Gregg Hurwitz - The Program

Miller unfurled a fax of a blueprint on the ground, pinning it open with a rock and his boot. Bear's gear rustled as he lowered himself over it. Speaking quietly despite the high wind and the hundred-yard distance to the target location, he conveyed where he and Dray had picked up activity within the building.

Miller nodded and took over. "We have a meat wagon on standby just outside the park in case of injuries. Metro's been alerted, but we don't have time to wait for them to set up a secondary perimeter outside the gates…?" He regarded Bear and Dray with raised eyebrows, and they shook their heads in concert. "We're gonna go in heavy, a ten-man no-knock." As he ran through the entry plan, he tapped the blueprint with a chewed nail, indicating the coverage areas for each two-man cell.

Thomas and Freed scurried back around the corner. Thomas's mouth was drawn tight, spreading his mustache, the cracks around his eyes pronounced in his weathered face. He handed off his night-vision goggles and gestured. Miller took a peek, grimaced, and handed off the NVGs down the line. Dray noted the way each deputy's face changed, and she pulled the goggles from Bear's hand and looked into the green-cast world.

A handsome, well-built kid was pacing outside an open door to the warehouse near where she and Bear had heard voices. Fuzzy streaks stained his hands to the forearms; blurry smudges marked his T-shirt, his jeans.

Red always came out hazy through night-vision optics.

The kid bent over and put his hands on his knees, as if fighting nausea. He retrieved a bottle of bleach from the trunk of the Lexus, steeled himself at the door, then reentered.

The next thing Dray knew, Guerrera's hands were under her arms and he was helping ease her the rest of the way to the ground.

"We don't know nothing," Guerrera whispered. "Not yet."

A flash of embarrassment cut through the agony grinding at her. She stood up but swayed on her feet, Palton and Denley stepping to her side.

"I can't go in with you, right?"

Miller's face said there would be no discussion.

"I'd better get the hell out of your guys' way then."

She pulled herself into the passenger seat of Bear's truck, leaving the door open.

They stacked up along the loading dock in their two-man cells, MP5s low-ready across their chests, waiting for Miller's go command.

The battering ram swung at Palton's side. Precious idled tight at Miller's legs.

Monsters with goggle eyes and Kevlar helmets, they seethed and bridled, body armor rustling.

Miller's raised fingers vanished one by one into his fist, and they were off.

Winona was squatting above the toilet, careful not to touch ass to seat, when she heard the faint shuffle outside. She jerked up her pants and hopped onto the sink, bringing her face to the window in time to see what looked like a geared-up SWAT team sweep past, quiet and lethal. She muffled a yelp with her hands.

She listened for maybe thirty seconds, then shoved open the window. Squirming out was easy, but the six-foot fall scraped her palms and jarred her wrists and knees. She ran down the length of the warehouse toward the front gates of the park.

She was just coming up on the loading dock when a dark form melted from the shadows and a female voice said, "I don't think so."

Winona swung blindly. A series of blows buffeted her – a forearm knocking away her punch, an open-hand strike to the side of her head that set her ears ringing. A boot clipped her knee, two hands locked behind her neck, and then she was ridden down to the asphalt with such force that all eight of her fingernails snapped on impact.

She whimpered into the ground as a knee dug into her back, and then her arm was wound behind her like a clock hand. Metal pinched her at the wrists, then the ankles.

Behind them, at the warehouse entrance, the world seemed to explode.

Miller yanked Precious clear. Maybeck took down the frame with the door, the battering-ram-propelled dead bolt blazing through the shoddy carpentry. He pivoted out of the way as Bear swept past in the number-one spot, holding the action back on the pump handle, Thomas and Freed at his elbows. Denley hummed a long-drawn-out hum as he always did on entry, though it was barely audible above the tramping of boots.

MP5 pressed to his cheek, Guerrera squared off with the darkness to their right, his weapon-mounted flashlight illuminating push doors and the warehouse proper that Bear and Dray had deemed empty.

The others swept toward the throw of light at the end of the hall. They flung around the corner as if propelled, immediately breaking toward the threats.

"U.S. Marshalsgetthefuckdown!"

Bear's mind raced to catch up with the gruesome tableau. Seven garbage bags tidily knotted. Crimson-tinged runoff spiraling down a drain. An ominous black doctor's bag. A soaked mop propping up the handsome kid from outside. Henderson backpedaling to a table bearing an array of pistols, one yellow dishwashing glove spinning to the floor, the other still encasing his left hand.

Bear's shotgun coughed out a shuck-shuck as his wide frame floated forward, his boots barely touching the blood- and bleach-slick concrete. To his side, Thomas and Freed hammered the kid, proning him out.

The discarded glove slapped the floor.

Stumbling to a knee, Henderson reached the table, his free hand grasping the nearest gun. The Magnum discharged into the far wall just as Bear's shotgun rammed into his face, the muzzle finding the hole of his mouth, splintering teeth and pinning his head to the floor. Bear's foot smashed down on his wrist, snapping it, and the. 44 bounced free.

Bear felt the bore of his Remington grind against the soft flesh at the back of Henderson's throat, and he thought about seven well-knotted garbage bags, his finger tightening on the trigger.

Henderson's eyes bulged until his lids disappeared, blood drooling from his split lips.

Bear stood poised over him, sweat hammering through his pores. His left ear rang – the ricochet had screamed right past his head.

Somewhere Precious was yelping.

He withdrew the shotgun from Henderson's mouth.

Palton flipped Henderson like a pancake, cinching flex-cuffs around his wrists.

The other deputies were fanning out, kicking doors, two cells peeling back to help Guerrera sweep the warehouse. A shard of the blacked-out window had fallen away beneath the bullet hole. Outside, Precious lay bowed on her side, hind legs scrabbling on asphalt; she'd taken the ricochet. Miller crouched over her, his eyes wet.

From a dark doorway, Thomas cried out, "Bear. Bear!"

Head buzzing, Bear trudged over. It was like walking through syrup.

He braced himself, forearm against the jamb.

In the center of the maintenance closet, a bloody face intercepted the dim plane of light from the open door.

His lower lip had come loose; a flap lay across his cradling palm like a cut of meat. He peered out from a black eye swollen to the size of an orange and rasped in a halting, just-audible voice, "Master Sergeant Tim Rackley, date of birth 10/4/69, service number five – four – eight – seven – nine – zero – five – three – three."

The sterile light felt like pins sticking in his eyes. He squeezed his lids shut and tried to roll over, but his body did not respond.

The clatter of gurney wheels, the sickly-sweet smell of antiseptic, the throb of a needle in his arm – he was in a hospital. He heard some commotion at his bedside; his brain fought to make sense of it.

The bed creaked as someone leaned over him, and he inhaled her blissful scent – jasmine, lotion, gunpowder.

"County was closed to trauma, so we medevacked you to UCLA Med Center. It's Thursday, April twenty-ninth. Five thirty-two P.M."