Outside the Wire

by Richard Farnsworth

  #

  Morales made his way through the urban effluvia to the crack house with the entry team. Half the agents would go in the front with him while the other half went through the back. The embroidered yellow letters D.E.A. stood out on the black fabric front and back of his body armor, all that over blue jeans and athletic shoes.

  They had met Harden in an alley down the street and he and his men filed in behind Morales. The soldiers carried Heckler and Koch MP-5s on short slings, with body armor under pixilated camouflage. Morales felt his team looked a little shabby in comparison.

  After the final equipment check in the assembly area, Morales went over the plan. He explained entry procedures, fire discipline, rules of engagement and several times reminded everyone that the soldiers had no authority to interfere with law enforcement operations under the Posse Commutates Act.

  Harden watched with an almost amused expression as Morales drove home the point that he, Morales, and not the Army, was in charge.

  Then it was Harden's turn to explain the high points of what he was there to do. He talked about the special ammunition, the communications plan, and then told the agents to watch out, call when they saw kids and not to look the BEKs in the eyes, and no, BEKs didn’t mean beer.

  As they started out Morales asked what Harden meant about his special ammo. The soldier popped a round from a spare clip.

  “Teflon bean-bag filled with a silver nitrate solution,” he’d said.

  “I don’t think those rounds are NATO-approved.” Morales said.

  “Our targets aren’t members.”

  “Maybe for werewolves or something?” Morales asked it as a joke.

  “Something,” was all Harden said.

  Now the sun cast a faint red glow over the rooftops to the east. Morales intended to enter before the Haitians woke up. Drug dealers weren't usually morning people.

  The crack house had been grand once but now it was on the verge of being condemned. Urban settlers hadn’t made it far enough into the city to start the gentrification of this neighborhood.

  “If they’re making so much money, why are these guys living in such a dump?” Harden asked softly.

  “Bales of cash are hard to spend. Louis walks in somewhere with a wheel-barrel full of hundreds and we can put him down for tax evasion. As it is he has to limit purchases to less than ten grand.”

  At the front of the house Morales motioned to the two men that would go in first. Both wore bomb-squad vests with Plexiglas shields bolted to their helmets.

  One carried the Hallagan tool, a device with a mallet on one end and a crowbar on the other, for breaking down the most stubborn of doors. The other carried a short-barreled shotgun with a rotary cylinder that looked like an old Tommy-gun on steroids.

  All in place, Morales said, “Now,” on the common frequency.

  The door smashed in one practiced movement. The special agent with the tool flattened against the doorjamb and the rest crowded behind the one with the shotgun. Crouching into a tight mass, they poured in.

  “DEA!” Those at the back door were doing the same.

  The front foyer emptied into a long dirty hall, stairs and a big room to the left. A shirtless man on the couch, his dreads pulled into a loose ponytail, held up his hands and whimpered.

  On his face, they zip-cuffed him. The agents flowed out through the room as Harden and his team entered.

  Radio calls indicated the agents had come into the back through a kitchen. They found the basement door and part of the team went down as planned. The rest secured the back of the house while the front entry team went up the stairs.

  Harden nodded to Morales like he was impressed.

  "I'd have come down through the roof and flushed the targets out the front to snipers, but this works too. Different agenda’s. I don't need my targets alive."

  Shouts and loud thumps from up stairs, but no gunfire. An all clear call from the basement.

  Morales had been right. The druggies wouldn’t be trouble.

  He let go a raspy post-adrenalin sigh, knowing this was a clean take down. He smiled at Harden, gave him a modest ‘that’s how it's done shrug’ and then he heard the single shot fired from the basement. This followed by a short, staccato burst.

  “Doughtery, what’re you doing?” a disembodied voice said through the receiver.

  Dougherty had been tasked with clearing the basement.

  “We need to help them. They’re scared, can’t you see?” Another voice, followed by two more bursts of automatic fire and a confusion of calls.

  "Shit, they found one," Harden said. He signaled to his team and the five men fell into line, trotting toward the rear of the house.

  “Morales, I’m a go for the basement. Get your men out of there, now!”

  Morales said on the common freq, “Dougherty, what’s going on?”

  Harden spoke over Morales, “All law enforcement agents, this is Major Harden. Get out of the basement. Now!”

  They stopped in the kitchen, Harden telling Morales to stay back and not get in the way.

  The Special Forces team moved like five fingers of the same hand. Through the hall and down the stairs.

  Two moving three on watch. Then three moving and two on watch. They leapfrogged down into the darkness, their boots heavy on the wooden stairs.

  Morales tried to keep up without getting in the way because he wasn’t going to leave his men down there.

  At the bottom of the stair Harden hand signaled and stepped over a dead agent on the landing. Multiple gunshot wounds, all above the vest's neckline. As the soldiers filed past and fanned out in the basement, Morales bent and found no pulse. The face obscured in a pool of meat and blood. He pushed down the panicky feeling at losing another agent; compartmentalize and focus on the job.

  Another narcotics officer just beyond him on the rough concrete floor, twitching out the last bit of life. There should be two more.

  Grey light from the small casement windows illuminated the cramped basement. Old brick walls and pillars with a hundred years of peeling paint cut the space into a gloomy rabbit warren of interlocking rooms.

  Harden hand-signaled straight ahead. Morales saw the outline of Dougherty in a doorway, crouching to listen to a preteen boy.

  The boy turned and Morales caught the unmistakable eyes from fifteen feet away.

  Harden squeezed a short MP-5 burst. Three rounds tore through the grey, Old Navy hoody, lifting the boy into the air, propelling him backward. A split second later the squibs in the silver nitrate rounds went off and the liquid exploded outward.

  Morales had his pistol out now, confused at seeing the big soldier spray a kid with automatic fire.

  He heard Harden' voice over the radio saying, "My favorite part."

  Holes burned from the inside out as the little body emolliated there on the floor. The burning chemical smell caught in Morales throat more than the cordite.

  Satisfied, Harden turned his attention to Dougherty.

  The agent stood confused, looking to where the BEK had been.

  “He isn’t released so there have to be more,” Harden whispered into the mike.

  Sergeant Douglas disarmed Dougherty and left him unconscious. Morales wanted to say something but it happened so quickly. Douglas dropped the clip from the agent’s carbine, one handed, and tossed the gun toward the stairs. Never leave a loaded weapon unattended.

  The five continued through the little doorway and stayed close to the wall. Old furniture, mildewed boxes of tattered magazines and things not easily identified in the gloom didn¹t slow their steady progress.

  Douglas stopped in front of Morales, while the rest continued, bending to peer into a pile of trash. The soldier stood slack, his weapon pointing at nothing.

  Morales called over the freq, “Soldier, what's wrong.”

  No answer. Morales flinched as Harden fired a quick burst into the trash heap.

  The little monster in there screamed over the echo of the shots a
nd then he saw the burnout between the boxes.

  Douglas shook his head and gave a thumbs-up and mumbled. “Mary had a little lamb…”

  “What?” Morales asked.

  Douglas said, “The mantra interferes with the mind control.”

  All the soldiers repeated it together now. Familiar repetitive words helping to clear the mind as they continued their sweep. Two rooms down.

  Morales went through a low doorway, and bumped into Douglas. All the soldiers stood quiet, weapons lowered.

  The agent started to say something and then he heard the voices.

  “Mary,” someone said on the radio.

  The calm, pleading voices. They just needed help.

  “…had…” someone mumbled.

  A good guy would help these kids. The clatter, as his pistol dropped to the concrete, didn’t even register.

  Three kids stood around him, one talking softly. Morales couldn’t understand what was being said.

  Looking into the bottomless wells of its eyes he saw his son, little Frank in them.

  His son was caught in a gangland crossfire, dead three months now. His son was a drive-by victim because he stood in the wrong place after a little league game, eating an ice cream. But now little Frank was here asking for help.

  “Will it be okay, Poppa?” That’s what little Frank seemed to say.

  “Sure, miho,” Morales said.

  He reached out to hold the little guy’s hand. The sharp nails with the blood, spreading down the fingers, it made him freeze.

  Someone made gurgling sounds. Like blowing bubbles through a straw into a milkshake.

  “It’s okay, Pop,” little Frank said.

  Morales’ hand was stuck in midair. Douglas dropped to his knees. Thick, oxygen-rich blood from his opened throat blurred the muted greens and grays of the pixilated camouflage into a dark brown bib.

  Harden, beyond Douglas, raised the MP-5 to his shoulder as if to fire, and lowered it.

  Up.

  Back down.

  Up, then back down.

  A kid stood beside the soldier, talking to him. Morales wondered how that man had looked into the BEK’s eyes, because you had to make eye contact for the mind control to work.

  His own arm wouldn’t move. Little Frank was there and then he wasn't, like his son was coming in and out of focus. One minute the little boy he loved more than life, then something ugly was there instead.

  It kept talking, faster now. Morales focused on the floor. A pool of blood spread into his field of view over the pock-marked concrete.

  He saw his hand lowering. He willed it to draw his pistol, but the weapon was on the floor. When had he dropped it?

  He concentrated hard on gaining control of his own body.

  “Poppa, you really need to help us.”

  Morales did. He really needed to. The part of his mind that he still controlled knew he didn't, but the voices were so persuasive.

  His son's voice.

  He missed the boy so much and now they were together again. He meant to wipe the tear from his eye, but the arm wouldn't work for that either.

  He needed to break this hold or he was dead.

  A BEK held Harden by the elbow as he walked stiff-legged and continued to raise the weapon up and down.

  Up and down.

  Then he raised the weapon to point at Morales.

  “Frank, we have to get these kids back to their Momma. They’re lost and need our help.”

  Morales nodded. His arm still wouldn’t move. Beads of sweat coated him. His breath was labored, like he’d been running all morning.

  The MP-5 came up level with Morales face and he looked sidelong. If he held his head just so the radiant image of his son stayed and the ugly thing was gone.

  Roger’s weapon lowered a few inches this time. He wasn’t getting a full drop now. The next time it just dipped, and came back immediately.

  Harden sweating, looking confused. The index finger came out of the trigger guard and flexed in a pulling motion.

  Morales could see that some part of Harden knew what was going on.

  Morales had been shot before and knew the impact of those big forty caliber bullets would suck. Would the bullets ripping into him be worse than the little explosions though? Teflon and silver nitrate tearing through your body. What would that be like?

  Little Frank, and at the same time not, beside him touched his elbow. 

  “It’s almost over, Poppa. Just be still.”

  And it was. They were all dead, just like his son.

  It was just a matter of playing out the hand.

  Harden’s weapon pointed at Morales head.

  “It’s for the best, right?” Harden asked.

  Morales’ head nodded on its own. All he could see was the gun now, no more than a foot away. The muzzle was a black eye staring at his mortality.

  He looked back down to say goodbye to his son again.

  The two images were superimposed now. Little Frank smiled a mouthful of pointy little teeth. Frank focused on them. He was able to see the teeth that didn't belong to his son. The mouth and the two noses that didn't belong together came apart.

  He pulled the image of the BEK from that of his son with his mind and the two came apart like Velcro. Little Frank's face there beside the other but distinct, it smiled at his father and then was gone.

  As Harden’s willpower gave out, Morales pushed the MP-5 pointed at his head to the little monster that had tried to impersonate his son.

  A spray of bullets and the hot muzzle flash deafened and burned Morales as the rounds tore past his face and through the BEK beside him.

  Still holding the wildly firing machine pistol, Morales drew Harden' nine-millimeter Berretta from the shoulder holster. He flicked the safety off with his thumb and squeezed rounds into the BEK to Roger's left, the one controlling the soldier.

  A spray of thick blood and the little monster went down. Harden released the MP-5 trigger immediately and blinked at Morales.

  The other BEK broke for cover. Morales dropped into a two-handed weaver stance and put two bullets into one little beast as Harden took careful aim at another.

  Sergeant Jepson got up from his knees and found his weapon. He started up with the nursery rhyme again and put controlled three to five round bursts into everything that moved. The three of them hunted the remaining BEK through the refuse, through crowded little rooms to the back of the basement. An old coal grate, the wrought iron cover pulled to the side, showed where the last BEK had escaped into the morning.

  Now Morales could hear the radio traffic over the beginnings of a migraine. Funny how it had been mute before.

  “Major Harden, over here Sir,” Jepson called.

  The two of them, tense, followed the voice to a pile of carpet fragments. There, covered with newspaper were three cantaloupe-sized pods. Sweaty and pulsing,

  Harden blew each one apart with well-placed rounds.

  “Intel was right, this was a nest,” he said to Morales.