SWAT doesn't roll for just any dicey set of circumstances. Black-and-white units can handle 90 percent of what happens, and if there's an extraordinary situation involving human perps, they send the TRU (Tactical Response Unit). But if you've got a barricaded ogre, or a hostage situation with werewolf involvement, or you have to serve a warrant on a powerful witch or wizard, then the SWAT team will get the job done. One way or another.
The back of the van opened and a tall, lean guy in black fatigues and a matching baseball cap stepped out. Lieutenant Frank Dooley has been SWAT commander for the past four years. To look at him, you'd never know that he did a year and a half at the seminary before realizing he had a different vocation. Come to think of it, the outfits of both jobs are pretty similar, give or take the hat.
I saw Karl come around the van from the other side. Inside, several black-clad figures were moving around putting on spell-dispelling body armor, checking their weapons, and probably saying lastminute prayers. Even the non-clergy SWAT guys are a religious bunch. I guess they have to be.
"I devoutly wish we had better intel about what we're likely to be facing in there," Dooley said to Karl and me.
"I told you what we know, Lieutenant," Karl said. "I admit it ain't much."
Dooley unbuttoned the flap on his breast pocket and pulled out a notebook. He opened it, flipped past a couple of pages, then frowned at the page he'd stopped at.
"Condo's owned by one J. Longworth." He looked up. "Any relation to the Longworths? The rich ones?"
"Their son," I told him.
"Oh, good," he said with a smile. "I just love busting me some rich bitches." Dooley grew up shantytown Irish, and never quite got over his resentments. "Hmmm. Cultist." He was looking at the notebook again. "Busted for summoning demons and murder of a known prostitute." He looked at me. "That what you figure we're likely to be up against? A demon?"
"No reason to think so," I said. "But Longworth is believed to have been associating with a vampire/wizard named Sligo. There's no way of knowing if he's taught young Jamieson any tricks, or even if he's in there with him. But both those things are possible."
"Um." Dooley wrote something in the notebook and put it away. "If the wizard's also one of the undead, we know what he'll be doing at this hour." He glanced up at the sky, where the sun was shining through a nearly cloudless sky. "And we've dealt with wannabe wizards before, too. Excuse me." He turned and went back into the van.
"Took that warrant long enough to come through," I said to Karl.
"McGuire thinks that Mrs. Longworth tried to stop it. Maybe she put out the word that any judge who signed the arrest warrant on sonny-boy was going to be running against a very well-funded opponent next time out."
"Olszewski would've signed it," I said. "He doesn't give a shit. Anyway, he's what Rachel calls my paisan."
"You're probably right. But his mother, who's in Florida, had a heart attack, or something. He just got back last night – and signed the warrant this morning."
"Speaking of Rachel reminds me," I said, "you need to w what went down while I was on my way to work today."
I took Karl aside and gave him the short version of what had happened at the parking garage.
"Well, doesn't that just suck dog cock," he said. "You either tell him where Sligo is, assuming we ever find the motherfucker, or he turns Rachel into a human torch."
"Yeah," I said, "but there's a couple of other-"
I stopped because Dooley had come out of the black van again, and this time the rest of his team followed him. SWAT was ready to rock and roll.
The first black-clad figure out after Dooley was Heidi Renfer, who was Karl's cousin. She had the same long, lean build, although I sometimes wondered if her supe-proof vest had to be custom-made to accommodate those formidable breasts. She was carrying a Benelli combat shotgun as her primary, and I knew it was loaded with a mixture of doubleought buck, rock salt, and BB-sized balls of silver, all blessed by a priest.
Like everybody on the team, she wore a set of vision-enhancing/protective goggles around her neck and a wide belt encircled her hips. The belt held the holster for her backup weapon – Heidi favored a big. 50 magnum Desert Eagle loaded with explosive rounds. It also held a can of Supe Repellant Spray (silver nitrate suspended in holy water), silverplated handcuffs made of cold iron, a tactical radio, and a couple of pouches that might contain anything – from extra ammo to field dressings imbued with a healing spell.
Heidi smiled and waved at Karl, but ignored me, which good-looking women have a habit of doing. Give or take Lacey Brennan.
Next out was a blocky guy in his thirties named Van Cleef. He looked like he had barely made the minimum height requirement of 5'8". Seeing him next to Heidi Renfer's 6'1" was enough to make you smile, but something about Van Cleef's face discouraged you from making jokes about it to him. Maybe it was the long puckered scar that ran from his forehead almost to his chin. He had an H amp;K MP5 assault weapon slung over his shoulder and carried the big door-busting sledge that was a vital part of SWAT's equipment. I'd heard that, during a breach, he always volunteered to be the first one through the door, and the others were happy to leave that hazardous job to him. I'm pretty sure if he was 6'4", he wouldn't feel he had so much to prove.
He was followed by a Jesuit named Garrett who taught theology at the U. Garrett could have served on the prayer team and done a lot of good that way, but he'd volunteered for the combat training, and come out near the top of his class.
A lot of Jesuits are badasses – I think it's part of their image. Their founder, St Ignatius of Loyola, was a soldier before he got religion, and the Jebs have never completely abandoned that military mindset.
Garrett carried a mini-flamethrower strapped on his back, the nozzle held in one asbestos-gloved hand. Some supes are vulnerable to silver, others to holy water or garlic, or cold iron. But fire will stop practically anything.
Then came Shiro Kyotake, who was born in Yokahama and speaks better English than I do. He studied the sword under a master in Japan and was the team's edged-weapons specialist. There aren't too many supe species that can survive decapitation, and Shiro can take the head off an ogre so fast the thing will be almost too surprised to fall down. He makes jokes about being descended from a long line of ninjas. But I've seen him at work with that long, curved blade, and I'm not sure he's really kidding. And he can throw a knife better than anyone I've ever seen.
After that came someone I didn't know. Make that two someones. The human, who was dressed like the rest of the team, had wavy blond hair cold irona muscular upper body. I couldn't see his eyes, since they were hidden behind a pair of wraparound sunglasses. The backup weapon in his belt holster looked like a Colt Python. 357 Magnum, the only revolver I'd seen among this crew. The guy wasn't carrying a heavier weapon, but I knew he wasn't unarmed. His primary was the dog.
Instead of a leash, the blond guy had attached to the animal's collar a four-foot length of chain that would not have looked out of place attached to a tow truck. He had the other end wrapped a couple of turns around his left hand, which was encased in a heavy leather glove.
Far as I know, the dog breed that comes closest to resembling what I was looking at is the Neapolitan mastiff. A cousin of mine used to own one, although he always used to say that it owned him. The SWAT dog, which must have weighed close to two hundred pounds, had the same black fur, floppy ears, and wrinkled face that you find with Neapolitans. But this animal also had a tuft of red fur that ran from its neck along the spine and all the way to its tail. Its teeth looked to be about twice as long as an ordinary dog's, and three times as sharp. And I saw that the eyes atop its huge muzzle glowed bright red, which you never see on anything that comes from this world.