The Verdict on Each Man Dead

by David Whellams

  Henry put up his hand; it seemed appropriate. “Are you hoping he’ll blow himself up with his own bomb?”

  “It might be the best outcome, but I don’t count on that result. The buildings will be kept almost empty. No cocaine or hash left inside. He won’t bother with the grass this time. There will be many bags of powdered milk, however, for him to take.”

  Peter said, “Which direction will Devereau enter from?” His options were the entrance under the portico at the right, or the front desk of the marijuana store to the left.

  “Ah, señor, you are wondering how Devereau can hope to deal with all the guards. Well, I have let it be known that the cocaine and hashish will be trucked tonight out the shipping room side, into the covered laneway. There will be only two inside workers in the central processing area and one token guard in the marijuana store. He will enter at the driveway on our right, snatch the false drugs and retrace his steps. We will be waiting.”

  Peter and Henry both saw the obvious flaws in the setup but said nothing. They exchanged glances. Devereau would arrive prepared to kill everyone who got in his way; better to have no one inside. Plans to trap him in the dark buildings gave Peter no comfort. Devereau would carry enough ordnance to blast his way out.

  Peter owed Joan a call, as he had promised Maddy, even if it was only a heads-up that he and Henry were okay. This was a new era of spousal openness and communication, he told himself. But as he summoned the cottage number to the screen, he faltered. If it all goes wrong tonight, is it better that I told her the risks, or that I said nothing?

  CHAPTER 35

  They abandoned the Avalon before sundown. González’s enormous Escalade barely accommodated the four men and their guns, with two pairs of night goggles adding to the heap; José’s body armour took up a seat on its own. González drove and kept up a stream of orders over a headset, while José sucked on a jumbo bottle of guava cocktail.

  To Henry’s annoyance, they stopped at a burrito stand in south Denver. “Why the delay?” he whispered.

  “Be patient,” Peter hissed back. “We don’t control this.”

  Peter was content with a taco salad, thus branding himself the least macho hombre in the vehicle. José tempted him with a cup of guava, but Peter declined; with his bladder, he would likely be peeing in the parking lot when Devereau moved in to attack.

  Peter remained edgy, no matter his command to Henry, and he fortified himself for what lay ahead by checking his ammunition supply. He ignored the passing highway signage, since maybe it was better that he not remember too many details. The smart move was to take his cues from the Mexicans, who remained self-possessed and confident.

  On a silent and anonymous street in South Denver lined with one-storey warehouses, González pulled over next to a beat-up Honda and an equally scruffy Chevy Impala, each piloted by a small Mexican man. The soldiers got out of their junkers and transferred armloads of guns to the cars. González beckoned Peter to the Honda, while the fat man and Henry got in the larger Impala and drove out of sight. Peter and Henry said nothing to each other as they parted.

  Within a few minutes, with their guns arrayed along the back seat in easy reach, Peter and the drug boss moved into position some two hundred yards from the trisectioned warehouse. Henry was somewhere in the darkness off to their left. A single spotlight flared on in the parking lot, accentuating the shadows and creating hiding places for anyone stalking prospective entry points to the drug complex. Peter assumed that the Mexican spotters were poised to attack from the surrounding block.

  He recognized that his personal risk in this enterprise was high, in part because he hadn’t winkled the full truth out of González. Did the drug dealer know what awaited them in the darkness ahead? Peter knew stakeouts and was in no rush to talk, despite his qualms about González’s plan. González stayed serene. The air had cooled, and only a mild sweep of traffic could be heard from the street beyond the warehouse. The spooky quiet pressed a slow rhythm on the passage of time.

  González spoke without altering his gaze. “Inspector, you know that this will be our last opportunity to get him?”

  “You don’t think he intends to get back into the terrorism business?”

  “No. He is on the run. He will vanish after tonight.”

  “Even if he collects only powdered milk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then, señor, I will be disappointed. I hoped to confront him with his past. His terrorist actions are a disgraceful part of that past.”

  “Even worse than my brother, than Pastern’s wife?”

  Peter closely considered his answer. “Perhaps.”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Inspector?”

  “Yes.”

  Peter laid out the history of Devereau’s involvement with Kaczynski and possibly McVeigh, and his ambition to issue his own anti-government manifesto.

  “Señor, you are a very perceptive policeman, but I have to disappoint you. From everything you tell me, Devereau, or Señor Shaw, was never a very good terrorist. Do you not see that? Was his heart ever in it? You police love to profile serial killers and terrorist bombers, but you do not understand this man. One obvious thing you seem to have missed: he gave up easily. Did he treat the Unabomber with respect? No. He let Kaczynski take all the risk. The same with McVeigh. Where was his courage? He worked behind the scenes but took almost no chances himself. His manifesto? He never finished it, you say. He wrote a few chapters and left the manuscript in that restaurant, and didn’t bother to collect it. He thought he was too good for his proteges.”

  “You’re convinced he will disappear?”

  “Understand, Inspector, he is not a reasonable man. He is a psychopath. After his dreams rotted away, what remained was insanity. He may have fancied his own genius, but what does a psychopath do when no one listens to him? He goes loco. His lunacy lives in the space between his terrorist ideas and his quest for a quiet life.”

  Peter measured González’s argument. Maybe he was right. Devereau had lost control each time he was affronted. He might have lived with Watson’s irritating drug business or waited for the cops to pounce, but instead he lashed out. He was too quick to go after Jerry and Selma. Who understood the triggers of his rage?

  “I think you’re right,” Peter finally said.

  The Mexican tapped the dashboard superstitiously. “The executions. The blood. The bombs. The fires. He is moving fast. He cares about his own safety, not the objectives of any militia movement. He must be dreaded for that reason. He has gone loco.”

  Peter glanced into the back seat at the shotgun. “It’s curious that we don’t know his real name, yet we’re willing to kill the man.”

  “Revenge. Trust it. It sweeps away doubts.”

  “I can live with that,” Peter said.

  There was a long pause. “Are we like Devereau?” González said.

  “Evil?” Peter said.

  “Yes.”

  “You want absolution for your sins, Avelino?”

  González let out a bitter laugh. “No, it is too late for la misericordia. You know about killing men, Peter. DeKlerk told me. To be honest, I invited you along tonight because you understand killing. Neither one of us is looking for a reprieve for our sins, not tonight. I want revenge for my brother. Maybe I just want to round out my destiny.”

  After a half minute, he added, “Like you, Peter.”

  They should have known better. The explosion came fast, and from the wrong end of the complex.

  From the deep shadows behind the drug warehouse, Peter saw the top of a cloud rise beyond the section on their left. None of the three merged cubes presented a back exit, nor even a window anywhere along the rear walls, so the explosion wasn’t easy to interpret. Until then, they had been monitoring the small door around the side to their right, where a feeble bulb lit the asphalt driveway. The false coc
aine shipment, according to González, would emerge from there, and that would be Devereau’s point of attack.

  Too late, Peter realized how blind they were at their observation post in the rear. They had no line of sight on the marijuana store entrance, and González’s two outliers on the far street had failed to report the enemy’s movements.

  On the avenue on the other side of the complex, customers had slowly realized that the cannabis outlet was closed for the night (it was not as though the hours of operation were posted), González having ordered the door double locked and all inside lights turned off. One man was left to monitor the back storage area, but he had nothing to do in the dark but get high on the merchandise. At about 11 p.m., a stream of college students and dopers began to arrive. They peered through the front door and pounded on the glass. By 11:20 a crowd had formed on the sidewalk. The mob rumour mill began to grind, accelerated by dopers quickly convincing themselves that something called marijuana withdrawal was raging through their systems. Screams of “Open up!” swept them forward.

  A tall man in a grey hoodie and a large backpack moved to the front of the group and turned to address them. “Folks, there’s no point in kicking that door in, there’s just another one behind it.”

  “We want our bags,” a kid yelled.

  “Be careful, there may be someone with a gun behind that door,” Hoodie Man replied.

  Another kid called out, “Who are you, spokesman for the marijuana dealers defence league?” Pressure had been building in Colorado to legalize marijuana, but no one laughed.

  Hoodie Man took off his knapsack and reached inside. Out came a sawed-off Remington shotgun. The crowd oohed, and some applauded.

  “Gentlemen, I urge you to stand back. Let me go in first. I’ll let you know when it’s safe.” Witnesses later reported that he sounded reasonable, a leader.

  The crowd retreated from the door and formed a crescent, waiting. Hoodie Man levelled the shotgun at the door handle and fired. The blast obliterated the lock and set the interior steel panel swinging into the anteroom. The solitary guard in the back, completely stoned, heard the explosion as a surreal convulsion somewhere nearby. He got to his feet and stumbled around the dark room in search of his AR-15.

  Hoodie Man — Ronald Devereau — hauled his knapsack through the wrecked doorway. The crowd pressed forward to follow, but two new shooters brandishing MAC-11 machine pistols stood in front of the entrance and gestured for the students and down-and-outers to hang back. The pair slipped inside, leaving the crowd staring at the yawning doorway.

  Devereau knew the configuration of the complex. He dodged around the front counter and kicked wide the door to the storage area, where the guard was fumbling with his AR-15. Devereau could have erased him with a shotgun blast, but he moved aside to let one of his men do the job. The MAC-11 stuttered, and the guard flopped onto a low pile of marijuana-filled plastic bags.

  The use of the MAC-11 was deliberate. Devereau knew that the distinctive sound would reach the street. It was the sound of professionals at work. The crowd respected it and stayed back from the door for the time being.

  The three invaders halted in the first big room and assessed the doorway to the middle building, where the cocaine, heroin, and premium hashish were processed. Devereau verified that it was thirty minutes shy of midnight. It was possible that the hash and blow were already in the far building, but he didn’t think so; the two guards would move it to the exit at the last minute. This was the moment of greatest uncertainty for the attackers. Their inside man had promised that it would be easy to penetrate the central factory, but that informant, who now lay in a mess of blood-smeared Ziplocs, had also greeted them with an AR-15. Treachery was to be expected at every step of this gauntlet.

  Devereau calmly took a wooden box from his bag and went back to the counter area, while his two gunmen waited for his signal to assault the centre building. There were more bystanders on the sidewalk than he had expected. He slipped the box under the counter. Three twenty-year-old students watched him from the edge of the doorway. Devereau swiftly returned to the storage area, and thirty seconds later the bomb went off. It wasn’t a large device, and was fashioned as much for its bang as its lethality, but the force of it splintered the vertical panel supporting the counter and drove a quiverful of wood shards into the inquisitive students, killing all three.

  The breach of the middle door had to be finely timed; Devereau waited another few minutes, until his watch read 11:50. He had deployed a five-man team. Two of them, one armed with an Uzi and the other with a Glock 17, waited on the far sidewalk down at the end of the three linked buildings. They heard the bomb and saw the smoke roll out onto the street. They waited in the gloom, poised to attack the shipping door from outside at the ordained moment.

  Out in the parking lot, Peter and Avelino González leapt from their car seconds after the first blast. Peter guessed (mistakenly) that the bomb was a diversion and that the main objective remained the shadowed doorway to his right. He opted to hold back one minute longer; meanwhile, he retrieved the shotgun from the back seat of the Honda, reasoning that in such darkness it would be the most effective weapon against the pending attack.

  González blew off Peter’s strategy before they got fifty feet beyond the car. “They’re going through the front door. They’re getting to the shipment that way.” He gestured to the left, where the smoke from the bomb was still rising.

  Peter was unsure how the three buildings were connected. Any guard inside would be smart to barricade the doors between the units. Peter then realized that Devereau knew all about the linking doors and likely would have a second bomb ready to blast his way to the centre. His outside crew would attack the exterior door by the asphalt driveway, catching the defenders in a squeeze. Either way, the door on the right offered the best opportunity to stop Devereau. Peter checked his shotgun load and made for the paved alley on a diverging vector from the Mexican.

  Far off, he caught sight of Henry and José running for the narrow passageway that would take them around to the left, to the marijuana store. Screams reverberated overtop of the building and into the parking lot. Henry was running full tilt now, so fast that he had to slow down to unholster his .45. Peter guessed at his logic: with the panic on the street and the likelihood that the attackers were well inside the building, it might now be safe to break for the store entrance. Even so, the game would get trickier. Henry, José, and González each carried a pistol; Peter judged that they would need shotguns to overwhelm the squad inside the marijuana dispensary.

  The Mexican had left a skeleton crew of two soldiers in the middle building, where the phony narcotics were stored. They might slow down the invaders, but Peter doubted that González could make a squeeze play work. Peter heard the machine pistol bursts from Devereau’s team and concluded that they had the clear advantage in firepower.

  Peter was almost at the driveway. He hesitated, scanned the dimly lit door beneath the overhang, and listened. Devereau probably had enough men to attack from both ends and work his own trapping manoeuvre, in which case Peter had to watch for a barrage from multiple directions.

  As well, González’s two spotters lurked somewhere out in the streets and at that moment must be trying to reach the boss and José on their mobiles. Peter had no doubt that their instructions were to shoot any gringo who tried to enter the shipping door. He wasn’t about to ring the bell.

  None of these scenarios transpired. Peter learned the details later. José and Henry reached the marijuana storefront before González. Three bloodied and inert students had been hauled out to the sidewalk by bystanders, and the crowd had re-formed and was pressing towards the façade. Wisps of smoke hung in the air outside the building; more drifted from the large round hole in the side panel of the counter inside. Henry was in the lead. So close finally to meeting his enemy, he fought for a clear line of fire, but González, abandoning caution, pushed p
ast him and José and charged into the gloom, obscuring Henry’s shot. González, Henry later reported, gave off the vibe of a gunfighter hell-bent on a face-to-face shootout.

  Just for a second, Henry made out the shape of his ghostly target — it must be Devereau — ten feet away.

  Devereau had brought along a specialized device to blow open the middle door. It resembled something manufactured by the Unabomber, the lab would later note; he had designed the blast to shoot forward and up to the level of the door lock. He planted it a mere two feet from the metal frame and with his two shooters retreated into the marijuana storage area and took shelter behind a pair of desks.

  González halted by the marijuana stack, his pistol extended. The haze from the first bomb obscured the ambush. Henry thought he had the Mexican’s back, but in fact Devereau was less than ten feet from González and Henry when the second device detonated, launching González backwards onto the dozens of crates of packaged marijuana. Fragments of steel and wood punctured his chest and throat in fifty places, killing him by the time his body stilled. In the flash, Henry saw Devereau clearly, and Devereau saw his face in the same instant.

  The explosion pushed Henry back and onto the floor. A piece of shrapnel carved a groove across his forehead as he fell, stunning him. Devereau could have finished him off, but he kept to his plan. The bomb had blown the connecting door off its hinges, and he and his men, armed with their MAC-11s, pushed into the factory room. The blast rendered the token guards deaf and ineffectual in the smoke and heat. One of the attackers moved forward and sprayed the middle room with Colt ammo, executing one defender and wounding the other.

  Outside, hearing the two explosions and the advancing gunfire, Peter guessed that the attackers were heedlessly blowing up everything around them as they moved through the cubes. He waited for a third explosion, but for a minute there was silence. Peter himself felt exposed to multiple angles of approach, so he moved to the bushes to wait, knowing it wouldn’t be long.