James PATTERSON - The Big Bad Wolf

A little less than fifty-five minutes later a Bell helicopter set down at Big Sky Aviation in Millville, New Jersey. Two black SUVs were waiting, and Mahoney and I were rushed to North Vineland, about six miles to the north.

We parked in the lot of an International House of Pancakes restaurant. Farley’s house was one point two miles north on Garden Road. ‘We’re ready to roll on him,’ Mahoney told his group. ‘I have a pretty good feeling about this one.’

I accompanied Mahoney in one of the SUVs. We wouldn’t be part of the six-man HRT team that would go into the house first, but we’d have immediate access to Rafe Farley. Hopefully, we’d find Audrey Meek alive in the house.

In spite of my misgivings, I was starting to get pumped about the take-down. Mahoney’s enthusiasm was contagious and any kind of action beats sitting around. At least we were doing something. Maybe we’d get Audrey Meek back.

Just then, we passed by an unpainted, off-white bungalow. I saw broken porch boards and a rusty car and camping stove in the small front yard. ‘That’s it,’ said Mahoney. ‘Home sweet home. Let’s pull over up there.’

We stopped about a hundred yards up the road, near a stand of red oaks and pines. I knew that a couple of surveillance agents in ghillie suits were already nestled in close to the bungalow. These agents did nothing but surveillance, and wouldn’t be involved in the actual bust. There was also a closed-circuit camera aimed at the bungalow and the UNSUB’s car, a red Dodge Polaris.

‘We think he’s sleeping inside,’ Mahoney informed me as we jogged through the woods until we had the ramshackle house in view.

‘It’s almost eleven in the morning,’ I said.

‘Farley works a late-night shift. He got home at six this a.m. His girlfriend’s in there too.’

I didn’t say anything.

‘What? What are you thinking?’ Mahoney asked as we watched the house from a thick stand of woods less than fifty yards away.

‘You said he has a girlfriend in the house? That doesn’t sound right, does it?’

‘I don’t know, Alex. According to surveillance, the girlfriend’s been there all night. I guess they could be the couple. We’re here. My job is to take Rafe Farley down. Let’s do it… This is HRT One. I have control. Ready! Five, four, three, two, one. Go. Go! ’

Mahoney and I watched as the breech team moved quickly on the small, inconsequential-looking house. The six agents were outfitted in black-on-black flight suits and body armor. The side yard was littered with two more junked vehicles, a small car and a Dodge truck, and a lot of spare parts for appliances like refrigerators and air conditioners. There was a standing urinal out back that looked like it came from a tavern.

The house windows were darkened even though it was past eleven. Was Audrey Meek in there? Was she alive? I hoped that she was. It was a huge break if we got her back now. Especially since everybody thought she was probably dead .

But something about the raid bothered me.

Not that it mattered now.

There is no ‘knock and announce’ protocol when HRT is involved. No talking, no negotiating, no political correctness. I watched two agents breech the front door. They started to go inside the suspect’s house.

Suddenly, a muffled boom . The agents at the front door went down. One of them didn’t get up. The other got up and stumbled back from the house. It was awful to witness, a complete shock.

‘Bomb,’ said Mahoney in surprise and anger. ‘He musta booby-trapped the door.’

By then, the four other agents were inside the house. They had gone in through a back and side door. There were no more explosions so the doors hadn’t been booby-trapped. Two HRT agents approached the wounded pair at the front of the house. They pulled away the agent who hadn’t moved since the blast.

Mahoney and I ran as fast as we could toward the house. He kept repeating ‘fuck’ over and over. There were no gunshots coming from inside.

I was suddenly afraid Farley wasn’t even in the house. I prayed that Audrey Meek wasn’t already dead in there. Everything was feeling so wrong to me. This wasn’t how I would have done the raid. The FBI! I had always hated and distrusted these bastards, and now I was one of them.

Then I heard, ‘ Secure! Secure! ’ And ‘ We have a suspect! We’ve got him! It’s Farley. There’s a woman here too! ’

What woman? Mahoney and I barged in through the side door. I saw thick smoke everywhere. The house reeked of the explosive, but also marijuana and greasy cooking smells. We made our way back to a bedroom off a small living room.

A naked man and a woman were spread-eagled on the bare wooden floor of the bedroom. The woman on the floor wasn’t Audrey Meek. She was heavy, at least forty or fifty pounds overweight. Rafe Farley looked to be close to three hundred pounds, and had hideous clumps of red hair not only on his head but all over his body.

An old poster for the movie Cool Hand Luke was taped over a kingsize bed that had no sheets or covers. Nothing else caught my eye.

Farley was screaming at us, his face deeply crimson. ‘I have rights! I have goddamn legal rights! You bastards are in real trouble.’

I had a feeling that he might be right, and that if this screaming man had kidnapped Mrs Meek – she was already dead, and he knew he had nothing to worry about .

‘You’re the one in trouble, fat boy!’ an HRT agent barked in the suspect’s face. ‘You too, girlfriend!’

Could this possibly be the couple who had taken Audrey Meek and Elizabeth Connelly?

I didn’t see how.

So who in hell were they?

Ned Mahoney and I were stuck in a close, dark, pigsty of a bedroom with the suspect, Rafe Farley. The woman, who assured us she was his girlfriend, had put on a filthy bathrobe and been taken into the kitchen to be grilled.

We were all angry about what had happened outside. Two agents had been wounded by a booby trap. Rafe Farley was the closest thing we had to a break in the case, or a suspect.

Things kept getting weirder. For starters, Farley spit at Mahoney and me until his mouth went dry. It was so strange and crazy that, at one point, Ned and I just looked at each other and started to laugh.

‘Think this is fucking funny ?’ Farley rasped from the edge of the bed where he was lodged like a beached whale. We’d made him put on clothes, blue jeans and a work shirt, mostly because we couldn’t stand the sight of his flaccid rolls of fat, tattoos of naked women, and a purple dragon that was eating a child.

‘You’re going down on kidnap and murder charges,’ Mahoney snarled at him. ‘You injured two of my men. One might lose an eye.’

‘You had no right comin’ in my house, middle of the night! I have enemies !’ Farley yelled and spit at Mahoney again. ‘You barge in here, ‘cause I sell some weed? Or I screw a married broad who likes me more than she likes her old man?’

‘Are you talking about Audrey Meek?’ I asked.

Suddenly he went quiet. He stared at me, and his face and neck turned bright red. What was this? He wasn’t a good actor, and he wasn’t real smart either.

‘What the hell’re you talking about? You been smoking my shit?’ Farley stammered. ‘Audrey Meek? That chick they kidnapped?’

Mahoney leaned forward. ‘Audrey Meek. We know you know all about her, Farley. Where is she?’

Farley’s piggy eyes seemed to be getting smaller. ‘How the hell would I know where she is?’

Mahoney kept at him. ‘You ever been in a chat room called Favorite Things Four?’