Джеймс Паттерсон - Cross the Line

The detectives had gone to check it out and called for backup. One patrol car drove into the alley behind the house. Another patrol car came onto the block at one end, and Lincoln and O’Donnell came from the other. They saw Le and three of his men chilling on the front porch.

O’Donnell had stopped his vehicle just shy of the house. The other patrol car did the same. All four officers jumped out, guns drawn, and ordered the men on the porch to lie down. Le came up with an AK-47 and opened fire.

Lincoln and a patrolman were hit; Lincoln took a bullet through his thigh and another through his hand. O’Donnell had been able to pull him behind a car across the street. The injured patrolman, Josh Parks, had been shot through the pelvis, but he’d dragged himself up against the base of the porch, where he could not be seen or shot at from inside.

“How are you, Parks?” Bree asked over the radio.

“Feel like I got a drill bit through my groin to my spine, but otherwise peachy,” the officer said.

“O’Donnell?”

“We need to get Lincoln and Parks to the hospital without getting shot.”

“I hear you,” she said. “Cavalry’s on its way. ETA four minutes.”

“I heard a lot of screaming inside. I’m thinking he’s got hostages.”

We heard shouting and automatic gunfire, and then the connection died.

“Shit!” Bree shouted.

She tried to redial, but her phone rang before she could.

“O’Donnell?” Bree said, and listened. “Where are you?”

Bree punched the speaker button, and out came the terrified voice of Michele Bui.

“I’m hiding inside a closet upstairs,” Thao Le’s girlfriend said, clearly on the verge of tears. “Thao and his friends have been snorting coke and meth for days, and they’re out of their minds and paranoid. He’s got them convinced they’re next.”

“Next for what?”

“Next to be killed,” she said. “They were so whacked, they thought the cops were those vigilantes killing meth cookers.”

“Who else is in the house with you?” Bree asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I was upstairs sleeping, but I heard a few of the cutters and packagers come in and work through the night. After the shots, I heard screams and—”

“What?”

“Thao’s yelling for me,” she said. “I gotta go.”

The line went dead.

Metro patrol cars were parked in V formations blocking the street at both ends of the road. Other officers were moving through the alleys to evacuate residents closest to the row house Le was in.

A pair of ambulances had already arrived. We left our squad car down the street and got our first look at the situation through binoculars.

Halfway down the block on the east side, Officer Joshua Parks was on his side by the stoop to the row house, contorted in agony.

“We’re here, Parks, with more on the way,” Bree said over her radio.

“Good,” he said. “I’m getting one hell of a leg cramp lying on the cement like this.”

Bree couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll have that cramp looked into. Talk to me, O’Donnell.”

Detective O’Donnell was across the street from Parks on the sidewalk behind a white Ford Explorer. He was holding Lincoln, who looked weak.

“O’Donnell, talk to me,” Bree said again.

“Lincoln’s conscious, but hurting bad. What’s the plan?”

“Working on it,” Bree said.

She looked at me, said quietly, “I’ve never handled anything remotely like this, Alex. You have, so I’m all ears.”

I scanned the scene again and then said, “We need to be inside the house directly across the street from Le’s and also in the house directly behind it. And we need Le’s cell phone number.”

“I’ll try Michele Bui again,” Bree said.

The SWAT van pulled up. Captain Matt Fuller, dressed head to toe in black body armor, climbed out and hurried toward us.

“Shit,” I muttered.

“What?”

“I’d hoped Captain Reagan was on duty,” I said. “Fuller’s good at what he does, but he wants to do it as often as he can, if you know what I mean.”

A burly man with soft, almost saggy facial features, Fuller said, “Dr. Cross. Chief Stone. Sampson. How’s the officer down?”

“Two are down, Captain,” Bree said. “Lincoln, who’s one of my men, and Officer Parks. Both are in critical need of medical attention, especially Parks.”

Fuller looked at the scene through binoculars. When he put them down, he said, “We’re going to want to be in the house opposite and the one behind.”

“You took the words right out of my mouth,” I said, and then I looked to Bree again. “Call Michele. Get that number.”

Captain Fuller, four of his men, Sampson, and I used an alley to reach the row house directly in front of Detectives O’Donnell and Lincoln and across the street from Parks. A frail older woman had been evacuated from the house. She’d given her key to one of the patrolmen who’d helped her, and we used it to go through the back door into her kitchen.

We passed a steep staircase on our way into the living area, barely taking in the dated furniture, the photos of a lifetime, and a baby grand piano.

“Maxwell and Keith, you’re upstairs,” Captain Fuller said behind me. “Stay back from the windows, keep it dark.”

While the two SWAT officers climbed the stairs, Bree pushed aside the window curtains just enough for us to see O’Donnell and Lincoln right there on the sidewalk, backs to the Explorer, no more than fifty feet away. O’Donnell had his belt around Lincoln’s thigh, but Lincoln looked wan, like he’d lost a lot of blood.

“Lincoln needs medical help now,” Bree said.

“Both of them do,” I said, watching Parks go through some kind of pain spasm that made him arch in agony.

The SWAT commander was quiet for several moments and then said, “We’re going to handle this one at a time. Easiest first, which means Lincoln.”

Fuller looked at his two other men. “How fast can you get out the door, go down those steps, grab Lincoln, and get your asses back inside?”

“Twenty seconds,” Sergeant Daniel Kiniry said.

“Maybe less,” Officer Brent Remer said. “Unless we come under fire.”

“O’Donnell? How long since the last shots?” Fuller asked.

“Ten, maybe twelve minutes,” the detective came back.

The captain thought a moment and then spoke into his radio. “Wilkerson?”

“Go ahead, Captain.”

“Break me out a couple of grenades.”

Bree and I looked at Captain Fuller like he’d lost his mind.

“Grenades?” Bree said. “Isn’t that a little extreme?”

“No,” Fuller said, and then he explained what he wanted to do.

I considered it, decided once again that Captain Fuller was good at his job, and admitted, “That could work.”

“It could,” Bree said. “Your move, Captain.”

Three minutes later, on Fuller’s command, two flash-bang grenades went off behind the row house where Le and his fellow gangbangers were holed up.

I had my binoculars trained on the windows across the street and saw movement inside, figures running to investigate the explosions. Then Bree threw up the window sash, and we stuck our service weapons out the window.

“Go,” Fuller said, and he yanked open the front door to the old lady’s home.

Kiniry and Remer bolted across the porch, leaped off the stairs, and landed beside Lincoln. O’Donnell let go of his partner.

The SWAT guys got their hands under Lincoln and came up fast. O’Donnell jumped up, his gun, like ours, aimed at the row house as he backed up, covering Kiniry, Remer, and Lincoln.