James Patterson - Gone

Plans were made as the clock ticked and it got darker.

The armed-to-the-gills LA-office SWAT teams, along with Hostage Rescue, were geared for a full frontal assault, while we task force members were assigned slightly safer, perimeter positions in case Perrine tried to mosey out the back door.

At a little after eleven, Parks Department personnel were inserted into Crystal Cove State Park, a little south of the development. We had to hike a mile down a dark horse trail, alongside scrub willow and oak, using night vision. Though it was pretty temperate, with all the gear on and my rifle, I was sweating like a pig in about a minute and a half. Parker looked as fresh as a daisy.

When I turned, far away over the trees, I could see the shiny surface of the Pacific. Wow, do I have a weird job , I thought.

We were under strict radio silence. Too bad there wasn’t voice silence. Up ahead in the dark, Emily and I could overhear Bassman complaining about what a bullshit detail this was and how, since it was LA cops who’d been murdered, it should be the LAPD kicking in the front door.

Emily and I shook our heads at each other. I’d heard blowhards before, but this guy was something else.

It took us almost twenty minutes to get into position along the horse trail at the bottom of the shrub-and-loose-dirt-covered slope behind the rented mansion. We spread ourselves out in two-person teams along the bottom of the slope, one team every ten or twenty yards. If Perrine came down the hill, he’d be nailed. I prayed that he would.

When I checked my watch, it was a quarter to twelve. The breach team was due to go in at 12:20 on the nose. It was exactly 12:15 when the bullshit started. We turned as Bassman, who was stationed on the trail to the right of Parker and me, started climbing up the hill with his partner.

“Bassman,” I hissed, rushing down the trail toward him. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Getting into a better position,” he hissed back.

“That’s not the plan, Bassman. You’re gonna get your ass shot.”

“What are you? My mother?” he said, dismissing me with a wave as he continued up the slope.

After another minute, he disappeared over the crest of the hill with his partner.

The moment he disappeared, I looked up to see the huge form of an MH-60 Black Hawk helicopter appear out of the night. It passed extremely low, directly over my head, making no more noise than a Cuisinart mixer. I knew that the military teams were being inserted into the compound by air, in conjunction with the SWAT teams. What I didn’t know was how discreet their entrance would be.

Less than a minute later, up over the ridge in the distance, there came several sharp, loud bangs that must have been the SWAT teams breaching the house’s wrought iron gate. There was a roar of engines that had to be the SWAT vans. Over the tactical mike, I could hear cops-or maybe they were soldiers-calling out a jumble of shouted directions amid more bangs.

That was when the firing started. From everywhere at once, it seemed the silence burst with the unmistakable metal-hammering-on-metal sound of automatic gunfire. The dark sky above us lit up, suddenly glowing with muzzle flashes as the jumble over the radio became confused screams.

The firing was becoming heavier when I heard an unmistakable voice over the cacophony.

“I’m pinned down!” Bassman was yelling. “By the pool house! Cop pinned down! Somebody help!”

“Of course he is,” I said to Parker as I started up the loose-dirt hill.

When I peeked over the ridge, I didn’t see any sign of Bassman, but I did see a figure on the deck. He was a short Hispanic guy in tighty whities, with a tribal tattoo on his shirtless chest, and he was staring straight at me as he raised a pump-action shotgun.

Before I could duck, get my hand onto the pistol grip of the rifle strapped to my back, or say my act of contrition, a half-dozen FBI SWAT guys appeared in the backyard from the side of the house, firing. The glass doors on the deck blew in, along with most of the gunman, as a fusillade of MP5 fire ripped open the entire front of him, from his crotch to his throat.

I stood there, frozen, watching helplessly as the SWAT team rushed in through the back doors.

If they hadn’t come, I would have been dead , I thought. A second later, I would have been gone. I knew it in my bones.

I shook all over.

I’d never been to war.

Until now.

I pulled myself together by the time Parker arrived behind me. I raced with her around the pool and around the dead guy on the deck, into the house.

“Down! Freeze!” cops were yelling. From somewhere a woman was crying.

As we passed a bathroom, Parker tapped me on the back.

“Mike! Oh, shit, Mike! It’s him!”

“Who? Perrine? Where?”

I turned. It wasn’t Perrine. It was Scanlon. I recognized him from his passport photo. Barely. He was on his back in the tub, on top of the torn shower curtain. His hands were handcuffed behind him, and his throat was cut to the bone.

We scoured the house for another twenty minutes before one of the ATF SWAT guys found the trick door in the wine cellar. Beyond it was a steep set of circular stairs, with faux castle walls and candelabra, leading toward a Gothic, dungeonlike door on the bottom.

“What the hell is this?” Emily said as one of the hostage rescue guys in front of us pushed it open.

“They left this out on Realtor dot com,” I said.

The door led to a large octagonal room with benches along the crimson walls and a huge platform bed in the middle of it. Strapped on the bloodred silk moiré walls were lots of very interesting objects. Whips, handcuffs, leather hoods, and other assorted adult devices that, when bought off the Internet, probably arrived in plain brown packages. There was a sophisticated sound system and even a mounted camera in the ceiling.

“Now I think I know why the previous owner got a divorce,” I said.

One of the commandos pushed open yet another door, on the other side of the room. There was another long corridor behind it. It dead-ended at a brick wall with a little ladder bolted into it. At the top of the ladder was a hatch. An open hatch.

I poked my head out. The escape hatch opened up onto the trail, not twenty feet from where we’d been stationed behind the house. I shook my head. Then pounded my thigh with my fist.

No! If we’d still been in position, we would have heard Perrine escaping. Now Perrine could be anywhere.

“He’s in the woods behind the house,” one of the commandos called into his radio. “Get the chopper! Light the park south and east of the target house, and, dammit, get K-nine into the park!”

When I went back into the underground sex chamber, Bassman was standing there, examining one of the curios on the wall. I just stared at the jackass, about as pissed off at anyone as I’d ever been in my life.

He finally noticed me staring. No wonder he made detective , I thought.

“Can the eyeballing, Bennett,” he said, puffing up his already pretty puffed-up self. “You need to get something off your chest, open your trap.”

Actually, I did need to get something off my chest. But I forgot to use my words. I took two steps forward and punched him as hard as I could in the mouth.

He grunted as his head snapped to the side. Then he screamed as he rushed forward and rammed his shoulder into my chest, knocking out my breath as he bulled me backward. He was about to get me down when I wrapped a leg around the back of his ankle and spun us both sideways. Bassman landed hard on his back, beside the bed, with me on top of him. I punched him three times quick again in his face before two of the SWAT guys could peel me off him.