by Hunt, James
“All right you two,” Hickem said, strapping on his bulletproof vest. “We don’t have any extra gear, so I hope you have your own.”
“We’ll make do,” Grant said. He headed for the door and Mocks followed.
“I think this is one of those times where you should take your own advice,” Mocks said as they made their way to the car.
“Well, that’s the great thing about being the person who gives advice, Mocks. I get to choose when and how I take my own medicine.”
“That just sounds like a bad combination.”
Hickem drove like a madman, but Grant kept pace with the FBI van weaving through traffic. Not that Grant minded the speed. Every second that ticked away on Grant’s wrist lowered their chances of success. Once they reached the twelve-hour mark, the odds of a successful retrieval dropped in half after every subsequent six hours.
Mocks had reached for the green Bic lighter in her jacket and was already performing the ceremonious flick of the flint to calm her nerves.
Grant followed Hickem off the highway and toward the shambled structures that comprised the south side of Seattle. Broken windows, barred doors, and graffiti were common sights.
Vagrants shuffled along the sidewalks, swallowed up in their large coats, their hollowed faces and blank stares cast toward the pavement. A group of kids played on a rusted swing set, chasing one another in yards devoid of grass. Much like the rest of the neighborhood, it was nothing but dirt and trash.
Politicians had used the south side as a campaigning platform for years. They promised to clean the city up, but once elected, the neighborhood became a distant memory. There were other worries and issues to think about: the drug and homeless epidemic, and now the human-trafficking problem. But Grant knew it was all connected. You pulled one string, and one hundred others followed with it. The only challenge was figuring out which string unraveled it all.
Hickem slowed and veered off the road. Once he stopped, his agents filed out the back. Grant parked behind them.
Hickem loaded a round into his shotgun. “The house is a few blocks up the road. The moment they see us coming, they’ll dig in. This is your last chance to back out. You two may have seen a lot of shit, but this is going to be different. I promise you.”
“We can handle ourselves,” Grant said.
Hickem shook his head. “Have it your way.” He grabbed two earpieces and a pair of black masks. He handed Grant and Mocks one each. “You’ll need to wear both.”
Mocks lifted the mask. “Seriously?”
“These people don’t know who we are, and you want it to stay that way,” Hickem said. “They are worse than the Mexican cartels when it comes to payback.”
Grant and Mocks did as the man said, and once their faces were covered, Grant opened his trunk, and he and Mocks strapped on their own protective vests, grabbing some extra magazines out of Grant’s duffel bag that he kept stocked for such occasions. He fingered the bullet still lodged in the Kevlar from the raid on Craig Johnson. He hoped he wasn’t tempting fate again.
“Listen,” Grant said. “We need to follow their lead. I’ve seen them in action before, and they know what they’re doing.”
“You think we’re gonna be in their way or something?” Mocks asked. “Or have you forgotten the pair of detectives that saved that little boy earlier today, or the little girl yesterday?” Her tone was laced with sarcasm, but Grant didn’t want to take any chances.
“Hickem is right,” Grant said. “We’re walking into something we’ve never experienced before. I don’t know how bad it’ll get.”
Mocks went quiet, and then after she finished the last strap that secured her Kevlar, she quietly spoke. “I’ve seen bad, Grant. Whatever’s in there, I can handle it.”
A few of the homeless looked up from their feet as Hickem led the charge. Grant’s heart pounded in time with their quick footsteps, and the activity reminded him of the lack of food he’d had over the past two days. He hardly ever ate during an investigation, and with the number of cases he’d had stacked lately, he was practically fasting. Adrenaline would kick in though. That he was sure of.
They reached a crossroad, and Hickem stopped thirty feet before the turn, holding up his fist, halting the crew. He signaled for the rest of the team to head around back, and then motioned Grant and Mocks toward him.
“You two stay on my six the entire time, understand?” Hickem asked.
“We won’t get in the way,” Grant answered.
“I’m not worried about you getting in the way,” Hickem said. “I’m worried about you getting shot.” He leaned closer. “The moment we turn this corner, they’ll have a line of sight on us, so brace for impact.”
And whatever hell Grant thought would rain down on him didn’t even come close to what happened next.
Two men stood guard on the house’s front porch. AK-47s hung from their shoulders. It was one hundred feet between the street corner and the house, but when the gunfire started, it felt much closer.
Bullets spit from the automatic rifles and tore into the concrete and asphalt as Hickem rolled left behind a low-lying concrete wall that was once a perimeter fence. Grant and Mocks followed, the sound of every gunshot pounding in their chests.
“Just stay down!” Hickem said, then squat-walked a few feet forward. He shot straight up and returned fire, his movements quick and mechanical. He squeezed off a half dozen rounds, and then retreated back behind cover.
Gunfire erupted to Grant’s left, and when he turned, he saw that Mocks had stood and fired as well. He yanked her down, and another barrage of gunfire vibrated through the wall.
Hickem walked over and gave both of them a shove. “I don’t need any cowboy shit.”
“No,” Mocks said. “What you need is cover fire. We know how to shoot.”
“She’s right,” Grant said. “We can help.”
It was impossible to study Hickem’s facial expressions behind the black mask. But with his eyes focused on Grant, the detective knew he was considering it.
“All right,” Hickem said. “Wait for my mark.” He quickly turned back to the edge of the wall, and Grant and Mocks coiled in position.
Shouting replaced gunfire as Hickem craned his neck back toward Grant, holding up three fingers, counting down. On one, Grant and Mocks jumped from cover and fired into the converging gang.
The first two shots hit nothing but the side of the building, but once Grant had a better view of the situation, he adjusted his aim to the trio of thugs near the front porch. With the gang’s attention focused on Grant and Mocks, Hickem sprinted forward and dropped the trio with three quick strikes.
Hickem turned back to Grant and Mocks on their sprint and held up his palm. “Stay back!” The rest of Hickem’s unit crawled up the side of the house and they stormed inside.
Grant pressed his head against the rough grain of the concrete wall and checked the ammunition he had left in his magazine. A piece of cloth blocked his vision and he adjusted his mask to count the remaining bullets. Five left.
Mocks lifted her mask up, her face flush from the added heat. “I can’t see a damn thing with this on.” She wiped the sweat from her forehead.
“Put it back on,” Grant said. “We don’t know when this is going to be over.” More gunshots echoed from inside the house, along with the crash of glass.
The earpiece in Grant’s ear came alive with chatter, and Hickem repeated the same order over and over. “Man down. Man down. Suspects fleeing south.”
Grant poked his head over the wall and saw three gang members heading their way. He pushed himself to his knees, the majority of the wall still providing cover from his chest down, and opened fire.
The first two bullets went wide right, but the third made contact with the rear gang member’s leg. The front two members returned fire, and Grant ducked just as Mocks stood. “No!”
But before he pulled her down, she opened fire, her mask still pushed high on top of her head as the fleeing ga
ng members got a good look at her face. Empty casings ejected from her pistol and Grant yanked her back down.
Grant poked his head over the top, and the gang member he shot crawled on all fours, the automatic rifle still in his hand. He shoved Mocks, who adjusted the cloth over her face. “C’mon.”
He leapt over the side, pistol aimed at the suspect. “Freeze!”
The gang member stretched his arm to aim his rifle and Grant fired just to the left of the man’s hand, forcing the suspect to stop. Grant planted his knee into the man’s lower back as the suspect groaned and rambled in a foreign tongue.
Mocks moved closer and pressed the end of her barrel against his forehead. “Don’t move, asshole.”
The man looked up and flashed a smile that was riddled with gold and silver teeth. Tattoos covered his face, neck, arms, any portion of his skin that was exposed. Some of them were words in another language, others were of women, but the majority were spiders. They crawled all over his body, and when he laughed, the web on the left side of his cheek crinkled.
“We saw you, bitch,” he said, looking at Mocks. “You’re dead. You know that? You’re fucking dead!” He laughed again, and Grant shoved his face into the dirt.
“Detective!” Hickem’s voice boomed outside the house, and Grant let the man go. He walked over, his agents close behind. “You two all right?”
“We’re fine,” Mocks answered.
Grant kept his eyes locked on the suspect on the ground, the blood from the man’s calf staining the dirt and dead grass crimson. “Yeah. We’re fine.”
“I have medics on the way,” Hickem said. “One of our guys took a bullet, but he should be fine. We’ve got a few more inside.”
“There were two that got away,” Mocks said.
Grant nodded. “Looks like they were heading west. Not sure where to though.”
“I know where. To tell their friends what happened and come back with more trouble that we’re not equipped to handle right now.” Hickem looked down at the suspect. “Get him over to the driveway with the others. We’ll sort this mess back at the office.”
Grant peeled the gangbanger off the dirt and kept the man upright on the walk toward the front. He glanced back at Mocks a few times, and Grant shoved his face forward. The ambassador’s story suddenly surfaced in Grant’s memory. All of the death and destruction the Web brought upon anyone that opposed them. It was a fate he wanted to avoid.
8
The interrogation room at Hickem’s headquarters became a revolving door. Grant watched from the one-way glass as the FBI Special Agent worked over each of them, one by one, doing everything he could within the lines of the law, and even stepping over them a few times.
But each interrogation was only met with the same blank stare and same indigenous curses. None of them were giving up anything. Not even their names.
They denied the weapons and ammunition that were found inside the house. They denied the charges against conspiracy to kill law enforcement. They denied the drugs and the fact that they had inhabited a foreclosed building.
“This is a waste of time,” Grant said. “These people would rather die than give up any of their own.”
Mocks sat in the corner, working overtime on her Bic. “I wouldn’t have a problem with that.” Her eyes were focused on the newest suspect inside the room, who just so happened to be the man Grant had shot.
Grant walked over and placed his hand on her wrist, and she stopped. “Are you all right?”
Mocks pulled her hand back. “We need to go back and search that house.”
“The other gang members are probably already there,” Grant said. “It’s too dangerous.”
“C’mon, Grant,” Mocks said, irritated. “You’ve seen it; these guys aren’t going to turn over, no matter what we throw at them. They’re loyal. We need something else.”
Grant looked down at his watch, and the timer rolled over to eight hours. “We’ll need to be quick about it.”
Mocks pocketed the lighter and hopped off the table she was sitting on. “Then we better go before Captain America tells us otherwise.”
They slipped out of the room, and one of Hickem’s agents stepped in their path on the way to the front door. “Don’t want to stick around?” he asked. The man was a little shorter than Grant, but much wider, and it looked like he was all muscle.
“We still have a case to handle,” Grant said. “Tell Hickem that if he finds anything to give me a call. And tell him I’ll do the same.” Grant sidestepped him, and Mocks followed quickly.
The ride over was quiet. Nothing but ambient traffic noise flooded the cabin of Grant’s sedan. He glanced in the rearview mirror, half expecting to see Hickem’s armored truck barreling down after him, but he was nowhere in sight.
“All units, be advised,” Dispatch said, cutting through the silence. Grant and Mocks swiveled toward the radio. “AMBER Alert recovered in northern Skagit County. Adolescent girl. Dead on scene.”
Grant tightened his grip on the wheel, praying it wasn’t Annie Mauer. His stomach tightened into knots. He couldn’t lose her. Not this one.
“Suspect’s name is Bart Malliby, also dead on scene. An accomplice is believed to have escaped, be on the lookout for—”
Grant turned the volume off. Not their suspect. Not their girl. Neither of them said a word for a moment, but Grant still felt the anger simmering, deep beneath the surface. His breathing quickened, and his knuckles whitened against the black steering grip.
“Goddammit!” Grant punched the dash, and the radio’s receiver was knocked from its perch.
One of his knuckles cracked and bits of blood dotted the leather of the wheel and the dash. His hand ached, and he cursed under his breath. He veered left and maneuvered around a slow-moving van in the middle lane and took his aggression out on the accelerator.
“We have to stop them, Mocks,” Grant said, all of his concentration focused on the road, changing lanes, picking up speed, getting to the headquarters as fast as they could. “We can’t let them get away with this.”
“I know,” Mocks said. “And we will.” She placed a hand on his wrist. It was her turn to bring him back from the edge. “But it won’t do us any good if we wreck before we get there.”
The lump in Grant’s throat slid back down to his stomach, and his heart rate slowed. He took three deep breaths, exhaling slowly. By the time they returned to the house in the south side, the anger had dulled but hadn’t disappeared.
Grant parked the car in the corner, and they walked the two houses to the gang’s headquarters. Blood and bullet holes marked the carnage from earlier. On autopilot, Grant unholstered his pistol and took the first steps up to the porch, his eyes darting between the broken windows.
There were no cars out front, no signs that anyone had returned. Maybe Hickem was wrong. With the breach, the gang could have written the house off as a lost cause. But if that was the case, then there most likely wasn’t anything of value left behind.
The conditions inside the house weren’t better than the exterior. While the outside was riddled with bullet holes, the inside was littered with trash and ratty furniture. But it was the smell that made it unbearable. No central heat flowed, so a musty chill lingered in the air. Every breath Grant drew muddled his lungs with crap.
“I’ll start looking in the back, and you check the front,” Grant said. “If you hear anything, come and get me, and I’ll do the same.”
“Fine by me,” Mocks said, stifling a cough. “Sooner we can get out of here, the less time I’ll have to spend in the shower scrubbing myself clean.”
Grant stepped around empty beer bottles and was mindful of the used needles that littered the ground. He thought about asking Mocks if she was okay being around that stuff, but he decided against it. Of course it bothered her. She was an addict in the middle of a drug den.
The rooms in the back were small. Bare mattresses were shoved in corners, and more food wrappers and bottles littered the flo
or. What carpet wasn’t covered in trash was stained in what Grant figured was a mixture of booze, blood, and semen. The walls were decorated with pictures of naked women. A dartboard hung at the end of the hallway, and the misses were marked with tiny holes on either side.
But each room Grant checked had nothing more than the one before it. He wasn’t sure what he would find, and he wasn’t sure what he hoped to find. Maybe a manifesto, some type of communication, anything. If this gang was involved in the mass abductions, or even orchestrated them, then there had to be a paper trail somewhere. The Web wasn’t just flying by the seat of their pants.
“Grant!” Mocks said, her voice excited. “I’ve got something.”
Grant sprinted from the last bedroom and up the hall. He found Mocks in the living room, hunched over a laptop with her gloves on. He walked over, his heart racing at a breakneck pace. “Where’d you find it?”
“It was stashed under a floor board underneath the couch with a brick of coke,” Mocks answered, her keys gliding over the keyboard with one gloved hand. “Along with this.” She held up a small notepad with a bunch of symbols etched over it.
“What is it?” Grant asked.
“Don’t know.”
Car doors slammed outside. Grant and Mocks turned to the broken windows. Three sedans were parked in the street, and three men in suits and sunglasses stepped out. The wind gusted one of their jackets open and exposed the dual shoulder holster underneath, and they openly carried AK-47s strapped to their shoulders.
“We’ve got to go,” Grant said, closing the lid of the laptop and backtracking down the hallway.
Mocks followed on light feet and before they reached the first bedroom down the hall, the front door groaned as the men entered, and a flood of unintelligible voices followed. If they came for the laptop, then it wouldn’t be long before they realized it was gone.
Grant pulled Mocks toward the end of the hall and the dartboard, and they escaped out of sight just as the first gangbanger entered the hallway. The voices grew louder, and the crash of furniture thundered their haste.
