John Sandford - Phantom prey

"Gimme the glasses,” Jenkins said. “I know the fucker pretty good.” The guy appeared in the last window on the left, the kitchen, and pulled the shade, and Jenkins, peering through the 12x36 image stabilized binoculars, said, “Goddamnit. He does look like Siggy. And goddamnit, they’re pulling our weenies. That’s not him.”

“You’re sure?"

"Yeah-you know how? His earlobes are wrong,” Jenkins said

“Siggy plays with his earring. He did it all the way through the bail hearing, kept playing with that diamond, big as a lemon drop, and he’s got these great big fat fleshy earlobes. This guy’s got no earlobes at all, and his mouth isn’t quite right. Jesus, he looks like him. He’s got the haircut, but that ain’t him.”

Lucas looked at Shrake: “Talk to the SWAT. This is just more security… he’s coming in.”

“How’re we going to see him with the shades down?” Jenkins asked.

“The shades aren’t down in the bedroom,” Lucas said. “Siggy’s a horny bastard, he’s gonna nail her the minute he comes through the door. Unless they pull the shades down.”

“Unless he’s been getting some tail down in Miami,” Jenkins said. “They got some primo stuff down there.”

“He’s a family man,” Shrake said. “Even if he’s been getting it three times a day, he’ll try to prove to her he didn’t. I know what the guy’s like.”

Del said, “But what if that tummy bump isn’t his work? Then what?”

Five minutes.

Del said, “One of the guys was peeking at us, out of the kitchen window. He’s got glasses.”

“Can’t see in, we’re okay,” Shrake said. When they took the apartment, they’d covered the windows with a thin gray 3M film. From the other side of the street, it looked like you could see in, but you couldn’t.

Five minutes.

Jenkins said, “They’re in the street. One of them is coming right at the drugstore.”

“You know what? He’s going to ask about us,” Del said.“How many of them know about us?” Lucas asked. “Phil and Ann. They’re the only ones,” Del said. He had his phone in his hand, and he was speed- dialing. A moment later, he said, “Phil? This is Del. There’s a guy coming in the door. He’ll ask you who lives up here. Let somebody else answer-get out the back or something. Get Ann out of the way, too. He’s wearing a leather jacket, he’s just coming up to the door, now. Just get out of sight… don’t try to fake him out, he’ll read your face.”

Two minutes.

Phil called, Del listened. To Lucas: “The guy just left, he talked to Nancy, the pharmacist, she told him nobody lives here right now. Phil said it looked like he was headed around back, to the door.”

“Snap-latch, should be locked,” Lucas said. They went quiet, listening. Nobody came up the stairs.

Two minutes: they saw the guy come back around the end of the drugstore, and head across the street. He was talking on a cell phone.

“Get ready,” Lucas said.

Six minutes.

Siggy showed up, but they didn’t know it. They found out later that he was in a raggedy ass Chevrolet that turned down into the parking garage entrance, and disappeared.

Jenkins wondered, “Why didn’t she go to him?"

"Kid,” Lucas suggested.

“Leave the kid with Mom. Meet in a hotel across town. She comes in at a preset time, his security is all set up, they see if anybody comes in behind her.”

“Maybe you ought to suggest that for next time,” Shrake said. “He doesn’t believe we’d still be here,” Lucas said. “It’s been too long."

"He knows we just busted Antsy."

"But that was Antsy’s fault,” Lucas said. “He doesn’t believe-"

"Wait- wait,” Del said, urgently, and they all looked at the remaining open window, and Heather was there laughing, in the arms of a big man who reached out and pulled the blind, and they were already tumbling toward the bed when the blind came down, and Jenkins said, “Hello, Siggy.”

Lucas talked to the SWAT commander: “We know he’s got at least three security guys- we’ve seen them. He might’ve had more people with him, when he came in. You gotta count on five or six guys. Just looking at them, I’d say they’re cocked and ready to go.”

The SWAT started in, and Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins armored up, heavy stuff with drop- down groin protection and Level IV armor plates in the chest and back. Del slapped the Velcro bands around his vest and they all put on helmets. Shrake had an M16, Jenkins his 12 gauge pump, Lucas and Del their pistols.

“It’d be stupid if they were all up there in that apartment, listening to Siggy and Heather getting it on,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one of them on this side of the street, another one in the garage, another one on the other side of the building, couple in the apartment, plus Siggy. They’ll all have phones. Let the SWAT do the hard stuff, keep your eyes on the windows…”

“Here comes SWAT,” Del said.

As T. Paul undercover guy had photographed the interior of the apartment house, and had gotten keys for the lobby door. Since Heather’s apartment was on the second floor, with street- side windows, the squad could be through the lobby, up the fire stairs, and in the hall outside the apartment in less than fifteen seconds.

As they came in, in three vans, the undercover guy, in plain clothes, would open the door and hold it: the squad would go straight through, up the stairs, and attack the apartment door, knocking down opposition with a couple of flash- bangs.

That was the theory. If they killed the pregnant wife or the baby, they’d be, as the SWAT commander noted, permanent residents of shit city.

The vans rolled slowly down the street, and the undercover guy walked up the steps to the front door, working the key. Lucas said, “Let’s go.”

They went out the door and down the stairs in a rush, hit the outside door, and thirty feet down the alley and around the corner of the drugstore and down the width of the store and around the next corner and the SWAT guys were boiling out of the vans and into the apartment.

As they came around the corner, running into the street, Lucas saw a guy run out of a bagel shop across the street, seventy or eighty yards away from them, looking up at the apartment, a cell phone to his ear.

Shrake yelled, “Hey!” and the guy turned and looked at them and took off running, away, up Snelling, and Del said, “I’ll get him,” and took off after him.

Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins ran across the street and up the sidewalk and heard the flash- bangs go off in the apartment, then the long, ripping stutter of a machine gun, and Jenkins yelled, “Holy shit,” and the machine gun wouldn’t stop and Lucas thought about drywall and plywood walls in apartment buildings, and hoped the shooting was being done by the cops, but it didn’t sound like it, it sounded too uncontrolled and crazy.

Then Lucas picked up individual shots, and a man ran out the front door, looked at the vans, yanked up a small, short weapon, and fired a burst at the vans and then turned and ran away, up the street, where Del could still be seen chugging after the first runner, and Shrake said, “I got him,” and lifted his M16 and Lucas shouted, “No, no…” and behind the runner, a car pulled out of the parking garage and stopped across the sidewalk and Shrake yelled, “Shit!”

A chair came through the end window on the apartment, and then a blanket dropped over the edge and Siggy looked out at them, saw them, turned the same weapon the second runner had, and fired a burst at them and they all went sideways behind parked cars and the bullets patted and whanked like bees.

Siggy dropped the gun out the window and threw himself over the edge, hung one second and dropped, ten or twelve feet into a flower bed, and Shrake stood up and the second runner, now eighty or a hundred yards off, opened up again and they all went flat again and then Siggy was running away with the gun, around the car still sitting in the driveway, behind it. The driver came flying out the driver’ side door and sprawled on the ground and Siggy was in the car, fired another burst through the open driver’s door, reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed on the gas pedal with his other hand, and as the car started into the street, Shrake walked out into the street and said, “Fuck this,” and dumped half a magazine into the front of the car.