Chapter 11
D. A. had worked it out very carefully in his mind. He broke the team down into two-man fire teams, and put three of them into each squad, one designated the front-entry team and the other the rear-entry team.
Now it was time to do it, with unloaded weapons but all other gear as it would be, including the heavy vests that everybody hated.
Of course the young Carlo Henderson found himself united with the even younger Frenchy Short, who was full of opinions too important to be kept to himself, which was one reason nobody else would come near Frenchy.
'See,' he said, 'I would use the shotguns and the carbines. This isn't the '20s. The Thompsons were developed for trench warfare. For spraying. You spray a room, you got?'
'You wasn't ever instructed to spray nothing,' said the stolid Carlo. 'Mr. Earl told us: three-shot bursts.'
'Yeah, well, some of these hicks from the sticks, they'll go nuts if somebody starts shooting at 'em. They'll spray anything that moves. They'll turn one of these casinos into a Swiss cheese house.'
'You'd best just do what you're told.'
'Ah,' said Frenchy. 'You're one of them. You probably love all this shit. You probably love that big Mr. Earl throwing his weight around like he's some kind of God or John Wayne or something.'
'He seems okay. I heard he was a big war hero.'
'Yeah, what'd it get him? Pretend sergeant in Hot Springs, Arkansas, busting down casino doors. Shit. He couldn't do better off a big medal than that?'
'What're you even here for if all this is so much crap?'
'Ah?'
'Well?'
'You won't tell anybody?'
'Of course not. You're my buddy. I have to cover for you.'
'I got kicked out of Princeton. Boy, was my old man red-assed! He's a big-deal judge, so he got me a job in the police department. What I really want to do is get to the FBI. But not without a college degree, no sir. But if I do well as a cop?'
'Why'd you get kicked out?'
'It's a long story,' said Frenchy, and his eyes grew hard and tough with a zealot's fire. 'It was another crap deal, believe me. I got blamed for something I absolutely did not do! Anyhow, if I can get into the FBI, I can maybe then get into the OSS. You know what that is?'
'The what?'
'The what! Henderson, you're even dumber than you look. It's the Office of Strategic Services. The spies. Man, I would be so good at that! You work in foreign countries and I have a gift for languages and accents. These guys all believe I'm from some Passel O'Toads, Georgia! Anyhow, in OSS you pull shit all the time. In the war they blew up trains and assassinated Nazi generals and cut wires and eavesdropped on diplomats. My uncle did it.'
'Well,' said Henderson, 'you'd best forget about all that and just focus on what we're going to be doing in a few minutes.'
'Okay, but I get the Thompson, okay?'
'I thought you didn't like the Thompson.'
'I didn't say I didn't like it. I said it was wrong for this kind of work. But I get to carry the Thompson.'
'Fine. I'll go first.'
'No, I'll go first. Come on, I'm much faster than you, I shoot better than you, I'm quick, I'm smart, I'm?'
'You can't both go first and carry the Thompson. That's agin the rules.'
'The rules!' cursed Frenchy, as if he'd run up against this one before. 'The goddamned rules! Well, fuck the rules!'
The address was Building 3-3-2, in a sea of deserted barracks that spilled across the hardscrabble Texas plain. It looked no different than any other barracks, just a decaying tan building, its paint peeling, its wood drying out, a few of its shingles flapping in the ever-present wind.
That was the target. The twelve officers took up positions in a barracks three doors down, made a preliminary recon, studied their objective, and drew up plans. Stretch, the oldest at twenty-six, a Highway Patrolman from Oregon, was nominally in charge, and he was steady and wise, and knew the wisdom in keeping it simple. It seemed so easy, if only everybody would listen and cooperate.
But almost immediately Frenchy began to undercut him. Frenchy knew belter. Frenchy figured it out. Frenchy, charming, loquacious, willful, kept saying, 'I'm the best shot, I ought to go first. Really, why not let the best shot go first?'
'Short, can you give somebody else a turn?'
'I'm just saying, the best way is to utilize your best people up front. I'm a very good shot. Nobody has shot as well as I have. Isn't that right? Correct me if I'm wrong. So I ought to be the first-entry guy.'
He had very little shame, and no quit in him at all. Finally, to shut him up and get on with the planning, Stretch gave Frenchy the okay to be first man on the rear-entry team, with his partner.
That said, other assignments handed out, and the men suited up, sliding on the heavy armored plates over their suit coats, then donning their fedoras. They got into three cars?two old Highway Patrol Fords, painted all black, and a DeSoto that had once belonged to the State Liquor Control Board?and drove through the deserted streets of the barracks city until they came at 3-3-2 from different angles.
'All teams,' said Stretch, into his walkie-talkie and consulting his watch, 'deploy now!'
The cars halted. The men rushed out. Immediately one fell down, jamming his Thompson muzzle into the Texas loam, filling its compensator with muck. Another, as he ran to the door, banged his knee severely on the swinging steel of the vest, which was really more a sandwich board of heavy metal; he went down, painfully out of action.
But Frenchy, in the lead from the rear car, made it to the door first and fastest. He carried the tommy gun. Carlo, less graceful and more ungainly in his armor, struggled behind.
Frenchy kicked the door.
It didn't budge.
'Shit!' he said.
'Goddammit, you're supposed to wait for me!' Carlo said, arriving, followed by the last four men on the team.
'The fucking door is jammed.'
Frenchy kicked it again. It didn't move.
'We ought to?'
But Frenchy couldn't wait. He threw off his heavy armor, smashed in a window, climbed into the frame and dove through it, rolling in the darkness. He stood up.
'Prosecuting Attorney's Office,' he screamed. 'This is a raid! Hands up!'
'Wait for me, goddammit,' huffed poor Henderson, still on the other side of the door.
Frenchy heard them banging. It never occurred to him to unlock it. He did not wait for anybody. He headed down a hall in what was surprising darkness, feeling liberated in the absence of the twenty pounds of armor. The hall led to a wider room, and he raced in, pointing his empty tommy gun at menacing forms which proved to be old desks and tables and chairs. At once the room filled with smoke. The smoke billowed and unfurled, completely disorienting him. He coughed, ran further into the room, all alone, and stepped into a wider space, where the smoke was thinner. All around him things seemed to crash. Before him, he saw shapes. Without thinking about it, he dropped to one knee, put the tommy gun sights on them, and pulled the trigger. The gun's bolt flew forward with a powerful whack.
He recocked, knowing in reality he'd just mowed a few people down, and suddenly a figure appeared before him.
WHACK! he fired again, and a second later noted the surprised face of Carlo Henderson, whom he had just killed. He lurched to the left to a stairwell, kicked it open and raced up it.
'Short!'
