“No, sir.”
“Then you fire over their heads. Aim for hips and shoulders if you gotta, but don’t be killing any kids while I’m running this team. Shit, Cap, you’re wearing a titanium-plate vest that’ll stop a seven- point-six-deuce, and you got one-mile kills in the Gulf War. Ain’t no excuse for you to be dropping kids. You gotta problem with that, Cap?”
“No, sir.”
“Good.”
Then Eliot, charging his Heckler-Koch MP-5, said, “These U-Street assholes pack Uzis and MACs and all kinds of other shit. What about adults?”
Phil stared at him. “This is a PCP lab, Bob. These fuckers trash lives faster than Dignazio goes through pint bottles of Scotch. Either of you guys—any adult who even looks like he’s gonna point a gun at you, redecorate the wall with his brains.”
Cap nodded. Eliot said, “Gotcha, sir.”
Then they slipped in through the door.
The stench of hydrocarbons kicked Phil in the face. The intelligence boys called this one right. Unless they got a license to manufacture ether in a closed warehouse, Phil thought. All the signs were here; this place was a lab.
And darker than all hell.
“Quiet,” Phil whispered. He had his 65 at the ready. “And don’t scuff your feet. We don’t want to ring the doorbell, do we? And, Cap, keep that laser-sight down till we get into the shit.”
It was almost too easy. Down the main corridor, then a left and a right, just like the intel blueprints read. At once, they were on a ten-foot catwalk overlooking the biggest PCP lab Phil had ever seen. About a dozen skell were hard at work below, beneath flanks of fluorescent lights. “Don’t fire if they run,” Phil whispered, “only if they start popping caps at us. Dignazio’s crew is at all the exits.”
Phil’s two tac men nodded in silence, and acquired protected firing positions behind the roof and catwalk props. Time to grow some balls, Phil thought. He stood boldly in the middle of the cat, raised his megaphone, and calmly announced: “EVERYBODY FREEZE. MY NAME IS LT. PHILIP STRAKER OF THE METRO POLICE NARCOTICS SQUAD, AND IT TICKLES ME PINK TO INFORM YOU THAT YOU’RE ALL UNDER ARREST. I’VE GOT FIFTY TACTICAL POLICE OFFICERS SURROUNDING THIS BUILDING AND TWO GUYS JUST ITCHING TO KILL SOMEONE AT EVERY EXIT. PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR AND STAND STILL. ANYONE WHO EVEN THINKS ABOUT MOVING LEAVES IN A BODY BAG.” And then he thought, These guys must be getting soft in their old age. Each and every skell looked up, gaped, and raised their hands. Nobody moved. And not one gun was fired.
It was like a freeze-frame. I ain’t gonna miss the Yankees after all, Phil thought. Several seconds later, the tac team moved in, covering the paddy boys. No one moved, and not one gun was grabbed for or even seen.
“Shit, sir,” Eliot commented. “We’ll be out of here in time to catch all ten dancers at Camelot.”
“I think you’re right, Bob. And I’m buyin’. Just give me a minute to find Dignazio. We’ll let him do the paper, and we’ll blow.”
More labware than a college chemistry class, Phil observed after taking the stairs down and walking through the aisles. The paddy boys from District 6 were cuffing the skell so fast they’d honed it to an art form. Guess they’re Yankees fans, too. Dignazio, sided by a pair of golems with MP-5s, stood back by the delivery concourse.
“Hey, Dig,” Phil said, trying to be at least cordial. “Looks like we pulled this one off without a hitch.”
“My guys pulled it off. All you did was take a walk and talk shit.”
Phil smirked. Typical. “Fine, Dig. Look after the cleanup. Your guys check all the halls?”
“You ain’t gotta tell me how to do my job, Straker.” Dignazio glared, torqued-up, wiry, and with a face with more cracks in it than the original Mona Lisa. Then the sergeant walked off, taking his two gunners with him. Then:
chink
Phil jerked his head.
He strained his eyes down the concourse and thought he saw something flutter. A shadow? No…
A glint?
What the hell is that?
Not a dozen steps into the dark concourse, and Phil realized it wasn’t what but who.
A small shadow seemed to whisk from one open doorway to another
A spotter, he thought. A kid.
Phil slid his Kel-Lite from his belt, then began down the dusty, linoleum corridor. His light roved. Then—
“Jesus!”
The kid popped out of one of the storage rooms and sprinted toward the dead EXIT sign, his feet scuffing frantically.
TSD had already chained that exit from the outside.
“Come on, kid. You can’t get out that way. Let’s you and me have a talk, all right? I won’t hassle you, I promise.”
It was sad, the way these dope-gangs indoctrinated kids into their business. Of course they grow up to be criminals—it was the only thing they knew. And how old was this one? Ten? Twelve? Christ, Phil thought drearily. The kid hit the door, found it locked, then turned around, wide-eyed in his terror.
This kid looked about seven or eight.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” Phil assured. “But you’re gonna have to come out here now so we can get you squared away.”
The kid’s face looked like a dark skull in Phil’s Kel-Lite beam. Tears glistened on lean, dark cheeks. He’s shit- scared, all right, Phil realized. The worst part was the district court’d just stick them in an orphanage, and nine times out of ten they’d just run back to the streets at the first opportunity.
“You’re gonna have to come with me now,” Phil said.
He never saw what was coming—he never even saw the gun. At once, the ever-familiar sound of a small- caliber pistol clapped his ears
pap! pap! pap!
The moment was mayhem. Fierce tiny lights blinked in his eyes; Phil only had time to let instinct haul him behind an empty refuse drum. His Kel-Lite rolled across the cement floor when another bullet pinged into the drum. Phil drew his service revolver
“Goddamn it, kid! Are you nuts?”
Then he fireda shot high over the kid’s head.
The kid stopped shooting.
How could I have been so stupid? Too busy worrying about the goddamn Yankees. A second later, two S.O.D. men were aiming lights down the corridor. “Don’t shoot!” Phil hollered. “It’s just a kid!”
Now more cops were trotting into the hall. “You all right, Lieutenant?” Eliot was asking, and helping him up.
“I’m fine,” Phil replied. “But I’m not sure I can say the same for my shorts.”
“What happened?”
“Just some shit-scared kid. I popped a cap over his head.”
But Eliot was giving him a funky look, and then Phil thought he heard some guys down the hall calling for an EMT.
No, no, Phil thought, and sprinted down the hall himself. “I swear to God I fired over his head!”
More cops spilled into the hall, flashlights bobbing…
“Fired over his head, huh?” Dignazio was striding loudly behind. He glared at Phil. “That’s a real piece of work right there, Straker. The deputy comm’s gonna love this.”
The words groaned in Phil’s mind like an old house in the wind: Good God Almighty…
The kid lay at the foot of the chained exit doors, blood pumping from the bullet hole in his upper-right chest. He was dead before they could even get him on the stretcher . . .
««—»»
Phil peered into the memory. Six months ago I was a metropolitan police lieutenant about to make captain,
