Don Clutesi saw it first and he tapped Cole Howard on the shoulder. They were wearing headsets which cut out the thudding roar of the rotors and allowed them to speak to each other and to the pilot and co-pilot. He pointed to the burning house some six miles away by the side of the Chesapeake Bay. There were no streetlights or other houses close to it and the inferno seemed to be suspended in the darkness. “See that?” Clutesi asked.
“You think that’s it?” said Howard, squinting into the distance.
The pilot’s voice came over the headsets. “That’s where we’re headed,” he said. The co-pilot began calling up Baltimore air-traffic control to request that they inform the Fire Department. His call was acknowledged.
Howard slapped his knee. There was no sign of a SWAT team in the vicinity of the house, no lights on the road. He was hardly surprised, they’d probably be driving out from the city, whereas the FBI JetRanger helicopter was zipping through the air at more than one hundred knots.
The pilot took the helicopter down to about five hundred feet above the ground and banked around the house. “Jesus, look at that,” said Clutesi.
For a moment Howard imagined that he could feel the heat from the blaze but he knew that they were too high. The pilot switched on a searchlight below the helicopter and an oval patch of light appeared on the grass below. Over the headset, Howard heard the co-pilot tell air-traffic control that he was landing.
Clutesi pounded Howard on the shoulder again and pointed. “Here comes the cavalry,” he said. In the distance, about a mile from the house, they saw a convoy of vehicles speeding along the main road in the direction of the house. “That’ll be the Ninjas. Better late than never.”
“There’s no rush — I don’t imagine there’ll be anyone hanging around,” said Howard. A blue car at the rear of the house exploded in a sheet of flame as its fuel tank detonated. The pilot yanked the helicopter up and away and chose a landing spot further away from the house. The oval light grew smaller and brighter as they descended and then the skids gently bumped the ground. The co-pilot turned around in his seat and handed flashlights to Howard and Clutesi and indicated that they could disembark. The two FBI agents climbed out, the still-turning rotors making their jackets flap around their waists. Both agents were armed and they took their handguns from their holsters as they jogged across the lawn to the house. The convoy of cars and vans turned down the drive to the house and Clutesi headed in their direction, holding his badge and gun aloft.
Howard saw a figure lying on the grass about fifty yards from the house, stretched out and unmoving. He went over and knelt down beside the body. It was a middle-aged man, bare-chested with wicked cuts across his back as if he’d been whipped. There was also a nasty gunshot wound on one shoulder but it didn’t look fatal. The man’s right hand was holding a compact black handgun, his finger still on the trigger. Howard took a pen from his inside jacket pocket and used it to pry the gun from his fingers. He rolled the man over and winced as he saw more wounds on the man’s chest. His right nipple was missing, a red, crusty scab in its place, and it looked as if a strip of flesh had been ripped out, exposing the muscle underneath. “Hell, what happened to you?” Howard said under his breath. The man’s eyebrows and chest hair were singed from the flames and his cheeks and nose were red as if he’d been under a sunlamp for too long. Howard bent down and put his ear close to the man’s mouth. He couldn’t hear anything above the crash of falling timbers and crackling wood, but he felt the man’s breath on his cheek.
Clutesi ran over, followed by two men in blue overalls and body armour. Clutesi knelt down beside Howard. “He dead?” asked Clutesi.
Howard shook his head. “Not yet,” he said.
One of the men in overalls introduced himself as the commander of the SWAT team, Scott Dunning. Howard asked him to arrange an ambulance.
“You’d be better off using the chopper, airlift him to Shock-trauma in the city,” said Dunning. “It’ll take the bird ten minutes but it’s almost an hour by road.”
“Good idea,” said Howard. He patted Clutesi on the back. “Don, you go with him. I’ll check here. When you get to the hospital, call Ed, let him know what’s happening.”
The commander called over two of his men and had them pull out a stretcher to carry the injured man to the JetRanger. As the helicopter turbine roared and it lifted into the air, Dunning and Howard surveyed the burning building. “Not really much need for a SWAT team, is there?” observed Dunning tersely. His men were standing beside their vehicles, the flames throwing long flickering shadows behind them.
“Not unless you’ve got a fire engine with you,” said Howard.
“Afraid not, not today,” said the SWAT commander.
“Fire Department’s on their way,” said Howard. “We called them from the chopper.”
One of the members of the SWAT team, a young man with a rifle and telescopic sight, wandered over the lawn towards the house. “Tom, stay by the vans until the lab tech boys get here,” Dunning shouted. The man waved and went back to the van. “He’s new,” explained Dunning. “He’s a crack shot but a menace around a crime scene.”
Howard nodded. He walked slowly around the area where the body had been lying, looking at the grass. He was trying to work out where the man had been shot. The shoulder wound was from the front, so his first thought was that he’d been shot as he’d left the house, by someone outside. He shone the flashlight on the grass, looking for footprints. He saw a few drops of blood where the man’s feet had been and he began working his way back to the house, sweeping the flashlight beam from side to side. He found several more spots of blood and revised his first impression. The man had been shot in the house and had been running away before he’d passed out, either from loss of blood or the effects of the smoke.
Someone was shouting and he looked to his left. The young SWAT sniper was pointing towards the house and yelling. Howard shaded his eyes with his hand and squinted in the direction he was pointing. There was something lying on the ground, close to the door. Howard went closer but the heat drove him back. It looked like another body. He went over to the sniper and borrowed his rifle. He shouldered the weapon and looked through the telescopic sight. It took him a while to centre the cross-hairs. Through the scope he saw the man’s sweatshirt burst into flame and his skin bubble and crack. There was nothing they could do — the SWAT team had protection against bullets, not fire, and until the fire engines arrived they could only stand and watch.
The motel could be seen from the road; a red neon sign over the main entrance indicated that there were vacancies. The building was U-shaped, with the two wings pointing away from the road, either side of a car park and swimming pool. Lou Schoelen parked his car outside the entrance and went inside to arrange his room. Carlos stopped his car some distance from the motel and watched, checking that no-one else had tailed the sniper. After a few minutes, Schoelen appeared, swinging a key. He got back into his car and drove slowly around to the parking area. Carlos followed him and pulled in next to him.