Page 115 of Vanish From Sight
Noah turned to the EMTs. “Go. Get them to the hospital,” he said, his voice urgent as Charlie placed the oxygen mask back over his face and closed his eyes. Noah only hoped the two of them survived, and they managed to locate the teens before they continued their rampage. Behind, in the distance, he saw a fleet of squad cars coming up the driveway. He figured it wouldn’t be long before they found the teens and…
Crack.
Noah immediately turned towards the sound of a gunshot and saw the chaos that followed. Panicked students fled in every direction, others dropped to the ground. The situation escalated even faster as he saw Callie engaging.
With quick thinking and decisive action, Noah pulled his service pistol and took off, telling others to move back as he hurried through the crowd to reach Callie who was already ahead of him and had opened fire on a car.
Noah hurried to provide backup.
“Show me your hands!” Callie bellowed.
The driver and passenger doors were wide open on a Ford Mustang.
In the back there were two students; the other two had fled around the building toward the forest. By now the otherdeputies had arrived on scene, lights and sirens blaring. Noah directed one of the deputies to secure the two students from the back of the Mustang while he and Callie took off pursuing the other two — Adam and Joshua.
The chase led them toward the dense tree line as multiple rounds were fired by one of the teens. Despite their efforts, the two teens were able to evade them and disappeared into the thicket of trees which made up a sliver of the Sentinel Range Wilderness, a mammoth swath of dense forest that covered over 23,000 acres.
“Wait,” Noah shouted to Callie. “It’s too dangerous. They aren’t going anywhere.”
It would be nearly impossible to find them on their own and at night. They’d need to bring in more officers, highly trained search crews and helicopters with forward FLIR.
The wilderness was too vast.
As Noah turned back to the Academy that was ablaze, he shifted gears quickly, formulating a plan to have State and County officers set a perimeter. They would set up roadblocks within a ten-mile radius. It would be a massive operation, but they needed to catch the suspects before they could cause any more harm.
CHAPTER 33
Thursday, November 24, 10:40 a.m.
Truth tellers and liars — the world was full of them.
Some were willing to fall on their sword while others would go to their grave with secrets. The world was full of both for all manner of reasons — shame, guilt, pride, anger or just straight-up stupidity. Although many would speculate about the liars, it usually boiled down to self-preservation, a more palatable version of cowardice.
As the sun rose over the Sentinel Range Wilderness the next morning, casting a golden hue across the forest floor, Noah and Callie trudged towards a clearing about three miles in from where they last saw the teens.
Search efforts continued throughout the night but were limited to securing the roadways around the vast wilderness and the use of technology, including drones and FLIR cameras on helicopters to track the suspects who had fled deep into the woods.
It was safer for law enforcement to wait until early light before closing the net. Knowing the teens were armed and more than liable to use deadly force, safety was paramount both for deputies and K-9s.
As soon as light broke and they received confirmation from eyes in the sky on the location of the two, using a thermographic camera, a slew of highly trained law enforcement geared up, ready for a violent standoff. The intention was to secure and arrest but neutralizing the threat was also on the table.
The forest was dense and quiet, its thick canopy of trees blocking out some of the sunlight. As the investigators made their way through the underbrush, they could hear the sound of their own footsteps crunching on fallen leaves and twigs beneath them. Occasionally, a radio squawked as officers communicated with the eyes in the sky. It was a coordinated effort. With the anticipation of the unexpected, a tense atmosphere formed among them.
A SWAT team spearheaded the operation, taking the lead.
At one point as they got closer to the location, Noah and Callie were told to hold back until they received confirmation that it was safe to move in.
Minutes felt like hours as they waited in a preserve known best by hikers who explored it for the trails and remote experience.
Static came over the radio followed by a voice. “All secure.”
A sense of relief flooded Noah’s chest as they moved towards a small clearing only to find a pair of bodies lying on the ground near a small meandering brook.
As they approached the scene, Noah felt no sense of triumph. Like the others he was exhausted, physically and emotionally drained by the events of the past week.
It became clear that both suspects had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. There was only one gun, a 44 revolvernearby. A heavyset imposing man, a lieutenant from Adirondack County, strolled toward them. He was wearing a heavy-duty tactical helmet, body armor, gloves, boots and holding an M4 rifle.
“You should see this,” he said, handing them a cell phone that was open on a 25-minute video. Noah snapped on blue latex gloves, took it and hit play. The self-filmed video confirmed their guilt, as well as the fact that the other two boys who had been with them were only guilty of the sexual assault of Isabella.
