by RW Krpoun
The Zone
By RW Krpoun
ISBN 9781466178373
Copyright 2012 by RW Krpoun
Dedicated to my wife Ann
Chapter One
Crayola crayons-that’s what always stays with me - it sets it off every time. When we walked in, at eye level on the exposed interior studs was an old faded gold and green Crayola box, the cardboard kind that holds sixty plus colors. I had had a box of them as a kid, and hoarded the metallic colors for the most special coloring. I bought a box for my idiot son when he was two, and the goober gave an accurate indicator of his future prospects by promptly eating them.
The narcs had a deal going down, a really hot deal moving fast, so fast that they had to grab people on the hop. We were coming off a noon to ten on a muggy but otherwise bland Saturday night when the head narc, a Sergeant named Cooper, came jogging down to Report Writing 4 where we were sorting out the paperwork of ten hours spent being Anti-Crime, which was police-speak for Jacking With Gang-Bangers & Street Trash.
He needed ‘buyers’, and right away, overtime authorized. Stephen jumped on it, being the hyperactive hot dog, but I wasn’t opposed to staying out a few more hours. My idiot son had stolen my wife’s CD collection and some china her grandmother left her, and there was much drama at home.
Drama, but no chance whatsoever of her agreeing to boot the little moron out of the house and changing the locks. He is in fact my own flesh and blood, and I really can’t make an argument that he had gotten genius DNA on either side of the donor pool, but on the other hand he was raised in a decent neighborhood, went to good schools, and never wanted for anything important. He wasn’t ever molested, and he didn’t get half the whippings he deserved, yet from the time he was self-propelled, he was a monumental disappointment and annoyance. We tried counselors, help books, and family encounters, and nothing helped. He’s eighteen and nowhere near a GED, having washed out of high school over a year ago; a pot-smoking, crack-using slacker busy killing what few brain cells he had to begin with, and from ample experience I could testify that he had no surplus to spare. He continued a troglodyte existence in our basement despite my having washed my hands of him two years ago.
His mother would not hear of him being booted from the nest, which was yet another strain on a dying marriage, so I moved all my papers and important personal mementos (plus my guns) out of the house, arranged for credit card bills to be mailed to the substation, and locked everything of value of mine that I had to have at home in a gun safe whose combination was known only to me.
That personal policy was yet another burden on my marriage, made worse when predictably he stole my wife’s grandmother’s china and hocked it for five cents on the dollar. Naturally, being right focused a lot of blame on me.
Our daughter, age fifteen, was not the sharpest knife in the drawer, either, and was displaying some pretty poor judgment on virtually every issue.
So frankly, I would rather not go home.
The operation, thrown together in the heat of the moment, was based on the sudden appearance of ten kilos of meth going for a very decent price. Cooper and one of his boys happened to have a snitch who was close to the sellers, an important factor since the sellers were just off the boat, so to speak. In any case, me and mine were the buyers, with Cooper was the middleman broker. He had the A-Crime team that relieved us and a couple units from Patrol as a reaction force, the whole thing getting scraped together in thirty-odd minutes.
Personally, I thought it was stupid, because my four-man Anti-Crime team looked like four cops, even in civvies: short hair, no visible tattoos, no jewelry, cheap clothes, cop stares. Cooper said he had billed us as a robbery crew who posed as security guards, which might help. I figured if worse came to worse we might lose the arrest, but what the hell, the DA wouldn’t give the meth back.
The sale was to take place in a condemned house, one of a few dozen row houses awaiting the big hammer in a gutted neighborhood. We went in the back door, Cooper leading the way, and right inside the door I saw the crayon box.
I was right behind Cooper, who was a good enough guy, a year ahead of me in the Academy, and fifteen places above me on the Lieutenant’s list. In fact, his number was about to come up any week now, which would mean cutting off his dreadlocks and goatee and heading out to command a band of blue-suits on Patrol, so he was eager to get all the dope work in before he left; Lieutenant is the top Civil Service rank, so if he planned to climb the ladder, he needed glory.
Stephen Reynolds was behind me, a three-year Patrolman III and ultimate hotdog, a tall, skinny black kid whose parents where from Haiti or someplace; he was so eager he seemed to vibrate during briefings.
Behind the hotdog was Patrolman III Sheila Barr, a short, stocky woman nearly my age, with a burr haircut and a grim attitude. She transferred in six months ago after four years in Patrol. She had done ten years in the County Jail before hiring on with us, and was hard as nails. If the sellers weren’t outsiders we would have had to leave her behind because she knew every dirtbag in the greater metro area on sight.
Master Patrolman Patrick Stabros brought up the rear, a massive shaven-head man who never seemed to blink, and looked like he should have been an Aryan Brotherhood enforcer. Stabros had gone through the Academy with me fifteen years earlier; he had reached Corporal before getting busted down to Patrolman I for a use of force incident that he was still bitter about. I had gotten him transferred to my team after he had done about six months in Patrol (following his three month suspension), and he had gotten his Master chevron back in due course. He was a cop’s cop, intelligent, fearless, and cool, but every so often he did something weird that adversely affected his career. Back in the Academy we all figured him for high command, but life hadn’t turned out that way. Trouble was, Pat had figured it that way as well, and the steadily diminishing scope of his career was making him very sour.
We were a good team, with Stephen jazzing us up, Sheila’s encyclopedic knowledge of the client base, and Pat’s rock-solid technique. I had gotten an Anti-Crime team after running a Patrol Squad for three years, and in the two years I had been Anti-Crime my team had hacked its way to the number one spot amongst the Department’s twenty-four A/C Teams. I was on the very short list for Senior Sergeant, and if I could actually get Lieutenant off this list or the next (a long shot), there was a decent chance of being appointed to Captain before I pulled the pin. I wasn’t really ambitious, but at forty you start thinking about what the next promotion can do to your pension.
Once inside the urine- and mildew-stinking structure we found ourselves in a single room with most of the interior walls reduced to stubs of two by fours, the floor bare wood littered with bits of sheetrock, the outer walls open to the studs and siding. Two battery-powered storm lamps illuminated a filthy card table and the sweating local contact, a black guy with a prison haircut who went by Sly. Six sellers lounged around the walls on three sides, poorly lit by the lamps.
Sly looked sick with fear and I was getting pretty uncomfortable as well. My team was too mixed to feel right except in a casual transaction, and ten kilos was definitely not a casual transaction. We hadn’t expected six in the sell group; three at the most was what we had been told. This was starting to smell like a rip-off, and those never go well. I had been in uniform my whole career, but I had done a hitch in Tactical, a big part of which being covering narc teams doing buys. I’d seen deals go bad, and I was wishing we had more back-up and a better plan.
One of the figures detached itself from the wall and strolled over, an Asian man with solid shoulders and a lot of tattoos on his bare arms; he had a convict’s mannerisms and a killer’s stare, and worst of all there appeared to be body armor under his sleeveless denim shirt.
I knew right then i
t was over: they were a rip-off crew, outsiders slipping in to take down greedy locals. Worse, these were Third World rip-off artists, guys who came from places where dropping bodies was not as big of a deal, and whose fear of killing a cop was radically less than our domestic thugs.
The guy was talking, Sly was talking, Cooper was talking, Stephen was putting the bag with the flash money on the table, and I was casually thumbing the panic button on the ‘cell phone’ hanging from my jeans pocket, feeling extremely naked in a tee shirt, open Hawaiian shirt, jeans, and Reeboks.
The wall to my left had one member of the seller group, the wall I faced had two, the wall to my right had two; I mentally named them One through Five from left to right, and Talker. We were in a bad place and it was getting worse, surrounded, illuminated, and unprepared. I hit the button again, praying that the backup team was making a mad silent rush to us, and took a step to my left.
Gunshots are always startling at close quarters, even if you are expecting them, as much the compression of air as anything else. I saw it out of the corner of my eye: Talker produced a blued-steel heavy-frame revolver from somewhere and fired it square into Stephen’s sternum, smooth and adder-quick. The noise was a slap on the eardrums, an electric shock throughout the body.
I was startled by it, but I was planning before it went off, and my body jumped like everyone else’s, but it came down moving. I had the SiG out of the back of my pants and was moving forward, pumping rounds at One to my left. Six feet away, and three of seven shots missed, but the four that hit were all in the throat and facial area, and he went down without involvement, as the shooting boards like to say.
The entire room was a maelstrom of shots, screams, someone yelling ‘Police’, and someone yelling in an Asian language as I tried to get twisted back around, but my right side was on fire, like a red-hot wire was laid there, and my breathing was ragged and forced as if I had been running.
Cooper was on his back atop the collapsed card table, body arced, mouth gaping in a scream I couldn’t hear, hands clutching his belly. Sly was hugging Three against the wall behind the table, and out of the corner of my eye I saw Talker blow two ragged craters in his back with that damned hog-leg he was using. I was focused on Two behind the table, who was blazing away at me with a Berretta.
My left arm was smacked away, throwing me completely off-balance, the arm was numb below the elbow, and my slide was locked back, although I didn’t recall firing again. I fell to my knees, dropping the empty mag and jamming the empty pistol between my legs. Berretta-boy had taken three of mine in the chest, apparently; his vest stopped them, but he was sucking dry air, and had slid down to a sitting position.
The spare mag was still in my back pocket, but it took three tries to get it into the weapon. Thumbing the slide release, I shot Two square in the forehead as the shooting roared all around me. I lurched back up to my feet, a stupid move but I was running on blind instinct; a detached part of me saw that Sly had not been hugging Three, but shanking him with an ice pick, one for our side.
Talker had dumped his empty wheel-gun and was pulling Stephen’s unfired Glock from his belt when I fired, hitting him twice in the head out of several shots fired. How many fired, I couldn‘t tell; I had a blinding headache from the pounding of gunfire in an enclosed area and the dust was making breathing hard. The pain in my side and arm were combining with the lack of air to give the whole thing a dream-like quality devoid of emotional content.
Then the whole universe erupted in an explosion of pain the sort I had never imagined, could never conceive before. I hit the floor on my right side, which split me in half, and turned out all the lights for a bit. When I opened them I saw Sheila on the ground about a yard away, eyes open and unseeing; shooting was still going on, people were screaming, and I saw a handful of shell casings tumble to the floor from an automatic weapon on the far side of the room. The reaction team didn’t have full auto, I knew.
My SiG P229 was long gone, but I had a SiG P230 in a shoulder rig under my shirt, and while .380 wasn’t nearly as good as the .40s I had been spraying around, it was better than an empty hand. I managed to lurch my torso off the floor, which sparked more pain from every part of my body, and rip the P230 out of the holster.
I promptly dropped it, and then I was hit by what felt like four or five wasps across my right cheek and neck, which nearly caused me to lose it a second time. I heard a scream that I later realized was mine, but I got a grip on the pistol and fired in the direction of the shell casings, getting one or two off before the piece of shit jammed.
Banging it on the floor didn’t clear the action, but I couldn’t remember where the magazine release was, or even see the stoppage, my eyes were watering too badly. I have never felt so frustrated in my life. There was a Berretta Model 21A in an ankle holster on my left ankle, I finally remembered, so I dropped the useless P230 and tried to reach for it, but a sudden shaft of white-hot pain dumped me into darkness.
When I opened my eyes I saw overheads flashing, which was comforting to me, and I had straps all over my body; a pretty blond girl’s face was about all I could see, with a white EMS polo collar visible. She kept asking my name and what day it was, and telling me not to go to sleep. Things were going out and coming back; I kept telling her about the ripoff that my primary backup cost me $650 and had jammed, but I couldn’t remember the date or the day of the week. I asked about my team mates as the pain lashed at me, but she wanted to know who was governor and the time of year. I told her to buy a friggin’ almanac, how was my team.
I must have gone out, because the next thing I remembered was white ceiling, bright lights, and a woman in a surgical mask telling me to count backward. I tried to tell her to get bent, but she sucker-punched me and things went away again. I recall she had very beautiful eyes.
There was a bed, and beeping, and faces over me, and voices that sounded like Charlie Brown’s teacher, or a TASER cam recording. In and out, out and in. I still hurt all over, but while the pain was there, it was unimportant, far away. Whatever they had given me was working pretty damn well.
I finally surfaced enough to see the IV stand and some gizmo with a green LED screen, and a guy in blue scrubs looking at me. He started in on the day and President shit; my tongue felt like a dried sponge, but he gave me some crushed ice, and I managed to give him his answers. I kept asking him about my team, and he said he wasn’t the one treating them, but he would send someone to find out. He told me I had a tissue damage laceration to my side from a grazing hit, a through and through bullet wound in my left forearm that broke the bone but did not appear to be serious (I wiggled my fingers on command), lacerations to my right cheek which were being watched for infection but otherwise were not serious.
My serious wounds were a couple buckshot which had clipped the side of my skull producing a concussion; the MRI had shown no damage to the skull, but there was minor irritation or swelling or something under the area of the impact, which was why I felt so dazed. The big issue was a bullet lodged in my left knee; as soon as somebody said my brain was back to normal they were going back in after it. The first surgery had gone well, but had been done for life-saving only. He explained I had lost a great deal of blood, and would feel weak for a while.
I told him I had no idea I had gotten hit in the head, and then for some reason bitched about my P230 jamming.
Things stayed very fuzzy for a long time; I drifted in and out, and saw people by my bed, including Sheila whom I was pretty certain was dead, or at least too screwed up to be visiting. I remember being taken for surgery, where I apologized to the lady with the pretty eyes for my language earlier and explained that it was the backup jamming on me that had put me in a foul temper. I don’t recall what she said.
I finally came to for real, clearest I had felt since the shooting started, with my left leg in a sort of cast-sling thing, elevated, thirsty as hell and feeling very mellow, even though I knew I was in pain. A nurse gave me crushed ice and took my vitals,
along with the questions about Presidents; I blinked at the walls and ceiling for a while, before exploring and finding my head had a bandage, as did my cheek, left arm, side, and of course my leg. I started sorting out my memories of the incident, wishing I had something to write with.
Things were just getting to feel a shade of normal when Deputy Inspector Breed, the head of Anti-Crime, came in and sat by my bed. He was in his usual suit, but it was rumpled and he needed a shave.
I managed to get through the greetings, and ‘how are you feeling Sergeant, helluva job, helluva job’ formalities. “Sir, how’s my team?”
He sighed. “Master Patrolman Stabros died on the table a couple hours ago. Reynolds and Barr were dead at the scene. Sergeant Cooper is still alive, but its touch and go. We’re not real sure…he’ll make it, I believe, but…he’s hurt bad.”
What he wasn’t saying was that Cooper lost a kidney, spleen, and some other stuff, and that he was going to use a walker for the rest of his life. Of course, he wouldn’t have known all of that at the time, and nobody knew that Cooper would blow his own brains out six months to the day after the shooting.
My father wouldn’t have cried, but he never lost his entire friggin’ team on a volunteer job, either.
“What about the shooters?” I managed as soon as I could.
“None of them made it.” There was a look to him that suggested that none of them really had had much hopes of making it. “Your team accounted for five, and the backup team got the sixth and two outside security they had. None lived long enough to make it to the ambos. The snitch is dead, too.”
It took me a moment to figure out he was talking about Sly. “They had us boxed.”
“Ambush, pure and simple,” he agreed.
“Straight up, boss, how deep am I in it?”
“You?” He looked surprised. “Hell, you’re not even on the edge of it. The shooting is straight, an ambush, there was no problem there. Its clean from start to finish. There will be the usual investigation, Grand Jury review, that sort of thing; we’re bringing in a Ranger team to show its being done fair, but its clean.” He rubbed his face. “Cooper’s Lieutenant signed off on the op; trouble is, he did it verbally, not by request memo, and so Narcotics has issues there. It was a cowboy op, too damned rushed, and now we’ve got three dead police officers, three wounded officers, one dead citizen, and eight dead criminals. There’s people in it up to their necks, but you’re not one of them. Don’t waste a second thinking about that. Once the Grand Jury stamps the paperwork, we’re going to hang a medal on you in front of City Hall.”
