The Tin Man

by Dale Brown

  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. None 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 rubber-covered 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 oneway window scowled. “They could be talking about buying Girl Scout cookies, for chrissakes,” he muttered. He knew there was nothing in their conversation so far to hold up in court. “C’mon, boys, do the deal.”

  An exchange was made, and the officers got pictures. The twenty-dollar bag of a white crystalline powder looked like a speck of white paint, a fraction of the normal size of a hit of meth. “They’d laugh that buy right out of the courthouse,” the surveillance officer said. “We need some weight, boys. These mouse-shit-size buys aren’t going to cut it.”

  “There’s hardly any dope on the streets,” another officer said resignedly. “Everyone’s scared to be holding any weight. They think whoever took out the Brotherhood might go after them.”

  “We should give this thing another week, when the brave cookers start gearing up,” said another officer as the buyer moved off and the seller went back inside. “Nothing worthwhile is happening now.”

  “Politics,” the officer watching the front door said. “The chief and the mayor want something for their press conferences, something so they can show folks they’re in control. Election day is coming, and…”

  “We got another guy,” the officer with the camera interjected. “Sheesh, I must be getting tired. I didn’t even see him walk up.” He looked up from the eyepiece, rubbed his eyes, then went back on it: “Medium height, about five-nine; husky build… looks like he’s wearing a full set of leathers, jacket and pants. How the hell can those guys wear those things? He’s wearing his helmet too. One of those full-face jobs.”

  “I didn’t hear a Harley,” the other officer remarked. “Usually you can hear those things three blocks away.”

  “I don’t see a bike.”

  “No bike, huh?” Now they were all interested. “What’s he doing?”

  “He’s… uh-oh, he just walked right through the front gate. That pit bull’s going to have him for breakfast-I don’t care how much leather he’s wearing.”

  “This oughta be good.” The second officer lifted a set of binoculars and peered through the one-way mirror. “Here comes doggie booking around the house.” They could hear the angry barks and growls. “The guy must be a regular. The dog must know him.”

  “That dog’s still on the hunt… oh shit, looks like he’s going to pounce! Better hop the fence, dude!”

  The pit bull pounced, all right, jaws extended, teeth flashing in the light of the front porch, going right for the newcomer’s left wrist-then let go as soon as he clamped on. They watched the dog shake his head, bark, growl again, and then leap for the stranger’s left ankle. The same thing happened-the dog bit but did not hold on. At this angle they could see that the guy was holding a small backpack in his right hand. A third leap, and this time the dog clamped down hard on the fingers of the guy’s left hand. The force of the bite jerked him around to the left and downward-but then, as casually as swatting a mosquito, the stranger slapped the dog on the side of his head. They heard him yelp in pain and saw him knocked to the ground as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat. Weird. The slap didn’t look that forceful.

  “And the dog is down!” one of the surveillance officers proclaimed. “Ha! Never saw a pit bull run with its tail between its legs like that before! What’d he use on the dog-a Vulcan nerve pinch or something?”

  “Mace, probably,” said another officer.

  “I didn’t see him spray. Anyway, sometimes badass dogs like pit bulls aren’t affected by pepper spray. He’s a lucky bastard, though. He might be cranked up already, and the pain is going to hit him full force when the dope wears off. Hope the crank is worth it. Maybe we can just go and pick this guy up and see how his hand is doing, and ask him what he did to that dog.”

  “I don’t really give a shit,” said the head surveillance officer. “Wonder what he’s got in the backpack? He just set another bag down by the front door. His hands are clear. Maybe this is a delivery.”

  “Through the front door? Yeah, like Domino’s or something-your crank delivered in thirty minutes or less or it’s-”

  A huge explosion rocked the van. The cops’ heads flew back as if they had been stabbed in the eyes, the brilliant flash temporarily blinding them. “Shit, what the hell was that?” one officer shouted, trying to rub the flash out of his eyes. “He set off a bomb?”

  “Sure as hell did!” said another officer. “Looks like he tried to plant it, but it went off before he could get away.” He scrambled for his handheld radio, hoping it was set to the right channel beca
use he couldn’t see the selector knob if it wasn’t. “KMA, Special Unit Four-Four, roll backup, fire and bomb squad on our location for a nine-two-seven bomb explosion. Notify all units of nine-nine-four circumstances, repeat, nine-nine-four circumstances.” The sergeant in charge of the south area sector got on the radio and repeated the 994 call, reminding everyone responding to the call to use bomb threat procedures: no radio, MDT, or cellphone calls within two blocks of the scene.

  It took several long moments before the cops in the van could get the use of their eyes back. When they finally peered through their telephoto lenses, they could see the stranger lying on his back, blown about ten feet away by the force of the blast. “Looks like the biker got a faceful,” one officer said. “I hope the ambulance guys bring spatulas-they’re gonna need…”

  He stopped, and his jaw dropped in disbelief. The stranger who had planted the bomb and looked as if he had been smashed flat by the explosion struggled to his feet and a moment later was standing in the blown-apart doorway of the crank house.

  Patrick heard the dog’s bark through his sound amplification system and he even picked up the sound of its pads racing across the muddy grass from the backyard, but he didn’t actually notice the pit bull until it grabbed his wrist, then his ankle, then leaped for the fingers of his left hand. There was no pain, but the sight of the big dog latched onto his hand frightened him. All he’d meant to do was dislodge the jaws, but the sound he heard when his other hand hit the poor creature’s head was sickening. The dog yelped and dropped to the ground, blood oozing from his ears.

  Sons of bitches, Patrick cursed into his helmet, sending a dog out to fight their battles! He fought to suppress the anger spreading through his head but he was furious. He hurled the backpack full of explosives against the door, selected the short-range FM channel to the detonator, and keyed the transmit switch.

  At the explosion just a few feet in front of him, the light-sensitive visor in the helmet instantly dimmed so the flash wouldn’t blind him, and the environmental system inside the suit began circulating more coolant to drench the blast of heat. But the blast pushed him back and off his feet, and when he opened his eyes, the rage that had seared into his head was burning red-hot throughout his body. He moved his arms, then legs, then torso-everything worked fine, no pain anywhere. A quick systems check: battery already down by half, to four hours remaining. It had been at six hours just before he approached the door, so the blast must’ve sapped a lot of juice. Everything else reported normal.

  The explosion had blown open the door, taken out some of the wall to the left and right of it, and cut off all power in the house, but there was enough light from outside for Patrick to realize he was in a living room, with the kitchen visible beyond. The place was a pigsty-the explosion didn’t help, of course, but it had to have been unfit for human habitation before that. Garbage was scattered everywhere, and he could make out spray-painted graffiti on the walls.

  A tall, lean figure dressed like a commando or special-operations infantryman in a black combat suit, balaclava, and combat harness rounded the corner of the hallway to the left, leveled a small automatic machine pistol at Patrick, and fired. He rocked backward as the triple-round burst hit him, more from surprise than pain or the impact of the bullets, since all he felt were the powerful electric shocks coursing all across his body. Damn, Patrick swore, I thought that problem was fixed! The electric current blurred his vision, and when he rocked back, he stumbled against a piece of debris and sank down against the wall.

  “Stirb, du Teufel!” he heard the commando shout. He pointed the gun right at Patrick’s head and fired again.

  This time, Patrick felt the impact of the blast against the helmet-but it was a love tap compared to the surge of electricity that shot through his body. The pain was exquisite, as if every nerve ending was firing like the spark plugs in a race car-but most of all it felt so goddamn good…

  The commando looked as though he were seeing a ghost rise out of a gravesite. “Wer bist du?” he shouted.

  Patrick charged, forearms up. The commando screamed and fell backward into the tiny kitchen. In rage, Patrick bent over him, grabbed his face in his left hand, and pushed his head against the floor. His fingers felt like steel spikes. He ripped off the balaclava and saw a young, fair, chiseled face staring at him in terror. “The drugs,” Patrick said through his electronic helmet. “Where did you get the drugs?”

  “Drogen? Ich weiss nichts!” the soldier cried. “Lass mich los!”

  “Who the hell are you?” Patrick demanded. “Are you a German? Deutsch?” There was no answer. “Who are you? Do you work for the Major? Kommandeur? Der Major?”

  The look on the soldier’s face gave him his answer. He had struck home at last.

  “Where is the Major?” Patrick racked his brain for remnants of his German-it had been years since he’d used it. “Vere… no, shit, wo ist der Major, asshole?”

  “I will not answer!” the soldier said in broken English, and in a flash pulled a knife from a boot sheath with his left hand and shot it toward Patrick’s chest. Patrick caught his wrist, but not in time to stop the thrust, only slow it…

  … and the knife blade inched toward the suit, touched it, then pierced it.

  A warning tone sounded in the helmet. Cooling fluid from the environmental control system spurted out, and then the knife pierced the thin cotton lining of the suit and touched flesh. At the pulse of electricity discharging through the suit, and his panic, Patrick cried out and rolled away. The soldier leaped to his feet and scrambled for the rear door beyond the kitchen.

  The suit didn’t work-the knife had penetrated it! Patrick felt for the breach. It was small, a slit less than an inch long-how in the hell could the BERP suit protect him against bomb blasts and gunshots but not protect him against a simple knife jab?

  Patrick did a systems self-test. He would lose all of his coolant in a few minutes, and after that the sealed-up suit would probably become too uncomfortable to wear. But he was relieved to see that the system integrity was still intact-a cut in the BERP fabric didn’t render the entire system inoperative. He still had a couple of hours of power left.

  He was going to catch the German, torture the hell out of him until he told what he knew about the Major. He activated the low-light sensor in his helmet and stopped in his tracks at the entrance to the kitchen. A body was lying on the blood-soaked floor-a big guy with long, stringy hair, his arms and shoulders covered in tattoos, bullet holes in his head. From the commando’s gun? What was a German commando or soldier doing here in a known Satan’s Brotherhood house? The Major was German too. A connection? Could be that the terrorists who had engineered the bomb blasts throughout the Sacramento area were mopping up the remnants of the Brotherhood they’d missed. It felt like a clue at last.

  He heard a sound in the back of the house and went down the hallway. It was coming from the vicinity of a small bedroom on the right, which had a smell even the suit’s environmental systems couldn’t filter out-but all he could see was debris and garbage, and evidence of some strong chemicals too, probably from cooking drugs. Then he spotted a little nest of soiled blankets and a filthy pillow, with some empty fast-food containers next to it. It looked as if a small child had been sleeping there. Fucking animals, Patrick said to himself. Allowing a child to live like this… it’s subhuman.

  The bathroom on the left had been partially blown in by the explosion, and he realized this was where the heart-wrenching sounds of a child’s sobs were coming from. When he pushed open the broken door, he found a tiny little girl inside, half covered in debris from the blast. She couldn’t have been more than two or three, and she was a waif, skinny as a straw, and as dirty and as uncared-for as the house. He could make out bloody cuts on her head; she must have been in there when the explosion hit.

  “Easy, sweetheart,” Patrick said softly. “I’ll help you out of here.” But the child began to scream, a long, wild, piercing scream, and he saw her eyes
bug out and her little body shake in terror. She tried frantically to claw her way out of the debris, but only succeeded in bringing more of it down around her. Patrick ignored the screams, eased her free, and gently laid her down on the threadbare carpeting in the hallway.

  Using his laser holographic heads-up display, he selected the VHF frequency of the UC-Davis Medical Center emergency dispatch center, which he had discovered while with Paul in the hospital. “Davis Dispatch, have an ambulance respond to the residence at Sixty-fifth and Rosalee Heights,” he radioed. “Victim is a female child, approximately age two, with lacerations on the back and head and possible head trauma. How copy? Over.”

  “Unidentified caller, this is Davis Medical Dispatch Center, this channel is for official use only. If you require emergency medical assistance, please clear this channel and dial 911 on any telephone.”

  “Listen, Dispatch, I’m in a drug flophouse in Rosalee with a dead drug dealer and a young girl who’s been hurt in an explosion and is probably going into shock,” Patrick radioed back. “The police are on their way. Send an ambulance right now.” Patrick terminated the call and turned to the now unconscious child. He had to try to give her first aid until the medics got there.

  Suddenly Patrick heard a cry, “You bastard! Get out!” and something hit his helmet. A half-naked woman was standing at the end of the hall, clutching an aluminum softball bat. He couldn’t guess her age-she might have been young and maybe even pretty, but the drugs had left her ravaged face seamed, gaunt, and covered with sores, and her hair hung thin and lifeless. “Fucking cops! Leave us alone!” she shouted, and swung the bat again. Patrick let it bounce harmlessly off his right shoulder.