Джеймс Паттерсон - The 19th Christmas

A line of vehicles came up the road from behind them, some stopping along the sagging chain-link fencing across the street. An SUV with its headlights off sped up and passed their van. She couldn’t see where it went. A fire truck stopped, backed up, parked behind them.

“What’s happening?” she shouted.

No answer from Corey.

Megan could just make out men in dark clothing clambering out of vehicles. She saw long guns.

Corey’s face was next to hers; he was also looking out at the swarm of activity on Donahue. Then, bellowing commando-style, he ran toward the front of the van.

Had he wigged out completely? What was he doing? Were they going to run?

Glass shattered.

No, no, no, no.

Megan Rafferty’s life wasn’t supposed to go this way. Christ.

Am I about to die?

Chapter 41

“She was crying when I left the house,” Conklin shouted over the scream of the siren.

“Another night and I’m not home for dinner and cannot say when I will be home.”

He was driving.

I was bracing myself against the inside of the door and standing on imaginary brakes in the footwell as we followed Octavia Boulevard onto the ramp for 101 South. The skyline winked on our left, and ahead of us cars peeled off into the right lane, getting the hell out of our way.

He said, “She gets that this isn’t my choice. She respects what I have to do. But she doesn’t like it.”

“Do you need a note? I can vouch for you.”

Conklin laughed. It was an ironic, tired little laugh, but there was mirth in it.

I made a mental note: If Rich and I survived the night, the four of us—Joe, Rich, Cindy, and I—should treat ourselves to a first-class outing. Something to look forward to.

My thoughts jumped back to the matter at hand and the “hot Loman tip” that had launched our Code 3 response out to Hunters Point. Information had come from one of Brady’s own CIs that Loman was sending a caravan of transport vehicles to an unknown target—tonight. That the targeted hit would be big. According to Brady’s informant, two people in a dark-blue 2009 Chevy transport van that was part camper, part arsenal would be spearheading a heavily armed assault team and would join the rest of Loman’s crew at an unknown location. We had no clue about what we were about to walk into.

We had some background on Corey Briggs and his partner-girlfriend, Megan Rafferty.

Briggs had done time for a home invasion and petty larceny and for possession with intent. Rafferty had been arrested for possession, sent to court-ordered rehab, then released. The pair had found each other and were now living in a housing project in this predominantly low-rent, high-crime area under redevelopment.

Not the pair I would have pegged for criminal masterminds, but from what we knew about Loman, he needed henchpeople he could manipulate.

As other cops headed out to banks, a museum, and the art gallery, my partner and I were assigned to the takedown of a pair of small-time criminals with big-time aspirations.

SWAT commander Reg Covington and his unit were waiting for us on Donahue, a low-traffic side street near the replacement housing. Covington’s unit would approach covertly in unmarked vehicles.

My partner and I were only four miles out, and he was concentrating on his driving. We got off the freeway, followed the signs to Cesar Chavez Street, and slowed as we approached the stoplight at Evans.

Adrenaline had burned off my fatigue and focused my mind. I didn’t think about home, bed, Julie, Joe, or Gloria Rose. I thought about my partner. And I hardened my nerves for whatever shit-storm was about to come down. I hoped we could bring these two nobodies in alive.

I hoped we could head off a bloody heist and get our hands on Loman.

Commander Reg Covington’s voice came over the radio. He had located the dark-colored van two hundred yards up Donahue Street, right-hand side, registered to Corey Briggs. He told us to kill our lights. His team would isolate and launch an assault against the van, with our car bringing up the rear.

“Boyle will wait for you and hand off the first aid,” Covington said.

Conklin hung a squealing right around the bend where Evans becomes Hunters Point Boulevard, and we slowed for local traffic, then crawled for a mile along Innes Avenue, bordering the construction site. I stayed in radio contact with Covington and he guided us in.

Four miscellaneous trucks and SUVs, one small all-terrain fire truck, and Conklin’s old Bronco converged on the dog-grooming van up ahead.

Everyone involved was heavily armed.

Chapter 42

At our SWAT commander’s direction, Conklin eased the Bronco onto Donahue and braked halfway down the stretch of pitted asphalt bordering the bulldozed site.

The last time we’d worked with Reg Covington—two full days ago—he’d led the charge up all those flights of stairs at the Anthony Hotel. Then, like now, the goal had been to take the subject alive. But Chris Dietz had gotten the last word, killing an FBI agent, wounding another, and committing suicide-by-cop, taking everything he knew about Loman’s plans with him.

A failed takedown just couldn’t happen again.

We needed Corey Briggs and Megan Rafferty to talk while there was still hope of heading off Loman’s big, bloody heist. In fact, this pair of small-time dopers might be our only hope.

Covington’s plan of attack was classic: Use ordinary-looking vehicles and trucks so that they could get close to the subjects’ van without spooking them. Isolate the van so that it couldn’t go mobile. Execute disabling tactics so that the subjects couldn’t hurt anyone, including themselves.

I saw Briggs’s old Chevy van thirty yards up ahead. Covington was on the radio, and I confirmed to him that the vehicle was in sight.

“Do you see Boyle?” he asked me.

A man carrying a duffel bag over his shoulder came down the street singing to himself. I recognized him and said so to Covington.

A moment later Boyle rapped his knuckles on my window. I buzzed it down and he passed the heavy bag to me.

“Here you go, Boxer. Everything you’ll need.”

I thanked Boyle and watched him get into a vehicle; it crawled up the road and disappeared from sight. It was as if I’d imagined him.

A pickup truck, no lights, turned onto Donahue and pulled smoothly in behind the van. Another vehicle, an SUV, parked a dozen yards in front of the van, backed up.

Tanya’s groom-mobile was now locked in bumper to bumper. Men and women in tactical gear exited their repo’d vehicles, stopped between our Bronco and the blue van.

I watched SWAT advance on the van with weapons in hand. One of the team leaned across the hood of a truck and braced a 40mm grenade launcher. He aimed at the blue van.

He fired.

A pepper-gas grenade traveled ten yards, shot through one of the van’s side windows, and hit the back wall.

The quality of life inside that van was about to go straight to hell.

Chapter 43

I hunched over reflexively as the grenade exploded, and when I sat up, everything was in motion.

The masked tactical team swarmed toward the van. The rear cargo doors blew open, and the writhing figure of a young woman tumbled out. She was followed by a screaming man in bulky outerwear.

The two fell to the ground, blinded by the burning gas, their mucous membranes inflamed, making them feel like they were choking. These two had to be Briggs and Rafferty. I watched as they tried to stand, but they didn’t have a chance. An all-terrain fire truck rolled up on fat off-road tires, and a SWAT commando aimed the water cannon at the couple and flattened them to the asphalt.

On Covington’s “Go,” Conklin and I scrambled out of the Bronco, me with the duffel bag, Conklin cutting a path for us through the tac team, which was cuffing our howling, writhing subjects on the ground.