Gregg Hurwitz - The Kill Clause

“Either of them fit Heidel’s description?”

“No, but they look like the spicks who helped spring him. Thomas and Freed are sitting surveillance with the ESU geeks-I told them not to get eye-fucked, that we’d hot-ass over and take the mutts before Elvis leaves the building.”

Bear knocked the door open so hard it left a dent in the wall. The other deputies watched them with some envy as they headed out.

•The Beast waited for them downstairs. An old, retrofitted military ambulance, the Beast fitted twelve people on two opposing benches. Huge white letters stood out from the black paint-POLICE U.S. MARSHALS-almost exactly matching the T-shirts of the ART members. On all U.S. marshal-issue clothing and gear, POLICE appears in text larger than that proclaiming the agency name, because if given the choice in a high-heat situation, a deputy marshal doesn’t want to wait for the Average Citizen to remember what a deputy U.S. marshal is, and because POLICE is the international language for CAN SHOOT STRAIGHTER THAN YOU. The yellow lettering and embroidered badges also cut the odds considerably that the ART squad would be mistaken for a stickup crew.

Tim grabbed his gear from the trunk of his car, swung up into the back of the Beast, slapped a few fives, and sat between Bear and Brian Miller, the supervisory deputy in charge of ART and the Explosive Detection Canine Team. Miller’s best bitch, a black Lab named Precious after Jame Gumb’s poodle, nuzzled up to Tim’s crotch before Miller snapped her back into place.

Tim regarded the eight other men on the benches. He was not surprised to see both Mexican ART members present; knowing that Heidel’s two deputy-killing accomplices were Latino, Miller had pulled in the Hispanic talent as a preemptive strike against claims of racial retribution. A Cuban kid named Guerrera was sitting in for their regular number-three man, who was the brother-in-law of one of the deputies whom Heidel’s men had shot. Miller had taken every precaution to ensure a fair, lawful takedown and to make sure his men would survive the postop hernia-check scrutiny of the Los Angeles media.

There was some uneasy shifting on the bench opposite Tim. “Do me a favor. Don’t tell me how bad you feel about my daughter. I know you all do, and I appreciate it.”

Assorted nods and mumbles. Bear broke the awkwardness, pointing to Tim’s holstered. 357. “Hey, Wyatt Earp. When are you gonna get an auto and enter the twenty-first century?”

Bear’s little drill to show the others Tim wasn’t fragile. Appreciative, Tim played along. “The average gunfight lasts seven seconds, occurs within a range of fewer than ten feet. Do you know how many rounds are typically exchanged?”

Bear smiled at Tim’s mock-formal tone, and a few of the others joined him. “No, sir, I do not.”

“Four.” Tim removed the pistol and spun the wheel. “So the way I see it, I’m actually packing two spare bullets.”

The vehicle lumbered out of the parking lot, passing the Roybal Building’s metal sculpture composed of four immense human outlines that looked as though they’d been aerated by the crew that took down Bonnie and Clyde. The perforated men and the women with square heads left Tim with the strong impression that the government should stick to issuing budgets, not art.

Frankie Palton stretched his arm back over his head, grimacing, and Jim Denley snorted. “Your pimp beat you up?”

“No, the old lady brought home this goddamn Commie Sutra book, you know, all the sexual positions-”

Tim noticed that Guerrera’s MP-5 was set to three-round bursts, and he gestured with his middle and index fingers to his own eyes, then pointed at the gun’s knob. Guerrera nodded and clicked it to safety mode.

“-and she had me going in this goddamned Congress of the Cow last night, I shit you not, I thought I was gonna blow out my rotator cuff.”

Ted Maybeck leaned over and searched the floor at his feet. “Goddamnit. God dam nit.”

“What’s the fucking problem, Maybeck?” Miller said.

“I forgot my ram.”

“We have two battering rams and a sledge up front.”

“But not my ram. I brought that ram from St. Louis. It’s good lu-”

“Don’t say it, Maybeck,” Bear growled, looking up from loading his five-shot. “Don’t you fuckin’ say it.”

Tim turned to Miller. “What do we got?”

“Thomas and Freed are reconnoitering as we speak, getting the lay. ESU’s keeping an eye on the cell-phone signal, making sure it stays put. As we all know, Heidel is considered armed and extremely dangerous. If the four firearms he’s chosen to register are any indication, he prefers wheel guns. When we get him, don’t order him to put his hands behind him-he’ll probably have a pistol shoved in the back of his jeans. We want his hands on his head. According to witnesses, the two Hispanic males-”

“You mean Jose and Hose B?” Denley said.

“You fucking white guys,” Guerrera said. “Always an inferiority complex with your little glowworm dicks.”

“Big enough to fill your mouth.”

The two men extended their fists and bumped knuckles. If tactical precision was an ART requirement, the ability to generate repartee was not.

Miller’s voice rose to warning pitch. “The two Hispanic males have some gang insignia on the backs of their necks, and one might have a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his biceps. We don’t know for sure, but we’re counting on four men in the hotel room-Heidel, the two Hispanics, and the mule. Heidel’s got a common-law wife-fat bitch with limited English and several weapons violations. We couldn’t flip her last year, so she might be along for the ride. We have numerous statements from Heidel that he’s not going back to prison, so we can interpret that pretty easily.”

Heidel, like the majority of postconviction fugitives they tracked, had nothing to lose. He’d already had his day in court. If captured, he’d spend the rest of his life in prison, and that wouldn’t make him or his two deputy-killing buddies particularly docile takedowns. Once again the deputies would have to play by the rules even when the mutts did not. Mutts had no departmental guidelines, no deadly-force policy, no concern for bystanders or passersby. To fire they didn’t have to wait to get threatened with a gun or be in fear for their lives.

“We’re gonna go with an eight-man stealth, no-knock entry. No flash-bangs. Usual order through the door. LAPD’ll set a secondary perimeter, give us a nice visible uniformed presence, and we’ll have some cover rifles across the street. Guerrera, this ain’t Miami-the doors open in here, not out. Denley, remember you’re in Los Angeles. Through the door and straight back. Forget those vertical Brooklyn entrances.”

“Try to lose the Bobby De Niro accent while you’re at it,” Palton said. “No one buys that shit anyway.”

Denley jerked a thumb toward his chest. “You talkin’ to me?”

Tim cracked a smile, his first in days. He realized he hadn’t thought about Ginny in nearly five minutes-his first free five minutes since the incident. His return to the memory was jarring, but he felt steeled with the first bracings of hope. Maybe tomorrow he’d manage six minutes free and clear.

The Beast screeched over a curb and pulled into the back lot of a 7-Eleven. Two LAPD officers at his side, Freed crossed to them in a crouched under-fire run, though the motel was nearly two blocks away. One of the ESU geeks-matted hair, thick glasses, the whole nine yards-was right behind him, eyes glued to a handheld GPS unit, the faintly glowing readout showing that the locating RF pulse from Heidel’s mobile phone was not moving.

The ART squad exchanged greetings with the cops, and Miller thanked them for their presence and discussed where to set the perimeter. With ART huddled around, Freed unfurled a thick sheet of butcher paper across the hood of a nearby Volvo. On it he’d sketched a rough diagram of the hotel room’s interior based on a conversation with the manager and his own assessment of the lay of the roof and the locations of various vents and external pipes. They didn’t want to risk the visibility of taking a tour through a similar room. The blueprint was oddly elongated; a hallway led back from the front room to a bedroom and bathroom.