” Johansen snorted. “This ought to be a pretty good place to have a party after all. At least we’re going to have the people that really count here, not like all those gay bastards that’ll be hanging around the Frostee Freeze tonight. God, I hate being around some of those buttfuckers.”

“All right, people,” Charlie said to the group of officers gathered in the police station. “You’re probably wondering why I called you together tonight.”

“Looks like it’s going to be a big deal,” someone said from the back of the room.

“I really don’t know much about the details myself,” Charlie lied – if the leak who had ruined the two raids in past years was still active he might be in the room. “What I do know is that what we’re doing is providing backup for an operation Sheriff Stoneslinger has going on tonight. From what I understand it’s a meth lab takedown, and he’s hoping to catch the perps red-handed. The location and timing are a little loose, and there’s a chance it may not come off at all.”

“The Wagner brothers?” Leo asked.

“It’s possible,” Charlie said. “The sheriff wasn’t real clear on it, and that’s about all I know. Now, it’s pretty obvious that we’ve got a lot more people here than we have vehicles, so we’re going to have to get a little unconventional. I asked Leo to bring his full-size van, and I want eight or nine of you to ride with him. I’m going to have you stage at Shaundessy’s Bait and Tackle out toward the east end of the lake. Just sit there and try to not be too conspicuous. Since Leo doesn’t have a vehicle radio in the van, a couple of you keep your portables on. The rest of us may meet you there or have you go someplace else. I just don’t know yet. It depends on the way things play out.”

“How about weapons?” someone piped up. “If we’re going to be taking down the Wagner brothers we’re going to want a little more in the way of friends than normal.”

“For right now, just take your sidearms,” Charlie told them. “If it turns into a real deal, we’ve got the patrol cars already loaded with some heavier equipment. But there aren’t enough vests to go around, so my understanding is that those people without them are mostly going to be perimeter security. I’m sorry I can’t tell you a lot more, but the key to this is going to be to stay loose and flexible. Now, anybody want to go with Leo, or should I just pick some people?”

The sun was getting lower in the sky, and more and more people were arriving. Of course, the first thing everybody did was to stop off at the back of Scotty’s pickup to get a beer or two. A few people made some snide comments about the crappy beer, but even those people conceded that crappy beer was better than none.

“Eddie, you da man!” senior lineman Darrell Stersec exulted, seeing all the cold beer. “You done good, getting all this.” He popped one open and gunned about half of it back in one gulp. “Man, that’s good, and cold, too!”

“I was a little worried if it would be cold enough,” Eddie said, “but I guess it worked out all right.”

“Hey guys!” Stersec called out in a bull voice. “Anybody here think that Eddie shouldn’t be team captain for getting us all this good stuff?”

There was a chorus of acclamation, along with shouts, whistles, and compliments. It would be several days before the vote was taken among the players, but just then the deal was done. And that carried with it several worthwhile privileges – a fact brought home when cheerleader Courtney Dolfuss came over to him, beer in hand, and gave him a rather beery kiss. “That was real nice of you, Eddie,” she said. “When it gets a little darker, I’ve got a special present for you.” There was little doubt of what she meant, either – although she wasn’t a keeper she was pretty good looking and reportedly pretty easy, although Eddie had not yet tapped that keg. She wasn’t exactly Shelly, but there were plenty of fish in the sea. With any kind of luck, he might be able to catch more than one of them tonight.

About that time Scotty got in the truck, stuck an album in the CD player and cranked up the volume. With the doors of the pickup open it made for adequate drinking music. And really, that was mostly what was happening – drinking as much as possible and talking in small groups, mostly trash talking at that, about how they were going to kick butt on the football field this year, and at least hurt some people if they didn’t win some games.

Shelly Battle was on a mission, well, a couple of them. She liked her beer and wanted to get as drunk as possible, partly because everyone else there was trying to do the same thing and she didn’t want to be different from the group of people important to her. Vanessa Robideaux was there, of course, standing around in a separate group, and Shelly decided the time had come. She headed over to the truck, got a couple beers, opened one and dropped several pills into it. She went over to join the group that Vanessa was with, just about the time that Vanessa said, “Hey, guys, I need to break off and get another beer.”

“Here you go,” Shelly said, handing the open beer to her rival.

“Hey, thanks Shelly!” Vanessa said. “Does this mean we’re over that pissing match from last week?”

“I’m willing if you are,” Shelly grinned. “When you stop and think about it, it doesn’t matter. They’re just boys after all, there are more where they came from.”

“Yeah, there are more all around us,” Vanessa smiled. “Hey, we might even get a little action tonight.”

“You ought to be able to manage it. I want to wait a while and see what happens, maybe have a few more beers before I get down to that part.”

“You snooze, you lose,” Vanessa laughed.

“You might be right at that,” Shelly grinned. In fact, it was more or less what she had in mind.

The police station was a lot less crowded now that eight people had left with Leo. Cody wasn’t one of those picked to go with him, and he had no idea why he hadn’t been picked. “I’d be willing to bet it’s the Wagner brothers,” Ben Kubalek, another one of the part-time officers commented while Charlie was on the phone in his office. “I’ve heard rumors they’re running something over around Hoselton.”

“Could be,” Fred shrugged. “But then, it might be something else. I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.”

It seemed a likely prospect to Cody. The Wagners had gotten away with an awful lot around the area over the years – every officer on the department knew that. For a number of reasons, knowing something and getting a conviction on it proved to be two different things. If the three brothers could be taken off the streets – well, out of the woods, in their case – life would be a little more peaceful around the county for a while. If that was what was going on, it would be worth all of the extra effort.

They stood around lightly speculating for a few minutes, getting nowhere, until they could see that Charlie had hung up the phone in his office and came out into the main room. “All right,” he told the remaining officers. “I guess we’ve got everyone who’s going to show up. Let’s head across the street and see if we can find out what the sheriff has in mind.”

The six of them headed out the door; Charlie locked it behind him – in a department as small as Spearfish Lake’s the place was often unstaffed since the single officer on duty had other things to do. County Central Dispatch was where the 911 calls were answered, and that gave them as good a response time as a manned office would have done.

Over in the larger sheriff’s office they found several deputies hanging around, dressed much the same as the city police were, except that the deputies wore dark brown instead of dark blue. Cody knew a few of the deputies, but again, not all of them, although some of the faces were familiar.

Sheriff Stoneslinger proved to be no more informative than Charlie had been earlier. “All right,” he said. “It’s coming together. We have four county cars and one city car. I want a deputy to pair off with a city officer in each car. I want you to leave one at a time and meet up out at the airport. Maybe that way we won’t tip anybody off. He quickly assigned deputies to each of the cars, which included the Dog Warden’s truck, and Charlie designated city officers to ride along; again, Cody wasn’t one of those chosen.

“All right,” the sheriff said. “Let’s get moving. It may be a while yet. This probably won’t happen until after it gets good and dark, so be prepared to wait a while. If you guys leave every ten or fifteen minutes maybe no one will notice. The rest of you, come with me.” He looked around and counted. “OK, seven including myself. I wish I could take a few more, but that’s really about my limit. Still, it’s going to be more than I can fit in my sport-ute. Chris,” he said, nodding to Chris Aaronsen, one of the deputies, “you’ve got your car, why don’t you bring the extras and follow along?”

Eddie guessed that by now most everybody likely to show up had made it to the party. He didn’t have a firm count, but guessed it was around forty people. A little to his surprise, he hadn’t noticed any guys who weren’t supposed to be there. There were a number of girls, mostly cheerleaders but including a few girlfriends. There were a few no-shows, or at least people he hadn’t yet seen, but virtually all of them were people he hadn’t expected to show up anyway, like Mike Kovacs and Steve Sarmeinto. Well, they were pussies anyway, and didn’t count for much on the team. At least those people who really mattered were here.

People were getting to the point of feeling pretty good. Most of the people at the party were starting to feel the effects of the Shadler’s, both in their heads and in their bladders. A good many of them had made one or more trips out into the bushes away from the party to drain their kidneys, and a few, in couples, for other purposes.

Eddie was one of the first to join the latter group, to take Courtney Dolfuss up on her offer from earlier. It proved that Courtney had come to the party with that in mind; she wore a short skirt and no panties, so it didn’t take long for them to get down to business. Both of them got their rocks off and made the requisite noises to each other, even though they both knew it was nothing more than a quickie. They couldn’t have been away from the party more than ten minutes, and if anyone noticed, no one said anything.

It was getting dark enough now that the fire made sense, so Eddie decided to get it going while Courtney headed off to find someone else to hook up with for another quickie in the bushes. While he and Scotty had been waiting around for people to show up, he’d piled a pretty good stack of wood on top of the empty cardboard beer boxes. If that wasn’t enough, he got a gallon can of kerosene he’s bought at the Fiesta station earlier and dumped it over the whole thing. With all that, it didn’t take long for the fire to be roaring.

“Nice fire, Eddie,” Alison DuQuoin said to him, hanging on his arm a little. “That really makes things perfect.”

“I think so,” Eddie agreed, noticing that Alison seemed a little looped to him. He hadn’t been keeping count of how many she’d had, but it was a few. Alison wasn’t exactly the easiest girl among the cheerleaders, and it would be a real point on the scoreboard if he could manage a hook-up with her. “But hey,” he said, trying an angle, “that was a pretty good party you had last week.”

“It was OK,” Alison shrugged. “I’m just sorry things had to go sour between you and Shelly as a result of it.”

“I’ve gotten used to it,” Eddie said truthfully. “It was getting to be time to be moving on, anyway. I think Shelly was starting to get a little too serious.”

“I think you’re right. She wasn’t the girl for you, Eddie. This party shows that you need someone who really likes to have fun.”

“Someone like you?” he grinned.

“Well, yeah,” she smiled. “I could stand a little fun. Are you in the mood for a quick hook-up?”

“Any time you’re ready,” he smiled. Hell, his dick wasn’t even dry from Courtney yet, and now Alison was horny! There was no point in letting the opportunity go to waste . . .

The sun was down but the sky was still light as Cody wound up riding in the back of Aaronsen’s car. The thing that really surprised him was that they were following the sheriff, who had his bass boat on the back of his personal vehicle. That didn’t make a lot of sense, unless the place they were hitting was along the lake somewhere, which sort of ruled out Hoselton. But there were isolated cottages along the northeast part of the lake, some of them well back in the woods. If that was the case, taking the bass boat made some sense – maybe it was a way to come at their target from an unexpected angle.

Cody sort of expected that Charlie knew more about what was coming off than he’d admitted to, and he was probably giving the primary assault team the skinny on what was coming down out at the airport. If this was going to be a raid, Cody felt a little naked without a vest and better weaponry, although it was no secret that he was the best shot on either of the departments – he was twice State Champion in heavy pistol. Well, maybe the sheriff had the stuff in his sport-ute, although given a choice Cody would have preferred to have a vest that he knew fit him. But then, maybe the idea was to flood the target, overkill it rather than going in with too few people.

Even when the sheriff drove past the downtown boat launch Cody didn’t think too much about it; probably the sheriff was going someplace else and didn’t want a bunch of armed officers being seen loading into a boat. His suspicion was confirmed when they drove out past the school and onto County Road 417, but soon turned off onto the road to the dam. There was a boat launch there, Cody knew, and even on a weekend it wouldn’t be a busy place.

“Now what the hell?” Aaronsen said when the sheriff ignored the road to the dam launch site, and turned down the narrower, rougher road to the small boat ramp below the dam. “If he’s going down here, whatever we’re doing isn’t going to be on the lake. It’s the wrong way for going out to the east end of the lake.”

“Beats me,” the other deputy in the front seat said. “If it’s somewhere on the river, the other guys are way away from here.”

In a minute or two it proved that the sheriff was ignoring the lake entirely; he swung his rig around and backed right up to the boat ramp without stopping. He backed the rig into the water, then got out to back the boat off the trailer while Aaronsen parked his car a short distance away. In a minute or two the boat was tied lightly to the dock.

The sheriff called the rest of the officers over. “All right,” he said. “Bring your weapons and your sweat shirts, and get aboard.”

“Are we going to need heavier weapons or vests?” Cody asked.

“I’m running on the assumption that we’re not,” the sheriff said. “We’re probably going to need bug dope, but I’ve got some. Come on, let’s get moving. I want to get close to where we’re going while I’ve still got some light to see where we are.”

A few minutes later they were heading down the wide, deep, slow-moving river. The sheriff was behind the wheel, and he wasn’t hurrying; as he had said, the light was going fast, and he wanted to be careful. They went around several bends, and after a few minutes Stoneslinger brought the boat to a stop at a dilapidated dock. “OK, tie it off,” he said to Aaronsen. “This is a good place to wait until everybody else gets in place.”

“Now that we’re out in the middle of nowhere, are you going to tell us what we’re really doing? Aaronsen asked.

“Yeah, in a couple minutes,” the sheriff replied. “Now that we’re staged I’ve got to get the rest of the wheels in motion.” He pulled out his portable radio and spoke into it. “Cascade Six to Cascade Five,” he called. “Go ahead and call in Cascade Three to your location, brief them in and move to your position. Let me know when you’re in place.”

“Jeez, special call signs?” Aaronsen said. “This has got to be something big.”

“Military hangover,” the sheriff said. “There are reasons, I’ll get to it in a minute.” He pulled out his cell phone and punched an autodial number. “OK, we’re getting there,” he said to the other person. “Go ahead and get moving, but don’t get in position until everybody else is there. I’m guessing about forty-five minutes to an hour until we’re ready.”

Over the course of the next hour or more twilight became darkness. No one particularly noticed, mostly because the fire was still roaring; as soon as it burned down a little Eddie or someone tossed some more wood on it.

The group was going through the beer in the back of Scotty’s truck at a pretty good rate. It wasn’t all gone yet, not by any means, but the supply was shrinking. A couple times Eddie checked it out and figured that he’d figured it about right – they’d be running out just about the time that everyone had drunk their fill. He’d guessed that typically one of the people at the party might go through eight or ten cans. A few might go less, but then there were animals like Lethbridge and Caldwell that would go way over the average.

The two were doing their best to out-drink each other. Eddie didn’t have a firm count and doubted if anyone did, but the two must have gone through a dozen or fifteen cans each by now, and they were getting pretty well blitzed. They were still navigating, and still drinking – as well as making more trips out into the darkness to piss than anyone else, too. But there were a number of other people who had more than their allotment of beer in them and were still going; things were getting pretty drunk out there.

Out in the dimness at the very edge of the firelight, Vanessa Robideaux and Don Johansen were getting it on. Nobody particularly noticed; they weren’t the only ones, and people hooking up weren’t getting away into the woods quite as much as they had earlier. Again, Eddie hadn’t been keeping count, but he figured that most of the girls at the party had already had a round or two, and Courtney, at least, had more than that. At least he’d gotten to her first this evening, he thought.

Just at that moment, Eddie was standing near the fire, talking with Kyle Ralston. “Great party, Eddie,” Kyle was telling him. “You really know how to throw a good one.”

“Good way to start the season,” Eddie told him. “It’ll be something to remember when we’re sweating through practice.”

“Yeah, one last season,” Kyle said, “then it’ll be over with. We’d better make it count while we can.”

Eddie wasn’t really paying attention to the conversation; he was mostly figuring who he could hit on next. It wasn’t easy; a lot of the girls at the party were busy at the moment. Well, Shelly wasn’t. He’d had enough of her, but maybe something for old times’ sake?

He never got to make a decision, as Don came wandering up to the fire. “God, that’s really gay,” he said.

“What’s really gay?” Kyle asked.

“I was over there fucking Vanessa and she fell asleep on me. I mean, how gay can you get if she can’t get that interested?”

“Shit,” Kyle sneered. “It’s you that’s gay. I’ll bet I can fuck her hard enough to wake her up.”

“Be my guest,” Don shook his head. “If I can’t do it, then there’s no way you can. I mean, shit, that’s really gay of her.”

“Guess I’ll take you up on that,” Kyle said.

“If you can’t wake her up, maybe somebody else would like to try,” Don laughed. “I mean, it’s not like she’s gonna mind if she sleeps through it.”

It was fully dark now – dark as the inside of the proverbial cow. There was no moon; it had set earlier that evening and wouldn’t be rising until sometime around dawn. It wasn’t clear to Cody how the sheriff was finding his way down the river in the darkness, running silently and slowly on just the trolling motor.

The boat went around a wide bend, and they could see a big bonfire in front of them – and everything else they were expecting to see. This was really going to be a surprise, Cody thought. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be the same kids who’d been a pain in the ass when he’d been in school, but they was the same type, and it seemed like it was payback time.

He heard the sheriff’s voice, obviously speaking over his portable in the darkness. “Cascade Six to Cascade Five,” he said. “Target confirmed. We’re going in.”

“Five is clear, we’re ready,” Cody faintly heard Charlie Wexler’s voice.

“All right, guys,” the sheriff said as he hit the switch to raise the trolling motor, and started the big outboard a few seconds later. “Here we go!”

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