"They apparently have a quantity of the heroin and cash in their possession. They're pinned down between drug dealers and other personnel on the top floors, and about half a dozen more armed guards who showed up while the robbery was in progress. At this point we're in a Mexican standoff. We've made initial contact with both sides. Nobody wants to give in. I guess they figure, what do they have to lose, or gain? So they're just sitting tight."
Tim Moran continued in a calm voice. "Because there are members of SWAT inside, given the complications of it, the Hostage Rescue Team will take the lead here. Metro will give our full cooperation to the FBI."
Captain Moran's summation was clear and concise, and it had taken some guts to hand the operation over to the FBI. But it was the right thing to do if somebody had to go inside and possibly fire on the SWAT guys. Even if they were bad cops, they were still cops. It didn't sit well with any of us to have to shoot at our brothers.
Ned Mahoney leaned in close to me. "Now what do we do, Einstein? HRT is caught in the middle of a shit sandwich. See why I wanted you here?"
"Yeah, well, excuse me if I don't fall all over myself thanking you."
"Ah, you're welcome anyway," said Mahoney, and he punched my arm in a bullshit gesture of camaraderie that made us both laugh.
Chapter 23
IT WAS IN HIS BLOOD.
The Butcher was in the habit of monitoring metro police communications whenever he was in DC, and it was hard to miss this baby. What a royal cluster-fuck, he couldn't help thinking to himself. SWAT against Hostage Rescue. He loved it.
For the last few years he'd been cutting back on the kinds of jobs he did, "working less, charging more." Three or four major hits a year, plus a few favors for the bosses. That was more than enough to pay the bills. Besides, the new don, Maggione Jr., wasn't exactly a fan of his. The only real problem was that he missed the thrills, the adrenaline punch, the constant action. So here he was at the Policeman's Ball!
He was laughing as he parked his Range Rover a dozen blocks from the potential firefight scene. Yes, indeedee, the neighborhood was sure jumping. Even on foot, he couldn't get much closer than several blocks away on Kentucky Avenue. On his walk toward the crime scene, he'd already counted more than two dozen metro DC police department buses parked on the street. Plus dozens more squad cars.
Then he saw blue FBI Windbreakers – probably the Hostage Rescue boys up here from Quantico. Damn! They were supposed to be hot shits, right up there with the best in the world. Just like him. This was good stuff, and he wouldn't miss it for anything, even if it was a little dangerous for him to be here. He spotted several command-post vehicles next. And at the "frozen zone," or inner perimeter, he thought he picked out the "incident commander."
Then Michael Sullivan saw something that gave him pause and made his heart race a little. A dude in street clothes talking to one of the FBI agents.
Sullivan knew this guy, the one in civvies. His name was Alex Cross, and well, he and Sullivan had something of a history. And then he remembered something else – Marianne, Marianne. One of his favorite kills and photographs.
This was getting better and better by the minute.
Chapter 24
I COULD DEFINITELY SEE why Ned Mahoney wanted me here.
A heroin factory estimated to have more than a hundred and fifty kilos of poison, street value at seven million. Cops versus cops. It looked like a no-win situation for everybody involved. I heard Captain Moran say, "I'd tell you to go to hell, but I work there and I don't want to see you every day." That sort of summed things up.
No one inside was showing signs of surrendering – not the drug dealers, not the guys from SWAT. They also weren't allowing any of the lab workers trapped on the fourth floor to leave. We had the names and approximate ages for some of the lab workers, and most of them were women, between fifteen and eighty-one. They were neighborhood people who couldn't find other jobs, usually because of language and education barriers, but who needed and wanted to work.
I wasn't doing a whole lot better than anybody else at figuring out a possible solution or an alternative plan. Maybe that was why I decided to take a walk outside the barricades at around ten. Try to clear my head. Maybe an idea would come if I physically put myself outside the box.
By now there were hundreds of spectators, including dozens of reporters and TV camera crews. I strolled a few blocks along M Street, my hands dug deep into my pockets.
I came to a crowded street corner where people from the neighborhood were being interviewed for TV I was starting to walk by, lost in my thoughts, when I heard one of the women talking between wrenching sobs. "That my flesh and blood trapped inside. Nobody care. Nobody give a damn!"
I stopped to listen to the interview. The woman couldn't have been more than twenty, and she was pregnant. From the look of her, she was due any day. Maybe tonight.
"My gramma is seventy-five. She inside to make money so my kids can go to Catholic school. Her name Rosario. She a beautiful lady. My gramma don't deserve to die."
I listened to a few more emotional interviews, mostly with family members of the lab workers – but also a couple with the wives and kids of the drug crew trapped inside. One of the runners in there was just twelve years old.
Finally, I headed back inside the barricades, the inner perimeter, and I went looking for Ned Mahoney. I found him with some administrative types, suits, and Captain Moran outside one of the command-post vans. They were discussing shutting off the building's power.
"I've got an idea," I told him.
"Well, it's about time."
Chapter 25
THE BUTCHER WAS still hanging around the police barricades in Washington, and he knew he shouldn't be there. He was supposed to be home in Maryland hours ago. But this was worth it. The craziness of it all. He wandered through the crowd of looky-loos, and he was feeling like a kid let loose at a state fair, or at least what he thought a kid at a state fair would feel like.
Hell, they even had ice cream and hot dog vendors at the scene. People's eyes glistened with excitement; they wanted to see some real-life action. Well, hell, so did he, so did he.
He definitely was a crime-scene junkie, and he thought it stemmed from the days spent with his old man in Brooklyn. When he was little, his father used to take him on fire and police calls that he intercepted on his two-way. It was about the only good thing he ever did with the old man, and he figured it was because his father thought he'd look like less of a freak if he dragged a kid along beside him.
But his father was a freak. He liked to see dead bodies, any kind – on a slab of pavement, inside a crashed car, being hauled out of a smoldering building. His crazy old man was the original Butcher of Sligo – and much, much worse. Of course, he was the Butcher now, one of the most feared and sought-after assassins in the world. He was the Man, wasn't he? He could do whatever he wanted to, and that's what he was up to now.
Michael Sullivan was pulled out of his reverie by the sound of somebody talking into a mike at the hostage scene. He looked up, and it was the detective again – Alex Cross. It almost seemed like fate to him, like ghosts calling to the Butcher from the past.
Chapter 26
I FIGURED MY IDEA was a long shot, and definitely out of left field, but it was worth it if it could save some lives. Plus, nobody had come up with anything better.
So at midnight we set up microphones behind a solid row of police cars and transport buses parked on the far side of Fifteenth. It looked impressive, if nothing else, and the TV cameras were all over it, of course.