The Kill Clause (5 page)

He waited for the phone to quiet before speaking. “A tip came in from one of our CIs this morning. We’re planning a hot takedown. I have to go in.”

One of Bear and Tim’s confidential informants had caught wind of a deal going down that had Gary Heidel’s smell all over it. The Escape Team had been tracking Heidel, a Top 15, for the better part of five months. After being convicted for one count of first-degree murder and two counts of drug trafficking, Heidel had escaped during his transport from courthouse to prison. Two Hispanic accomplices in a pickup had pinned the sedan against a tree, shot both deputy marshals, and extracted Heidel.

Tim had known that Heidel would need money quickly, and so he’d turn to the one place guys like him got money quickly. Since Heidel’s MO was a distinctive one—he acquired diluted cocaine from Chihuahua and had mules drive it across the border hidden in wine bottles—it had been easier for Tim and Bear to press the street for related information. Finally their vigilance had paid off. If their CI had given Bear reliable intel, a forty-key deal was going down sometime that afternoon or night.

“You sure you’re ready to work?”

Tim’s eye flicked to the scattering of cards on the wood tabletop. Garlands in muted inks on taupe paper. “I don’t know what else to do. I’m going out of my mind. If I don’t work, I might do something stupid.”

Dray dropped her eyes. He knew she sensed his eagerness to get out of the house. “You should go, then. I think I’m just upset that
I’m
not ready yet.”

“You sure you’re okay? I could call Bear—”

She waved him off. “It’s like what you said to me that first awful night.” She mustered a faint grin. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

He paused for a moment in the doorway before leaving. Dray leaned over the card she was writing, her jaw set just slightly as it got when she concentrated. Early sunlight shone through the window, turning the edges of her hair pale gold.

“Of course I remember that day at the picnic, with her and the airplane,” Tim said. “I remember everything about her. Especially when she was bad—for some reason those memories bring her the closest. Like when she drew on the new wallpaper in the living room with crayons—”

Dray’s face lightened. “And then denied it.”

“Like
I
might have done it. Or you. Or that time she put the thermometer against the lightbulb to get out of going to school—”

She matched his smile. “I came back in the room, and the mercury was redlined at a hundred six degrees.”

“The princess tyrant.”

“The little shit.” Dray’s voice, loving and soft, cracked, and she pressed a fist to her mouth.

Tim watched her fighting tears, and he looked down until his own vision cleared. “That’s why I can’t…why I avoid it. When we talk about her, it’s too…vivid…and it…”

“I need to talk about her,” Dray said. “I need to remember.”

Tim made a gesture with his hand, but even he wasn’t sure what it was meant to convey. He was again struck by the ineffectiveness of language, his inability to digest his feelings and shape them into words.

“She’s a part of our lives, Tim.”

His vision grew watery again. “Not anymore.”

Dray studied him until he looked away. “Go to work,” she said.

TIM SPED DOWNTOWN,
reaching the cluster of federal and courthouse buildings surrounding Fletcher Bowron Square. The squat cement and glass structure that passed for the Federal Building housed the warrant squad’s offices. Embedded in the front wall was a mosaic mural of women with square heads, which Tim had never quite grasped. The few times he’d taken Ginny to the office, she’d found the seemingly inoffensive mural unsettling; she’d keep her face turned into his side as they passed. Tim had always had a tough time deciphering her fears; also on her list were movie theaters, people over seventy, crickets, and Elmer Fudd.

He badged himself at the entrance, took the stairs to the second floor, and headed down a white-tiled corridor with spotty patchwork on the walls.

The office itself wasn’t much to look at, a haphazard throw of cubicles with metal schoolboy desks and fabric walls the color of Pepto-Bismol-laced vomit. For months admin had been promising the deputies a move to the more upscale Roybal Building next door, and
for months it had been delayed. The bitching had reached a daytime-talk-show high, but it did little good; the deputies weren’t the first to note that federal bureaucracy moved like an arthritic tortoise, and, to be fair, shoddy office space had never been an impediment for deputies who preferred the street anyway. The walls were covered with newspaper clippings, crime stats, and most-wanted mug shots. John Ashcroft peered out from a portrait, all beady eyes and weak chin.

As Tim threaded through the cubicle labyrinth to his desk, the other deputies mumbled condolences and averted their eyes, precisely the type of reaction he’d come to work to avoid.

Bear approached him at a half sprint, filling the narrow space between desks. He was geared up—ballistic helmet under an arm, goggles around his neck, thin cotton gloves, a mike-mounted portable radio, two sets of matte black cuffs, a gaggle of hard plastic flex-cuffs fanning back off his shoulder, black steel-plate boots, a Beretta in a hip holster, a can of Mace, extra mags dangling from a shoulder rig on his right side, and a Level III tactical vest, more flexible than the old Christmas-platter trauma-plate specials, but still able to stop most rounds. Forty-plus pounds, not counting his primary entry weapon, a cut-down twelve-gauge pump-action smoothbore Remington, charged with double-aught buck and fitted with a fourteen-inch barrel and pistol-grip stock. Because of its absence of a shoulder stock, the shotgun kicked back thirty-five pounds of recoil to be absorbed by the arms; this was nothing for Bear, but Tim had seen more slender deputies get knocked ass over teakettle.

Like the rest of the Arrest Response Team members, Tim preferred the shoulder-mounted MP-5, which could better pinpoint targets. He thought Bear’s shotgun an unwise choice because it tied up both hands and presented penetration problems in a confined area, but Bear had grown partial to the Remington in his Witness Security days, and the
shuck
it gave when he racked a round could up a fugitive’s pucker factor considerably.

ART was composed of the best-trained deputy marshals. When the bell rang, they came off regular duty, threw on Kevlar, and enacted precision strikes to extract fugitives. Because of Tim’s Spec Ops background and his early record working up warrants, he’d been fortunate to make ART almost immediately after graduating the academy. During one fugitive roundup in his second month, his team had been hitting as many as fifteen hideouts a day, guns drawn on each entry. They kicked in the door half the time, and more than half the arrests were of armed men.

Bear hardly slowed as he reached Tim, and Tim turned and moved with him to keep from getting run over.

“We’re waiting on you. Downstairs. Now. We’ll have our pre-op briefing on the way over.”

“What happened?”

“Our CI dropped dime on a buddy who was supposed to mule a shipment of imported wine, clear it through customs, port of entry San Diego. His meet is with a guy who fits Heidel’s description.”

“Where?”

Bear’s gold marshal’s star flashed on its leather belt clip as he walked. “Martía Domez Hotel. Pico and Paloma.”

The mule would probably leave the drugs in a truck in the parking lot to eliminate the risk of getting caught with them in the room. At the motel he’d receive his first payment and get directed to the stash house, where the water would be extracted from the “wine,” leaving behind cocaine.

“How’d you pin location?”

“ESU. Heidel’s a smart bastard, been phone-swapping about every other day, but the CI coughed up his new number and it tripped a cell site right at Paloma and Twelfth.”

The Electronic Surveillance Unit had a unique set of tricks at its disposal when it came to tracking fugitives. Every cell phone emits a locating burst in its own distinct radio frequency, identifying itself to its network. If a top-clearance government agency like the Marshals Service or NSA is willing to commit outrageous resources, a nationwide cellular system can be programmed to pinpoint that burst to a local cell-system coverage area within a radius of less than three hundred yards. Because of the expense—a live cell-phone trace requires men and cars and global positioning satellite handsets—the obvious problems gaining legal clearance, and the reliance on private-sector telecommunication cooperation, the technology is used sparingly. They were going all out for Heidel.

“Martía Domez is the only hotel on the block, and the CI knew the meet was in a hotel Room 9,” Bear continued. “The meet wasn’t supposed to be until six
P
.
M
., but Thomas and Freed did a drive-by about twenty minutes ago and said someone’s already in the room. Two more men just showed up.”

“Either of them fit Heidel’s description?”

“No, but they look like the spicks who helped spring him. Thomas and Freed are sitting surveillance with the ESU geeks—I told them not to get eye-fucked, that we’d hot-ass over and take the mutts before Elvis leaves the building.”

Bear knocked the door open so hard it left a dent in the wall. The other deputies watched them with some envy as they headed out.

•The Beast waited for them downstairs. An old, retrofitted military ambulance, the Beast fitted twelve people on two opposing benches. Huge white letters stood out from the black paint—
POLICE U
.
S
.
MARSHALS
—almost exactly matching the T-shirts of the ART members. On all U.S. marshal–issue clothing and gear,
POLICE
appears in text larger than that proclaiming the agency name, because if given the choice in a high-heat situation, a deputy marshal doesn’t want to wait for the Average Citizen to remember what a deputy U.S. marshal is, and because
POLICE
is the international language for
CAN SHOOT STRAIGHTER THAN YOU
. The yellow lettering and embroidered badges also cut the odds considerably that the ART squad would be mistaken for a stickup crew.

Tim grabbed his gear from the trunk of his car, swung up into the back of the Beast, slapped a few fives, and sat between Bear and Brian Miller, the supervisory deputy in charge of ART and the Explosive Detection Canine Team. Miller’s best bitch, a black Lab named Precious after Jame Gumb’s poodle, nuzzled up to Tim’s crotch before Miller snapped her back into place.

Tim regarded the eight other men on the benches. He was not surprised to see both Mexican ART members present; knowing that Heidel’s two deputy-killing accomplices were Latino, Miller had pulled in the Hispanic talent as a preemptive strike against claims of racial retribution. A Cuban kid named Guerrera was sitting in for their regular number-three man, who was the brother-in-law of one of the deputies whom Heidel’s men had shot. Miller had taken every precaution to ensure a fair, lawful takedown and to make sure his men would survive the postop hernia-check scrutiny of the Los Angeles media.

There was some uneasy shifting on the bench opposite Tim. “Do me a favor. Don’t tell me how bad you feel about my daughter. I know you all do, and I appreciate it.”

Assorted nods and mumbles. Bear broke the awkwardness, pointing to Tim’s holstered .357. “Hey, Wyatt Earp. When are you gonna get an auto and enter the twenty-first century?”

Bear’s little drill to show the others Tim wasn’t fragile. Appreciative, Tim played along. “The average gunfight lasts seven seconds, occurs within a range of fewer than ten feet. Do you know how many rounds are typically exchanged?”

Bear smiled at Tim’s mock-formal tone, and a few of the others joined him. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Four.” Tim removed the pistol and spun the wheel. “So the way I see it, I’m actually packing two spare bullets.”

The vehicle lumbered out of the parking lot, passing the Roybal Building’s metal sculpture composed of four immense human outlines that looked as though they’d been aerated by the crew that took down Bonnie and Clyde. The perforated men and the women with square heads left Tim with the strong impression that the government should stick to issuing budgets, not art.

Frankie Palton stretched his arm back over his head, grimacing, and Jim Denley snorted. “Your pimp beat you up?”

“No, the old lady brought home this goddamn Commie Sutra book, you know, all the sexual positions—”

Tim noticed that Guerrera’s MP-5 was set to three-round bursts, and he gestured with his middle and index fingers to his own eyes, then pointed at the gun’s knob. Guerrera nodded and clicked it to safety mode.

“—and she had me going in this goddamned Congress of the Cow last night, I shit you not, I thought I was gonna blow out my rotator cuff.”

Ted Maybeck leaned over and searched the floor at his feet. “Goddamnit. God
dam
nit.”

“What’s the fucking problem, Maybeck?” Miller said.

“I forgot my ram.”

“We have two battering rams and a sledge up front.”

“But not
my
ram. I brought that ram from St. Louis. It’s good lu—”

“Don’t say it, Maybeck,” Bear growled, looking up from loading his five-shot. “Don’t you fuckin’ say it.”

Tim turned to Miller. “What do we got?”

“Thomas and Freed are reconnoitering as we speak, getting the lay. ESU’s keeping an eye on the cell-phone signal, making sure it stays put. As we all know, Heidel is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If the four firearms he’s chosen to register are any indication, he prefers wheel guns. When we get him, don’t order him to put his hands behind him—he’ll probably have a pistol shoved in the back of his jeans. We want his hands on his head. According to witnesses, the two Hispanic males—”

“You mean Jose and Hose B?” Denley said.

“You fucking white guys,” Guerrera said. “Always an inferiority complex with your little glowworm dicks.”

“Big enough to fill
your
mouth.”

The two men extended their fists and bumped knuckles. If tactical precision was an ART requirement, the ability to generate repartee was not.

Miller’s voice rose to warning pitch. “The two Hispanic males have some gang insignia on the backs of their necks, and one might have a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his biceps. We don’t know for sure, but we’re counting on four men in the hotel room—Heidel, the two Hispanics, and the mule. Heidel’s got a common-law wife—fat bitch with limited English and several weapons violations. We couldn’t flip her last year, so she might be along for the ride. We have numerous statements from Heidel that he’s not going back to prison, so we can interpret that pretty easily.”

Heidel, like the majority of postconviction fugitives they tracked, had nothing to lose. He’d already had his day in court. If captured, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and that wouldn’t make him or his two deputy-killing buddies particularly docile takedowns. Once again the deputies would have to play by the rules even when the mutts did not. Mutts had no departmental guidelines, no deadly-force policy, no concern for bystanders or passersby. To fire they didn’t have to wait to get threatened with a gun or be in fear for their lives.

“We’re gonna go with an eight-man stealth, no-knock entry. No flash-bangs. Usual order through the door. LAPD’ll set a secondary perimeter, give us a nice visible uniformed presence, and we’ll have some cover rifles across the street. Guerrera, this ain’t Miami—the doors open in here, not out. Denley, remember you’re in Los Angeles. Through the door and straight back. Forget those vertical Brooklyn entrances.”

“Try to lose the Bobby De Niro accent while you’re at it,” Palton said. “No one buys that shit anyway.”

Denley jerked a thumb toward his chest. “You talkin’ to me?”

Tim cracked a smile, his first in days. He realized he hadn’t thought about Ginny in nearly five minutes—his first free five minutes since the incident. His return to the memory was jarring, but he felt steeled with the first bracings of hope. Maybe tomorrow he’d manage six minutes free and clear.

The Beast screeched over a curb and pulled into the back lot of a 7-Eleven. Two LAPD officers at his side, Freed crossed to them in a crouched under-fire run, though the motel was nearly two blocks away. One of the ESU geeks—matted hair, thick glasses, the whole nine yards—was right behind him, eyes glued to a handheld GPS unit, the faintly glowing readout showing that the locating RF pulse from Heidel’s mobile phone was not moving.

The ART squad exchanged greetings with the cops, and Miller thanked them for their presence and discussed where to set the perimeter. With ART huddled around, Freed unfurled a thick sheet of butcher paper across the hood of a nearby Volvo. On it he’d sketched a rough diagram
of the hotel room’s interior based on a conversation with the manager and his own assessment of the lay of the roof and the locations of various vents and external pipes. They didn’t want to risk the visibility of taking a tour through a similar room. The blueprint was oddly elongated; a hallway led back from the front room to a bedroom and bathroom.

“The mule just showed up in a hoopty,” Freed said. His command of slang disguised the fact that he came from money, but his crisp enunciation still betrayed a private school education. “A kitted-up ’91 Explorer. Chrome rims, running boards, brush guards, curb feelers, air dam—the whole street-scum package. The back looks to be filled with boxes, but the windows are tinted, so we can’t ID if they’re wine crates or not. He’s been in there about five minutes. The two Hispanic males arrived in a Chevy, and we think whoever was waiting for them in the room came in a green Mustang. Plates check out to a Lydia Ramirez, Heidel’s girlfriend, so that’s a pretty good confirm.”