Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  guy's chest. "Then I'm going to break your neck,

  and then your skull. Youll be a vegetable for the

  rest of your life. Now talk. Where's the Major?"

  "I swear I don't know," the biker gasped, his face

  contorted in pain.

  "Who contacted Mullins? Who met Mullms

  here?"

  "I never seen him. One of his guys, one of his

  lieutenants, came here, but I didn't see him. Mullins

  told me he was going to meet the Major at a

  ranch in Wilton. I don't know where, I swear to

  God! . . ." f

  "Were they Germans?"

  The biker nodded. "Yeah ... yeah, Mullins said

  he didn't want to deal with no krauts, but they paid

  him good."

  "Where was this ranch in Wilton? What road?"

  No response. Patrick forced the biker's head between

  his left arm and his side and squeezed. "I'll

  pop your head right off your damned shoulders if

  you don't talk!" But the guy had fainted. Patrick let

  him drop in a heap on the floor and headed for the

  bar. He knew that the patrons had probably scattered

  like rats in a fire when they heard the gunshots

  , but he had to find that other biker. If he was

  this guy's friend, he might know more about . . .

  "Police! Freeze!" Patrick turned. Two plainclothes

  cops with gold badges hanging from their

  necks were taking cover just outside the back door,

  aiming what looked like very large automatic pistols

  at him. "Hands up! Turn and face the wall!

  Now!"

  Patrick ran a system self-test. Battery levels were

  still in the green, but down to less than two hours'

  endurance. He had only had the suit on for less than

  an hour-must be a problem with the power-reserve

  indicators. Taking all those gun blasts certainly

  didn't help. He could probably withstand these cops

  emptying their guns on him, but he couldn't take

  the chance of more cops showing up and his power

  draining down into the reserves or to emergency

  levels. He would then have no choice but to surrender

  "I'm unarmed," Patrick told the cops. He raised

  his hands, palms out, so they could see they were

  empty. "I'm leaving now. Don't shoot me. I might

  hurt you if you shoot, and I don't want to hurt the

  police."

  "Shut up, turn, and face the wall!" one of the

  cops yelled. Patrick started walking out the door,

  hands raised.

  "Oh shit," the second cop muttered, "he's not

  going to stop. I heard gunshots in there-do we

  shoot this asshole?"

  "He doesn't have a gun, dammit," said the first

  cop. "I don't see any weapons." He shouted again

  for the guy to freeze, but he kept on coming.

  "Fuck," said his partner, bolstering his weapon.

  He shouted, "Cover me!" and ran full speed into

  Patrick like a charging linebacker.

  The first cop heard a dull clunk when the two

  bodies collided. -The guy was knocked backward

  into the wall by the flying tackle, but his buddy lay

  facedown on the floor and wasn't moving. The guy

  simply got on his feet, took a second, as if regaining

  his balance, raised his hands again, and started for

  the door, careful not to step on the unconscious cop. A

  "Freeze!" the first cop shouted again, aiming his

  9-millimeter SIG. "Stop right there or I'll shoot!"

  He had made the decision to shoot; his partner was

  down. At Patrick's next step, he fired three

  rounds-two in the chest, one in the head. He heard

  the scream as Patrick collapsed on his back.

  The cop grabbed his portable radio and keyed the

  mike with a shaking hand, keeping his gun aimed.

  "KMA, Sam One-Niner, shots fired, officer down,

  officer down, one suspect down, send cover and an

  ambu-"

  He broke off in midword, gaping as the guy in the

  helmet crawled to his feet, held on to the wall for

  support for a moment, then walked toward the

  door.

  This time the shot hit somewhere in the torso,

  but after reeling back against the wall as before, the

  guy pulled himself up, pushed the cop out of the

  way, and stumbled out into the alley. The arm that

  shoved him felt like a steel bar, but by now he was

  so stunned, the guy could've used a feather..

  "Mother of God!" the cop muttered. He followed

  the guy outside, his smoking pistol still leveled at

  him, but a small crowd had formed out in the alley,

  so he had to lower the gun and decock it. The crowd

  let the guy trot past them and down the alley, his

  gait improving with every step until he was sprinting

  by the time he vanished out of sight.

  Tom between pursuit and his downed partner,

  the cop retrieved his radio and mashed the mike

  button: "KMA, Sam One-Niner, the 245 suspect

  . . ." Shit, how in hell was this going to sound

  on the radio? He'd just reported that the suspect

  was down-now he was running down the

  street? . . . "Suspect is on foot heading west down

  the alley behind the Bobby Tohn Club, heading

  toward Fairfield Street. All units be advised, the 245

  suspect is wearing a black leather jacket, dark coveralls

  , some kind of backpack, and a full-face motorcycle

  helmet. Suspect . . . shit, suspect does not

  appear to be armed but should be considered dangerous./I

  A

  At Del Paso Boulevard, Patrick ran left onto Fairfield

  Street. Using the thrusters in his boots, he

  leaped to the second-story roof of an abandoned

  printing shop, then paused to do another system

  self-test. Battery levels were already in the emergency

  reserve range. The emergency reserves were

  for escaping and survival, not for fighting. if he encountered

  any police now, he'd have no choice but

  to surrender.

  Patrick called up and interrogated the discrete

  global positioning satellite search function on the

  heads-up display inside his helmet. A tiny red blip

  appeared, with a direction and range to the target.

  The red blip was Jon Masters, riding inside a specially

  equipped AMC Hummer they were using as a

  mobile support vehicle. Both Patrick's suit and the

  Hummer carried satellite navigation transponders,

  for each of them to see and track the other's location

  . Masters was now less than two-tenths of a

  mile away,, cruising around the target area and trying

  to look as inconspicuous as a six-thousandpound

  Hummer wagon could look on a city street in

  the middle of the night.

  Using the thrusters, Patrick hopped from roof to

  roof along Fairfield and Forrest streets until he got

  to Arden Way. He waited on the roof of an apartment

  building until he saw the Hummer moving

  closer. Then he leaped off the roof, landing on a

  patch of lawn-right beside a startled guy just getting

  out of his car in the parking lot not forty feet

  away. Patrick ignored him. Fifteen seconds later,

/>   when the thrusters had recharged, he made another

  leap across the parking lot and lit down a few feet

  away from the Hummer as it slowly cruised down

  Arden Way. He pulled open the door as it stopped;

  then Jon hit the gas and sped away as fast as the big

  all-terrain vehicle could take them.

  After they crossed the river and headed down Sixteenth

  Street south toward the downtown area, Jon

  finally asked, "How did it go?"

  "Great! It went great!" Patrick said, removing

  the helmet. Remembering his awful visage when he

  had taken off the helmet after the demonstration,

  Jon had been afraid of what he might see this time,

  but Patrick looked pretty normal. "Everything

  worked great!"

  They had installed a portable gasoline-powered

  generator in the back of the Hummer, and Patrick

  started it up with a push of a button, then brought a

  cable around and plugged it into a receptacle on a

  bottom corner of his backpack. Although he

  couldn't monitor the power levels without the helmet

  on, he knew from testing that it would take

  thirty to sixty minutes to recharge the backpack

  power unit.

  "We're done for the night, right?" Jon asked hopefully

  . "You got what you were looking for?"

  "Hell no-we do it the way we planned!" Patrick

  answered. "I got a lot of good information, but I

  need more. The next stop might give us the rest of

  what we need to bust these guys."

  "There seemed to be a lot of cops around . . .

  "We'll do it the way we planned, Jon," Patrick

  repeated. "We'll go to a wider radius to keep this

  vehicle away from the next location. If all else fails,

  I'll meet you at Sac Executive Airport, at our rendezvous

  point. I can hide in the hangar or up on the

  tower."

  Jon fell silent. it had to be played out . . .

  ROSALEE SUBDIVISION,

  ELDER CREEK NEIGHBORHOOD,

  SACRAMENTO, CALIFORNIA

  A SHORT TIME LATER

  Sometimes it took days to find the best location

  for parking a surveillance van. Ideally, the crew

  wanted a spot a block or so'down the street from the

  target address, close enough to see and photograph

  everyone entering or leaving the premises with a

  medium telephoto lens or to look inside an open

  garage, but not so close as to attract attention to

  itself or the target. Even in better neighborhoods,

  the van had to be moved periodically so it didn't

  attract attention or become a target for thieves or

  vandals.

  Although it only involved sitting, waiting,

  watching, and listening, doing a surveillance was

  tough, uncomfortable, tiring work. Depending on

  the neighborhood and the nature of the operation,

  the cops doing the surveillance could sometimes

  switch with other officers for food or relief breaks.

  But a lot of times they -were stuck inside the van for

  the entire eight-hour shift, forced to use "piddle

  packs," portable toilets, garbage bags, or soft drink

  cans to do their thing.

  But the worst part of a surveillance, even after

  only a couple of days, was the godawful smell.

  Thankfully, few cops smoked inside the van anymore

  , but a closed-up surveillance van quickly

  collected a variety of odors-fast food of every conceivable

  kind, sweat mixed with various deodorants

  and perfumes, fumes from a leaky exhaust, and

  other, more unmentionable, smells. Leaving the van

  actually made it worse. The cops grew accustomed

  to the smell after a couple of hours, no matter how

  bad it was, and if they then left the van to grab a

  bite or take a piss, the fresh air made getting back

  into the stinky, stifling, claustrophobic vehicle that

  much worse.

  The Rosalee subdivision, between Sixty-flfth

  Street and Stockton Boulevard north of Elder Creek

  Road, was one of the predominantly white areas of

  the Elder Creek section of town, with lower- to

  middle-class homes on generally nice suburban or

  semirural streets. Go a few blocks in' any direction

  around Elder Creek, howeveri and it was very different

  territory. Some houses showed pride of ownership

  , with clean yards, neat landscaping, and fresh

  paint; but most were rentals, subrentals, sub-

  subrentals, or squatter-occupied, and no handyman

  or can of paint had come near them in years. The

  area was a melting pot of races and ethnic backgrounds

  : whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, plus every

  possible mix.

  The house just north of the target address on the

  corner was a very nice single-family property with a

  decent-looking lawn, well-trimmed shrubs still

  wrapped in burlap to protect them against the winter

  frost, plenty of lights surrounding the place, and

  a For Sale sign in the yard. The reason for the sale

  was probably the ramshackle house next door, a

  one-story frame structure of rotted wood and cracking

  stucco set in a dirt yard covered with patches of

  brown grass. It was surrounded by a mangled, rusting

  chain-link fence, and a huge pit bull terrier

  prowled the yard, barking fiercely at the slightest

  provocation. Some of the windows were boarded up,

  and others caged in steel bars bolted onto the outside

  of the house.

  Usually it's the dirtbag traffic around a house

  that gets cops' attention, but this time it was the

  dog that had roused the interest of Intelligence and

  Narcotics again. When the occupants of the house

  were first busted, they had a fierce rottweiler guarding

  the place; after the bust, the dog was gone. The

  new occupants had a dog too, but it was small, a

  beagle or something like it, just as noisy but no

  killer guard dog. Drug dealers rarely used beagles as

  watchdogs. A few kids' toys in the yard, a morning

  newspaper, and pizza boxes in the trash cans were

  more indications that maybe the occupants weren't

  dealing or cooking meth.

  But a few weeks later, all these domestic touches

  began to disappear. The foot traffic increased, the

  toys vanished, the take-out food containers were

  gone-meth users never ate very much-and the

  beagle was replaced by a pit bull. It definitely attracted

  attention.

  The objective of this surveillance was to observe

  and look for opportunities. it had been suspected

  that the Satan's Brotherhood was using this house

  for selling or distributing crank, but Narcotics had

  never been able to get enough solid evidence to

  prove it. They had tried every trick in the book:

  making traffic stops of vehicles that had recently

  been to the place, hoping to find some crank inside

  so they'd have probable cause to get a warrant to

  search the house; tailing frequent visitors, hoping

  to catch someone on possession with enough stuff

  to go after the house itself. N
one of this ever panned

  out. Neighbors were too terrified of the Brotherhood

  to cooperate with the police, and there was simply

  not enough weight moving into or out of the place

  to attract serious manpower. Surveillance on the

  house had been spotty at best, and it was finally

  terminated because the police couldn't justify the

  cost or time to the captain, or the probable-cause

  circumstances to a judge who would be asked to

  sign a search warrant.

  But the house was definitely Brotherhood and

  probably a meth lab-and it had survived the recent

  bombings. Even on lean days, the place probably

  turned several thousand dollars' worth of methamphetamine

  a week-if someone was going to wipe

  out the Brotherhood's drug outlets, this certainly

  would have been on the list. That was enough information

  for Deanna Wyler to order surveillance restarted

  .

  The last three hours of this twelve-hour shift

  were the real dog part. This was when all the coffee

  in the thermos was cold and the burgers sat like

  lead weights in the gut, slowing down blood circulation

  and acting like a big sleeping pill. The van was

  cold, the seats smelled musty, and the rubbercovered

  eyepiece in the 180-millimeter telephoto

  camera was slimy from all the oily eyes that had

  touched it.

  A few subjects had approached the house this

  evening, but they had been scared away by the pit

  bull. One visitor did bring out an occupant of the

  house; the surveillance teams got some good snapshots

  of a big biker-looking guy with long, stringy

  dark hair a beard, and a leather vest over a bare

  torso, but little else. The big-ear directional microphone

  picked up an argument between the two.

  "What you got, man?" the visitor had asked, his

  voice coarse and cracking.

  "What you need? You need a snort, man? I got

  what you need." They had met at the chain-link

  fence, but it was obvious that the occupant didn't

  want to be out in the open too long.

  "What the hell is this, man?" the buyer asked

  angrily. "That ain't no line."

  "Where you been, muthafucker? There ain't no

  shit on the street. The Brotherhood's fucked. This is

  it, man. You want it?"

  "You rippin' me off, man."

  The surveillance officer eyeing them through the