“Sounds like I should marry you for your money.”
“I’m not ever going to marry.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am. It just isn’t out there for me. You’re a catch, but you’re too much like me. Jackson was a wholly different person, calm and wise and funny. He wasn’t brilliant, but he knew how to do the right thing in any situation.”
“That’s as much a gift as Ham’s shooting.”
“You’re right, and he cultivated it every day. But he’s gone, and there’s nothing I can do about it.”
“Did they ever catch the people who did it, that cult group, or whatever they were?”
“No, but Lance says I’d have a better chance with the Agency. I could never run them down in law enforcement. Either I’d have a department to run, like now, or I’d be caught up in a bureaucracy with some supervisor’s shoe on my neck. I don’t think it would be like that with Lance.”
“Maybe not.”
“I could always quit, if I didn’t like it.”
“I suppose.”
The phone rang and Stone picked it up. “Hello?”
“It’s Dino. The address is less than two blocks from your house.”
“Jesus.” He got a pencil and wrote it down. “We’ll meet you there.”
“No, come here. We’ve got the building plans on the way, and we need to plan this well.”
“We’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Bring your weapons and Holly’s warrant.”
“Will do.” He hung up.
“Got your warrant?” he asked Holly.
“You bet your ass.”
“Then let’s go.”
On the way uptown, in the cab, Stone reached out for Holly’s wrist and felt her pulse.
“What are you doing?”
“It’s about ninety,” he said. “You want to calm down. Take some deep breaths. It’s going to be at least a couple of hours before we go in.”
“I want to do it now.”
“I know, but you have to be patient.”
“No, I don’t,” she replied.
“You’ll do a better job if you pace yourself.”
“Maybe.”
“Certainly.”
She began taking deep breaths, and her heart rate started to come down.
“That’s better,” he said.
“No, it isn’t,” she replied.
50
THE TEAM MET in a conference room at Dino’s precinct. There was a pile of equipment near the door, and men, and a couple of women, were milling around, talking.
“Okay, everybody, settle down,” Dino said, setting a blowup of a floor plan on an easel. A blown-up photograph of Trini Rodriguez was pinned to a wall.
People took seats or leaned against the walls.
“We’re lucky on this one. The building’s under renovation, so current floor plans were filed for the new building permit. What we’ve got is a five-story walk-up, just like the ones on either side, with a fire escape down the back. We’re lucky, too, that the fire escape on our building has been removed, pending replacement, so there’s no way down, except the main staircase.
“The phone number we tracked down belongs to the top-floor apartment, though there’s not supposed to be anybody living in the building while the fire escape is down, but the neighbors say there are still people living there. The building is owned by a Muslim charity, and the tenants appear to be Muslim, too, so we should treat anybody inside as noncooperative but not hostile, unless they behave that way.
“It’s possible that, if the occupants see us going up the stairs, they might give the alarm, and that would make this work more dangerous, so anybody who sees us should be hustled inside his apartment and told to shut up. Anybody who tries to give the alarm should be arrested and gagged until we’re done.
“We’ve got a twelve-man team. I want four on the roof-you can access it from the building to the east-and eight going up the stairs. We’ve got two officers from a Florida department who have a fugitive warrant for Rodriguez, and they’ll be bringing up the rear, so I’ll keep them with me.
“According to the neighbors across the street, there are a lot of people living in each apartment, so you should expect there to be as many as half a dozen people in the apartment. They should all be immediately restrained, unless they point weapons at officers, in which case you should respond with armed force. Any questions?”
“Yeah,” said a burly young man sitting at the table. “You have any idea what they might be armed with?”
“My best guess is handguns, but you should be ready to deal with automatic weapons.”
“If automatic weapons are a possibility, then I suggest we use a stun grenade before going in.”
“Negative,” Dino said. “There may be women or even children in there, and since that incident last year when the woman died of a heart attack after a stun grenade was used, we can use them only in dire emergencies when we’re certain who’s in there.”
“Have we used any listening devices on the place?”
“We’ve pointed a mike at an upstairs window from across the street, but the blinds are drawn, and all we’ve heard is a kind of low muttering, which we take to be men’s voices, and not much of that. We think they may be sleeping.”
The man nodded.
“Anybody else?”
The SWAT team leader walked to the easel and pointed. “Going in, try to confine any shooting to this direction, to the east, because we’ve got a double-brick wall there. If possible, avoid shooting toward the walls, here and here, that have windows. Even though we’re using frangible ammo, I don’t want any rounds going through an open window and flying around the neighborhood. Clear?”
Nobody said anything.
“Is the search warrant here yet?” the leader asked Dino.
“It’s on the way,” Dino replied. “We won’t go until it’s in hand. It’s for the whole building.”
“Do we have arrest warrants for anybody but Rodriguez?”
“Not specifically, but anybody in the apartment should be arrested for harboring a fugitive.”
“Women, too?”
“Yes. There’ll be a couple of people from Children’s Services on hand to take charge of any children in the apartment, and one of them is an Arabic speaker.”
“One of my people speaks Arabic and Urdu, too,” the leader said, pointing at one of his men. “He’ll do all the talking until we’ve established who speaks English.”
“Trini Rodriguez speaks English,” Holly said.
Everybody turned to look at her.
“He might pretend not to, and I’d suggest that if he’s armed and he’s slow obeying commands in English, somebody shoot him.”
“This is Chief Barker from the Orchid Beach, Florida, PD,” Dino said. “She’s had considerable experience with Rodriguez. Anything else to offer, Holly?”
“He’s a stone killer,” she said, “and he’ll do anything to avoid being arrested, including shooting police officers. He won’t hesitate, and neither should you.”
“Okay,” Dino said. “We’ve got four detectives in the block observing the house, two in the building across the street on the same floor as our target apartment. We’ll be in two vans, and we’ll stop on the avenue and check with them before moving in.” He looked around the room. “You guys look ready to me. Let’s go!”
The men picked up their equipment and filed out.
Dino walked over to a pile next to the door. “This is our stuff,” he said. “Let’s suit up. We’re aiming for entry at six p.m.”
51
IT WAS HOT in the van in which Stone, Holly, and Dino were riding, and the heavy equipment made things worse. It was past six p.m. A few of the SWAT team were exchanging macho banter, but most were quiet. Stone wiped sweat from his forehead. “I’m going to need a shower after this.”