Our sergeant directed us to head north to Wolf Creek from Helena, running code (Spanish for lights and sirens). Get to Wolf Creek and take Little Wolf Creek Road north, heading toward Highway 200. Traffic was light in Helena and drivers pulled over. The roads felt wide open. The F-150 I was driving was not as smooth as the Crown Vics are, and it felt like I was driving a dump truck. Finally on I-15, I was free to really open it up. Of course I'm being a bit sarcastic...it's hard to open anything up with a big truck. We nonetheless carried on Northward, nearly breaking the sound barrier at a whopping 95 miles per hour. We did approach 100, only by virtue of a downhill slope. The best part of our speedy journey was noticing a pair of far-away headlights in the rear view mirror. They were gaining. Big time. A couple hundred yards from us, I saw the overhead emergency lights turn on. One of the Highway Patrol guys in one of their fancy new Dodge Chargers. As he went by it seemed as though we were not moving.
During the sprint to Wolf Creek, dispatch continued to feed us information about the situation that was unfolding to our north. We were still being told that there were two hijackers, one of whom was armed, on the loose somewhere along Little Wolf Creek Road or in the immediate area. The victim was still on foot, stumbling along the road in the dark. There was not much conversation about it over the radio, but everyone listening and moving toward the situation was thinking about the fugitives from Arizona who were confirmed to have been in Montana. Our victim said he was held up by two men, but there was no way to rule out the possibility that one of them may have been the wanted man who has been on the news.
Once in Wolf Creek, the highway patrol trooper fell in behind us. He'd been waiting there for at least five minutes, likely making comments about the slow vehicles from the Sheriff's office. He set up a post where Little Wolf Creek dumps out on to Highway 434 while we headed northwest on the dirt road where we figured the action would be. Several miles along the road, it veered to the right, and straight north. We began to see very fresh tire tracks and broken tree limbs. We were in the right place. Dispatch continued to provide information given by the victim, whom we knew we would find at any time. Turns out the Penske had a rifle and shotgun in it, and the victim did not know if the two men had gotten into the truck at that point.
As we pressed northward on what was a terrible dirt road dotted with creeks we had to cross and large flooded potholes, and as the forest canopy grew tighter and tighter around our truck, it became more and more clear how much of a target we were becoming. Two guys with a rifle and shotgun would have no problem sitting on the side of the road in the dark, waiting for the right vehicle to show up. Suddenly I realized how dry my mouth was. I was nervous. At any moment, around any turn we could have come across a stuck Penske truck and the second vehicle. We could have come face to face with two armed men who may not have had much to lose. The deputy who was with me was thinking the same thing. He warned me that if we came across these guys, I would need to throw the shifter into reverse and get as much space between us and them as possible.
After several more tense minutes and countless sweeps with the mounted spotlight, dispatch called out our number and told us that our victim could see our headlights. Out of the darkness at the edge of where our headlights reached came a young man, running slowly along the road. His cell phone glued to his ear, he looked as though he might collapse. He hung up with dispatch and my partner began talking to him. His hands were shaking. His words were choppy and his voice was lurching in and out of giant sobs. Two men had flagged him down near Wolf Creek. One brandished a large revolver and forced his way into the moving truck. The men were drunk. The one who was driving the Penske put on black gloves. Kept the gun pointed at him. Our guy said he wanted to grab the gun from his captor. Said he should have. The hijacker had laughed as he drove the large vehicle along the dirt road that seemed, at least to me, far too risky a road for a vehicle like that. He was getting divorced, all of this had just happened, and everything in his life seemed to be falling apart. He was, understandably, very upset. My partner and I told him that he did the right thing by not grabbing the gun. We did our best to calm him down.
After a few minutes of question and answer our victim got in the back seat and we continued northward, fully expecting to run into the jerks who had instigated this whole thing. Some moments later we hear the sergeant, who had met up with another deputy, announce over the radio that they had found the Penske truck, stuck in a gully. There was no second vehicle that they could see. But there's lots of forest up there, and plenty of places to hide. The sergeant told us to stop and wait. They had all their lights on the Penske but could not see the cab. Nor could they see whether the cargo door had been breached. Therefore, still no verdict on whether the long guns were in the hands of these morons. The sergeant and his partner told dispatch they were going to leave their vehicle and try to get a better look. Several minutes later they cleared the area. No one at the Penske. Our victim kept asking if the truck had been broken into. We could not tell him. The sergeant announced that the second vehicle did not seem to be around. We were told to drive on. The sheriff, who had been part of the radio conversation for some time, told the sergeant that he had the SWAT team, as well as a Department of Homeland Security helicopter, on standby in order to search the immediate area and highways for the missing truck.
The tension remained. There was some distance between the sergeant and us. We still had a good chance of finding these guys. But we did not. After a short time the sergeant told us to stop where we were. He could see our lights. He wanted my partner up at the scene. He left. I continued talking to the victim, telling him to focus on making it just 6 more minutes until 12:45--to work on remaining calm for just a few more minutes. He did well. Then I told him he needed to make it another 10 minutes. My partner appeared in the headlights. Walked over to my window. Asked me to give him my Miranda card. Something was off.
My partner read our passenger his Miranda rights. The passenger did not like this. He seemed to be confused. He was upset. Wanted to know why he was suddenly being treated like a criminal when he was the victim. My partner told him that he could start over. Come clean. That there was evidence up the road that would disprove his story. The passenger remained upset, sticking to his story. The evidence, it turned out, was that there was no second set of tracks where the Penske was stuck. Little Wolf Creek Road, you see, was wet. The mud showed no second set of tracks. Fifteen minutes later, his story changed. The sergeant told the sheriff to stand everything down--the SWAT team, the feds' helicopter. Everything.
He was cuffed and taken to jail for filing a false police report.
I made it home at 3:15 a.m. Better than two Wednesdays before, when I got home at 5:00 a.m. the following morning. Maybe I will write about that night as well.
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