the house itself. None of this ever panned out. Neighbors were too terrified of the Brotherhood to cooperate with the police, and there was simply not enough weight moving into or out of the place to attract serious manpower. Surveillance on the house had been spotty at best, and it was finally terminated because the police couldn’t justify the cost or time to the captain, or the probable-cause circumstances to a judge who would be asked to sign a search warrant.
But the house was definitely Brotherhood and probably a meth lab-and it had survived the recent bombings. Even on lean days, the place probably turned several thousand dollars’ worth of methamphetamine a week-if someone was going to wipe out the Brotherhood’s drug outlets, this certainly would have been on the list. That was enough information for Deanna Wyler to order surveillance restarted.
The last three hours of this twelve-hour shift were the real dog part. This was when all the coffee in the thermos was cold and the burgers sat like lead weights in the gut, slowing down blood circulation and acting like a big sleeping pill. The van was cold, the seats smelled musty, and the rubber-covered eyepiece in the 180- millimeter telephoto camera was slimy from all the oily eyes that had touched it.
A few subjects had approached the house this evening, but they had been scared away by the pit bull. One visitor did bring out an occupant of the house; the surveillance teams got some good snapshots of a big biker- looking guy with long, stringy dark hair, a beard, and a leather vest over a bare torso, but little else. The big-ear directional microphone picked up an argument between the two. “What you got, man?” the visitor had asked, his voice coarse and cracking.
“What you need? You need a snort, man? I got what you need.” They had met at the chain-link fence, but it was obvious that the occupant didn’t want to be out in the open too long.
“What the hell is this, man?” the buyer asked angrily. “That ain’t no line.”
“Where you been, muthafucker? There ain’t no shit on the street. The Brotherhood’s fucked. This is it, man. You want it?”
“You rippin’ me off, man.”
The surveillance officer eyeing them through the oneway window scowled. “They could be talking about buying Girl Scout cookies, for chrissakes,” he muttered. He knew there was nothing in their conversation so far to hold up in court. “C’mon, boys, do the deal.”
An exchange was made, and the officers got pictures. The twenty-dollar bag of a white crystalline powder looked like a speck of white paint, a fraction of the normal size of a hit of meth. “They’d laugh that buy right out of the courthouse,” the surveillance officer said. “We need some weight, boys. These mouse-shit-size buys aren’t going to cut it.”
“There’s hardly any dope on the streets,” another officer said resignedly. “Everyone’s scared to be holding any weight. They think whoever took out the Brotherhood might go after them.”
“We should give this thing another week, when the brave cookers start gearing up,” said another officer as the buyer moved off and the seller went back inside. “Nothing worthwhile is happening now.”
“Politics,” the officer watching the front door said. “The chief and the mayor want something for their press conferences, something so they can show folks they’re in control. Election day is coming, and…”
“We got another guy,” the officer with the camera interjected. “Sheesh, I must be getting tired. I didn’t even see him walk up.” He looked up from the eyepiece, rubbed his eyes, then went back on it: “Medium height, about five-nine; husky build… looks like he’s wearing a full set of leathers, jacket and pants. How the hell can those guys wear those things? He’s wearing his helmet too. One of those full-face jobs.”
“I didn’t hear a Harley,” the other officer remarked. “Usually you can hear those things three blocks away.”
“I don’t see a bike.”
“No bike, huh?” Now they were all interested. “What’s he doing?”
“He’s… uh-oh, he just walked right through the front gate. That pit bull’s going to have him for breakfast-I don’t care how much leather he’s wearing.”
“This oughta be good.” The second officer lifted a set of binoculars and peered through the one-way mirror. “Here comes doggie booking around the house.” They could hear the angry barks and growls. “The guy must be a regular. The dog must know him.”
“That dog’s still on the hunt… oh shit, looks like he’s going to pounce! Better hop the fence, dude!”
The pit bull pounced, all right, jaws extended, teeth flashing in the light of the front porch, going right for the newcomer’s left wrist-then let go as soon as he clamped on. They watched the dog shake his head, bark, growl again, and then leap for the stranger’s left ankle. The same thing happened-the dog bit but did not hold on. At this angle they could see that the guy was holding a small backpack in his right hand. A third leap, and this time the dog clamped down hard on the fingers of the guy’s left hand. The force of the bite jerked him around to the left and downward-but then, as casually as swatting a mosquito, the stranger slapped the dog on the side of his head. They heard him yelp in pain and saw him knocked to the ground as if he’d been hit with a baseball bat. Weird. The slap didn’t look that forceful.
“And the dog is down!” one of the surveillance officers proclaimed. “Ha! Never saw a pit bull run with its tail between its legs like that before! What’d he use on the dog-a Vulcan nerve pinch or something?”
“Mace, probably,” said another officer.
“I didn’t see him spray. Anyway, sometimes badass dogs like pit bulls aren’t affected by pepper spray. He’s a lucky bastard, though. He might be cranked up already, and the pain is going to hit him full force when the dope wears off. Hope the crank is worth it. Maybe we can just go and pick this guy up and see how his hand is doing, and ask him what he did to that dog.”
“I don’t really give a shit,” said the head surveillance officer. “Wonder what he’s got in the backpack? He just set another bag down by the front door. His hands are clear. Maybe this is a delivery.”
“Through the front door? Yeah, like Domino’s or something-your crank delivered in thirty minutes or less or it’s-”
A huge explosion rocked the van. The cops’ heads flew back as if they had been stabbed in the eyes, the brilliant flash temporarily blinding them. “Shit, what the hell was that?” one officer shouted, trying to rub the flash out of his eyes. “He set off a bomb?”
“Sure as hell did!” said another officer. “Looks like he tried to plant it, but it went off before he could get away.” He scrambled for his handheld radio, hoping it was set to the right channel because he couldn’t see the selector knob if it wasn’t. “KMA, Special Unit Four-Four, roll backup, fire and bomb squad on our location for a nine-two-seven bomb explosion. Notify all units of nine-nine-four circumstances, repeat, nine-nine-four circumstances.” The sergeant in charge of the south area sector got on the radio and repeated the 994 call, reminding everyone responding to the call to use bomb threat procedures: no radio, MDT, or cellphone calls within two blocks of the scene.
It took several long moments before the cops in the van could get the use of their eyes back. When they finally peered through their telephoto lenses, they could see the stranger lying on his back, blown about ten feet away by the force of the blast. “Looks like the biker got a faceful,” one officer said. “I hope the ambulance guys bring spatulas-they’re gonna need…”
He stopped, and his jaw dropped in disbelief. The stranger who had planted the bomb and looked as if he had been smashed flat by the explosion struggled to his feet and a moment later was standing in the blown-apart doorway of the crank house.
Patrick heard the dog’s bark through his sound amplification system and he even picked up the sound of its pads racing across the muddy grass from the backyard, but he didn’t actually notice the pit bull until it grabbed his wrist, then his ankle, then leaped for the fingers of his left hand. There was no pain, but the sight of the big dog latched onto his hand frightened him. All he’d meant to do was dislodge the jaws, but the sound he heard when his other hand hit the poor creature’s head was sickening. The dog yelped and dropped to the ground, blood oozing from his ears.
Sons of
At the explosion just a few feet in front of him, the light-sensitive visor in the helmet instantly dimmed so the
