James Patterson - I, Michael Bennett

After we divided up the raid duties, a quick prayer was said as the sun came up over the restaurant’s giant red plastic chili. I don’t know who started it, but mostly everyone joined in. We probably flew in the face of several Supreme Court decisions by actually having the unbridled audacity to bring God into government proceedings, but we just went ahead and did it anyway. I guess we were feeling really wild and crazy that morning as we prepared to stare death in its ugly face. Just completely off the hook.

Jimmy gunned the engine of the muscle car as I got in, the air around me vibrating with every surge of its deep, rumbling thunder. Who needed coffee?

“It’s ass-clobberin’ time,” Jimmy said as he dropped it into drive.

“Amen to that, brother,” I said, shucking a round into my tactical shotgun as we peeled out.

The target was a cruddy stucco two-family house on Hillman Avenue. If it stood out at all on the worn suburban street, it was because of the just-off-the-lot black Chevy Tahoe in its concrete driveway. There were five entrances, including the one to the basement apartment, and the plan was to hit all of them at once, very, very hard, with everything in our arsenal-battering rams, flashbang grenades, tactical ballistic shields.

The word was that the people inside weren’t your run-of-the-mill dopers, but highly trained killers and mercenaries. We weren’t taking any chances. We parked a block away, and a moment later, thirty armed-to-the-teeth cops were jogging quickly and quietly down the dim, narrow street.

When we arrived at the address, Jimmy and I and our five-man team split off through the house’s short alley to the backyard. It was a hot summer morning, and under my body armor I was sweating quite profusely as I knelt in the dirt of a small vegetable garden by the house’s rear sliding glass door. I had to wipe my hand on my pants several times to keep the shotgun from slipping.

From a house on the other side of the backyard, I could hear an a.m. news station rising in volume as a clock radio’s alarm went off. Don’t bother slapping it this morning, buddy, I thought. This whole street is about to hear one hell of a wake-up call.

It happened right before we got the go-ahead. We were crouching there like runners at the starting line when all of a sudden we heard the metallic, clacking plah-plah-plah of a machine gun. Our team stared at each other. It was coming from the front of the house, along with a lot of hollering over the tactical microphone.

“What do we do?” Jimmy said. “Go in or go out front?”

I answered him by shattering the sliding glass door with the butt of my Mossberg and tossing in a flashbang. It went off like a stick of dynamite, and then we were inside.

“Freeze! Police! Police!”

As the grenade smoke cleared, we saw a shirtless Hispanic man, maybe eighteen years old, standing wide-eyed in the kitchen in front of an open closet door. First he put his hands up, but then, snake-quick, he reached into the closet and swung something out of it. Both Jimmy and I shot the kid as he lifted the AK-47 to his shoulder. Our three-and-a-half-inch-barrel 12-gauge Mossbergs were loaded with double-aught buck, and the shooter went down as if he’d fallen through a hole in the floor.

As Jimmy and I entered the living room, we could clearly hear the chopping sound of the machine gun upstairs. Rattles of gunfire were also coming from outside in the street and hitting the house. We crouched as rounds shattered the living room window and thumped into the walls. It was return fire from our guys, who must have been pinned down outside.

“Cease fire on the lower level!” I called into the microphone. “Cops on the ground floor!”

The firing stopped, and Jimmy and I had just shucked new rounds into our guns and were heading toward the stairs when it happened. There was a thunderous ripping sound from above, and I was suddenly airborne. It was the weirdest feeling, almost pleasant, as though I were on some carnival ride.

I grayed out for a second as I landed hard on my back in the kitchen. When I came to, the first thing I noticed was that my shotgun was missing, as well as my shoes. The room and everything in it, including me, were completely covered in plaster and debris. Every inch of my exposed skin felt like it had been slapped. My ears were ringing, and blood was pouring from my nose.

Jimmy rose from beside me, coughing. I just lay there for a minute, trying to reorient myself. The house was roofless, the second floor completely open to the sky.

I smelled fire and grabbed Jimmy, and we ran out into the backyard.

It had been a bomb, of course. Not a large enough one to kill me, but almost. After the FDNY put out the fire, we found two bodies in the charred debris. Another Hispanic man with an AK-47 and a middle-aged white guy with an enormous sniper rifle in his lap.

There was no sign of Marietta. We found the cellar door open right next to where we breached, so she must have escaped during the confusion. The speculation was that there had been bomb-making materials upstairs, and one of our guys must have hit it during the firefight. My pet theory was that Marietta detonated it remotely as a distraction in order to escape.

I certainly wouldn’t put it past her to kill some underlings or anyone else in order to get away.

I’d taken a licking, but I kept right on ticking. Well, at least for the moment.

Actually, I thought I’d feel more screwed up, having so narrowly missed buying the farm, but after the explosion I felt strangely exhilarated and energized. In fact, for a few buzzing hours, I felt about as invincible as a sixteen-year-old motocross champ, and that’s truly saying something.

And why not be joyful? There weren’t too many people walking around who had the “experience a truly massive explosion” box checked off their bucket list. The luck o’the Irish indeed!

After the EMTs cleaned me up and the Staten Island crime scene was secured, I went back to my Manhattan apartment for a shower and a change of clothes. I couldn’t believe it was only eleven o’clock when I plopped down on my couch. Talk about a full morning.

I checked in with Seamus to let him know I was okay. I was about to tell him that I was planning on crashing in the city tonight until he told me that there was another late-evening Newburgh town meeting being called.

I immediately changed my plans. I had to be there. Because in spite of all their frustration, it was obvious that there was an incredible thing going on with the folks of Newburgh. It might not have been exactly the moral crusade Seamus had been talking about, but it was powerful nonetheless. These good people had had it. They weren’t going to stop coming together until their bad situation was changed.

Not only that, but I’d thought of something that might help.

I grabbed a cab downtown and had a long lunch with my assistant U.S. attorney friend, Tara McLellan. I remembered that Tara had been on a violence task force in Boston, where the feds and local authorities had come together and helped several of the violent, gang-ridden communities come back from the brink. I was eager to get her feedback.

“What do you think, Tara?” I said over the remains of the massive, greasy, life-affirming pub-style bacon cheeseburger I’d just devoured. “I know you work in the city, but these people in Newburgh are so desperate. Do you think we could get the federal ball rolling for them?”

Tara lifted her light beer.

“Actually, I work for the Southern District, Mike, which includes Newburgh. I also know full well what gangs do to a community-the insidious fear, the old ladies who can’t go outside. I’ll do everything I can.”