Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs

"I understand. SWAT's play."

"What's he got?"

"Two pistols and a knife, Lieutenant-- Jacobs, see if there's any ammo in the gunbelts."

"Dump pouches," the patrolman said. "Pembry's still full, Boyle's too. Dumb shit didn't take the extra rounds."

"What are they?"

"Thirty-eight +Ps JHP."

Tate was back on the radio. "Lieutenant, it looks like he's got two six-shot.38s. We heard three rounds fired and the dump pouches on the gunbelts are still full, so he may just have nine left. Advise SWAT it's +Ps jacketed hollowpoints. This guy favors the face."

Plus Ps were hot rounds, but they would not penetrate SWATs body armor. A hit in the face would very likely be fatal, a hit on a limb would maim.

"Stretchers coming up, Tate."

The ambulances were there amazingly fast, but it did not seem fast enough to Tate, listening to the pitiful thing at his feet. Young Murray was trying to hold the groaning, jerking body, trying to talk reassuringly and not look at him, and he was saying, "You're just fine, Pembry, looking good," over and over in the same sick tone.

As soon as he saw the ambulance attendants on the landing, Tate yelled, "Corpsman!" as he had in war.

He got Murray by the shoulder and moved him out of the way. The ambulance attendants worked fast, expertly securing the clenched, blood-slick fists under the belt, getting an airway in and peeling a nonstick surgical bandage to get some pressure on the bloody face and head. One of them popped an intravenous plasma pack, but the other, taking blood pressure and pulse, shook his head and said, "Downstairs."

Orders on the radio now. "rate, I want you to clear the offices in the tower and seal it off. Secure the doors from the main building. Then cover from the landings. I'm sending up vests and shotguns. We'll get him alive if he wants to come, but we take no special risks to preserve his life. Understand me?"

"I got it, Lieutenant."

"I want SWAT and nobody but SWAT in the main building. Let me have that back."

Tate repeated the order.

Tate was a good sergeant and he showed it now as he and Jacobs shrugged into their heavy armored vests and followed the gurney as the orderlies carried it down the stairs to the ambulance. A second crew followed with Boyle. The men on the landings were angry, seeing the gurneys pass, and Tate had a word of wisdom for them: "Don't let your temper get your ass shot off."

As the sirens wailed outside, Tate, backed by the veteran Jacobs, carefully cleared the offices and sealed off the tower.

A cool draft blew down the hall on four. Beyond the door, in the vast dark spaces of the main building, the telephones were ringing. In dark offices all over the building, buttons on telephones were winking like fireflies, the bells sounding over and over.

The word was out that Dr. Lecter was "barricaded" in the building, and radio and television reporters were calling, dialing fast with their modems, trying to get live interviews with the monster. To avoid this, SWAT usually has the telephones shut off, except for one that the negotiator uses. This building was too big, the offices too many.

Tate closed and locked the door on the rooms of blinking telephones. His chest and back were wet and itching under the hardshell vest.

He took his radio off his belt. "CP, this is Tate, the towers clear, over."

"Roger, Tate. Captain wants you at the CP."

"Ten-four. Tower lobby, you there?"

"Here, Sarge."

"It's me on the elevator, I'm bringing it down."

"Gotcha, Sarge."

Jacobs and Tate were in the elevator riding down to the lobby when a drop of blood fell on Tate's shoulder. Another hit his shoe.

He looked at the ceiling of the car, touched Jacobs, motioning for silence.

Blood was dripping from the crack around the service hatch in the top of the car. It seemed a long ride down to the lobby. Tate and Jacobs stepped off backwards, guns pointed at the ceiling of the elevator. Tate reached back in and locked the car.

"Shhhh, " Tate said in the lobby. Quietly, " Berry, Howard, he's on the roof of the elevator. Keep it covered."

Tate went outside. The black SWAT van was on the lot. SWAT always had a variety of elevator keys.

They were set up in moments, two SWAT officers in black body armor and headsets climbing the stairs to the third-floor landing. With Tate in the lobby were two more, their assault rifles pointed at the elevator ceiling.

Like the big ants that fight, Tate thought.

The SWAT commander was talking into his headset. "Okay, Johnny."

On the third floor, high above the elevator, Officer Johnny Peterson turned his key in the lock and the elevator door slid open. The shaft was dark. Lying on his back in the corridor, he took a stun grenade from his tactical vest and put it on the floor beside him. "Okay, I'll take a look now."

He took out his mirror with its long handle and stuck it over the edge while his partner shined a powerful flashlight down the shaft.

"I see him. He's on top of the elevator. I see a weapon beside him. He's not moving."

The question in Peterson's earphone, "Can you see his hands?"

"I see one hand, the other one's under him. He's got the sheets around him."

"Tell him."

"PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD AND FREEZE," Peterson yelled down the shaft. "He didn't move, Lieutenant… Right."

"IF YOU DON'T PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD I'LL DROP A STUN GRENADE ON YOU. I'LL GIVE YOU THREE SECONDS," Peterson called. He took from his vest one of the doorstops every SWAT officer carries. "OKAY, GUYS, WATCH OUT DOWN THERE-- HERE COMES THE GRENADE." He dropped the doorstop over the edge, saw it bounce on the figure. "He didn't move, Lieutenant."

"Okay, Johnny, we're gonna push the hatch up with a pole from outside the car. Can you get the drop?"

Peterson rolled over. His.45 automatic, cocked and locked, pointed straight down at the figure. "Got the drop," he said.

Looking down the elevator shaft, Peterson could see the crack of light appear below as the officers in the foyer pushed up on the hatch with a SWAT boathook. The still figure was partly over the hatch and one of the arms moved as the officers pushed from below.

Peterson's thumb pressed a shade harder on the safety of the Colt. "His arm moved, Lieutenant, but I think it's just the hatch moving it."

"Roger. Heave."

The hatch banged backward and lay against the wall of the elevator shaft. It was hard for Peterson to look down into the light. "He hasn't moved. His hand's not on the weapon."

The calm voice in his ear, "Okay, Johnny, hold up. We're coming into the car, so watch. with the mirror for movement. Any fire will come from us. Affirm?"

"Got it."

In the lobby, Tate watched them go into the car. A rifleman loaded with armor-piercing aimed his weapon at the ceiling of the elevator. A second officer climbed on a ladder. He was armed with a large automatic pistol with a flashlight clamped beneath it. A mirror and the pistol-light went up through the hatch. Then the officer's head and shoulders. He handed down a.38 revolver. "He's dead," the officer called down.

Tate wondered if the death of Dr. Lecter meant Catherine Martin would die too, all the information lost when the lights went out in that monster mind.

The officers were pulling him down now, the body coming upside down through the elevator hatch, eased down into many arms, an odd deposition in a lighted box. The lobby was filling up, policemen crowding up to see.

A corrections officer pushed forward, looked at the body's outflung tattooed arms.

"That's Pembry," he said.

In the back of the howling ambulance, the young attendant braced himself against the sway and turned to his radio to report to his emergency room supervisor, talking loud above the siren.