Dry Heat dmm-3

by Jon Talton

  “An FBI team,” Peralta said, reappearing behind me, with his suit coat gone and his shoulder holster prominent. “It’s their operation.”

  Eric Pham walked up behind us and nodded. He had covered his starched white shirt with a Kevlar vest bearing the letters FBI.

  “I think we’ve got them, David,” he said.

  “All we have to do is hope the dust storm doesn’t hit,” I said. So far, the wind was up, whipping us with occasional sand, but the sun was still out and we had at least an hour’s daylight.

  “All we have to do,” Peralta said, “is sit here and enjoy the show.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Even the binoculars didn’t provide a very good view of the house. I saw native stone, a wall of tinted glass, and a roof set at a rakish angle. Then I didn’t see much. The storm came on, cloaking the mountains and then the scattered houses in dusty haze. At this time of day it almost looked like the fog in San Francisco, except for my persistent coughing. Back to the west, Camelback and Mummy mountains were barely visible. I heard some deputies cursing. I made my way quietly into the command post, where two rows of consoles were being monitored by deputies and FBI agents wearing slender headsets. TV screens showed a view of the desert, then the house-apparently the assault team carried cameras so the brass could watch the fun. An agent turned to Pham, Peralta, and a Scottsdale police deputy chief: “Team Blue is in place.” In another minute: “Team Red is in place.”

  Barely audibly, Pham said, “Begin operation.”

  Peralta turned and walked outside. It didn’t take much to bore him, especially if it was a multi-jurisdictional operation like this one. I decided to follow him. Just as I stepped onto the ground, I heard a muffled “whump.” Turning toward the house, I saw a flash and heard another concussion. From the command center I heard someone call, “Showtime.”

  Peralta faced toward the action, his hands behind his back, his powerful shoulders tensed.

  “You think they’ll screw it up, don’t you?” I said, trying to ease my own anxiety, tamp down my hope that Lindsey and I might be reunited soon.

  “What I think doesn’t matter, Mapstone.”

  “What about what you know?”

  He faced me, one black eyebrow barely raised.

  “The Pilgrim case,” I said. “You know more than you’re telling me.”

  He studied me with a slow orbit of his eyes. “The Kate Vare thing? Don’t be paranoid, Mapstone. She was convinced you were holding out on her about some vagrant chick you interviewed. She was raising a stink with Chief Wilson and the county supervisors, so it seemed easy enough to let her check the files in your office. Don’t worry, we didn’t disturb your precious library of history books.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “What then?” he asked, his voice suddenly impatient.

  I was about to launch into it when we heard an unmistakable crackle from the direction of the house, then expletives from the command center. Peralta hurried back in, and I followed him enough to stand in the doorway.

  “…taking fire…one suspect is down. He’s down in the kitchen. An officer is down. Officer down…”

  “How many do we think are in there?” I asked, and was ignored. Over my shoulder, the sound of automatic weapons fire had become steady. But these were short bursts, apparently from both sides. We were dealing with trained, disciplined scumbags inside that three-million-dollar pile of rocks.

  Then the only sounds were wind and traffic.

  “Building is secure. Building is secure. We have one officer down and four suspects down. Send in medics.”

  Two ambulances were flagged through the roadblock, escorted by a Scottsdale PD unit. The tightness in my gut started to let up a little.

  Someone shouted, “One of ’em’s unaccounted for. Hang on…”

  Then, after a few centuries: “Yuri. Yuri’s not among the suspects.”

  I stepped back outside, as if propelled by the Russian’s dark magic. My hand clutched the butt of the Colt Python, as if Yuri would suddenly appear from around the corner of the bus and kill us all. It didn’t seem impossible. The dust storm was full upon us now, the wind coming in hard horizontal bursts. The timeless logic of the desert trying to reclaim its own. The mountains were no more than a quarter mile away, but I could only see murky oblivion in that direction. I closed my eyes against the flying particles and prepared to step inside the command center. But a bulk came the other way, nearly knocking me down. Peralta.

  “Let’s go,” he said, a rare wild look in his eyes.

  “What?”

  He spun me and pushed me like I weighed ninety pounds. Behind me, “Goddamn it, David, let’s go!”

  I ran to the car. Peralta was right behind me, but he had retrieved a shotgun from one of the cruisers.

  “Go!” he ordered. I assumed he meant to the house, so I blew past a befuddled deputy and aimed the Oldsmobile up Thompson Peak Parkway, then into a side road and quickly climbed into the foothills. Getting closer, I saw the ambulances and sheriff’s cruisers pull around to a wide driveway where a gazillion-car garage was built into the rocky face of the hillside. Medics were talking to one of the ninja tactical guys.

  Then everything changed.

  One of the tasteful desert-toned garage doors disintegrated. Pieces were still midair when the grillwork of a Hummer exploded out of the garage.

  “Get off the road,” Peralta said, almost to himself.

  But I was already ahead of him. Old cop intuition, which was hardwired in me by training and by four years on the street, had come alive like some forgotten tribal knowledge. I braked hard and slammed the gearshift to “R.” The Olds responded with a primal “clunk” deep in the rear end-no digital pulses from twenty-first-century auto technology here-but the car moved backwards at once. I quickly slid into the hard desert ground, uprooting a stand of prickly pear and brittle-bush.

  “Oh, hell,” Peralta said. I looked toward the house and an FBI ATV and its rider were crashing to the ground on a trajectory from the Hummer. Next it slammed across the top of the sheriff’s cruiser, whose hood gave way under the Hummer’s jacked-up tires. The cruiser’s windshield shattered and the tires blew out. By then the Hummer was on the road and flying past us. It was the same black Hummer from that day in Roosevelt.

  “Follow him,” Peralta commanded.

  “What?”

  “Goddamn it, David, go!”

  I eased the Olds out of the scrub and onto the asphalt. Then I punched the accelerator into the floor.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  If the Russian had taken off across the desert, we never would have caught him. Instead, he wheeled out onto Scottsdale Road and turned south, toward the city. This was the racetrack for the rich and famous, but the black Hummer quickly passed a clot of SUVs and pricey sedans doing a mere sixty and commandeered a clear stretch of the slow lane. Within a mile, the speedometer on the Olds, with its long thin numbers and circular dial from the industrial designers of the 1960s, was pushing one hundred.

  “How the hell can he go this fast?” I panted, feeling barely in control of the car. “I thought SUVs were lead sleds.”

  “Maybe not,” Peralta said. “Don’t let him get on the freeway!”

  “And I’m going to stop him how?” I yelled.

  The clear stretch didn’t last long. As we neared Bell Road, I could see a parking lot of commuters, looking forward to happy weekends or fights with the spouse, spread out in four directions. Dust careened across the road in swirls and wild patterns. Headlights were lost to the gusts. Traffic was stuck at the entrances of the 101 beltway, whose concrete mass swooped over our heads. The Hummer barely slowed. I’d kept him off the freeway.

  “Holy shit,” I whispered, braking down to eighty, taking the left-turn lane and honking the big Detroit claxon to clear cars away. The Russian jerked to the right, through a forest of red cones cordoning off some street-widening. Across the aircraft-carrier deck of O
ldsmobile hood, I watched as cones, dust, wood, unidentifiable debris, and finally steel reinforcing rods flew off in the Hummer’s wake. He cut back into the slow lane, sending a panicked Lexus into a 360-degree spin-I could make out a plume of blond hair inside the driver’s window-and ending up glancing off the door of a shiny Lincoln Navigator. I heard horns and crashes but didn’t have time to watch. The Hummer blew through the chaos, crossed Bell against the light, and sped south. Somehow, after jagging into oncoming traffic and nearly taking out a light post, I was right behind him.

  Now the needle was insistently pushing against 120. I still had an inch or so under my foot. The former owner, the drug dealer, had helpfully added new shoulder harnesses and seat belts. I steered with one hand and buckled up with the other.

  “Where’s the cavalry?” I wondered aloud. The dust storm made it impossible to get choppers in the air, but I looked in vain for police emergency lights coming behind us. I could hear Peralta on his cell phone.

  “They’re setting out stop sticks at Doubletree,” he said above the din of canvas roof and wind. “Just keep going straight, you son of a bitch.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was directing that at me or at Yuri, but as if the Russian could hear us, he veered off to the left on a side street. The Hummer strained against simple physics, and for a moment it was on two wheels. This is it, I thought. But somehow he made the turn. I pumped the brake and took the turn at fifty, hearing the wheels scream and-I swear-something like rivets popping somewhere in the chassis. But the Olds felt steady once we were going straight again. I pushed it, and we came within a car length of the black Hummer.

  In an instant, the Russian made a right and tore across a lawn. I hesitated only a second. He crashed through a stucco wall, which didn’t hold him. I followed. My peripheral vision caught a large patio, expensively outfitted with one of those outdoor grills that was bigger than our kitchen. A poolside flashed by. Then we were enveloped in green.

  “I played here just last week,” Peralta said. “Dammit, he’s going to ruin the grass.”

  The Hummer sped out onto the Gainey Ranch golf course. Only the dust storm prevented the potential carnage of a foursome in his path. He plowed through a rough and went due south, cutting tracks into the fairway. I avoided the rough and followed.

  “Put the top down!” Peralta commanded. He had already pulled the hand release on his side and I popped the lever above my head. Then I depressed the button on the dash and the roof went away, propelled by forty-year-old mechanics and a stiff wind. I coughed from the dust. Then I saw Peralta’s white shirt and slacks levitating, and he was standing. His tie was blown back over his shoulder and he had the shotgun in his hands.

  “Hang on!” I yelled and punched the accelerator. The Olds advanced to within maybe ten feet of the Hummer’s rear end and Peralta let loose a shot. The rear window became a spider’s web. The second round shattered the glass entirely. But the Russian cut sharply, and when I moved to keep up with him, Peralta fell back into his seat. The Hummer went through a low hedge, over a curb, and into a parking lot. In the rearview mirror I could see a forlorn groundskeeper chasing us, cursing us.

  The Olds’ tires hit the asphalt with a yelp and we were moving again. I followed the Hummer back to the west through pricey residential streets, tasting dust and particles in my mouth. Then we turned on Scottsdale Road again, neatly avoiding the stop sticks, which sat useless several blocks to the north. I glanced at Peralta, who was cradling the shotgun.

  “Are you still using those hot loads that are against department regulations?” he demanded. Hot loads were custom bullets made for maximum stopping power. The downside: sometimes they could go completely through the suspect and take out three civilians and two walls. My gunsmith assured me that wouldn’t happen with the ones I carried.

  “Are you?”

  I said, “Yes. I need an edge. I’m just a bookworm, remember.”

  “Good,” he said. “Get me close again.”

  I glanced at him, and there was a look in his eyes I had only seen two or three times in our twenty-five years of friendship. Something primal, bloody-minded, and irrational, as if his riff about the Aztec blood coursing through his veins was not entirely hyperbole. He was close to a cop killer, even if the cop had been a female computer nerd. He was operating on something not well understood in university lecture halls.

  Getting close again wasn’t easy. We flew south into denser parts of Scottsdale, past Lincoln, McDonald, and Chaparral. But traffic was heavy, the visibility was worse, and the Russian kept changing lanes every few seconds. I could see red and blue lights behind us, but they kept falling back. The Olds didn’t handle with the precision of a sports car. Instead, it surged. But it was ultimately fast, inevitable. I understood why the drug dealer liked it, besides his passion for preserving a little history of the automotive age. But it was a crazy fast thought, one I would only remember later. We were going so fast.

  At Camelback, the Hummer struck a glancing blow at a Scottsdale Police cruiser; the big rig barely slowed while the front of the car was trashed. We swerved through the intersection, debris snapping against the floor of the Olds. The Russian took the oncoming fast lane across the Arizona Canal bridge, then came back into the southbound lanes. I followed. Fifth Avenue flashed by, obscured by dust. Particles tried to get under my eyelids, clung to my lashes. Lines of SUVs, minivans, BMWs, and old heaps were left behind.

  “Goddamn it, David,” Peralta shouted. “We’re going to lose this cocksucker again!”

  Indian School Road and Old Scottsdale were coming up fast. There were no police units in sight.

  “No, we’re not!” I shouted back. “Buckle up, goddamn it!”

  It was a millisecond of opportunity, and only a fool would have tried it. I would never have done it. But I did. The Russian had to brake suddenly to avoid a gargantuan Escalade that was stuck in the middle of the intersection. He jerked right, slowing again to keep from flipping into the Starbucks. I put on the power and slid left around the Escalade. I forced the wheel hard to the right, catching the rear end just before it fishtailed. A truck was coming west on Indian School. I beat him through the rat hole that had opened in traffic. Suddenly I was just ahead of the Russian. I said good-bye to the Olds and rammed into the Hummer’s left fender. The car jerked. The eerie sound of sheet steel being crushed and bent filled the air. The steering wheel bit back at my hands as the Hummer threatened to push us aside or over. I saw Peralta gripping the dashboard. But I was not unarmed: the 442-cubic-inch engine of the Oldsmobile was under my control. I fought to keep the wheel to the right and slammed my foot into the gas.

  Brick and glass came up fast. Then a sound like an explosion.

  We were suddenly in a stationary world. I stared at the ruined front of an art gallery. My collarbone ached against the trusty shoulder strap. Give me a couple minutes and I might have thrown up.

  “David!”

  I focused on the big man next to me. It was Sheriff Peralta.

  “Shit!” He fell backwards against me before the first burst of fire raked across what was left of the Oldsmobile. Then he rose quickly and fired three rounds from the shotgun. I unfastened the belt and pulled on the door handle. Miracle: the door survived, and opened like its first day in the showroom. I rolled out onto the pavement, feeling glass puncture my knees. Peralta scuttled out behind me. And for a long thirty-second count we huddled against the side of the car. Then Peralta mouthed “Go,” and I came around the backside, toward the carcass of the Hummer. My arm rebelled against the weight of the Colt, which at first shook in my hand. I moved fast behind the Olds’ rear bumper, knowing Peralta was going around the front. But nothing was left in the Hummer but the remains of the airbags. We sprinted through the debris of the gallery toward the back door, which lay open. I tried to remember everything from the academy, two and a half decades ago. But my legs were rubbery and holding the gun in a combat stance seemed to take superhuman effort.

  W
e came into the alley. Somewhere over my shoulder sirens were coming. The alley was empty. But it wasn’t. The wind yielded the briefest moment of clarity, and a man was running, maybe two blocks away. There was no time. Peralta was too slow. I holstered the Python and ran like hell. I kept close to the buildings, as if I could dive to safety if the man ahead of me decided to send a magazine of bullets my way. In another life, in a seaside city, before Lindsey, I had been a runner. Ran every night. Now I felt the damage in my right knee. But I remembered a few tricks. After my initial burst, I settled into a stride I could sustain. I closed the gap. The man didn’t see me.

  A monstrous wind came down the alley, but it was at my back. I crossed Seventieth Street, saw the oleanders sway as if a small hurricane was coming through. Palm tree husks flew crazily through the air. Dust clouds swirled in orange and purple phantoms high above. Ahead of me, the man jogged west, toward Goldwater Boulevard. Then I put on another burst. My shoes pounded on the asphalt, but the wind absorbed all sound. Back walls and dumpsters became my markers in the race. Deeper spaces opened in my lungs, and my heart settled into its long forgotten runner’s rhythm.

  There was no time. He got to Goldwater and started to look back. I closed to maybe fifteen feet. There was no cover. Not too damned smart. But maybe this wasn’t the Russian at all. Maybe it was just a citizen. I drew the Python and dropped into a combat stance.

  “Stop!” I yelled through a mouth thick with dust and suppressed panic.

  The man stood on the sidewalk, his back to me. He was a big man, about my size. Even in the oppressive heat he wore a dark sweatshirt. He didn’t move.

  I swallowed and called up a tiny bit of saliva. “Deputy sheriff! Drop your weapon!”

  I danced a little to the side, keeping his torso in the aligned twin sights of the Python. The gun’s stainless steel body glittered weirdly in the dusty light. Everything around us was brown. Streetlights came on in the murk, even though beyond the storm the sun was up. I tried to see what he had in his hands. He wouldn’t face me.