"Oh, no, no," Lily said, "He's got an AVON, they're gonna hit the door with AVONs."
"It'll never fall, man," Lucas said urgently to the AIC. "The door's a solid chunk of oak. Call them down, man, it'll never fall."
"What?" The AIC couldn't sort it out, and Lily said, "The door won't fall to AVONs."
Lucas turned and ran out of the apartment and down the hall to the front door of the building. He could hear Del chanting, "Motherfuckers, motherfuckers…"
Lucas crashed through the front door, startling the FBI man on the street. The agent made a move toward his hip and Lucas swerved, screaming "No, no…"
There was a boom, then a second and a third, not sharp reports, but a hollow, echoing boom-boom-boom, as though someone in the distance were pounding a timpani. Lucas stopped, waiting, one second, two, three; then another boom, boom… And then a pistol, a sharper sound, nastier, with an edge, six, seven rounds, then a pause, then an odd cracking explosion…
"Minneapolis cops," Lucas shouted to the FBI man at the base of the stairs. Lily was with him now and they crossed the street. The FBI man had one hand out at them, but with the series of pistol shots he turned and looked at the building.
"Get out of the fuckin' street, dummy," Lucas screamed. "That's fuckin' Hood with the pistol. If he comes to the window, you're a dead sonofabitch."
Lucas and Lily crossed the sidewalk to the building until they were standing behind the stoop. The FBI man came over and stood with them, his pistol out now. There was shouting in the hallway.
"They got him," the agent said, looking at them. He sounded unsure.
"Bullshit," said Lily. "They never got inside. If you got a radio, you better call the paramedics, because it sounds like Hood sprayed the place…"
The building door popped open and Kieffer, in a crouch, his gun drawn, stepped down onto the stoop.
"What's happening, what's happening?" shouted the armored agent on the corner.
"Back it off, back it off," Kieffer shouted. "He's got hostages."
"You dumb sonofabitch, Kieffer…" Lucas shouted.
"Get out of here, Davenport, this is a federal crime scene."
"Fuck you, asshole…"
"I'll arrest your ass, Davenport."
"Come down here and you can arrest me for kicking a federal agent's ass, 'cause I will," Lucas shouted back. "You dumb cocksucker…"
The federal entry team and the Minneapolis teams stabilized the area and hustled the other tenants out of the apartment building and adjacent buildings. The city's hostage negotiator set up a mobile phone to call Hood.
When Lucas and Lily returned to the surveillance apartment, Daniel was talking with the AIC and Sloan was leaning against the apartment wall, listening.
"… go on television and explain exactly what happened," Daniel was droning piously. "We've had substantial experience with this type of situation, we had the scene cleared and stable, we had an excellent action plan prepared by our best officers. Suddenly, with no coordination and without proper intelligence-intelligence that we had: we knew that door wouldn't fall to AVONs, which is one reason we didn't try them-suddenly, an FBI team takes jurisdiction and promptly launches what I can only describe as a rash action, which not only endangered the lives of many police officers and innocent people in adjoining apartments, but also jeopardizes the chances of capturing Bill Hood alive, and cracking this terrible conspiracy which has taken the lives of so many people…"
"It should have worked," the AIC said bitterly.
Daniel discarded his pious-preacher voice and turned hard. "Bullshit. You know, I never would have believed you'd have tried this. I thought you were too smart. If you'd come in with your team, taken some time, talked it over, we could have done a joint operation and you would have gotten the credit. The way it happened… I ain't taking the rap."
"Could I get everybody out of here? Just for a minute," the AIC asked loudly. "Everybody?"
"Lucas, you stay," Daniel said.
When the other cops were gone, the AIC looked briefly at Lucas, then turned to Daniel.
"You need a witness?"
"Never hurts," Daniel said.
"So what do you want?"
"I don't know. I'll probably want your seal of approval and some active lobbying on a half-dozen federal law-enforcement-assistance grant applications…"
"No problem…"
"… and a line into your files. When I call you on something, I want what you got and no bullshit."
"Jesus Christ, Daniel."
"You can write me a letter to that effect."
"Nothing on paper…"
"If there's nothing on paper, there's no deal."
The AIC was sweating. He could have had a coup. He was now in charge of a disaster. "All right," he said finally. "I gotta trust you."
"Hey, we've always been friends," Daniel offered, slapping the FBI man on the back.
"Fuck that," said the AIC, wrenching away. "That fuckin' Clay. He's calling me every fifteen minutes, screaming for action. He's coming here, you know. He'll have that fuckin' gun in his armpit, the asshole."
"I feel for you," Daniel said.
"I don't give a shit about that," the AIC said. "Just find something that'll get me off the hook."
"I think we can do that," Daniel said. He glanced at Lucas. "We'll say that Minneapolis made the call and we decided to use FBI experts to attempt an entry. When that couldn't be accomplished, we went to an alternate plan that used city officers to negotiate a surrender."
"The fuckin' TV'11 never buy it," the agent said unhappily.
"If we both agree, what choice have they got?"
Del, Lily and Sloan were standing together in the hallway when Lucas and Daniel left the surveillance apartment.
"What'd we do?" Del asked.
"A deal," Daniel said.
"I hope you got a lot," Del said.
"We did all right, as long as we can pull Hood out of there," Daniel said.
"Maybe this wasn't a time to deal," Sloan suggested. "Maybe this was a time to tell it like it is."
Daniel shook his head. "You always deal," he said.
"Always," said Lucas.
Lily and Del nodded and Sloan shrugged.
Hood had fired seven shots with a big-bore pistol through the oak door after the molded-compound AVON rounds had failed to blow it open. When they saw that the door wasn't going to fall, the agents had cleared away from it and nobody was hurt. The firing stopped, there was the odd explosion, and then silence.
Twenty minutes after the attempted entry, with Daniel still meeting with the agent-in-charge, the police hostage negotiator called Hood. Hood answered, said he wasn't coming out, but that his friends in the apartment had nothing to do with any of it.
"You know me?" he asked.
"Yeah, we've had a line on you, Billy," the negotiator said. "But that wasn't us at the door, that was another agency."
"The FBI…"
"We're just trying to get everybody out, including you, without anybody getting hurt…"
"These guys in here, they didn't have anything to do with it."
"Could you send them out?"
"Yeah, but I don't want any of those white guys to snipe them. You know? The fuckin' FBIs, man, they shoot us down like dirty dogs."
"You send them out, I guarantee no harm will come to them."
"I'll ask them," Hood said. "They're scared. They're sleeping, and all of a sudden somebody tries to blow up the fuckin' apartment, you know?"
"I guarantee…"
"I'll ask them. You call back in two minutes." He hung up.
"What's going on?" Lucas asked. He and Lily had cut around the building to come up on the negotiator's car.
"I think he's gonna let the other two guys out."