by Lily Harlem
SWAT
By Lily Harlem
SWAT: text copyright © Lily Harlem 2019
All Rights Reserved
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from Lily Harlem.
Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s written permission.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Please note this book is intended for mature readers.
Cover Art by Studioenp
Editing by Author Marketing Services
Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
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About Lily Harlem
Chapter One
Within every large police force there's a group of men and women with elite training, equipment, and skills who get the calls no one else can handle. I’m one of them. Being a member of SWAT fifty-five is all I’ve ever wanted. Getting here has demanded intense focus, incredible dedication and a talent for firearm handling.
Although right now, about to get shot at in Little Havana, Miami, I’m beginning to wonder why it was my dream—this is more like a nightmare.
“Spot us,” I said.
“Got you,” Carl replied through my earpiece.
I nodded at my colleague Ricardo. “Three. Two. One.” I mimicked the numbers with my fingers.
He used an enforcer to whack the door open. It flew wide on its hinges, the wood splintering as it hit the wall.
I rushed into the narrow hallway, weapon at the ready and gripping a flash-bang. Building entry training kicked in and I swept the deadly end of my gun around the first room I came to. Nothing—just an old, stained sofa, table littered with cartons and mess, and a dusty TV turned off. “Clear.”
Jonathan scooted past me, his armed shoulder padding brushing the bulletproof vest on my back. He swept the next room with one quick flick of his head around the doorway. “Clear.”
I retreated, adrenaline pumping through my system and my pulse thudding in my ears. We had reliable intel that Enrique Faldon was holed up here with his crew. Warrants were out for possession and two counts of murder—he was a man we wanted off the streets of Miami. Though he wasn’t likely to come quietly, hence our presence at five in the morning.
“Clear,” Patrick called from across the hallway as he stepped from yet another room, at a guess I’d say kitchen.
I zipped past him, keeping my weapon high. I turned to the left, shoved a dirty green door with my boot. It swung open, revealing a steep wooden staircase leading downward. “Armed police. Show yourself, hands up,” I shouted.
I was greeted with the sound of banging, then glass shattering. “Down here,” I called to my team. “Movement below.”
Without hesitating I threw the flash-bang and closed my eyes. Within a second there was a satisfying boom and the familiar hiss and smell of smoke.
A yelp and a few groans accompanied it.
“I’m going down,” I shouted, then rushed into the gloom. With each step I prayed a bullet wouldn’t find its way through my armour. Because that would mean a failed mission.
I hated failed missions.
More than anything.
Ricardo was behind me. I sensed someone else too, Jonathan perhaps, or Patrick, I wasn’t sure which, but it wouldn’t be both—someone would stay up top with Carl to keep our retreat unobstructed.
As I made it to the basement floor the smoke began to clear. A brilliant white patch shone through the haze at the far side. A window. Broken.
“This way.” I leapt over two mattresses strewn with twisted blankets and lumpy pillows, then another table littered with mess including needles and condoms.
Using the brilliant green light on my weapon, I swept the room. All my senses were honed in on seeing a face, a gun, a potential threat.
Nothing.
“Shit.” I huffed in anger.
“There.” Ricardo was at my side. “They’ve gone through the window.”
He was right. An upturned black crate stood amongst the broken glass on the floor.
“After them.” I raced to the window. There was blood on several shards of glass and a strip of torn blue denim. Using my gun to push the fragments aside, I then hopped onto the crate and shimmied through the window. It took a little effort in all my gear but I was quick to land, defences up.
I was in a small concrete courtyard with high fences all around. An old motorbike—minus a back wheel—laid horizontal and leaking oil. Next to it a soot-coated drum still dribbling a wisp of smoke.
“What the hell?” I muttered.
Ricardo was out in the open too, gun sweeping the area. “Where’d they go?”
“Must be up and over. Come on.” I ran to my right. I’d seen a way out of the courtyard. A makeshift step in the shape of an old barbeque.
“Freya,” Ricardo called. “Wait.”
His footsteps were fast behind me and I was quick to scoot up and over the fence. The descent on the other side was nearing seven foot but I dropped carefully, keeping my knees soft.
Still it jarred my back and a pain shot through my hip. But I ignored it, the way I’d been trained to, and scanned the gloomy alleyway. It was long and straight with three-storey, dirty-windowed buildings either side. A burned-out car hosted foul-smelling bin bags, a ginger cat dashed into a drain, and a pile of mattresses were rotting.
Ricardo landed next to me, the air huffing from his lungs.
Patrick was a second behind him. The thick knee pads of his kit saving his patellas a crack or two. “Have you seen anything?”
“No. Damn it.” How could we have lost Enrique and the other scumbags laying low with him?
Suddenly I spotted it. Movement behind the burned-out car. A flash of black leather. The glint of a pistol.
Bang.
The familiar whizz of a bullet too close for comfort screeched past my ears.
The fence behind burst with energy as it was hit.
“Take cover,” Patrick yelled, scooting to the right.
I didn’t need telling what to do and sought refuge behind a rusting old refrigerator. I fired off a round towards the car. My weapon chugged in my hand as the bullets released. They hit nothing but metal.
“Is it him?” Ricardo asked, pressing close to my side so he, too, was in cover.
“I’d say so.”
Another three bullets headed our way. I slapped my hand on my helmet, sensing they were damn close.
“Bastard.” Ricardo leaned to his right, and returned fire.
More bullets, pinging off the fence and rattling from the walls.
“That’s a different gun,” I said, looking up. “Shit, there’s more of them.”
To my horror I realised we were being fired on from above. That meant our cover was useless. I had point-something of a second before a bullet with my name on hurtled through the air.
And then I saw him—a tall man, bare-chested, scrappy black beard—
holding a shotgun. The business end pointed my way like a deadly black eye staring at me.
I raised my weapon, found him in my sights, then fired. Twice. Each shot went straight into his mouth.
He had no time to react. No time to know what was happening. His body simply crumpled forward. It hung for a second over the low windowsill then fell, limbs akimbo, and crunched onto the ground.
“Fuck,” Ricardo said. “I hadn’t seen him.”
“We’re not out of danger yet.”
“Cover me,” Patrick shouted.
He stood and ran towards the car, spraying bullets as he went.
Ricardo and I kept watch for movement, but there was none.
Patrick crouched, panting, behind the trunk.
“Requesting backup,” Ricardo said into his radio earpiece. “Alley due north of operation point.”
“Backup on the way,” was the crackling response in my own ear.
“Enrique Faldon, you are under arrest,” Patrick shouted. “Drop your weapon and show yourself with your hands up.”
Nothing.
“He’s got to still be there,” Ricardo muttered.
“Yeah, we’d have seen him running.”
“You’re outnumbered,” Patrick went on. “There’s no place to run. Give yourself up.”
Still nothing.
“Fuck, we’ve lost him,” I mumbled.
Patrick looked at us and shrugged.
“Don’t take any chances, Patrick,” I said quietly. “Faldon is an ass-wipe.”
“He won’t,” Ricardo said, straightening with his gun high. “And if anything happens, we’ve… fuck!”
Suddenly, from directly to the side of Patrick, Faldon appeared. He was a skinny, bald guy with tattoos covering his head and neck. He wore tight jeans, ripped at the knee, and his feet and torso were bare.
He held a revolver and within a split second of appearing he had it jammed beneath Patrick’s chin, one of the few parts of his body not protected by his SWAT uniform.
Ricardo stepped forward, quickly tipping his gun so it was pointed at the sky. “Steady. Steady. Why do you want to put another murder on your list of offenses?”
“Get the fuck out of here,” Faldon sneered, jabbing the gun harder and forcing Patrick’s head back at an angle.
Patrick grunted and made an attempt at holding onto his weapon as Faldon tussled to get it.
“Stop!” Ricardo called. “Take it easy. No one needs to get hurt here.”
“You bags of shit all need to go. Now.” Faldon yanked Patrick’s gun from him and let it dangle from his fingers. “You’ve got ten seconds to disappear then I blow your buddy’s head off his fucking neck.”
“Wait, wait.” Ricardo was getting closer. His spine erect, his wide shoulders even broader in his uniform. “Let’s talk about this.”
Nausea swept through me. I’d seen shit like this before. It was fifty-fifty whether or not it would turn out well for Patrick. But I beat down my physical reaction; it wouldn’t do anyone any good.
Instead I slowly raised my weapon over the refrigerator. Taking a few deep breaths I followed it, knowing my helmet would be in view should Faldon care to look my way.
In the distance sirens blared. A dog barked to my right. I concentrated on Faldon. He was shouting now, his voice high pitched, the octave telling me he was panicked. Like a wild animal cornered, he was unpredictable and dangerous.
And he had my friend’s life in his hands.
This bastard thinks Patrick is nothing.
I looked through my sights. Push had come to shove. I could react to this. It was what I’d spent my adult life training for.
I would be victorious.
I pushed fears of failure to one side. I had no room for them. The only fear was fear of the unknown and I knew I could take this shot. I was close. Calm. It was perfectly doable and the outcome predictable if I concentrated and did what I was good at.
He was in my sights but he wasn’t still—he was yelling, his head moving, he was staggering a little too, and taking Patrick with each step.
Ricardo was talking again. I blocked out what he was saying. Gut instinct told me Patrick was running out of time. Faldon was spooked and if he was going down, like any piece of shit, he’d take as many with him as possible.
But he wouldn’t take any of my team.
I had the capacity to kill. I’d done it before.
I blew my breath out through pursed lips and emptied my lungs completely. I was as still as I could be. My heart was the only thing in my body moving. I applied pressure to the trigger of my gun. Twice.
That was all it took.
A double tap.
Faldon went down.
For a second the outright violence of my shot was stunning—the two small holes between his eyes. A spray of blood from the back of his head that scattered onto the car and stinking bags.
And then it was over. He was on the floor, arms underneath him and legs jutted out to the sides in the uncomfortable way dead people fall.
“Fuck!” Patrick staggered to the right.
Ricardo was there in an instant, gun aimed at Faldon as he wrapped his free arm around his colleague.
“Everyone okay?” I stood, gun also aimed at Faldon, though I knew full well the life had gone from him.
“Yeah,” Patrick said, rubbing his neck. “Head still on.”
Ricardo swung his gun around the grimy alley, pausing on each window.
There was no movement. Not a flicker of a grubby curtain or the whisper of a face at a dirty pane of glass.
“Job done,” I said, walking their way, my boots quiet on the pot-holed ground. “Another asshole bites the dust.”
Patrick looked at me. He was paler than usual, his pupils wide and the whites of his eyes visible.
I bent and reached for his weapon. Faldon still had one finger curled around it. “Here you go, buddy.” I passed it to Patrick.
It took him a moment to take it. I guessed he was in some kind of shock. A near-death experience could do that to a person.
But not usually a member of a SWAT team. This was our job. Our daily lives.
“You okay?” I asked.
He nodded and extracted himself from Ricardo.
“Maybe you should go get some coffee,” I said.
“Coffee,” he repeated and glanced at the fence we’d all come over. “Yeah. Coffee.”
I frowned. “You in shock?”
“No. No, I’m fine.” He used his gun to point at the fence. “I’ll go fill Jonathan and Carl in. Get that coffee. Wait for backup.”
“They’ll be five minutes yet,” Ricardo said, finally lowering his weapon. “This place is empty. Well, apart from the two dead guys, but we won’t count them.”
I squeezed Patrick’s arm through his black clothing. “You want me to come with you?”
“No, you stay here.” He swallowed and nodded at Faldon. “And Freya… thanks.”
“For what?” I laughed. I knew full well why he was thanking me.
He didn’t return my humour. “You saved my life. That guy wasn’t messing around. I could hear it in his voice.”
My smile dropped. “So could I. It’s why he now has two bullets on his mind for all of time.”
“You’re a hell of an officer,” he said, then clasped his hand on my shoulder. “Never forget it.”
He bowed his head and walked away.
I stared after him. There was something final in the way he moved. As if his uniform was suddenly too heavy, as though holding a gun no longer suited him.
“What the fuck?” I muttered when he climbed the fence and dropped out of sight. “You think he’ll be okay?”
“Who? Patrick?” Ricardo tugged off his shades and poked them into one of the many pockets on his vest.
“Yeah.” I frowned. “He’s not getting any younger.”
Ricardo laughed. “None of us are.”
“You know what I mean.” I glanced up the alleyway again.
Still nothing. It was like a ghost town. “This place is a hell hole.”
“Yeah.” He poked Faldon with his toe. “Good shot by the way.”
I leaned forward and examined the neat holes in his forehead. Each had a small trickle of ruby-red blood leaking from the centre. “So was that one.” I pointed with my weapon to the other dead guy. “A good shot, that is.”
“Yeah, him too.”
My heart rate picked up. It was as if I’d suppressed the adrenaline so I could aim, but now it was coming out to play. It was there. It couldn’t be ignored. The wild fight or flight chemicals surging through my blood needed an outlet.
I ran my gaze over Ricardo. What lay beneath his black combats and protection was really fucking hot. He was pure muscle, toned to perfection and his skin a gorgeous smooth olive colour that dampened with sweat when he got near to coming.
“Fuck me,” I said, stepping close to him.
“What?” His eyes widened.
“Here, now.” My chest butted against his and I spoke onto his lips. “Fuck me, Ricardo, quick.”
Chapter Two
“Freya?” Ricardo said.
“You know shootouts make me hot for it. Come on.” I gestured around. “We’re alone. We’ve got a few minutes. Let’s fuck. Let’s just do it.”
He swallowed but didn’t object. I hadn’t thought he would. Ricardo’s sex drive was almost as wild as mine.
“Good boy,” I said, slipping my hand to his groin and cupping his cock.
He opened his mouth as if to object to being called a boy, or maybe complain about my bold touch out in the open, but then he shut it again and gritted his teeth.
His cock was semi erect. A few squeezes and it grew solid.
“Shootouts make you hard, eh?” I said.
“You make me hard.” He sheathed his weapon and snapped his arm around my waist. “Over here.”
He dragged me to the left, so we were out of sight of any windows.
Good, he’s as committed to this as I am.
As we walked I made my weapon safe then set to work on the buttons on his combats.
“Jesus, Freya,” he said, shoving me up against a wall. “You really want to? Here? It’s filthy.”
