"What the hell are you doing?" the neo-Nazi yelled at Arden as his struggle with the scrappy diMonda moved onto the street. There, two agents were waiting to pull him into the candy shop.
"Don't worry, sir," Arden yelled. "I'll make sure this bum doesn't bother you again." That was for the benefit of anyone who might be listening from upstairs. Arden had already drawn his sleek 9-mm Sig Sauer P226 and was standing against the wall on the left side of the stairs.
DiMonda moved in on the right, holding his Colt.45 automatic. Then the eight remaining agents entered in pairs.
The first two agents covered the first-floor room, just beyond the stairs. One crouched beside the door; the other remained near the stairs with a view of the first lending. The second two agents moved in between diMonda and Arden and took up positions on the first landing. They walked carefully up the stairs, staying to the middle of each step and climbing with their torsos straight. By centering their weight, they not only moved more efficiently, but caused less creaking on each of the old steps.
Then the next two agents went in, stopping halfway up the second flight of stairs. The fourth pair of agents went up and staked their claim on the second-floor landing. One agent covered the door, the other the stairs. The last pair of agents went halfway up the next flight. Then diMonda and Arden ascended to the last landing. DiMonda stood in front of the door while Arden took his position to the right of the door, beside the steps. His gun was pointing up, his eyes on his partner. He would be taking his cue from diMonda. If the FBI man went in, he'd follow. If he backed away, Arden would cover his retreat and follow.
DiMonda reached into the pocket of his tattered jacket and removed a small device which looked like a hypodermic syringe with a receptacle underneath that was roughly the size of three stacked dimes. He crouched, his gun in his right hand, and carefully inserted the thin tip of the device in the key slot. Then he put his eye to the back.
The FOALSAC— Fiber-Optic Available Light Scope and Camera— gave the user a fish-eye look into a room without generating any light or sound. The tiny receptacle underneath contained a cadmium battery and film to record whatever the camera saw. DiMonda carefully swept the device from the left to the right, tapping the bottom of the film cartridge each time he wanted to take a picture. When, it came to trying these bastards, photographic evidence would be important. Especially since the FOALSAC revealed stacks of machine guns, a couple of M79 grenade launchers, and a small tepee consisting of FMK submachine guns. There were three people in the room. A man and woman were eating breakfast at a table in the right-hand corner, and the third person— Gurney— was sitting at a computer table, facing the door, working on a laptop computer. That meant the other four neo-Nazis were in the bedrooms downstairs.
DiMonda held up three fingers and pointed to the room.
Arden looked back down the stairs. He held up three fingers and pointed to the room. Then he waited for the other agents to finish checking out their rooms.
Word came back that the other Pure Nation thugs were accounted for, two in each room. DiMonda gave the others a thumbs up, meaning that they were to proceed to the next step.
The men worked quickly, lest anyone inside decide to go for a newspaper or a walk.
DiMonda put away his FOALSAC. Because chances were good that the doors had been reinforced with metal bars, the age s would not attempt to kick them down. They attached plastique to the doors, to the left of the doorknobs.
The charges would be powerful enough to blow the locks and jambs away. A small metal shield was placed over each plastique to direct the blast, and a magnetized, quartersized clock was attached to it. There was a plastic pull-strip in the top of the clock: when removed, it would start a tensecond countdown. At the end of the countdown, an electric charge would travel from the clock through the metal and trigger the plastique.
DiMonda cocked his head back. The man on the landing was watching him. When diMonda nodded, so did the other man. And so did the man on the steps below him. At the count of three, marked by diMonda nodding his head, all the agents pulled the plastic tab from their clocks.
As the silent countdown progressed, the agents on the landings moved quickly to the doors. During the planning of this assault, they'd considered every possible distribution of Pure Nationals. Now they were disbursing accordingly. For this configuration, agents Park and Johns went upstairs.
Park stood behind diMonda and Johns was on the steps, beside Arden. The remaining two agents took up positions beside the first- and second-floor rooms.
DiMonda had moved to the left, lest he be struck by the doorknob when it blew off. He pointed to himself, then to Park and Johns in turn. Once inside, this was the order, from the left to the right, in which they would cover the Pure Nationals. Detective Arden would be their agent-at-large, assisting anyone who might need help.
The clock finished counting down and the plastique ignited. There was a boom, like a popping paper bag. As the brass knob blew out, the door swung in.
DiMonda went in first, followed by Park, Johns, and Arden. Smoke rolled in from the explosion and the men ran ahead of it, fanning out in a line. As they did, each man shouted "Don't move!" The cry came from the gut, loud and raw, designed to intimidate as much as possible.
Two of the white supremacists, a man and a woman, rose at the blast but stood still. Gurney did not. He rose, threw the laptop at Park, and reached his right hand under the table.
Park lowered his gun and'caught the computer. "Take him!" he shouted to Arden.
Arden was ahead of him. He swung his 9mm over as Gurney drew a Sokolovsky.45 automatic from a holster attached to the underside of the computer table. The.45 spat first, the first bullet catching the edge of Arden's Kevlar bulletproof vest. His left shoulder was shattered, but the impact threw him away from the fan of bullets. As they struck the wall behind him, Arden squeezed off rounds of his own. So did Park, who had crouched, set the computer down, and fired.
One of Arden's bullets caught the neo-Nazi in the left hip, the other in the right foot. Park put a hole in Gurney's right forearm.
Snarling viciously from the pain, Gurney dropped the.45 and fell to his left. Park hurried over and put his gun to the man's temple. During the four-second exchange, neither the woman nor the other man had moved.
There was no gunfire from the floors below, though the brief exchange on the third floor had brought the backup team racing into the building. They ran upstairs as Park was cuffing the bleeding gunman. DiMonda and Johns had put their own prisoners against the wall, face in, hands behind their backs. As they were handcuffed, the woman screamed that diMonda was a traitor to his race, and the man threatened retribution against his family. Both of them ignored Johns.
Three members of the backup team arrived and entered in two-one formation— two agents rushed in, fanning left and right, while the third dropped to her belly in the doorway, covering them. When they saw Arden and the white supremacist lying on the hardwood floor, and the other two neo-Nazis cuffed, they called for the ambulance.
As the backup team took charge of the prisoners, diMonda hurried to Arden's side.
"I can't believe this," Arden gasped.
"Don't talk," diMonda said. He knelt by his head. "If something's broken, you don't want to displace it even more." "Of course something's broken," Arden wheezed. "My goddamn shoulder. Twenty years on the force and not one injury. Man, I had a no-hitter going till that prick tagged me.
And it was a sucker punch. The old gun-under-the-table." Despite his wounds, the gunman said, "You're going to die. You're all going to die." DiMonda looked over as he was loaded onto a stretcher. "Eventually, yeah," he said. "Till then, we're gonna keep beating the bush and flushing out snakes like you." Gurney laughed. "You won't have to flush." He coughed, and said through his teeth, "We're coming to bite you."