Michael Slade - Headhunter

"When it comes to weapons, lady, I know a lot more than you."

"Try me," Spann said sharply.

"Don't make me laugh."

"Hey, wait a minute," Monica Macdonald said. "What's this about DeClercq? You mean our Superintendent?''

"Of course," Rick Scarlett said. "Come on. You must know the story. The man's almost a legend."

" Is a legend, I should think," Spann corrected.

"All right. Is a legend."

"Will someone fill me in?" the other woman asked. Beside the blonde woman she looked positively plain. Her hair was brown and tied back in a bun. Her eyes were brown and warm and her figure was round. She stood five inches shorter than Spann. Physically her only striking feature was her full and sensual mouth.

"Broads!" Rabidowski repeated, as if all this was to be

expected. What did women know about the glory of tradition? What, indeed?

Rick Scarlett said, "The year was 1970, a bit before our time. The Quebec October Crisis. Anyway, by then DeClercq was recognized as the best homicide man in the entire Force. In terms of success, his name was up there with Steele and Walsh and Blake. When the FLQ kidnapped Cross and Laporte and then killed the Labour Minister, DeClercq was called in. It was he who located both the Chenier and Liberation Cells."

"How did he do that?"

"No one knows. But he had a lot of contacts in the Montreal underworld. A lot of informers. But in light of what happened subsequently he never revealed his source."

"What happened?"

"A gang of punks got both his wife and daughter," Katherine Spann said.

Macdonald turned to her. "Killed them you mean?"

"Do you really not know any of this?"

"No, I don't."

Spann was a bit surprised, but then the legends of the Force had been in her family for years. "You tell her," she said, speaking to Scarlett.

"Two weeks after Cross was released and the Chenier Cell went to Cuba, three men invaded DeClercq's home while he was up in Ottawa. They murdered his wife on the spot, ripped her up with a machine pistol. Then they carried off his daughter. She wasn't very old. Five or so, I think.

"At the time everyone assumed that it was an FLQ revenge operation. But in the end it turned out to be just a group of Montreal thugs caught up in the groundswell of the Quebec independence movement.

"Anyway, DeClercq, of course, was banned from the case because of personal involvement. Shelved with a leave of absence. He didn't like the orders and he didn't follow them. He went on his own and did a rogue investigation. Using the same underworld grapevine that had helped him find Cross and the murderers of Laporte, he managed to discover where the gang was holding the girl. It was in a cabin out of the city in the Laurentian backwoods. DeClercq went out alone, determined to get her back."

Monica Macdonald's eyes squinted slightly. "And he didn't," she said.

"No," Scarlett stated. "Not alive."

Rabidowski said: "Story is he killed five people getting into that cabin. Picked off the first guy when he came out for some wood. Got three more when they came out looking for him. Took them all down with a crossbow, if you believe it. Because it's silent, I guess.

"They say he killed the last man with his hands as he was coming through the door and after the guy had stabbed him. But he didn't save his daughter. Two other punks had joined the original three, and there had been a dispute over what to do. The winning group in the argument had broken her neck that morning."

Monica shook her head.

"So that's why DeClercq was retired," Rick Scarlett said. "He'd contravened orders and you know what that means."

Katherine Spann added: "There was an internal investigation into his conduct. As usual he couldn't have a lawyer and so they appointed a member to present his defense. The guy they appointed was Francois Chartrand."

"The Commissioner?"

"He was an Inspector back then."

"What happened?"

"DeClercq was never charged. He had a legal defense under protection of his family and public sympathy was on his side. Besides, the odds were five to one no matter how you cut it."

Spann said: "Now Chartrand is Commissioner. And Robert DeClercq is back. I wonder if he really is as good as they say."

"Well, we're going to find out," Rick Scarlett said.

Rabidowski nodded. There was a smirk on his face.

Spann turned on him: "You know something, Ed? You're a first class pain in the ass. You're a mental dinosaur. Come to think of it, I know what the four of us are doing here. What's your job on this Squad?"

"Firepower," the Mad Dog said bluntly. "Lady, I'm a one man SWAT Squad. I'm our Emergency Response Team. Believe me, if the chips are down I'm more important than you. I won't go into detail. I'd be talking over your head."

"Try me," Spann said quickly — and as sharply as the last time.

"Gimme a break."

Rabidowski walked over to his locker and removed a clean shirt from inside. He began to put it on.

Monica Macdonald glanced at Spann and picked up something in her look backed up by intuition. She said: "What's the matter, Ed? Are you afraid to try her?"

Rabidowski turned. "Put your money where your mouth is and it might be worth my time. Or better yet, with lips like yours I can think of somewhere else to put your mouth if your sister cop here loses."

"Ten bucks," Macdonald said.

"Who holds the pot? Who decides?"

"Not Scarlett," Spann said. "You're in bed together." She sized up Rusty Lewis. "Let's take a chance with him."

Lewis took the money.

"Okay," Rabidowski said. "Let me pose a problem. We're talking firepower."

Katherine Spann nodded.

"You got a four man Emergency Response Team and you gotta cover all the angles. We're talkin' shots per second and we're aimin' for accuracy. Arm it," the Mad Dog said.

"You first," the woman replied. "And give me your reasons."

Rabidowski grinned. "Okay, long-barrels to start with. I'd give two guys pump-action Remington Model 870 twelve-gauge shotguns. Why is obvious. We're talking scatterforce. The third guy gets a sniper's rifle, the Remington Model V for Varmint, heavy-barreled, caliber.22 — 250. There you've got a small bullet with high velocity, so that means pinpoint accuracy with a flat trajectory. No compensation needed. The last guy gets your Heckler and Koch Model HK 93 assault rifle in caliber.223 with telescoping stock. There you've got high-class German manufacturing technique — which by the way is becoming standard in this state of the art — and a roller-locking mechanism. I'd take semi- over fully-automatic. More target control.

"And finally," Rabidowski continued, "I'd top each guy off with a whiz of a short-barrel. Each man gets a semiautomatic Beretta Model 92 S pistol, caliber nine-millimeter Parabellum with a magazine capacity of fifteen rounds plus one in the chamber. Your Beretta's double action. The whole trip means Kapow! So top that, lady. And Lewis, hand me the cash."

"James Bond used a Beretta," Rick Scarlett added.

Spann almost laughed. Her mind weighed the man up and found him a couple of ounces short. "My turn," she said.

"Come on, Spann. Better minds than you or me have put that team together. Go down gracefully," the Mad Dog said.

"Better minds than you or I are also rethinking it, Ed. For the sake of argument I'll keep the long-barrels the same. Now let's chuck the Beretta and replace it with four Ruger Model Security 6.38 Special revolvers with either.38 Special + P ammunition or maybe.357 Magnum. I'd take the four-inch barrel over the two and three-quarters. So we've stepped up the Smith and Wesson, and it's also double action. And it's easily field-stripped."

"Lady, you're a fool. Your Ruger's only got six shots compared to sixteen in the Beretta. The buzz words in this exercise are 'greater firepower.' That means semi-automatic."