Джеймс Паттерсон - 14th Deadly Sin:

“Does he have a family?”

“No. He’s divorced, no kids.”

I parked outside the firestorm but within view of it. I had two Kevlar vests in the trunk of my car. I told Swanson to stay put.

I got out of my vehicle, ducked down, and crept along the car on the far side of the gunfire. I popped the trunk, retrieved my vest, and put it on over my jacket. The spare vest was in my hand and I was creeping back to my car door when Swanson opened his door and bolted toward Vasquez’s house.

I yelled, “Swanson! Get down!”

Swanson was running along the short hedge that separated Vasquez’s driveway from his neighbor’s when I saw his body jerk twice, then, drop.

I climbed back into my seat, grabbed the microphone, and yelled into it, “Officer down! Officer down!” I gave my location, even though I knew that an ambulance couldn’t enter this block until the firing stopped. That was protocol.

I didn’t know what Swanson had been trying to do, but if he was alive, I had to get to him. With my lights and siren off, and keeping my head down, I drove over the sidewalk until I saw Swanson lying alongside the hedge.

I braked the car, slid on my belly across the front seat, and wrenched the door open. I was looking directly down at Swanson.

He was bleeding, but he was breathing.

I shouted, “You’re a stupid fuck , Swanson. You know that?”

Blood was spreading across his Windbreaker. Still, he grinned.

“Look who’s talking,” he said.

CHAPTER 96

MY CAR WAS a reasonable barricade against the fusillade of gunfire to my left, but I wouldn’t call it safe. I heard the banshee cry of an ambulance siren, then a second one, the sounds cutting out as the EMTs parked under the freeway.

I sat cross-legged on the ground next to Swanson. He was humming “The Star-Spangled Banner,” breaking into words now and then. “Mmm-mmm. Rockets’ red glare. Mmm-mmm, bursting in air.”

I folded the vest and put it under his head. He seemed peaceful. Maybe he was going into shock. Maybe he’d taken a hit to his spine. Maybe he was bleeding out.

He said, “It’s been good knowing you.”

“Not so fast,” I said. “You’re tougher than this. We’re cops, right?”

“I want you to do something for Nancy. The kids.”

“That’s your job, buster.”

“Say that I died … on the job. That’s the truth.”

“Talk to me, Swanson. It’s the least you can do.”

“… that our flag was still there.”

“Swanson, are you known to some people as One?”

I heard an engine start up, tires squeal. There was renewed gunfire. From the sound of it, a vehicle was making for the freeway exit at the far end of the street.

Swanson said, “Numero Uno. That’s me.”

Did he understand me? Did he know what I was asking him?

“You were the number one guy in the Windbreaker cop crew?” I asked.

He laughed.

“What’s funny?”

“The way it sounds. Numero Uno and the Windbreaker Crew.”

“Why did you fucking do it?”

He sighed. “ If I did it, it was a victimless crime.”

“What the hell do you mean by that? Over a dozen people are dead.”

“Stealing drugs from dirtbags. That’s victimless.”

How did a man become a cop—a superstar—and think like that? But I knew the answer. They were called public-service homicides. In other words, he figured, justifiable.

“What about Calhoun?” I asked him.

He lifted a hand and pointed in the general direction of the gunfire that was still raging.

“Poor Tommy.”

Swanson’s voice slurred. His hand dropped.

“Ted. Ted, don’t you dare leave me.”

He coughed up blood. I gripped his hand.

I heard a cop shouting from afar.

“ Get out of the car with your hands up! Get out of the car now! ”

A voice shouted back, “ You’re a dead man! ”

There were loud bursts of automatic gunfire. Then an echoey silence. I heard Brady’s voice coming over my car radio asking for the buses to come in.

I stood up and shouted his name over the roof of my car. A moment later, Brady, our homicide lieutenant with the shining blond hair, was standing with me.

“You OK?” he asked me.

“Yes. Are you?”

“I’m good.”

He bent at the waist and said “Swanson” to the downed man in the SFPD Windbreaker. “Swanson, speak to me.”

“Yo,” Swanson said. His eyes were closed. His breathing was shallow.

“He’s losing blood,” I said. “Where the hell’s the bus?”

Brady left to direct the ambulance, and I stayed with Swanson until the paramedics got to us. I watched as they loaded him onto the board, strapped him down, and lifted the board into the bus.

Unlike Robertson, Swanson had a family, and the only way they’d get benefits was if he died on the job. And there Swanson was, with holes in his SFPD Windbreaker. He’d seen his chance and he had taken it.

I grabbed one of the EMTs, pulled him to the side of the bus, and asked, “Is he going to make it?”

First the EMT shrugged; then he shook his head; and then he climbed into the bus and closed the doors.

I had wanted Swanson to tell me who else was in his “crew.” But I had a strong feeling that even if he’d lived, he wouldn’t have given his people away.

CHAPTER 97

AMBULANCES WERE COMING in, taking away the injured. The ME’s van had arrived, and Claire was talking to Clapper. CSU had barricaded all but one slim lane of the road. Techs were setting up lights and an evidence tent, and investigators were working the scene as best they could under the circumstances.

According to Brady, the body count was four, and all of the dead were unidentified shooters. One car had gotten away, and the number and identities of the people inside were unknown.

I sat in my car, and after I’d checked in with Joe and with Conklin, I called Nancy Swanson.

“I have to see you,” I said when she answered.

“What happened? Did something happen to Ted?”

“He’s hurt, but he’s alive.”

“What happened? Tell me—now. ”

“I’ll be at your house in fifteen minutes. I’m driving you to the hospital. Get someone to watch your kids.”

Her phone clunked to the floor. I called her name, but she was screaming and calling to her children.

I took the quickest, fastest route to the Swanson house, thinking that now, maybe, Nancy would tell me what she knew.

She was standing at the curb in a man’s white shirt, jeans, and bedroom slippers when I pulled up.

“Which hospital?” she asked me, getting into the passenger seat. “What’s his condition? Is it serious?”

“Buckle up,” I said.

The car shot off the curb and I set my course for Metropolitan Hospital. Nancy clenched her fists and beat her thighs as I told her about the standoff at Oswaldo Vasquez’s house.

I told her Vasquez had called her husband in a panic, saying that a number of cars had driven up to his house and that he perceived them to be a threat. I said that by the time Ted and I arrived, a full-scale shootout between the police and the men in those cars was in progress.

“He was safe in the car with me,” I told Nancy. “Then—he jumped out of the car and ran toward Vasquez’s house.”

“Oh, my God. That’s when he got shot?”

I nodded. “He was down but not out when the EMTs arrived.”

“This is all your fault,” she hissed at me. “Damn you, Sergeant.”

“I understand what you’re going through, Nancy, and I feel terrible for you.”

“I don’t care how you spin it. You’ve been crowding Ted for weeks now and he’s never done anything wrong. Anything he did, he did it for us. His family.”