Outside of the Wire

by Richard Farnsworth

  Domino held his shotgun low, but ready. Cadmus could smell the silver in the barrel and see the fear in the boy's eyes.

  Joseph handed the rifle over and asked with a pained expression, "Checkers?"

  "He died well. They all did, man and wolf alike."

  "I thought maybe some would have got out," Joseph said, his guarded eyes downcast.

  Cadmus just shook his head.

  Harmony made a sound as if to ask something, but the question died on her lips in a wave of sadness.

  "Did you kill all the wolves?" Domino asked with a hard look.

  "Most. The fight went out of them when I took the alpha. They’d no need to finish it. I couldn’t carry off all the meat and wouldn’t eat it myself, so they just waited me out."

  “What meat?” Joseph asked.

  Cadmus let his expression answer for him.

  "Momma explained you were doing right by us, Mr. Cadmus, and I'm sorry I protested so hard. I came to thank you," Harmony said. "It was just the thought of the other mother and the fathers, there with the wolves." Her young woman’s voice cracked and let the little girl show through.

  "You deliver the package?"

  She cleared her throat and said, "Yes."

  "What was it?" Cadmus asked as he pulled buttons through holes on his shirt.

  "It was a sciencey-thing, called a pea-see-are machine. It's for DNA, I'm told. There's sciencey folks here with the new believers," she said.

  Cadmus nodded, let his eyes linger until she dropped hers, and then said to Joseph, "I'll take my pay now, if it's all the same."

  "Sure, sure," said Joseph. "We need to get back inside before Miss Harmony’s missed, she snuck out after us. Should we see if you might come in to the town? Seeing as you saved their sciencey thing, and the girl."

  Cadmus shook his big head.

  Joseph sighed and slipped another bag off his shoulder. He handed over two brick-sized boxes and said, "Sixty rounds of thirty-caliber, like I promised. No silver though, that’s hard to come by."

  Cadmus slipped the ammo into his pack. Joseph pulled a smaller box out and handed it over too.

  "Really, don't seem this is enough for your trouble."

  The old man slipped the little silver rectangle into his big hand.

  "What is it?" the girl asked.

  "It's called a harmonica," Joseph said.

  Cadmus smiled as he ran the pad of his thumb over the etched letters. He glanced up and said, "It's more than that. It's a Hohner Chromatic. Just like my father's."

  He picked out the notes to an old blues tune as he left the silent normals to their world and he returned to his.

  B.E.K.s

  Morales nodded slowly at the special agent’s body which lay grey and tattered, half covered by a sheet on the stainless steel table.

  “Yeah, that’s Mamatez.” He reached to cover his nose at the wet, ruined-meat smell, but stopped to scratch his face self-consciously instead.

  The pathologist across the autopsy table gave a solemn nod and pulled the sheet back up over the body. The air-conditioning kicked in loudly, ensuring the room stayed mea-locker-cold.

  “Most of him anyway. Crabs do that to him after he got dumped? I heard about how that can happen,” Morales said.

  An uneven stencil, proclaiming the sheet property of the medical examiner, settled over what had been the agent's face. Like they wanted to make sure nobody walked off with a sheet from the morgue. Morales had had his fill of Morgues lately, morgues and courtrooms both.

  The body's smell subsided and the sharp disinfectant didn't seem that unpleasant after all.

  “No, I don’t think so. I’ve only done the prelim, but the wounds all appear to have been inflicted while he was alive. We called your office as soon as we ID'd him.”

  Light reflected off the pathologist’s round lenses and for an instant the eyes looked as if they were covered with silver coins. Morales thought of the ferryman's toll for the dead and the other's he'd known who'd paid that fare.

  “Those are some nasty tears. Dogs maybe?” That was a difficult thought. Mick was a good man. Had been a good man.

  “I’m not sure. I emailed the digital images and measurements to the FBI’s forensic lab. The technician I spoke to couldn’t say.”

  Morales stood quietly, running a hand through his dark air. He whole-body sighed, but didn't speak.

  After a brief, awkward pause the pathologist excused himself to leave Morales alone with the body. The agent didn’t get any time though.

  Before the stainless steel door stopped swinging, Supervisory Agent Daniels lumbered in. Another man, sharply contrasting with the older agent, followed closely. Close-cropped hair, crisply dressed with a rigid military bearing, the new guy carried a cheap briefcase and a whole lot of attitude.

  Daniels glanced unwillingly at the autopsy table and then to Morales saying, “Frank, real sorry about Mick.”

  Daniels had that ‘I’m going to tell you something you don’t want to hear’ look, fidgeting there with this other guy standing close.

  Morales waited.

  Daniels started to speak again as the other man pulled latex gloves from the box on the little rolling table. He snapped on a pair and reached for the sheet.

  Morales grabbed the man’s wrist and said, “The hell you think you're doing?”

  The new guy tensed but didn’t react immediately. A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth and he snapped his wrist free.

  The confidence and the way this new guy was put together made Frank Morales pause for the first time in a long-time, unsure if he could take him. Taller than Morales’ five-eleven, and just a little broader in the chest, the guy was hard.

  Daniels stepped forward and between the two men, crowding Morales away. With his ruddy complexion a little redder, he smiled like a pal, but nervously shaking his bulbous gin-nose.

  “Special Agent Morales, Major Harden. He’s investigating the circumstances surrounding Mamatez’s death.” Daniels’ speech sounded too rehearsed.

  The Major reached out a hand to shake. “Call me John.”

  Morales looked down at the gloved, outstretched hand but didn’t take it. “Major John, hunh. What? State police?”

  “No.” The Major didn’t elaborate, but instead dropped his hand and turned his attention from Morales back to the body.

  Daniels took a few steps back, guiding Morales with him across the stained linoleum and said, “Frank, he’s from the DOD. Army-something, I don't know what. He’s investigating Mick's death in relation to an ongoing operation.”

  Morales frowned. He didn’t like this. No respect coming in there like that while he was attending to the remains of an agent killed on duty. One of his men. What could be so damn important?

  “Don¹t make trouble,” Daniels said quietly, hand on Morales. "I know things been hard for you since little Frank…"

  Morales flicked the comforting hand away and said between clenched teeth, "That's none of your damn business."

  Daniels held the hand up, patting the air, placating, not meeting Morales' intensity. Morales saw the hurt in his supervisor's eyes, knowing he had snapped too quickly. With a softer tone, a little sarcasm to appease the man, he asked,

  “This guy want to know what happened, or just come to ogle at the body?”

  Daniels barked a little laugh. Conspiratorially he said, “Didn’t say one way or the other. I got called into the field office at six o’clock in the frigging morning and he’s there waiting for me. On a Sunday for Christ-sake.”

  Harden covered the dead man's face with the sheet, cleared his throat and said. “Special Agent Morales, I’d like to have a word,”

  “Yeah, I got a word for you.”

  “Frank, no screwing around.” Daniels stabbed his hand at Morales and then waved it open-fingered.

  “Cooperate. Fully. You understand?”

  Harden stooped to pick up the case from where he'd left it on the floor and stepped over

  “W
hat do you want? I just lost a good man,” Morales said.

  "I'm sorry. I know that can be hard."

  "Do you?" As soon as he asked it Morales could see in the man's eyes that he did.

  "I need to know the story. What he was involved with.” Harden had the kind of eyes you’d use words like piercing and gunmetal grey to describe. They stared, unblinking, at Morales from a weather-roughened face.

  Morales outlined the undercover operation they'd been working since he came back to the job. He explained how his team was infiltrating the organization of a Haitian cocaine dealer, gaining his confidence, and how his agent had posed as a dealer. He explained how his friend and colleague had disappeared two days ago, and been found late the night before, snagged on the lip of a culvert that emptied into the Baltimore harbor.

  “So, you believe his last known whereabouts were with this dealer?” Harden asked.

  “He was supposed to make a drop for Petite Louis, the Haitian. Mick reported he left, but never made it to his destination. His disappearance wasn’t enough to float a warrant to search and we worried about blowing the investigation. But now.”

  “Now?” Harden asked

  “With the body, I don’t think we’ll have a problem with a warrant,” Daniels interrupted.

  They both looked at the man as if they just realized he was still there.

  “Anything unusual about this Louis?” Harden asked.

  “Nope. Piece-of-trash drug dealer. A medium-big fish. We want the next level up.”

  “And this house, anything unusual there?”

  “A row-house on Rosemont. Like, maybe a hundred other crack houses in the city,” Morales said, shaking his head.

  “The people that live there, you ever see them yourself?”

  “Ask me what question you’re hinting at.” Morales didn’t like to beat around bushes.

  The corner of Roger's mouth pulled back in a half smile. He looked like the kind that would rather torch a bush than beat around it too.

  “Any children on the drug dealer's premises?”

  “Kids in and out all the time. Lots of these guys use children to deal. So, yeah. I guess.”

  Kids dealing had been background noise to Morales, before it had touched his own world so completely.

  Harden opened his military issue briefcase and pulled out a manila folder. He laid it open on the empty stainless steel table so that Morales could see the close-up photo of a preteen boy.

  “Ever see one that looked like this?”

  Morales studied it for an instant and said, “He looks like a kid. Maybe, what, ten? Twelve?”

  “Really? Look at his eyes.” Harden didn’t look at the picture; he studied Morales.

  Morales examined the photo. “Yeah, he’s got eyes. Dark.”

  “How about the sclera?”

  The way Harden was spooling it out frustrated Morales a little, but he looked again.

  “What’s sclera?”

  “The whites. Can you see the whites of his eyes?”

  Morales couldn’t. The eyes were solid black, like the kid was wearing some kind of opaque contact lenses.

  “That’s freaky-looking.” He looked up to catch Harden’s half grin.

  “We call them BEKs.”

  “Becks like the beer?”

  “Like B-E-K. For Black-Eyed-Kids."

  It pissed Morales off when Harden wouldn’t explain more. It really pissed him off when Harden told him soldiers were going on the DEA raid to the crack house. And Daniels standing there in his cheap suit nodding, the guy that could intercede didn't say a thing.

  #

  Morales made his way through the urban effluvia to the crack house with the entry team. Half the agents would go in the front with him while the other half went through the back. The embroidered yellow letters D.E.A. stood out on the black fabric front and back of his body armor, all that over blue jeans and athletic shoes.

  They had met Harden in an alley down the street and he and his men filed in behind Morales. The soldiers carried Heckler and Koch MP-5s on short slings, with body armor under pixilated camouflage. Morales felt his team looked a little shabby in comparison.

  After the final equipment check in the assembly area, Morales went over the plan. He explained entry procedures, fire discipline, rules of engagement and several times reminded everyone that the soldiers had no authority to interfere with law enforcement operations under the Posse Commutates Act.

  Harden watched with an almost amused expression as Morales drove home the point that he, Morales, and not the Army, was in charge.

  Then it was Harden's turn to explain the high points of what he was there to do. He talked about the special ammunition, the communications plan, and then told the agents to watch out, call when they saw kids and not to look the BEKs in the eyes, and no, BEKs didn’t mean beer.

  As they started out Morales asked what Harden meant about his special ammo. The soldier popped a round from a spare clip.

  “Teflon bean-bag filled with a silver nitrate solution,” he’d said.

  “I don’t think those rounds are NATO-approved.” Morales said.

  “Our targets aren’t members.”

  “Maybe for werewolves or something?” Morales asked it as a joke.

  “Something,” was all Harden said.

  Now the sun cast a faint red glow over the rooftops to the east. Morales intended to enter before the Haitians woke up. Drug dealers weren't usually morning people.

  The crack house had been grand once but now it was on the verge of being condemned. Urban settlers hadn’t made it far enough into the city to start the gentrification of this neighborhood.

  “If they’re making so much money, why are these guys living in such a dump?” Harden asked softly.

  “Bales of cash are hard to spend. Louis walks in somewhere with a wheel-barrel full of hundreds and we can put him down for tax evasion. As it is he has to limit purchases to less than ten grand.”

  At the front of the house Morales motioned to the two men that would go in first. Both wore bomb-squad vests with Plexiglas shields bolted to their helmets.

  One carried the Hallagan tool, a device with a mallet on one end and a crowbar on the other, for breaking down the most stubborn of doors. The other carried a short-barreled shotgun with a rotary cylinder that looked like an old Tommy-gun on steroids.

  All in place, Morales said, “Now,” on the common frequency.

  The door smashed in one practiced movement. The special agent with the tool flattened against the doorjamb and the rest crowded behind the one with the shotgun. Crouching into a tight mass, they poured in.

  “DEA!” Those at the back door were doing the same.

  The front foyer emptied into a long dirty hall, stairs and a big room to the left. A shirtless man on the couch, his dreads pulled into a loose ponytail, held up his hands and whimpered.

  On his face, they zip-cuffed him. The agents flowed out through the room as Harden and his team entered.

  Radio calls indicated the agents had come into the back through a kitchen. They found the basement door and part of the team went down as planned. The rest secured the back of the house while the front entry team went up the stairs.

  Harden nodded to Morales like he was impressed.

  "I'd have come down through the roof and flushed the targets out the front to snipers, but this works too. Different agenda’s. I don't need my targets alive."

  Shouts and loud thumps from up stairs, but no gunfire. An all clear call from the basement.

  Morales had been right. The druggies wouldn’t be trouble.

  He let go a raspy post-adrenalin sigh, knowing this was a clean take down. He smiled at Harden, gave him a modest ‘that’s how it's done shrug’ and then he heard the single shot fired from the basement. This followed by a short, staccato burst.

  “Doughtery, what’re you doing?” a disembodied voice said through the receiver.

  Dougherty had been tasked with clearing the bas
ement.

  “We need to help them. They’re scared, can’t you see?” Another voice, followed by two more bursts of automatic fire and a confusion of calls.

  "Shit, they found one," Harden said. He signaled to his team and the five men fell into line, trotting toward the rear of the house.

  “Morales, I’m a go for the basement. Get your men out of there, now!”

  Morales said on the common freq, “Dougherty, what’s going on?”

  Harden spoke over Morales, “All law enforcement agents, this is Major Harden. Get out of the basement. Now!”

  They stopped in the kitchen, Harden telling Morales to stay back and not get in the way.

  The Special Forces team moved like five fingers of the same hand. Through the hall and down the stairs.

  Two moving three on watch. Then three moving and two on watch. They leapfrogged down into the darkness, their boots heavy on the wooden stairs.

  Morales tried to keep up without getting in the way because he wasn’t going to leave his men down there.

  At the bottom of the stair Harden hand signaled and stepped over a dead agent on the landing. Multiple gunshot wounds, all above the vest's neckline. As the soldiers filed past and fanned out in the basement, Morales bent and found no pulse. The face obscured in a pool of meat and blood. He pushed down the panicky feeling at losing another agent; compartmentalize and focus on the job.

  Another narcotics officer just beyond him on the rough concrete floor, twitching out the last bit of life. There should be two more.

  Grey light from the small casement windows illuminated the cramped basement. Old brick walls and pillars with a hundred years of peeling paint cut the space into a gloomy rabbit warren of interlocking rooms.

  Harden hand-signaled straight ahead. Morales saw the outline of Dougherty in a doorway, crouching to listen to a preteen boy.

  The boy turned and Morales caught the unmistakable eyes from fifteen feet away.

  Harden squeezed a short MP-5 burst. Three rounds tore through the grey, Old Navy hoody, lifting the boy into the air, propelling him backward. A split second later the squibs in the silver nitrate rounds went off and the liquid exploded outward.