“They’ll set up a car trap. We drive in, he follows us, they close the horseshoe behind him, and he’s got nowhere to go.”
“Have you ever done a horseshoe trap before?”
“Me? No. But I’m sure they have.”
“Let’s hope it works.”
42
Forty minutes later we were in the back of the FBI’s Lyft minivan with Agent Amin behind the wheel. He pulled away from Mistral and headed west on Ventura Boulevard.
“What’s the plan?” Rachel asked.
“We have the horseshoe set up,” Amin said. “We just have to see if you have a follower.”
“Did Metz get a bird up?”
“Yes, but he had to wait until it was free from another op. It’s on the way.”
“And how many cars do we have?”
“Four including the Lyft.”
“That’s not enough. He may spot the surveillance and bug out.”
“It’s what we could do on short notice.”
“Where’s the horseshoe?”
“Tyrone Avenue on the north side of the 101. It dead-ends at the river and it’s only five minutes away.”
I saw Rachel nod in the darkness of the car. It did little to balance the anxiety she was exuding.
At Van Nuys Boulevard, we turned north. I could see the 101 overpass just a few blocks ahead.
Rachel pulled her phone and made a call. I only heard her side of it.
“Matt, are you running this op?”
I knew then that she had called Metz.
“Did he leave the restaurant?”
She listened and her next question seemed to confirm that the man at the bar had followed us when we left.
“Where’s the airship?”
She shook her head while listening. She wasn’t happy with his answer.
“Yes, I hope so.”
She disconnected the call but the tone of her last words indicated she thought Metz was handling it wrong.
We crossed under the freeway and then took an immediate turn east on Riverside Drive. Four blocks later, Amin put on his right turn signal as we approached Tyrone.
Amin was monitoring radio traffic on an earpiece. He got an instruction and passed it on to us.
“All right, he’s behind us,” he said. “We are going down to the dead end and stopping. You two stay in the van. No matter what, you stay in the van. That understood?”
“Got it,” I said.
“Understood,” Rachel said.
We made the turn. The street was lined on both sides with parked cars and only dimly lit. There were single-family homes on both sides of the street. A block ahead I could see the twenty-foot wall of the raised freeway. The tops of cars and trucks were crossing up there left to right, heading west and out of the city.
“This is residential and it’s too dark,” Rachel said. “Who picked this street?”
“It was the best we could do on short notice,” Amin said. “It’ll work.”
I turned to look out the back window and saw headlights sweep across the roadway as a car slowly made the turn and followed us onto Tyrone.
“There he is,” I said.
Rachel glanced back and then forward, obviously better versed in this maneuver than I was.
“Where’s the cutoff?” she asked.
“Coming up,” Amin said.
I scanned through all the windows, wondering what the cutoff meant. Just as we passed an opening on our right I saw the lights of a car backed into a driveway flash on. The car then lurched into the street behind us and stopped dead in front of the tail car, creating a barrier between us and the tail. I watched it all through the back window. Simultaneously, another car pulled from a driveway behind the tail car, boxing it in.
I saw agents tumble out of the two passenger-side doors of the first car and take cover behind the front of it. I assumed the same happened with the car on the other side of the box.
Amin kept driving, putting more distance between us and the takedown operation.
“Stop here!” Rachel yelled. “Stop!”
Ignoring Rachel, Amin started to bring the van to a slow stop as we reached the terminus of the street at a fence that enclosed the concrete aqueduct known as the Los Angeles River. Rachel was reaching for the release on the side door before he brought it to a halt.
“Stay in the van,” Amin said. “Stay in the van!”
“Bullshit,” Rachel said. “If it’s him, I want to see this.”
She jumped out the door.
“Goddamn it,” Amin said.
He jumped out next and pointed through his open door at me. “You stay right there,” he said.
He headed off after Rachel up the street. I waited a beat before deciding that I wasn’t going to miss this either.
“Fuck that.”
I climbed through the door Rachel had left open. Looking around, I saw Rachel up near the blockade. Amin was right behind her. I moved over to the right sidewalk and started up the street behind the cover of the cars parked along the curb.
The horseshoe was now lit by headlights and the spotlight of a helicopter that had swung in from over the freeway. I heard the shouts of men in the street up ahead, rising in urgency.
Then I heard one word clearly and repeated by many voices. “Gun!”
A volley of shots immediately followed. Too many to separate and count. All within five, maybe ten seconds. I instinctively ducked behind the line of cars on the curb but kept moving up the street.
The gunfire ended and I straightened up and kept moving, my eyes scanning now for Rachel to make sure she was safe. I didn’t see her anywhere.
After an eerie silence the shouting started again and I heard the all-clear signal.
When I got to the box I cut between two cars and into the light from above.
The man from the bar was faceup on the ground next to the open door of an old Toyota. I saw gunshot wounds on his left hand and arm, his chest and neck. He was dead, his eyes open and vacantly staring up at the helicopter above. An agent in an FBI raid jacket was standing eight feet away, his feet spread on either side of a chrome-plated pistol lying on the ground.
When he turned slightly I saw it was the agent I had met after Roger Vogel had been run over by the Shrike. Metz.
And he saw me.
“Hey, McEvoy!” he yelled. “Get back! Get the fuck back!”
I raised my hands wide to show innocence. Metz signaled to another agent standing nearby.
“Get him back to the van,” he ordered.
The agent moved toward me. He grabbed me by the arm, but I jerked free and looked at Metz.
“Metz, you gotta be kidding!” I yelled.
The agent moved in to grab me more aggressively. Metz left his position over the gun and moved toward me, holding his hand up to stop the agent.
“I’ll handle it,” Metz said. “Watch the weapon.”
The agent changed direction and Metz came up to me. He did not touch me but spread his hands as if to block my view of the man on the ground behind him.
“Jack, look, you can’t be here,” he said. “This is a crime scene.”
“What happened?” I asked. “Where’s Rachel?”
“Rachel, I don’t know. But Jack, you gotta move back. Let us do our job here and then we’ll talk.”
“He pulled a gun?”
“Jack...”
“Was it him? The Shrike didn’t use a gun.”
“Jack, listen to me. We are not talking about this right now. Let us work the scene and then we’ll talk. Get back on the sidewalk now or we are going to have a problem. You’ve been warned.”
“I’m media. I have a right to be here.”
“You do, but not in the middle of the fucking crime scene. I’m really losing my patience with—”
“Jack—”