Page 77 of S.O.S. Perk

“Agent Vessers,” she apprised. “FBI.”

Once again, she withdrew her credentials and handed them over. Blankenship did a quick perusal, then stuck out a gloved hand. “Nice to meet you. I wish it was under better circumstances.”

“Same,” she agreed. “Can you tell me what happened? How did you find the car?”

He launched into his story. “A couple of local kids decided to do some late-evening ice fishing,” the man gave a wry laugh. “They didn’t know that this isn’t exactly the best pond for any kind of decent angling, but they were attempting it anyway, and clearly caught more than they bargained for.”

Sloane chuckled and waited patiently.

“They had some big-ass flashlights with them, and when they got about ten feet out onto the pond, one of them saw something glinting under the ice. The kids stopped to take a better look, and determined that what was submerged, was a car. That’s when they called us.”

“And what makes you think it’s our BOLO?” she asked, her head on a swivel, taking in the operation getting underway.

“We cut a preliminary hole in the ice cover,” he stated, “and had one of our divers go down in a drysuit. He ID’d the car as a Mercedes, and ran the tags. It’s definitely the one you’re looking for,” the detective told her with surety.

“Nice work,” Sloane lauded. “I don’t suppose…?”

She didn’t have to say more.

“Yeah. The diver let us know there’s a body inside.” Detective Blankenship answered her question.

“He didn’t try to extract the vic, did he?” Sloane wanted the scene kept as pristine as possible for evidence. The area next to the pond was already compromised for clues due to the concentration of emergency vehicles and personnel churning up the now muddied shoreline.

“No. Once we determined this was your jurisdiction,” he told her, “we didn’t touch anything, but called it in right away.”

“Thanks for that,” Sloane nodded.

“We play by the book,” the detective added.

Sloane gave him a smile. “Give me a minute to call and get my forensics team headed this way, then you can tell me how you plan to get that baby out of the frozen drink.”

Blankenship nodded as she walked away.

Sloane, once assured that the proper agents would arrive on scene as quickly as possible, hung up and walked back to the detective. “So, how are you going to approach this?” she asked curiously.

“As soon as we have a large enough hole cut in the ice…”

Sloane noted people were already on the frozen surface with gas-powered augers. She assumed they’d make a bunch of holes, then connect the dots—so to speak—with a saw of some type.

“…we’ll use chainsaws to cut a large opening.”

Bingo.

“Then we’ll have the tow truck back up as close to the hole as possible, but not onto the ice. The freeze is only about seven inches thick; safe enough for our people to walk on, but no way will it support this thirty-five-ton baby.” Blankenship patted the large, red vehicle next to which they stood.

Sloane gave a chin-lift of understanding.

“Our dive team will then go back in and make sure the path from the vehicle to the shore is clear of any large impediments such as rocks or logs. Once they’re assured there’s a clean egress, they’ll come back up, run a line off the back of the tow truck in what they call a long winch-out, then go down and secure the submerged vehicle.”

The detective continued. “As soon as our dive team is clear and out of the water, the tow truck driver will slowly bring the car up.”

“Aren’t there floats of some kind you normally put underneath a car to make a job like this easier?” Sloane had seen a few water extractions of various sized vehicles, and was aware there were inflatable airbags for tasks like these.

“Too unstable in the freezing water, especially if they hit on the edges of the ice coming up,” the detective told her. “And because the bags would have to be closely monitored for unpredictable slippage, it would make things for our guys too dangerous. The last thing we want is the car making an unplanned shift that would injure our team.”

That made a lot of sense. If something went wrong, there could be collateral damage. With the winchingprocess, however,the divers could watch from afar, then if things didn’t go as planned, they could always regroup, go back in, and start over with the tow-line.

Sloane stood and watched in fascination as the round auger-holes were connected, and the ice cut out. Large pieces were subsequently smashed and removed with a net that looked like it was designed for just such a process.

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