Authors: Michael Crow
I conclude a three-round burst of 5.45s. In the face. Which was probably, along with the hands, dissolved in a tub of acid. They'll never identify this corpse. Vassily's guys made sure of that.
Could it be any of my dealers, Radik wants to know?
No, I tell him.
And no point, no point at all, in mentioning this to Dugal. Let him figure it out for himself.
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I most definitely do not feel good to go about anything, or willing to make anything happen.
Taggert You Fuck makes it happen.
Big surprise, the meeting in Dugal's office the following morning. Major buy-and-bust, on for that night. Not a kid like Buzz Cut. "Serious players," that asshole Taggert calls them. Deal for $25,000.1 hear Taggert made the connection in Jugs, a sleazy topless bar just across from the Ti-monium racetrack. Taggert liked to hang there on his own time, liked a table dancer when he was feeling flush. He had a snitch who worked there, never produced anything before. All of a sudden, the snitch gets Taggert close to two guys in their late thirties maybe, and Taggert—the dumbest, clumsiest and meanest guy on the squad—passes himself off as a major customer, for the right goods at the right price.
Dugal takes it from there. "All right, girls. My reading is whoever was backing Buzz Cut has stepped in personally since we've removed their man from the action. My reading is they want to accelerate their growth in our area quickly, while they think we're still congratulating ourselves on eliminating the biggest trafficker we've ever seen and not paying much attention. My reading is they are in for a major surprise. Am I right?"
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Not as big a surprise as you're likely to get, LT, I think. It's Vassily pulling all our strings now.
"Of course I'm right, so nobody needs to answer," Dugal runs on. "This is going to be easier, logistically and public safetywise, than Buzz Cut. No meet in a crowded mall. Taggert will roll in solo on that little road behind the track, the one they use for the horse trailers. He will stop where the road ends at the stables. It's off-season, stables are empty, no real security around except maybe a rent-a-cop asleep in his office near the grandstand entry. Taggert's sellers will arrive at two
a.m. You
know what happens then. As soon as Taggert shows the cash and they show the goods, we move in."
I flash on Poppa's Nam jive: world of hurt. I do not like this. I can't find any holes in Dugal's dispositions—me and Ice Box concealed in the stables, Tommy and Gus with shotguns back in the entrance to the grandstand, a few tacticals with AR15s a level up, the LT with Petey K. and Bimbo in a plain car, and three cruisers with two uniforms in each ready to roll down the few hundred meters of road as soon as they hear Taggert say, "Got the cash. You got the goods?" Taggert wired, naturally, with a transmitter.
World of hurt. It keeps looping in my head. The LT's plan is standard, solid. If we were dealing with a real deal. Taggert set it up? This doesn't feel like a real deal.
After the briefing I want to talk to IB about this, but we aren't talking much since the sketch thing, barely nodding at one another when our paths cross. Unfuck it, Luther. But I don't.
After lunch I drop by Annie's office. "Hey, Luther," she
says.
"So how come I haven't heard from you?"
"There hasn't been anything to tell. I'm nowhere on all my
cases."
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"And so you're nowhere to your friends? Always up a ladder plastering your ceiling? Can't answer your phone?"
"Don't you ever need some downtime?" She looks at me with those eyes. Then I know I can't tell her what I feel almost desperate to tell—about Thirty-fourth Street, Halliday, Vassily, the bad feeling I have about tonight.
"From the job, sure." I say. "But I could've come around, bought you a beer, maybe listened if you felt like talking."
"Just the point. I didn't feel like talking."
"Hey." I shrug. "Your life."
"But you'd be around if I needed you, wouldn't you, Luther?"
Sure I would. I'd be beside this woman all day and all night... in another life, maybe. "You know it, LT babe. Nowhere else."
Except, that night, in a world of hurt.
It's chilly in the stables. I'm shivering. IB and I moved into place an hour before the scheduled meet, coming up on foot through some woods out back. Tommy and Gus and the tactical shooters came in with us and ducked into the grandstand entrance. I don't much like the setup once I see it. The few security floodlights don't overlap their coverage, there are too many dark spots. When Taggert pulls up at one forty-five I like it even less. He's just at the edge of a circle of light, the stupid shit. The dealers, if they're pros, will stop outside the circle. All I'll see of them is silhouettes against another distant flood.
"This is fucked," I hear IB mutter. He's picked up on it too. What I need is an MP5 with a night-vision scope. What I've got is my HK .45. Some instinct, some intuition caused me to slip its long, fat sound suppressor into one of the cargo pockets of my pants. If I have to shoot, I don't want the targets knowing where the hits are coming from. I want to hit quietly, out of nowhere, like the finger of God. I screw the silencer on now. And then I move.
"What the fuck, Five-O?" IB hisses as I crawl crabwise
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out of the stable cover, trying to stay out of the light, and slide under Taggert's car. He doesn't hear me coming. I don't let him know I'm there.
I do my breathing drill, breathing myself cold and clear and empty. "On the way," I hear Dugal in my earphone. I see a silver BMW coming down the road, swinging around in a tight arc and stopping just out of the circle of light facing the way it came in. Ten meters from Taggert's car. HK's cocked, full clip of hollow points and one up the spout, tritium sights glowing faintly. It feels part of me, an extension of my hand. The way it should.
It happens fast, it happens slow-motion. Two men exit the rear doors of the BMW, move in on Taggert. All I can see now is three sets of legs. I hear two snaps. Taggert must be opening the briefcase. I hear him say, "Here's the cash. Show me the goods." I hear another voice say, "Not tonight, my friend." Then the legs start a weird shuffle, I hear a quick sound like cloth ripping, Taggert saying "Fuck this!" I hear Dugal over my earphone. "What's happening? What's happening, dammit?" I hear IB say, "Can't see. Two guys, close up with Taggert."
I hear "I'm coming in" from Dugal, but before he gets it all out there's three coughs so rapid it sounds like a pulled zipper. Taggert's body smacks the dirt. I've got no shot, only legs. I roll over on my back, arch my neck, see everything upside down: one guy standing with an AKSU, wisp of smoke rising from the silencer's business end, one bending for the briefcase full of cash. I pop two caps on the standing guy. He falls instantly, puppet whose strings got cut. Split-second eye contact with the bender as he's straightening up, looking real surprised. I double-tap. The back of his head explodes.
I roll out from under Taggert's car on the side away from the BMW. I hear fire behind me, probably IB coming on, and two shotgun blasts from the grandstand entrance. I see the driver's out of the BMW with an AK shortie, night-scoped. A three-round burst snaps past my left shoulder, he
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swings and empties full-auto toward the grandstand. He's sliding back into the driver's seat as I bring the HK up. Pop two caps before his head gets below the roof line, double-tap through the passenger window. Glass shatters, shards go spinning, glimmering. He's slammed back against the open door, he glides down to the ground.
Bright lights, flashing cruisers blinding me, sirens deafening. Dugal shouting shit in the earphone. I put the HK on the trunk of Taggert's car, raise my hands high over my head, move slowly into the light so everyone can see it's me. Still, there's a shotgun blast and the rear window of Taggert's car shatters. "Don't shoot, you assholes! Fuck, it's me! It's Luther! Don't fire! It's over!" I bellow.
Dugal sprints up, Ruger drawn. Tommy comes limping from the grandstand. Uniforms swarm around the BMW. "Holy shit," I hear one of them say. Then I hear someone puking his guts out.
"Aw fuck me, fuck me," Dugal says, his Maglite freezing on Taggert, face down in the dirt. No apparent wounds, but I know he's dead. I know there'll be three little holes in his face when they turn him over. Dugal shouts for an ambulance, kneels, places his fingers on Taggert's neck, desperate to find a pulse. "Aw fuck! Fuck me."
I lean against Taggert's car. Other Maglites are flicking the scene. Thick pools of blood, gleaming rich red so dark it's close to black, spread slowly around the heads of the two dealers. Two suppressed AKSUs in the dirt. The dealers' faces are pretty much intact, but there's nothing left behind their ears. Skull and brains, all blown away. People are stepping in that shit, cursing when they feel the squish under their shoe soles. I hear another cop gag, then puke.
I walk around to the BMW. Driver's head the same, but the blood pool's bigger because he also caught two in the chest. The window shots, I figure. Dugal's got me by the arm, asking things I don't understand. Then I hear Tommy's voice. "IB's down, LT! IB's hit!"
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I scream at the sky. Just one lung-searing scream. Then I breathe real deep, once, and start to walk slowly toward a big man flat on his back maybe five meters in front of the stables. Others are running there.
Cold, clear, moving on autopilot. A machine.
"Juked those motherfuckers! Dome shots!" I hear myself say. I feel the rush then, and smile. I'm unaware Dugal's still got me by the arm until he drops it like it was a hot wire and backs off a step. I turn to look at him. Fear's twisting his face. Seen that before.
I walk on.
People manhandle me into an ambulance. Tommy's already inside, moaning. An EMS guy slits the right leg of his pants from cuff to groin. A piece of his calf about the size of an orange looks like fresh hamburger. No hemorrhage, no other wounds. But he's pale, so the EMS guy rams a needle into the crook of his elbow and starts a saline drip, then straps an oxygen mask over his face.
Another EMS guy's feeling me up like I was a girl. "You hit, you hit?" he keeps asking.
"Fuck no," I say. "Leave me alone." He doesn't. Standard procedure—a cop who's just been in a shooting gets trauma treatment. I let the EMS dude attach a pulse meter to one thumb, blood pressure band on one arm. When he tries to stick me for an intravenous, I hit him just below the breast bone with two knuckles. He sits down suddenly, looking greenish, gulping air.
The transmitters are still live, the 'phone's still in my ear. I hear Ice Box's voice: "Oh man, I feel like I ran into a wall. Gotta get my breath, just gotta get my breath...." then nothing. They must be giving him oxygen. He sounded chest-shot. Oh Jesus, not chest-shot.
"They gonna do a dust-off to the Trauma Center?" I ask the EMS guy I knuckled, who's got his breath back now.
"Fuck man, why'd you hit me?"
"Shut up and answer," I snarl. "They gonna dust-off for
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the Trauma Center?" One of the best in the world is at a hospital downtown.
"I don't dig what you're saying, man," the EMS guy says.
"Are they going to chopper the shot cop to the Trauma Center?"
I shout.
"Get that?"
"I don't know, man. Just stay cool. There's another team with him. They'll get him through. Just stay cool, okay?"
"I am cool, you asshole. Why don't you help your buddy there with Tommy instead of sittin' on your ass? Tommy's the one with the leg wound. Right behind you, numbnuts.'"
"Okay, okay. Just chill, man. We're taking care of him."
He turns, starts helping his teammate with Tommy. I pull two tabs out of my shirt pocket and drop 'em. Hate doing it dry. I see a bottle of water, grab it, take a big swig. Better.
Then I think, Bad habit, Luther, dropping like that. I don't feel jagged at all. I feel smooth, real smooth.
Sirens blurping, lights flashing, some cool high-speed weaves through traffic to the Greater Baltimore Medical Center. They gurney Tommy into the emergency room. Before they can try that on me, I pull off the pulse meter, rip off the blood pressure band, and walk in. They want me to lie down, but I sit on the edge of the bed next to Tommy's. They want to put in a drip. I tell them to get off my case. A doctor pleads with me, so I let them attach another pulse meter and blood pressure band. I sit quietly for five minutes. Then I wave the doctor over. "Read the numbers," I say. "Out loud."
"Pulse rate 72, and steady. Blood pressure 118 over 80. Jesus."
"Right, I'm outta here," I say, removing the monitors.
"But the psychologist is coming. You can't just walk away."
"No? Watch me." I stand up and go. When I hit the corridor they're wheeling Ice Box in fast, passing the triage room and heading straight for the operating theater. His face, what I can see of it around the oxygen mask, is swollen
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and purple, like somebody's used it as a punching bag. The front of his jacket is in shreds. I trot after his gurney, but they slam the doors to the OR in my face. I sit down on the floor, back against the beige tiled wall.