by Mark Wheaton
“Bones!” Billy yelled in frustration.
He tromped over to the window and threw it open. Eyeing the ledge his shepherd must’ve used to further his escape, Billy couldn’t help being at least a little impressed at his partner’s ability. But then his concupiscence-tinged indignation returned with a vengeance, and he set out to locate his dog.
Bones had watched this entire spectacle from the pigeon-shit-covered rooftop of the liquor store across the street. He had heard the familiar grumble of Billy’s Bronco as it rattled up to the apartment and parked half a block up. But Billy was so engrossed in leaving a message on Mitzi’s voicemail that he hadn’t noticed the animal. A second later, when the window was thrown open, Bones had seen Billy again, this time his face colored by righteous fury.
The cop was soon back out on the street, leash in hand, as he glanced down towards the shack Bones used as a stepladder. Deciding a promising lead might lie in the alley, Billy slipped between the buildings and disappeared in back.
Bones waited for Billy to return. When he didn’t, the shepherd got to his feet, stretched, walked to the edge of the roof, and hopped off, descending down a pile of pallets to street level. Waiting for a break in the traffic, the furrier half of the K9 unit trotted across the street towards his building. Climbing on top of the aluminum shack, he leaped to the narrow ledge on the second story, eased around the corner to the front of the building, and disappeared back inside his apartment.
When Billy returned to his apartment four hours later, he found Bones asleep on the sofa. Furious, he had to resist the urge to pull his service automatic, a Heckler & Koch 9mm USP, and empty it into the shepherd’s body. He knew the instant he pulled the weapon, his dog’s sixth sense would trip him awake and, maybe, just maybe, the animal would tear his arm off before he’d gotten off a single shot.
Some days it was a short walk from “partner in law enforcement” to “that fucking dog.”
“We’re heading out, Bones,” Billy said.
Bones hopped off the sofa and began trailing his handler around the apartment as Billy gathered up Bones’s supplies for the trip. He almost couldn’t find the extra-large pet carrier. It took up so much room in the apartment that he’d been using it as a table, covering it with magazines and mail. Shunting all that to the side, Billy tossed Bones’s blue teddy bear inside, stuffed the paperwork he’d brought home from the precinct into the bag containing Bones’s “handler history,” and picked up Bones’s leash.
“Let’s go.”
It was always a long trek out to the airport, but there was little traffic. Billy allowed Bones to sit on the passenger seat and flipped through radio stations as they went. As much as the sergeant wanted to pretend otherwise, his mind was already well past Bones’s drop-off.
He’d Tivo’d Thundercats, hadn’t he?
The thought made him smile. He accelerated towards the exit for Pittsburgh International.
• • •
The United Express flight to Newark lasted only an hour, but Bones fell asleep the moment he’d entered his carrier. And only when the crate was bumping along the ramp out of the cargo hold did he wake up. He knew that he was thirsty and hungry, in that order, but was also curious to see what would happen next.
“Bones?” came a female voice.
Bones moved to the wire cage door of the carrier and saw a young woman looking in at him. She was short, five-foot-nothing, Latina, and had her hair knotted up inside her policeman’s cap tight as a drum.
“Sergeant Marina del Vecchio,” the woman intoned. “I’ll be your handler while you’re attached to the NYPD.”
She moved close enough so that Bones could get her scent. He smelled other dogs on her gloves, including one that was recently in heat. He also picked up the dank stench of human blood, sweat, and excrement. Snorting, he took a couple of steps back.
“Out of the cage or in the cage?” the sergeant asked.
Bones didn’t move.
“I’m going to take that for in,” del Vecchio replied.
She unlatched the cage door and reached in for Bones’s collar. Attaching a black lead to his Pittsburgh P.D. harness, she scowled at the familiar checkerboard pattern of the out-of-town force.
“We’ll have to get you fixed up with a loaner so no one thinks you’re not local.”
She tugged on the leash and Bones dutifully followed.
• • •
On the car ride to Manhattan, Sergeant del Vecchio talked to Bones the entire way, stopping only to yell at someone she seemed to know while going around the toll booths at the Lincoln Tunnel. She told him that she was born in Jamaica, Queens. She explained that her family had been there for years and, for a time, she dreamed of becoming an actress. When she was in high school, she’d seen the respect the Junior ROTC kids got and, despite her school having an over fifty-percent dropout rate, managed to graduate and went straight into basic training two weeks after she’d cleaned out her locker. It was there that she learned she had a natural ability with “MWDs.”
“An MWD is what they call military working dogs,” del Vecchio explained. “Once I got into the handler program, my first assignment was with a Belgian Malinois named Destry. He was just the sweetest dog. We trained together for months before deployment. We did three tours together in Afghanistan, but he was kept on after I finally cycled out. I really hope I can adopt him when he’s on the other side.”
As the sergeant continued describing her time in the military alongside Destry, Bones stared out the window, taking in all the new smells. The area was heavily industrialized, so the shepherd’s olfactory senses were being assaulted by the acrid smells of wastewater treatment facilities industry, oil refineries, and any number of chemical plants, combined with the exhaust fumes of thousands of heavy trucks and commuter vehicles.
Bones came close to vomiting several times, though his mostly empty stomach would’ve discharged little.
The New York Police Department’s Canine Team was part of the NYPD Emergency Services Unit, which was part of the even larger Special Operations Division. There was a training facility on West 20th across the street from the large kennels that housed active-duty dogs on operation days.
“The reason we had to bring you in, Mr. Bones, is because we’re just stretched too thin and have had too many injuries lately,” del Vecchio said, leading the shepherd out of her car on a lead. “My dog, Perseus, got shot on a narcotics raid in Staten Island a few weeks ago after being loaned out to those bozos. I’m still pissed on that one. So, when we go after these assholes today, I’m going to have you in a vest. Pretty sure you’re only being used on point. Detection, intimidation, possible pursuit but not likely.”
The Special Ops division building was old and in desperate need of a facelift. A onetime precinct house, the place had been taken over by Special Ops in the late seventies. Year after year, renovations projects were budgeted and put forth to the city and, year after year, they were among the first things cut. It had gotten so bad that a couple of officers had even come in with buckets of paint on their days off to at least make the first floor presentable. They made it an hour before a visiting administrator accosted them for a work order and shut them down.
So now, alongside curling linoleum, rat-eaten corkboard ceilings, and chipped doorframes, were four half-painted hallways, a reminder to all of the power and absurdity of police bureaucracy.
“That the Pittsburgh mutt?” called a uniformed tactical officer when he spied Bones and del Vecchio.
“This is the guy. Already told him if he felt like biting someone in the ass, O’Hara was just the douchebag to see.”
“Oh, fuck off, del Vecchio,” O’Hara snarled. “Ever wonder why no one buys your shit about gender bias in the division? Five minutes next to you and they know it’s your mouth holding you back. And in an outfit as small as New York’s finest, people talk.”
“Fuck yourself,” del Vecchio called. “But I guess you’ll be doing that a lot now that yo
ur wife ran off with your son’s LittleLleague coach.”
O’Hara blanched. “How’d you…?”
“Like you said, people talk.”
A smirk on her lips, del Vecchio led Bones towards the kennel in back.
“Problem is, he’s exactly my type, Huesos. Six-foot, family of cops going back four generations, Irish drunken fuck, works out every day, probably going to be a captain one day, maybe even deputy chief. His whole life is policing. Kind of guy needs a cop-wife to keep him in line. I just might try to get in on that.”
Bones picked up the scents of at least two dozen different enforcement dogs in the kennel, though there was only one being housed. Del Vecchio led him to the last enclosure, swung open the chain-link gate, and put him inside.
“We’ll get you fed and watered. Take it easy. The operation’s set for midnight, so we’ll rally at ten. Got that?”
Bones looked at her for a moment and the sergeant nodded.
“Good dog.”
II
The tactical team was relatively small. Twelve officers in all, plus Bones and the drivers of the two tactical vehicles. Four car units had been assigned to back up the SWAT officers, but the pervading belief was they would be unnecessary. The Spec Ops guys would breach with a lot of sound and fury, the targets would fold, and they’d call it a night.
For his part, though, Bones was attentive. He knew it was game time. The excitement pulsing through the officers had infected the shepherd as well. He’d spent most of the afternoon and early evening asleep, waking only to eat moments before he was brought onto the truck. Once he was there, his temporary handler quickly attached a camera apparatus to his harness.
“We’re going to hit the lights in this place,” del Vecchio explained. “We send you up ahead, around a corner, into an apartment, and you’ll be our eyes. Got it?”
Bones hadn’t replied.
“Some toy,” O’Hara grunted from a few seats up as del Vecchio checked the camera feed on a handheld monitor.
“I’d let you borrow it, but I’m afraid of what I’d find on the memory stick when you gave it back,” del Vecchio quipped, tugging the harness. “Besides, with your pecs you’d need something more in the realm of a 44 regular, am I right?”
Rather than be offended, O’Hara grinned. “Got post-raid plans, sergeant?”
Del Vecchio offered O’Hara a smile that was at least part invitation before turning back to her charge. “Don’t worry, Bones. My mind’s totally on your safety ’cause I know your mind’s on mine. And I don’t take that lightly.”
Bones eyed del Vecchio expectantly, but she went quiet.
A second later, the captain at the front of the vehicle spoke up. “Three nights ago, a citizen, Mr. Devaris Clark, was thrown off the roof of the building we have business in tonight. We believe it to be the work of one Mr. Chiedozie, a Nigerian slum lord who lines up squats for incoming illegals and then calls INS once he’s drained them dry. He keeps his neighbors quiet with threats of violence. We’re here to round up him and his organization. Some of the people in your line of sight will probably be the victims of his fraud, while others will pretend to be. Not our job. We get ’em down, cuff ’em tight, slide them to booking, and go home. We’re the dog catchers, not the Board of Records, present company notwithstanding.”
He nodded to del Vecchio. She gripped Bones’s lead a little tighter.
“All right. Let’s hit the ground running.”
The tactical vehicles turned onto East 112th and slowed at Neville Houses, but did not stop. The back doors flew open and the teams hopped off and moved directly towards the building.
Sergeant del Vecchio and Bones were the first ones out of the second vehicle. The dank scents that had polluted Devaris’s nose only days before now ravaged Bones. But he had no time to investigate this piece of garbage or that fetid pool of rat piss. He was going where he was led, end of story.
“All right, Bones,” del Vecchio whispered. “Here we go.”
At that moment, Building 7 of Neville Houses was plunged into darkness as the power was cut half a block away by Con Ed employees. Anyone lingering around the courtyard had vacated the second the tactical vehicles showed up on the block, so the team had a clear path all the way to the front door.
“What happened to the lights?” came a voice from the lobby.
“Police!” the captain yelled back. “On the ground, now!”
Bones and del Vecchio moved past the captain to follow the other tactical officers up the stairs. They were heading for the sixth floor but were stopping on five to allow their four-pawed companion to take the lead.
“Ma’am? Please return to your apartment! This is a police matter.”
Whoever the words were directed at seemed to take heed. Del Vecchio heard a door quickly shut. She had on night vision goggles but was already staring into the handheld monitor as the image bounced up and down with Bones’s quick steps. It was times like this that she envied not the shepherd’s incredible sense of smell, but his ability to see in the dark.
“Easy, Bones,” she whispered into her throat mic, her voice traveling into his ears via specially designed ear buds, a loan from the military.
They reached the fifth-floor stairwell and stopped. Del Vecchio waited for the command from the captain, checking and rechecking the view from the monitor on Bones’s back.
“Send him in.”
Del Vecchio took Bones off the leash and indicated the next floor.
“All right, Bones. Search!”
Bones moved up the stairs and glanced down the dark hallway on the sixth floor. Seeing nothing, he walked down the hallway, sniffing at every closed door. A door cracked open up ahead. Bones looked up. As he did, del Vecchio glimpsed a large man peering down the hallway, holding a gun. Del Vecchio showed this to the captain, who nodded.
“That’s our guy. Give the command.”
“Take hold!” the sergeant barked into her mic.
Bones had a significant prey drive. He’d been silently sizing up the man since his hand had gripped the doorknob. When given the command to bite the fellow, it was like an invitation to play time. He would merely be doing exactly what domestication and training kept him from doing naturally.
The gunman sensed something coming at him from the darkness only seconds before Bones’s jaws clamped down with an average 200 psi on his right arm. He’d made the mistake of trying to aim the gun at the unseen intruder at the last moment, giving Bones the moving target he was looking for. The shepherd hit the man so hard that he fell over, dropping the gun as he hit the ground.
Immediately, there were shouts, followed by gunfire.
On the screen, Sergeant del Vecchio counted at least a dozen pairs of glowing eyes. Fear raced up her spine, though it wasn’t her own safety she was concerned for.
“First squad! Go!” cried the captain.
Six members of the tactical team swept up the stairs and onto the sixth floor. Del Vecchio, part of the second squad, stared at the monitor as muzzle flash repeatedly blinded the camera. When she could make something out, the image bounded around. Bones was clearly in attack mode. Her worry switched from the shepherd’s safety to that of the tactical team.
“Bones! Out!!” she cried into her throat mic, unsure whether the dog could hear.
“Second squad! Go!”
Del Vecchio leaped to her feet and followed the others up to the sixth floor. She looked down at the monitor but couldn’t tell if Bones had stood down. Just as she entered the hallway, she caught a glimpse of a man’s eyes staring up at the camera in terror as Bones tore at his shoulder, already out of its socket.
“Bones! Out!” she repeated.
This time, she knew he couldn’t hear, so loud had the gunfire grown. That’s when all other noise was blotted out by the sound of a gunshot so impossibly close to her head that she felt temporarily deafened. This was followed by a numb feeling behind her eye. She looked down at the monitor and saw its screen was now obscured
by a thick greasy film of blood and brains.
Hers.
No one had heard the door to 632 open. The building’s records had the apartment rented to one “Erna Fowler,” aged eighty-two years. She’d been a resident since 1979 and lived alone. The idea that she would step out of her apartment with the small six-shot .357 she kept in a drawer and begin killing the officers in the hall with shots to the back of the head simply hadn’t occurred to anyone in the planning stages of the operation.
As bullets continued to fly, the chaos allowed Mrs. Fowler, married in 1951 to Archie, who died in 1993, to reload the weapon with a speedloader and continue shooting. She felled another two members of the tactical squad and was aiming at a third when a stray bullet from a MPK 9mm entered her left tear duct and exploded out the back of her head.
Still noticed by no one, she dropped to the ground directly beside the corpse of Sergeant del Vecchio, the .357 skittering down the hall before coming to a rest in front of 639.
• • •
Down on the street, Detectives Leonhardt and Garza stared up at the dark building as the distant, hollow report of gunfire continued, punctuated by intermittent flashes of light from three sixth-floor windows.
Leonhardt scrunched his brow. “Weren’t they only breeching 638?”
Garza nodded. “That’s what they said.”
“Then somebody’s got their front door open.”
“Fuck. Hope we don’t have any civilian collaterals up there.”
“We do, and everybody in the precinct will be looking over their shoulder for the next year. To say nothing of how the press will take it.”
“Shit,” scoffed Garza. “Any time these Special Ops assholes come up to 22nd Precinct, they’ve got to make things hard for the rest of…”
Garza was interrupted by a terrified voice over the radio.
“Something’s happened up there!” someone squawked. “We have multiple officers down! We need emergency services and backup! Immediately!”
Leonhardt blanched. He glanced over to Garza, who popped a stick of gum in his mouth.
