Halfway down the block on the east side, Officer Joshua Parks was on his side by the stoop to the row house, contorted in agony.
“We’re here, Parks, with more on the way,” Bree said over her radio.
“Good,” he said. “I’m getting one hell of a leg cramp lying on the cement like this.”
Bree couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll have that cramp looked into. Talk to me, O’Donnell.”
Detective O’Donnell was across the street from Parks on the sidewalk behind a white Ford Explorer. He was holding Lincoln, who looked weak.
“O’Donnell, talk to me,” Bree said again.
“Lincoln’s conscious, but hurting bad. What’s the plan?”
“Working on it,” Bree said.
She looked at me, said quietly, “I’ve never handled anything remotely like this, Alex. You have, so I’m all ears.”
I scanned the scene again and then said, “We need to be inside the house directly across the street from Le’s and also in the house directly behind it. And we need Le’s cell phone number.”
“I’ll try Michele Bui again,” Bree said.
The SWAT van pulled up. Captain Matt Fuller, dressed head to toe in black body armor, climbed out and hurried toward us.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“What?”
“I’d hoped Captain Reagan was on duty,” I said. “Fuller’s good at what he does, but he wants to do it as often as he can, if you know what I mean.”
A burly man with soft, almost saggy facial features, Fuller said, “Dr. Cross. Chief Stone. Sampson. How’s the officer down?”
“Two are down, Captain,” Bree said. “Lincoln, who’s one of my men, and Officer Parks. Both are in critical need of medical attention, especially Parks.”
Fuller looked at the scene through binoculars. When he put them down, he said, “We’re going to want to be in the house opposite and the one behind.”
“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said, and then I looked to Bree again. “Call Michele. Get that number.”
Captain Fuller, four of his men, Sampson, and I used an alley to reach the row house directly in front of Detectives O’Donnell and Lincoln and across the street from Parks. A frail older woman had been evacuated from the house. She’d given her key to one of the patrolmen who’d helped her, and we used it to go through the back door into her kitchen.
We passed a steep staircase on our way into the living area, barely taking in the dated furniture, the photos of a lifetime, and a baby grand piano.
“Maxwell and Keith, you’re upstairs,” Captain Fuller said behind me. “Stay back from the windows, keep it dark.”
While the two SWAT officers climbed the stairs, Bree pushed aside the window curtains just enough for us to see O’Donnell and Lincoln right there on the sidewalk, backs to the Explorer, no more than fifty feet away. O’Donnell had his belt around Lincoln’s thigh, but Lincoln looked wan, like he’d lost a lot of blood.
“Lincoln needs medical help now,” Bree said.
“Both of them do,” I said, watching Parks go through some kind of pain spasm that made him arch in agony.
The SWAT commander was quiet for several moments and then said, “We’re going to handle this one at a time. Easiest first, which means Lincoln.”
Fuller looked at his two other men. “How fast can you get out the door, go down those steps, grab Lincoln, and get your asses back inside?”
“Twenty seconds,” Sergeant Daniel Kiniry said.
“Maybe less,” Officer Brent Remer said. “Unless we come under fire.”
“O’Donnell? How long since the last shots?” Fuller asked.
“Ten, maybe twelve minutes,” the detective came back.
The captain thought a moment and then spoke into his radio. “Wilkerson?”
“Go ahead, Captain.”
“Break me out a couple of grenades.”
41
BREE AND I looked at Captain Fuller like he’d lost his mind.
“Grenades?” Bree said. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”
“No,” Fuller said, and then he explained what he wanted to do.
I considered it, decided once again that Captain Fuller was good at his job, and admitted, “That could work.”
“It could,” Bree said. “Your move, Captain.”
Three minutes later, on Fuller’s command, two flash-bang grenades went off behind the row house where Le and his fellow gangbangers were holed up.
I had my binoculars trained on the windows across the street and saw movement inside, figures running to investigate the explosions. Then Bree threw up the window sash, and we stuck our service weapons out the window.
“Go,” Fuller said, and he yanked open the front door to the old lady’s home.
Kiniry and Remer bolted across the porch, leaped off the stairs, and landed beside Lincoln. O’Donnell let go of his partner.
The SWAT guys got their hands under Lincoln and came up fast. O’Donnell jumped up, his gun, like ours, aimed at the row house as he backed up, covering Kiniry, Remer, and Lincoln.
They got Lincoln inside, and O’Donnell was almost there when Le or one of his men opened up with an automatic weapon. Bullets blew out the windows of the Explorer and pinged and cracked off the cement stairs while Sampson, Bree, and I emptied our weapons at the house.
O’Donnell sprinted and dove inside. Fuller slammed shut the heavy oak door as bullets strafed the side of the house and then stopped.
“Fuck!” O’Donnell screamed, crawling and clutching at his shoe. “He shot me through the foot!”
“Get this man medical attention!” Bree yelled back into the house.
Two EMTs came running from the kitchen.
While they started to work, I reloaded. Over our headsets, a voice said, “Cap, this is Maxwell.”
“Go, Maxwell,” Fuller said.
“I’ve got the shooter. Full chest exposed.”
“Identity?”
“Unclear, but subject is armed with an AK.”
“Take him,” Fuller said without a moment’s hesitation.
“What? Wait!” Bree said.
There was a rifle crack overhead, followed by a death scream across the street.
“Slow down, Captain!” I shouted.
“You’re not giving them any options!” Bree said.
“Options?” Fuller looked at us like we were addled. “That shooter, Le or not, just tried to kill four-count them, four- of my fellow officers. In my mind, that makes that person a potential cop killer with active intent, so I ordered him shot. End of story.”
Bree started to argue but her phone buzzed. Angry, she looked at the screen, rocked her head back, and said, “Oh Jesus.”
“What?”
“It’s Michele Bui. She says we just shot and killed one of the female hostages.”
42
FULLER DIDN’T HEAR. He was barking orders into his radio while EMTs rolled a morphine-happy Detective O’Donnell through the kitchen toward the back door. The siren of the ambulance bearing Lincoln was already wailing away.
“Captain!” I shouted at Fuller.
The SWAT commander put his radio on his shoulder, peered at me angrily. “Detective Cross, stand down.”
“I won’t stand down, Captain,” I said.
“Nor will I,” Bree said. “One of your men upstairs, Officer Maxwell, just shot an innocent hostage on your orders.”
Fuller lost color. “No.”
“Le’s girlfriend, who is in there, says yes.”
The captain pulled himself together and clicked his radio. “Maxwell?”
“Right here, Cap.”
“How did you identify the shooter?”
“White T-shirt and weapon.”
“No head?”
“Negative.”
“How long did you have the shooter in your scope?”
“From right before he started shooting at O’Donnell,” Maxwell replied. “When he stopped, he ducked out of sight for maybe three seconds and then returned, like he’d reloaded.”
“That was not a reload,” Bree said into her radio. “Officer Maxwell, you shot a hostage.”