Rolling Thunder

“Good. Get into the trailer with the rest of them. Stay away from the windows, my man. Snipers are always looking for assholes stupid enough to stand in front of a window. Think they can disarm me with a well-placed shot. I learned about that one at the police academy. Some jerk in the Midwest actually did it. Better shot than Danny Fucking Boyle.”

Great. He’s dragging me into his tirade, too.

Cliff goes into the control room.

Skippy squints up at the arched ceiling.

“I’m so glad my daddy put in the roof! Aren’t you guys? You poor SWAT bastards. Up there freezing your nuts off on top of a rickety goddamn roller coaster and you can’t shoot me because my daddy didn’t want people to demand refunds if it started raining after they bought their tickets. He built them a shed so he could steal their money, rain or shine!”

He faces the crowd on the far side of the tracks.

Raises his shotgun.

They scream and squirm backward.

Skippy laughs. Lowers his weapon.

“And my father thought I was a wuss! You people are all fucking pansies! Each and every one of you! But guess what? This is your sunny funderful day! As soon as I am safely inside that door, you are all free to go. Now, I’m sure the police will want to ask you a lot of questions. Please tell them that justice will soon be served. And, when it’s time to go, kindly exit the way you entered. No pushing or shoving or I might have to shoot you. Also, try not to trample Mr. Santucci or that brave little asshole whose head I blew open like a watermelon on your way out the door, okay? And, finally, and this is the most important part. On behalf of my entire family, Daddy and Kevin and Peter and Mary and Sean O’Malley, I hope each and every one of you will tell your friends about Sea Haven’s exciting new thrill ride: Big Paddy O’Malley’s heart-stopping new wonder-the Rolling Fucking Thunder!”

39

As soon as skippy closes the door to the control room, his hostages stampede off the platform.

They’re pushing and shoving at the bottleneck where they have to squeeze through an opening to run down the ramp that takes them back to the room full of stanchions and barriers like they have at airport security so you can wait in line for an hour and keep doubling back on yourself.

The mob treats the stockades like hurdles to be knocked over in an Olympics trial gone wrong.

Ceepak and I are running toward the entryway. So is the rest of the SHPD and several of the state police.

We’ll try to make the evacuation as orderly as possible.

“Sam!” I shout when I see her.

“Danny! He has Richard!”

“I know. Don’t worry. We’ll get him out of there.”

“How?”

“We’re working on it.” I grab her by the arm. “Come on. Run. I’ve got you covered.”

We dash from the roller coaster entrance to the side of the fried-food stand.

“Okay. You’re clear.” I gesture toward the staircase leading down to the parking lot. “Is your car down there?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Go. Call your mother. Let her know you’re okay.” I practically shove her toward the steps.

“What about you, Danny?”

“I gotta go back to work.”

“Be careful, okay?”

“Yeah.”

“Danny?”

“Huh?”

“Thanks.”

I think she wants to kiss me. Part of me wishes I could kiss her, too. I’m so happy Skippy didn’t randomly decide to blow a hole through her head. Hey, I’ve seen what those tactical shotguns can do. On the range, they let me fire one at an old TV set. Shattered the whole thing. Blew out the front and turned the metal at the back into a spaghetti strainer.

“I’ll call you later,” I say.

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

She runs down the staircase to the parking lot. I race back to the Rolling Thunder, reflexively keeping my head down like I expect Skippy to be the one up on the crossbeams sniping at me.

“We’re clear,” says Ceepak when I meet him in the entryway. “They’re all out.”

“Except the ones he took with him.”

“Roger that. We’ll get them next.”

A quiet ten minutes passes.

Maybe the longest ten minutes in my life. I’m thinking about how quickly Skippy could kill all his hostages. Boom, boom, boom. The shotgun reloads itself.

“Ceepak? Boyle?” The chief signals for us to join him.

“New development?” asks Ceepak.

“Negotiator’s here. He’s made contact with O’Malley via the radio gear.”

“Any demands?”

“Yeah. He wants to talk to Danny.”

“Okay. Where’s the microphone or whatever?”

The chief shakes his head. “He wants to talk to you inside. In person.” He gestures toward the Rolling Thunder. “In the control room.”

Now he leads us around a bank of cold deep-fat fryers to the communications center the tech guys hastily set up in the rear of the food stand. I see a very serious man in a short-sleeve New Jersey State Police shirt holding a yellow legal pad, a set of headphones strapped across his flat top haircut.

“Do you need food, Skippy?”

“Nah.” Skippy’s answers are coming out of a pair of portable speakers. “I had a big lunch. Of course, I wouldn’t mind trying one of those, what’d you call ’em, Cliff? The Stromboller Crusters?”

“We can try to get you one.”

“Nah. Forget it.”

“How about water?”

“Nope. Water makes me pee.”

“How about your guests?”

“It’ll make them pee, too, and I’m not about to start handing out hall passes.”

“How many people are in the control room with you, Skippy?”

“Eight. Nine if you count Old Man Ceepak, which I don’t because I’m not convinced he’s actually human.”

I’m trying to listen actively like Ceepak told me to do when I asked him how we were going to get Skippy and everybody else out of this thing alive. He gave me a crash course in hostage negotiations. Never lie. Ask open-ended questions. Remind Skippy who he used to be. Junk like that.

So when I listen actively, what I hear is a guy who has never had the chance to blow off steam and is now spouting off like a geyser.