Michael Connelly - The Black Echo

“At least,” Gearson said. “If they had a straight shot. They might’ve hit ground utilities or hard rock and had to divert some. Doubt any tunnel down there could be a straight shot.”

The SWAT expert tugged Rourke’s cuff and the two walked away from the crowd for a whispered conversation. Bosch looked at Wish and softly said, “They’re not going to go in.”

“What do you mean?”

“This isn’t Vietnam. Nobody has to go down there. If Franklin and Delgado and anybody else are down there in one of these lines, there’s no way to go in safely and unannounced. They hold all the advantages. They’d know we’re coming.”

She studied his face but didn’t say anything.

“It would be the wrong move,” Bosch said. “We know they’re armed and probably have trips set up. We know they’re killers.”

Rourke came back to the gathering around the car hood and asked Gearson to wait in one of the bureau cars while he finished up with the investigators. The DWP man walked to the car with his head down, disappointed he was no longer part of the plan.

“We’re not going in after them,” Rourke said after Gearson shut the car door. “Too dangerous. They have weapons, explosives. We have no element of surprise. It adds up to heavy casualties for us… So, we trap them. We let things take their course and then we will be there waiting, safely, when they come out. Then we’ll have surprise on our side.

“Tonight SWAT will make a recon run through the Wilshire line-we’ll get some DWP uniforms from Gearson-and look for their entry point. Then we’ll set up and wait in whatever’s the best location. Whatever’s safest from our standpoint.”

There was a beat of silence, punctuated by a horn from the street, before Orozco protested.

“Wait a minute, wait a minute.” He waited until every face was on his. Except Rourke’s. He didn’t look at Orozco at all.

“We can’t be talking about sitting out here with our thumbs up our asses and letting these people blast their way into that vault,” Orozco said. “To let them go in and pry open a couple hundred boxes and then just back out. My obligation is to protect the property of the citizens of Beverly Hills, who probably happen to constitute ninety percent of that business’s customers. I’m not going along with this.”

Rourke collapsed his pen pointer, put it in the inside pocket of his coat and then spoke. He still did not look at Orozco.

“Orozco, your exception can be noted for the record, but we’re not asking you to go along with this,” Rourke said. Bosch noticed that along with failing to address Orozco by his rank, Rourke had dropped all pretense of courtesy.

“This is a federal operation,” Rourke continued. “You are here as a professional courtesy. Besides, if my thinking is correct, they will open one deposit box only. When they find it empty they will cancel the operation and leave the vault.”

Orozco was lost. His face showed it. Bosch could see he obviously had not been given many details of the investigation. He felt sorry for him, hung out to dry by Rourke.

“There are things we can’t discuss at this point,” Rourke said. “But we believe their target is only one box. We have reason to believe it is now empty. When the perps break into the vault and open that particular box and find it is empty, we believe they will back out in a hurry. Our job now is to be ready for that.”

Bosch wondered about Rourke’s supposition. Would the thieves back out? Or would they think they had the wrong box and keep drilling, looking for Tran’s diamonds? Or would they loot the other boxes in hope of stealing property valuable enough to make the tunnel caper worth it? Bosch didn’t know. He certainly wasn’t as sure as Rourke, but then he knew the FBI agent might just be posturing to get Orozco out of the way.

“What if they don’t back out?” Bosch asked. “What if they keep drilling?”

“Then we all have a long weekend ahead of us,” Rourke said, “because we are going to wait them out.”

“Either way, you’re going to put that place out of business,” Orozco said, pointing in the direction of the Stock Building. “Once it is known that somebody blew a hole through the vault they’ve got sitting out there in the big window, there will be no public confidence. Nobody will put their property in there.”

Rourke just stared at him. The captain’s plea was falling on deaf ears.

“If you can catch them after they break in, why not before?” Orozco said. “Why don’t we open up that place, run a siren, make some noise, even sit a patrol car out front? Do something to let ’em know we are here and we know about them. That’ll scare ’em out before they break in. We catch them, we save the business. We don’t, we still save the business and we get them another day.”

“Captain,” Rourke said, the false congeniality back, “if you let them know we are here, you take away our one advantage-surprise-and invite a firefight in the tunnels and perhaps up on the street in which they will not care who is hurt, who is killed. That’s including themselves and perhaps innocent bystanders. Then, how do we explain to the public and even ourselves that we did it this way because we wanted to try to save a business?”

Rourke waited a beat to let his words sink in, then said, “You see, Captain, I am not going to hedge on safety on this operation. I can’t. These men that are down there, they don’t scare. They kill. Two people that we know about, including a witness. And that’s only this week. No way are we going to let them get away. No fucking way.”

Orozco leaned across the hood and rolled his blueprint up. As he snapped a rubber band around it, he said, “Gentlemen, don’t fuck up. If you do, my department and I will not hold back our criticism or the details of what was discussed at this meeting. Good night.”

He turned and walked back to the patrol car. The two uniforms followed without being told to. Everybody else just watched. When the patrol car drove down the ramp, Rourke said, “Well, you heard the man. We can’t fuck this up. Anybody else want to suggest something?”

“What about putting people in the vault now and waiting for them to come up?” Bosch said. He hadn’t really considered it but threw it out as it came to him.

“No,” the SWAT man said. “You put people in the vault and they are in a corner. No options. No way out. I wouldn’t even ask my men for volunteers.”

“They could be injured by the blast,” Rourke added. “No telling where or when the perps will come up.”

Bosch nodded. They were right.

“Can we open the vault and go in, once we know they have come up?” one of the agents said. Bosch couldn’t remember now whether he was Hanlon or Houck.

“Yes, there’s a way to take the door off the time lock,” Wish said. “We’d need to get Avery, the owner, back out here.”

“From what Avery said, it looks like that would take too long,” Bosch said. “Too slow. Avery can take it off time lock and open it, but it’s a two-ton door that swings open on its own weight. At best, it would take a half minute to get it open. Maybe less, but they’d still have the drop on us, the people inside. Same risk as coming at them through the tunnels.”

“What about a flash bang?” one of the agents said. “We open the vault door just a bit and throw in a flash grenade. Then we go in and take them.”

Rourke and the SWAT man shook their heads in unison.

“For two reasons,” the SWAT man said. “If they wire the tunnel as we assume they will, the flash could detonate the charges. We could see Wilshire Boulevard out there drop thirty feet, and we don’t want that. Think of the paperwork.”