"How long before it all starts?" she asked.
She had aimed her question at Dave, but Easy Washington was the one who answered. "Depends on how long it takes us to get there," he said.
Ali had always been under the impression that it took approximately forever to drive from the Palm Springs turnoff on I-10 into the city itself. Tonight it seemed to happen in the blink of an eye. Long before Ali had managed to prepare herself, Easy was already turning off Palm Canyon and headed toward Old Las Palmas. Ali closed her fists and let her fingernails dig into the flesh at the base of her palms. She may have been petrified about whatever was coming, but she sure as hell wasn't going to show it.
As they approached Via Hermosa, cop cars and roadblocks seemed to be everywhereall kinds of cop cars from all kinds of jurisdictions. But Easy and his Suburban had the secret code or maybe it was a magic charm. Every time the Suburban came close to stopping, they were waved on through the barricade.
When they finally came to a stop, it was on the far side of a wrought-iron gate with a massive wall on either side that seemed to stretch out of sight in both directions. The sky was starting to brighten almost imperceptibly on the far horizon while the view in through the gate was nothing short of idyllic. A lit fountain, spilling water, was the centerpiece of a bricked courtyard. Curtains of blooming bougainvillea framed a pillared front porch. The massive double doors, made of some kind of metal, gleamed in the light of equally massive sconces. It was an impressive entryway, one that made a statement. It also looked like a fortress.
Motioning for Dave and Ali to stay inside, Easy stepped out of the vehicle. Once again he had a phone clapped to one ear and an earpiece in the other. "Okay," Ali heard him say. "We're in place now. If everyone's ready, it's a go. On your say-so. Right."
What followed seemed to Ali like a moment of anticipatory silence. Then, as if on cue, all the officers standing outside the Suburbanall the ones she could see, Easy includedseemed to glance in the same direction at the same time, looking off over their shoulders, back toward downtown. And then, through the open car door, Ali heard the sound that had obviously captured their attentionthe distinctive rat-ta-tat-tat of an approaching helicopter.
Ali's first assumption was that the aircraft was some kind of support vehicle brought in to serve as backup for the officers on the scene, but as it flew directly overhead, it laid down what sounded like a spray of automatic gunfire. At the sound of it, the officers on the ground all dove for cover.
"Holy shit!" Dave exclaimed. "We're taking fire."
The helicopter dropped to the ground on the far side of the gate, easing down beside the lighted fountain. Behind it, one of the massive double doors flew open and two women emergedAmber and a white-haired woman, dressed all in pink and leaning on a cane. Amber hurried her forward. The two of them walked under the churning helicopter blades without ducking their heads, as though they were totally accustomed to them. As they approached the cockpit, Amber pulled herself inside and then reached back to help the older woman.
By then Easy's assault team was moving forward. Weapons at the ready, they crouched behind a growling Hummer that paused for only a moment before ripping the gate off its hinges and clearing the way for the team to spill inside the compound. As they surged forward, though, the helicopter had collected its passengers and was already lifting off. As it rose from the ground, another spray of bullets came through the craft's open door.
Instinctively, Ali and Dave ducked as bullets smashed into the front of the Suburban and whined past them in the empty air. The windshield splintered. And then there was another soundan ugly, guttural groan of painthe sound of someone hit and badly hurt. Outside the open front door, Easy Washington seemed to spin in place. Then, slowly, he fell backward.
Over the roar of the helicopter engine, Ali heard a group of shouted commands followed by yet another blast of gunfire, this one from the officers on the ground. At first it seemed as though it made no difference. For a time the helicopter continued to rise unimpeded. Then it seemed to hesitate slightly. The blades stopped spinning abruptly as the craft tilted drunkenly over to one side. Then, slowly to Ali's fear-fueled mind, it began to fall to earth.
Ali saw two somethings, one pink and one not, spill out onto the ground and land, like limp rag dolls, on the hard brick of the courtyard. And then the helicopter crashed down there as wellsmashing almost silently and eerily in the exact same spot. Immediately it burst into flames.
As the flames rose in the air, Dave vaulted out of the Suburban with Ali right behind him. By the time Ali reached the ground, Dave was on his knees lifting his friend's dreadfully limp body. Already drenched in Easy's bright red blood, Dave was cradling the man and doing his best to apply pressure to a wound at the base of Easy's chin.
"Find a phone!" Dave yelled at Ali. "Call nine-one-one. Hurry!"
Without knowing how she found it, Ali's fingers closed around the telephone Easy Washington had dropped when he fell.
"Nine-one-one," the operator said. "What are you reporting?"
"A man's been shot," Ali shouted into the phone. "A man's been shot and there's been a helicopter crash."
"What is your location?" the woman wanted to know. "You're calling on a cell phone. I need the exact address."
"Somewhere on Via Hermosa in Palm Springs," Ali returned. "Right next to the burning helicopter."
Three people died last night and three DEA officers were wounded, one critically, when gunfire erupted and a fleeing helicopter crashed in the normally quiet Old Las Palmas neighborhood of Palm Springs during a DEA-led task-force operation targeting a highly sophisticated network of alleged drug traffickers.
After a month long investigation and after staging numerous arrests all over Southern California, officers turned their attention to the home of a longtime Palm Springs resident thought to be the ringleader of the group. Both the unidentified woman and her granddaughter along with their pilot perished when the helicopter in which they were attempting to flee crashed during take-off. One unidentified DEA officer is hospitalized at Eisenhower Memorial Hospital with what are thought to be life-threatening injuries.
The gun battle came at the end of a long day of stunning high-profile arrests that netted several members of L.A.'s media elite along with some people thought to be highly placed members in law enforcement circles. Much of the operation centered around a trendy Beverly Hills topless club known as the Pink Swan.
One suspect was arrested and two carjacking victims were rescued at the Morango rest area on I-10 when officers, alerted by one of the hostages over a cell phone, managed to throw down nail strips, which disabled the fleeing vehicle. One of the two victims, both of them Arizona residents visiting in California, was slightly injured during the operation. The other was released unharmed.
It was almost noon that same day when Ali looked up from reading the online news report and considered those words, the understated and dispassionate journalese that toned down the very real drama of the story.
"One was slightly injured." That would have been Chris and his sprained ankle. The one who was released "unharmed" was Ali herself. And the "critically injured" officer was Dave's friend Easy Washington, who had been struck in the neck by a stray bullet. The theory was that one of the bullets fired from the helicopter had ricocheted off the Suburban's engine block. It had glanced off Easy's Kevlar vest and had slammed into his inferior thyroid artery.