The Captain stood up and grabbed the slip of paper from him.
“OK, you two, get down there and I’ll meet you at this address with the teams. And no heroics from anyone.”
Tooms smiled and left.
Brant picked up the phone and dialled the extension for SWAT and the bomb squad. He couldn’t help but think, “what the hell have they gotten into over there?”
FORTY-NINE
In less than an hour the building was surrounded, streets blocked off and helicopter units hovered above. The Captain pulled up, with Tooms and Tony arriving soon afterwards.
“So you two, what sort of hell have you for me today?” As the three of them stood outside their vehicles, the Captain looked pissed but his anger clearly wasn’t directed at them. A banging sound emanated from a dumpster container next to Tooms.
“What the?” yelled Tooms, as he and Tony both drew their weapons. Steel rushed forwards and darted between them and the dumpster.
“As much as I would love you to shoot the bastard, he may be a witness.” Steel removed his handcuffs from the container’s handles and dragged the man out, tossing him towards his fellow officers.
“This guy may have some answers.” McCall said, giving Jerry a swift look of contempt.
“Get him out of here.” yelled Brant, and two officers grabbed the man and took him away.
The group gathered next to a patrol car. Standing around the vehicle stood two sergeants; one was from the bomb squad, the other was a SWAT commander.
“Captain. I’m Sergeant Matt Carter of E.O.D and this is Sergeant Jack North of SWAT,” Said the bomb squad man. The Captain shook their hands.
“Gentlemen, I’m Alan Brant of Homicide and these unlucky pair of sons-of-bitches are detectives McCall and Steel.” After doing the usual courtesy handshakes, they moved to the car where laid out on the hood was a blueprint of the building.
“OK, what we got?” asked the tall ageing Sergeant Carter. Carter had been in the force a long time but he knew everything there was to know about explosives. The tall African-American man was bald and had a small beard. He was tall and had the build of a prize fighter rather than that of a technical type. The other man, Jack North, was much younger and had an arrogant presence about him: McCall noticed his body language towards Steel, almost as if he found Detective Steel to be some kind of threat. He was shorter than the others and his large-jawed head terminated in a blond flat top hairstyle. The man was keen and looked as if he might have a complex where authority was concerned.
Detective Sam McCall stepped forwards and scanned the plan. Using her finger she explained about their entry into the building and what they had found in all of the rooms up until she reached one particular door marked on the plan.
“This room here was the problem.” She looked round at her captive audience, and scowled as she noticed that Steel had found a squad car to lie upon while she gave the briefing.
“Inside we observed that the place had been set up into some kind of maze.”
The two sergeants looked up, suddenly curious.
“A maze?” Sergeant North stepped back and crossed his arms, as if to show his disbelief.
“Yes, a maze. Large cargo boxes stacked up around, I don’t know, seven feet or more.”
Sergeant Carter beckoned for her to continue.
“That wasn’t the problem however. As we continued further in we noticed pools of light created by holes in the ceiling. Steel threw some dust at the pools and that’s when we saw the lasers.”
This got everyone’s attention; Steel smirked to himself as he felt the mood change.
“What sort of lasers?” asked Sergeant North, his arms falling to the sides of his body.
“Strings of light, pretty much like on a laser sight,” she shrugged. These were the experts, she thought.
“Any ideas, Jack?” asked Sergeant Carter. The two men faced each other almost as if they were in a private conference.
“Well, it could be some kind of alarm system,” replied the SWAT commander.
“Claymores,” shouted Steel from his rest place, making everyone turn to look at him.
“Excuse me?” Sergeant North looked at Steel with an air of contempt. “And what makes you think claymore?”
Sergeant North turned away from the recumbent Steel, as if dismissing the idea.
“New type claymores have laser trip wires, not conventional cord ones,” Steel added still lying down, getting some sun. Sergeant Carter nodded to concur, studying the floor plan once again.
“So what are you thinking, Mr Steel?” Carter asked.
Rolling off his comfortable perch, Steel walked forwards and looked at the floor plan. “Our best bet is to take a bird’s-eye view, see what’s down there, and then plug the holes.” He stood back slightly and let them figure it out.
“OK, you lost me.” said Sergeant Carter.
“The glass roof,” McCall spoke up, her face suddenly animated. “The building has a glass roof, that’s where the pools of light are coming from. We can look through the roof then plug the holes.”
The Captain smiled as he noticed how his pair of detectives sparked ideas off each other.
“To what end?” Carter asked, then went on, “Ah, I get you, Ok, I got it, good idea. Plug the holes, then we have a better chance of seeing the lasers.”
“But just in case, when we send the teams in they will have infra-red attached.” added North.
“So what do you think?” Steel said, turning to Tooms.
The detective was caught off guard. Why was he asking me? Tooms thought to himself. His guilty mind was working overtime. Had the Captain been on the phone with Steel after their talk?
“Why you asking me?” Tooms asked nervously, crossing his arms in front of his chest to try and show some sort of defiance.
“Joshua, you were Special Forces, weren’t you?” Steel asked.
Tooms suddenly found himself muddling his words. “Yes, why?” there was a defensive tone in his response.
“Hey, look man, I just want your opinion.” McCall gave Tooms a strange look; she had never seen him behaving like this.
“Oh, OK.” Tooms answered. “Well, the thing about those mothers is knowing which is the business end. It’s not like the cable ones where you can just snip it in the middle, no, these are a real bastard.” He looked at Steel, who shot him a friendly smile.
“Plus the other problem,” announced Steel. Until y now McCall hadn’t realised how bad the situation was. With Steel’s next words she learnt the worst.
“The other problem being secondary devices. If they are mad enough to put claymores out they are sick enough to do that. That’s the bad news.”
Everyone gave him a look of surprise.
“And the good news is?” asked Tony, whose head was still spinning from hearing about the possible devices inside the building.
“My guess is there is something inside worth getting rid of, don’t you think?”
The Captain had to agree: there had to be something really important inside, that was worth booby trapping the building, and blowing it up rather than letting it be found.
“Sir, how long could a laser light last for?” McCall asked Sergeant North.
The sergeant looked puzzled. “Couldn’t say really. Why?” He leant forwards onto the hood of the car and looked at the plan, trying to look busy.
“Well how long would it last, unless it was plugged into the mains, which I doubt very much. The fact they’re still working suggests to me that someone had to have recently turned them on.” The Captain now had a bad feeling where this was going.
“And your point, Detective?” North didn’t have time for games.
“It means we were set up. Again.” McCall’s words were bitter. Steel had always maintained his fear of revealing too much on the off-chance of a mole within the department. Now his uneasiness was hers, she hated the thought that someone in the station could set them up like this.
FIF
TY
Not wanting to risk anyone seeing them through the weathered skylight, they sent a tactical helicopter. The small but nimble craft was propelled by quad rotors and had a built-in camera that could transmit data back so that the room could be mapped out. Before anything else was done, the holes in the roof had to be plugged to ensure complete darkness: one lucky volunteer made his way onto the roof and sprayed over the unpainted parts.
“OK, Sir, roof secure. Teams Alpha and Bravo report ready,” reported the radio op to Sergeant North.
“OK, move them in but first sign of trouble move them out.” North replied.
The man nodded and relayed the instructions.
The two teams moved in slowly. While their pistols were drawn, the men’s Heckler and Koch UMP machine guns were slung on their backs and ready to go. Creeping in, they reached the large room. Both point men stopped and looked at the mass in front them. Through their night vision goggles the scene looked immense and somewhat terrifying.
“Fuck me,” said Alpha’s point man.
“Report teams, what do you see?” asked the HQ party. Inside a blacked out large van was the operations room for the SWAT team. Monitors flickered and voices came over the loudspeaker.
“Sir, put it like this: what we see don’t look good,” the reply squawked over the speaker.
Moving in further the units split apart, taking both sides of the junction; suddenly the two teams stopped and went to ground.
“Sir we have a big problem.” The two point men switched on a small camera so that HQ could see what was happening.
“What in the name of everything holy is that?” Sergeant Carter eased forwards to get a better look. On the small monitor they saw a long corridor of boxes and down the centre they saw the lasers, what seemed like hundreds of thin beams of light: some going from top to bottom, others travelling from left to right. It was almost a nest of beams.
“Get your teams out now!” yelled the Captain, but North didn’t require the prompting, he was already nudging the radio operator to retrieve the teams.
All teams came over the net to confirm they were at a safe distance and returning as ordered., Sergeant North grabbed the comms set from his head and threw it down on to the makeshift operations desk.
“What now?” asked Brant. He could see the frustration on North’s face and he felt the same.
“We blow the building, make it safe.” Carter stepped forward, he was calm and knew that this was the only option.
“We can’t do that, there could be evidence inside,” yelled McCall.
“Yes, there could be, but we don’t know that for sure, do we?” North was still mad, his face was red and beads of sweat rolled down his tanned skin.
“We have to check first.” McCall lined up beside Sergeant North.
“Oh, really and who is going in? You?” he replied sternly.
“What about the copter?” asked Steel. Everyone turned to look at him. Steel was still lying on top of the squad car grabbing some rays of sun.
“What about it?” Carter stepped towards Steel, looking at this strange man and wondering who he was and where he came from.
“Well you fly the copter in, have a snoop round and if there is something we can get to we just drop in from above.” Steel didn’t move, he just casually lay there looking up and admiring the beauty of the day.
“From above?” North looked puzzled.
“The roof has a skylight, remember?” McCall added, smiling at his plan, knowing this would infuriate Sergeant North if it worked.
“Sounds good to me,” announced the Captain confidently.
“But didn’t the copter map out the grounds before?” asked Tony.
“No, we had to bring it in when everything went south,” announced North with a regretful look. They talked at length about the possibilities and equipment required. SWAT had pulleys and lifting gear available, so a team was assigned to go up on the ageing roof to assemble the cross beam construction ready for use.
“OK then, so who is the lucky bastard who is going in the harness?” Sergeant Carter asked, rubbing his hands together. The group turned and Steel could feel all their eyes burning into him.
“It was his idea.” North pointed at him with a wide grin.
“Thought so.” Steel got up and moved to McCall’s car and popped open the trunk; removing a large black canvas bag, Steel headed for one of the other disused buildings.
“Where the hell are you going?” asked Sergeant North, thinking Steel was making off.
Steel turned and smiled. “Just slipping into something more comfortable,” and so saying he headed into the building.
“Captain Brant?” Sergeant Carter asked the officer, as he watched Steel disappear into the building.
“Yes?” Alan Brant was watching the others as they saw their colleague go to get ready for this dumb-ass mission.
“Captain, where the hell did you find this guy?”
The two men looked at each other, and eventually Brant smiled. “He found us, man, he found us.”
The Captain turned and headed back to check on the copter operator.
FIFTY-ONE
It had taken some time for the metal construction to be put together, and now it resembled the skeletal structure of a medium sized marquee tent or the roof frame to a house. This framework would be put over the skylight and would support Steel as he went down into the room below. The detective walked out of the building and headed towards the command centre. Everyone there stared at Steel’s outfit, which was black and, as far as McCall could see, fitted snugly. The all-in-one outfit resembled a driver’s wetsuit apart from having carbon woven patches on the knees, elbows and shoulders. The gloves and boots were attached to the strange-looking suit so it was entirely one unit, with only John Steel’s head remaining uncovered.
McCall ran up to the English detective. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she said, urgently.
He just smiled. “Are you are volunteering then?”
“Sorry, not my style, but it’s a nice outfit.”
He shrugged and smiled at her, as she stared into the strange new glasses he had on. “Look, someone has to go in, I know he has left something, it’s part of his game.”
Sam McCall knew that he was right but on the other hand he had grown on her. She turned and saw the small helicopter take off and make its way to the entrance. All doors had been locked open, thus facilitating easy access for the helicopter.
“He’s right,” said a sickly sweet voice from behind them. As soon as she heard his voice she knew that it was the creepy Doctor Davidson. McCall and Steel looked over to see a quite perturbed doctor. McCall concluded that it was most likely the dirt that was bothering him, McCall thought, as she studied the way he kept brushing his trousers. He didn’t want to be here, and frankly most of them would have preferred him to stay away.
“Any thoughts, Doc?” Steel didn’t really need any psychobabble pontifications to know that this was one big trap, but on the other hand he felt kind of sorry for the guy.
“It’s clear that the person we are looking for has a flair for the dramatic, he is meticulous and brutal,” Davidson responded in his usual heart-warming manner, but still seemed more concerned about the dirt on his suit.
“In other words! Watch your ass.” Tooms added. He didn’t like the idea of the coming operation either, but like Steel said, someone had to do it. Steel continued his way to the command centre, where the chiefs were waiting for him.
“Steel, what the hell are you wearing, Son?” The Captain’s face showed an element of surprise and laughter as he studded the tactical suit.
“You know it’s not under water, right?”
Steel shot him a patient smile. “This suit blocks any heat signatures given off normally, so if there are any sort of sensor traps it should block them.”
The Captain looked puzzled as he studded the suit more closely.
“I don’t know, I find it kind of fetching,” an
nounced Tina as she walked up to the party, her eyes trained on John Steel.
“The doctor is here on the off chance that there could be casualties.” The Captain said it quickly, then changed the subject.
The man at the flight controls yelled for the others as his copter had moved to the middle of the room.
“Hey guys, I think we have something here,” he said. The camera showed the centre of the maze and in the middle sat a man in a chair. Steel stood up and looked puzzled. McCall turned to him, concerned at his sudden movement.
“What’s the matter?” she asked.
“Is it just me or does this guy have a really bad thing about putting people in chairs in the middle of really bad situations?”
McCall had not thought of it like that, but she had to agree.
“OK, so we have one male in the centre of a room, any theories?” The Captain asked, standing up after leaning in on the monitor. He looked searchingly at the others.
“We go with the plan,” Steel said firmly and shrugged as if to say no other options.
“OK, you go in from the roof and then get the hell out of there, understood?” the Captain told him. Steel had no other plan in mind. He didn’t like the thought of going in anyway but staying in there was worse.
Steel broke off from the group and headed for the warehouse, and then McCall grabbed him.
“You know this has TRAP written all over it?” she said to him urgently. “So why are you going?”
“We need this evidence—you need this evidence. Besides it’s a piece of cake: I go in, he comes out they get me out, we go home. Simple.”
But she knew it sounded too simple, and wished that she could see into his eyes to know what he was really feeling.
“You better get your ass back here.” She hoped that a display of anger would mask her concern.
A man ran up to Steel and tapped him on the shoulder. “Sir, we have to go,” he said. Steel nodded and ran off with the other man.
“He is too much of a pain in the ass to die,” Captain Brant said to her quietly. “Hell wouldn’t have him I bet, too much trouble and you know he ain’t ever going upstairs.”
Rise of a Phoenix: Rise of a Phoenix Page 19
