by James Hunt
“Hey!” Grant said. “Save your bullets for the gang.” He turned to Hickem. “You and I both know this is still Sam’s case, so you can stick it back in your pants before you embarrass yourself.”
It was quiet for a moment, and then Sam finally nodded. “Marshals will take the back door.”
“Yeah,” Hickem said, taking a step back. “Sounds good.” He gestured behind him to their path. “We’ve got a bit of a hike.” Without turning back around to either Grant or Sam, he walked off, his agents following.
Sam fell into line without a word, her two marshals doing the same. Grant hung back for a minute, taking in the blue skies and the mountainous, arid terrain that surrounded them. The wilderness here was different than in Deville. It was isolating, desolate. He hoped that what they found at the cabin was different.
Conversation was minimal, the only chatter limited to tactical options or updates from the SWAT team, who still didn’t know if anyone was inside.
Grant fought the urge to try to mend the bridge with Sam. Now wasn’t the time. She needed to stay focused. So did he.
And so boots crunched gravel, lips puffed labored breaths, birds screeched in the great big sky, and the closer they drew toward the house nestled in the middle of nowhere, the faster every pulse beat. Mouths grew dry, fingers twitched from frayed nerves, and mouths grew silent.
Hickem held up a fist, and the line of federal agents froze in place. He crouched, then they crouched. They removed their pistols from their holsters and white-knuckled them in nervous hands. Grant felt it. They were close.
After a few more moments of silence, Hickem stood and motioned everyone forward, and the group gathered in a half circle around him. He tapped his ear. “I’ve got an uplink with the SWAT team. They’re just over this next hill. The house is there, still no movement. This is where we split up.” He looked at Sam. “Take the marshals around the north side, and wait for our signal.”
“What’s the signal?” Cowboy asked.
“It’ll be a loud bang,” Hickem answered. “Now, we don’t have a layout of the house, and if a crew is inside, I don’t think they’ll keep the mother alive for very long, so we need to clear the rooms fast. Watch the corners, and work your way to the front. We’ll meet in the middle. Hopefully still intact.”
“All right,” Sam said. “I’m on point. Grant, you stay in the back.”
“No, Grant’s coming with us,” Hickem said.
Before Grant could protest, Hickem motioned his men forward, but he caught a concerned glance from Sam as they separated.
The SWAT members were hidden amongst some shrubs thirty yards from the house’s front door. One hundred yards from the house, Hickem’s team threw their bellies to the dirt and crawled toward their positions in slow, methodical motions.
Covered in dirt and tiny scratches from the prickly shrubs, Grant sidled next to Hickem, who positioned himself alongside one of the SWAT members. Their conversation was in whispers, but Grant was close enough to overhear.
“Still no movement inside,” the SWAT member replied. “Do we have any additional intel on the situation?”
“Negative,” Hickem said.
“Can’t we get a fucking drone out here?”
“It’s just us, Sergeant.” Hickem scanned to his left and then to his right. “Once the north unit is in position, we make our move.”
The hot summer sun beat down on their necks, muscles still and worn from the long hike and sudden lack of mobility. With both hands gripped on the pistol, Grant kept checking his watch. And while only seconds passed between his glances, it felt closer to hours.
“All right,” Hickem said. “North unit is in position. Sergeant, you tell your men to begin your approach. My people will be right behind you on the break-in. We’ll follow your lead.”
“Copy that.” The sergeant relayed the information over the radio to the rest of his men peppered along the ground outside the house. “We have a green light. I repeat, we have a green light. Be advised of team on north side of the house. They will be covering back exits.”
Hickem looked at Grant, a smile on his face as the SWAT members emerged from the earth, hunched forward with their assault rifles aimed at the house.
Autopilot kicked in, and all of those training hours with the department flooded back to Grant.
In total, there were ten men covering the front of the house, but the rush toward the door provided no more noise than the rustle of wind through the trees, the eerie calm before the horrendous storm that was about to ensue.
The six-man SWAT team converged at the front door, three on either side, and the lead man with the battering ram to knock the door down. Grant was positioned at the end of the line, his line of sight currently obstructed by a line of Kevlar bodies.
Grant kept tight against the wooden slats of the house that warmed his hip, but he was careful not to scrape against the sides to give away their position.
The sergeant held up his hand in preparation for the breach. Bodies tensed as they waited for the hammer to drop, and the next few seconds were the quiet before the storm.
The battering ram cracked the door, and the officers flooded inside, triggering an eruption of gunfire that plugged the flow of bodies.
Grant ducked below the front window just before it was blown out by bullets. Bits of glass rained over his head, shoulders, and back, the rush of adrenaline numbing him to the prick of the shards.
Orders were barked to push forward amidst the deafening whine that accompanied such gunfire, and the plug that had dammed the front door came undone, and Grant stayed close to Hickem’s heels on the way inside.
The curtains on the windows cast the house into darkness, and Grant’s vision had a hard time adjusting to the sharp contrast from daylight to nothing but black, but the open door cast enough light to help ease the transition.
The first room was the living room. It was large, housing a sectional couch, a coffee table littered with paper plates and beer bottles, and one motionless body, face down on the hardwood floor.
Immediately to Grant’s left after entering was a hallway where a pair of SWAT members checked the two rooms that led to the west side of the house. Grant remained at his position in the hall, covering their backs until they returned to the living room, giving the all clear for the rooms.
“We’ve got shooters in the interior!”
Everyone converged on the voice, and as Grant followed Hickem and the SWAT team, Sam appeared from the back, leaving behind the pair of marshals. Cowboy had been shot, and the shorter man was helping with the wound.
“How long till medic arrives?” Sam asked, gun up with her focus on the end of her pistol sights.
“Chopper is inbound,” Hickem answered. “Three minutes.”
Another hallway cut away on the left side of the house, tearing through the middle, and forced another bottleneck of bodies.
“You come in here, and we’ll blow her brains out!”
Walls muffled the scream, but it didn’t lessen the threat’s reality.
Grant and Sam were out of range to be of any use for the men at the front, lingering on the edge of the hallway. They exchanged a quick glance, and then over Sam’s shoulder, Grant saw motion through a vent in the ceiling. It was slight, and he would have missed it if it hadn’t been for the red dot from the shooter’s laser.
“Sam, get down!” Grant pivoted toward the vent, and Sam dropped to her knees, the bullet meant for her landing close to Grant’s foot as he squeezed his trigger.
In the same instant that Grant fired, there was a commotion at the end of the hall near the door, and he turned, finding the SWAT team gone and the door of the room kicked down.
Grant kept his pistol aimed at the vent and the cluster of holes his forty-five had put through the wood. It wasn’t until blood dripped from the bullet holes and onto the living room floor that he finally lowered the pistol, taking a knee by Sam’s side. “You all right?”
Sam nodded but
kept her head down, unable to hide the trembling from the adrenaline. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth, dropped her pistol, and ran outside.
Hickem’s voice shifted Grant’s attention down the hall, and suddenly he was back on a beach on the coast in the middle of the night. He walked slowly along the side of a large dump truck. The back gate was down. And on the other side was a cluster of dead women. Dead because of him.
And now, just like before, he found himself waiting to turn that corner, waiting to find out if his actions, actions meant to save a life, had ended in the death of another.
Hickem stepped out, his stride quick, carrying Mary Copella with the help of one of the SWAT members.
Grant exhaled, letting Hickem pass with the unconscious woman, her left hand wrapped in bloody gauze.
“Coming through!” Hickem shouted, forcing the two marshals at the back door to step out of the way. It wasn’t but a few seconds later that the whirl of the choppers sounded outside, and a team of medics tended to the mother and then the marshal.
With the commotion over, Grant eyed the vent in the ceiling where the sniper had been stationed. He scanned the ceiling, looking for the attic’s entrance, and found it at the front hallway. The stairs collapsed at the pull of the string, and he climbed up.
He had to hunch forward because of the wooden beams, and he immediately broke into a sweat due to the musty heat. Carefully, he stepped toward the shooter, mindful of the wooden slats above and below.
The man wore Kevlar, but one of Grant’s bullets had penetrated the gunman’s left cheekbone, the stopping power of the .45-caliber ammunition splattering the shooter’s brains over the wall behind him.
Grant donned a pair of latex gloves and searched the body and found ammunition, knives, and a burner phone. He flipped it open and searched through the texts, finding one outgoing message.
Breached.
The number it was sent to was blocked.
“Hey! Find anything?” Hickem shouted up through the slits in the air vent.
“Just guns and bullets. And a dead guy.”
“Shit,” Hickem said. “All right. We’ll send a body bag up.”
“Yeah,” Grant answered. “I’ll be down in a minute.” He scrolled through the recent calls list and found one number that was called every hour for the past three days. Check-in calls, no doubt. They might be able to track the number, but it was a long shot.
Grant pocketed the phone and then descended the steps and walked out the back. Outside, the medical teams were lifting Mary Copella into a chopper, Hickem was on the phone, and Sam was off to the left, hunched over.
Popping after a raid like this wasn’t anything new, especially with such a close call as Sam’s.
One second was all that separated you from life or death. And that death could come at any time from a thousand different places. And while you could train yourself to react in a timely manner in those situations, and how to mentally and physically handle the aftereffects, there was no quick fix, no magic wand that made things okay after it was over, even if the mission was a success. No amount of training could ever prepare anyone for a real gunfight, or a real death. It was like trying to explain to a fish how to breathe out of water. And with Charles Copella still missing, Grant was started to feel a little short on breath.
Links was sitting in his office when the call came through. He had to keep the phone’s speaker away from his ear due to Hickem’s boisterous shouts. The man was proud of his work and eager to impress his boss.
“Any leads on where the father might be?” Links had his eyes glued to the burner phone in his other hand, the angered flare of his nostrils contradicting the even-keeled tone of his voice.
“Not yet, but we can see what the mother knows. The fact that we found her stateside suggests the strong possibility that the father is still here too. And I bet he’s nearby. It’ll be tough, though. These guys have been pretty meticulous.”
“But not meticulous enough.” Links closed his fist around the burner, knowing that the ape on the other end of the line wouldn’t grasp the context of his words. “Keep me posted on any developments.”
“Yes, sir.”
Links hung up and tossed his regular phone onto the desk then leaned back in his chair, sinking low into the seat as he tapped his chin with his knuckles. He didn’t like the fact that his plans were being meddled with. He didn’t like the fact that at the start of the day he had three Copellas in his grasp, and now he was down to only one. And he knew that Joza would like it even less.
His latest partnership was one that was held together by the loosest ties of trust. Both parties had an opportunity to benefit from their relationship, and both had something to lose, but Links’s risk of exposure was greater than his associate’s.
Joza was a gangster, a madman at the head of an empire fronted by a billion-dollar company. People knew the types of deals he brokered and the types of people he employed. But he was untouchable, and that was his most important quality.
Links opened the burner phone and read the message that Joza’s men had just sent. He had thought of having her killed, knowing that the assassins Joza hired wouldn’t be able to get her out in time before the authorities arrived, but keeping her alive afforded him an escape route if necessary.
Neither the mother nor the daughter knew of Links’s involvement. It was only the father that knew. And while Charles Copella had showed some level of resistance to their methods of interrogation, the associates charged with extracting the needed information from him were close to achieving their goal.
Using the burner phone, he dialed Joza, knowing it was better if the news came from him rather than from some eager low-level minion looking to get on his good side.
“What?” Joza answered, annoyed.
“The mother has been compromised.” Links’s stomach soured at the silence that followed. He knew Joza was considering his options, weighing the pros and cons of the situation, and whether the partnership should continue. For a madman, he was incredibly analytic. It was one of the reasons Links sought him out in the first place.
“Do you have the codes?” Joza asked, his tone shifting to curiosity.
“I’ll have them by the end of the day.” Links turned to his computer and typed the name Chase Grant into his database. A profile appeared, and then he accessed Grant’s police file and news clippings about the events that led to his dismissal from the Seattle Police Department.
“This was supposed to happen quickly,” Joza said.
“There have been some unforeseen complications.” Links scrolled through the files, stopping on a name that he’d seen before, one that he recognized. “I need more contractors.”
“For what?” Joza asked. “You’ve already run through a number of quality candidates.”
“I know,” Links answered. “But this one will be much easier.” He clicked on the name, and a picture of Grant’s former partner appeared on the screen. “It won’t take long.”
9
When Grant, Sam, and Hickem returned to the marshal building in Seattle and had gotten through the thick line of press that had gathered outside, they were welcomed with wild applause. Hickem soaked it in, while Grant followed Sam off to the side. She provided curt nods to her peers with each clap on the back or shoulder she received on her walk through the building.
Once they were out of earshot, Sam slowed, letting Grant walk alongside her. “You’d think the job was done with the amount of fanfare that we’re getting.”
“People like to be a part of something,” Grant said. “Everyone is feeling the pressure on this one.” He nudged her arm. “You should take it as a win.”
“It doesn’t feel like a win.”
“It usually doesn’t.” Grant turned a corner and followed her toward Director Multz’s office.
Even after they stepped inside, Multz didn’t look up from his desk, refusing to speak until Grant closed the door behind him. “So what are we looking at?”
“Mother is at the hospital, being tended to for injuries sustained during her captivity,” Sam answered.
“Anything serious?”
“They chopped off three of her fingers on her left hand,” Sam answered.
Multz dropped the pen he was using to write with and then leaned back in his chair. He rubbed his face and then crossed his arms over his chest, his face ruddy from the vigorous scrubbing of his cheeks. “Status on the father?”
“We might have something,” Grant answered then fished the phone out of his pocket. “I pulled this off the shooter in the attic. A text was sent right before we burst inside. The number was blocked, but I don’t know what kind of hardware you guys are dealing with.”
“Sam, take that to the lab and put a rush order on it to see what they can pull up.” He reached for the pen again and returned to the paperwork on his desk. “I want you two to get down to the hospital and find out what the mother knows before Hickem and his people have a chance to sink their teeth into her. I’ve put a request in with the medical staff at Seattle General to only allow you two access to her once she’s been cleared. Obviously, we won’t be able to keep Hickem from her forever, but at least we’ll be able to question her before he can manipulate her answers.”
“What about the daughter?” Grant asked. “Does either Anna or Mary know about each other yet?”
“No,” Multz answered, finality in his voice. “I want you two to stay with the mother until the doctor gives the all clear, and then I want the pair of you to personally escort her back here. Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” Sam answered, and Grant nodded.
“Good.” Multz returned to his work. “Now hurry up.”
Grant followed Sam out of the office, and the pair walked shoulder to shoulder through the halls. “You really think that Hickem will just stand aside and let us question her without him?”
