Lee Goldberg: McGrave

Russell is so involved in his phone call with McGrave's ex-wife that he doesn't notice a split-second flicker across all of the command-center screens, including the one that shows the empty entry hall, which isn't actually empty.

Two men, all muscle and sinew, and a woman with a body suitable for a successful career as an Olympic gymnast or a porn star, walk in the front door all dressed in black and wearing ski masks.

They each have earbud transmitters and are carrying matching silver cases and gym bags.

They split up, moving with silent, practiced precision into the house.

Out on the street, at that open junction box, the repair guy is watching all of this go down on his iPad when someone taps him on the shoulder.

He turns and gets a fist in the face, breaking his nose like a water balloon.

It's McGrave.

If the repair guy had been more aware of his surroundings, and less focused on watching the robbery, he might have noticed that shortly after McGrave drove by, he'd made a sharp turn into a driveway just two houses down from the junction box.

McGrave punches the repair guy in the face again, mostly because it just feels so good after his conversation with Russell.

He bends down and snatches the iPad from the ground and plucks the transmitter out of the unconscious repair guy's ear and sticks it in his own.

McGrave glances at the iPad screen, toggles through the feeds, and sees the three thieves in different rooms, taking antiquities and placing them into cases lined with foam padding precut for each individual piece that they are stealing.

Pros with a shopping list.

He yanks the added wires and clips from the junction box, tosses the iPad on the ground, then opens the back of the van. The real cable guy is on the floor with a bullet in his forehead.

McGrave closes the door, takes out his cell phone, and dials Frank Russell as he hurries back down the hill to his car.

Russell is sitting in his chair, his back to the monitors, talking to McGrave's ex, when he's interrupted by a beep.

"Hold on, baby, I'm getting another call."

He takes the phone away from his ear to look at the caller ID.

It's John McGrave.

Fuck.

He puts the phone back to his ear.

"It's him. Do you think I should take the call?"

McGrave is getting into his car when one of the thieves asks him something over the transmitter in German. Not once, but twice.

So McGrave says, "Ja wohl."

It's the only German he knows. It's what Sergeant Schultz said all the time to Colonel Klink on Hogan's Heroes.

He yanks the transmitter from his ear, takes an extra ammo clip from his glove box, and starts his car.

Sebastian Richter hasn't survived and prospered as an assassin and thief simply on his intelligence, his lethal skills, and his physical prowess, though those qualities are certainly a plus on the rйsumй.

His edge has always been his natural predatory instincts.

And those instincts were telling him he was fucked even before McGrave said, "Yes, indeed," to him in German.

Richter drops his silver case, takes a gun out of his gym bag, and heads for the double doors of the command center.

"I've got to take his call, Sharon. If I don't answer, he'll think I wet myself over his stupid threat. I got to be cool about this. Hold on," Russell says, then answers McGrave's call. "Change your mind, buddy?"

"You're being robbed," McGrave says as he's backing the car out into the street. "There are three perps in the house right now."

Russell swivels around in his chair, stands up, and looks at the monitors, where he sees rooms with empty display cases and one thin guy and one hot woman busy stealing more.

He tosses the phone on the chair and is about to slap the big red emergency button on the console when the doors behind him burst open.

Out of flawed reflex, the kind Richter has subdued in himself with years of training, Russell turns around and Richter pistol-whips him across the face, taking him down.

Richter picks up Russell's phone, looks at the caller ID, and then pockets it.

He then says this in German into his earbud: "Abort. We have a guest coming. Otto, you stop him. Serena, warm up the car."

McGrave is speeding up the street, peeling rubber on the steep grade, when the repair guy, his face splattered with blood, staggers into his path with a gun and starts shooting at him.

The windshield shatters and McGrave ducks, twisting the wheel and steering straight for the repair guy.

The car slams into the repair guy, who flies up onto the hood, through the windshield, and right into the passenger seat.

McGrave elbows the guy a few times in the face to make sure he stays down and keeps on driving, making a hard left into the Wallengrens' driveway.

Serena rushes into the Wallengrens' garage and finds two Jet Skis, a Harley-Davidson, a BMW 7 Series, and a Mercedes S-Class.

It's nice to be rich.

The keys to the vehicles are on hooks on the wall. She takes the BMW key, pops the trunk on the car, and puts her cases inside.

She pulls off her mask and throws it in, too.

Imagine the most beautiful woman you've ever seen. Now imagine one even more beautiful.

That's her.

Otto takes a defensive position at the base of the stairs in the foyer. He heard the gunshots and can now hear a car approaching fast. He removes an automatic weapon from his gym bag and aims it at the front door. He's looking forward to this. He's killed eight men and one woman in his lifetime, and those experiences are fond memories. Especially the woman.

Whoever walks in that door is a dead man.

But McGrave doesn't walk in.

He drives in.

The Crown Vic blasts through the front door and takes most of the wall with it, plowing over Otto before he can even squeeze the trigger.

McGrave gets out of the car in a rain of dust and debris and squints down at Otto's arm sticking out from underneath the front driver's-side wheel.

There's a colorful tattoo of a woman embracing a bear on the dead man's twitching arm. The twitching makes the tattoo look like a crudely animated cartoon.

McGrave takes out his. 357 and strides casually into the living room.

He couldn't possibly be happier than he is right now.

And the feeling isn't diminished one bit when he sees Richter, his face hidden by the ski mask, standing behind Frank Russell and holding an automatic weapon to the dizzy ex-cop's head.

McGrave raises his gun and aims it at Richter, who stands across the room full of ceramic antiquities. "LAPD. Game over."

Richter cocks his head. "You're really a cop?"

"I am," McGrave says.

"Where did we go wrong?"

"You made two mistakes. Your first was using a Comcast cable truck in a Time Warner Cable neighborhood."

"I'll have to remember that next time. What was the second?"

"Picking a hostage who is screwing my wife."

McGrave fires.

The bullet smashes through the three-thousand-year-old stone toilet, obliterating it, and hits Russell in the upper chest, passing through him into Richter's shoulder.

The German tumbles backwards and fires, spraying the room with bullets.

McGrave dives to the floor as glass and ceramics explode all around him.

Richter scrambles out of the room and down a hallway. McGrave runs up and checks on Russell, who is wide awake and wishes he wasn't. His new suit is soaked with blood. At least his teeth are fine.

"Are you going to live?" McGrave asks.

"Yeah," Russell says.

"My aim must be off," McGrave says, then hurries after Richter.

The BMW is running, Serena is at the wheel, and the garage door is open as Richter staggers in, clutching his bleeding shoulder. He gets into the car. She peels out, filling the garage with smoke.