ROOKIE
BY JOE McKINNEY
Takes one to know one, right?
That’s what all the kids say.
Well, I used to be a Ranger, and the guy who walked into the D. B. Grocery that night, he was a Ranger.
He had Fort Benning written all over him.
“Pay attention,” my close-quarters combat instructors used to say. “It don’t cost nothing.”
For Rangers and cops alike, that’s the mantra. Pay attention. Head on a swivel. If you get surprised, it’s your own damn fault.
Don’t ever let it be your fault.
Good words to live by.
So I was over by the freezers, trying to figure out which TV dinner was going to keep me company that night, when I heard the door chime and saw movement out of the corner of my eye.
I pay attention.
Naturally, I turned that way.
The light from the corner lamppost poured in, framing a tall white guy in a dirty yellow halogen stain, as if he were stepping out of an old sepia photograph. He was built trim, like a swimmer. I’d guess six three, maybe 180 pounds. He had a surfer’s haircut, blond and shaggy, but the rest of him looked like a killing machine. His chin looked as though it had been carved out of stone and in his icy gaze I saw the reflection of all the crap I’d seen back in my time with the teams. If he’d been dressed in BDUs and a boonie hat, his face painted green and black, rather than a T-shirt and jeans, he’d have been a ready-made recruitment poster for the Rangers.
That is, if they had recruitment posters.
And trust me, they don’t.
He stopped in the doorway, made a long, slow scan of the store, skipping over Jun Kwai, the shop’s owner, and then lingered for a bit on me, summing me up, before taking in the rest of the place.
Only then did he walk in.
I let out a sigh. I knew the guy was trouble. When you see someone like that, a full-boat military bad boy, in the middle of one of the rowdiest neighborhoods in West Baltimore, you just know something’s wrong. I’d been a Baltimore police officer for something like seven months at that point, but even a rookie cop like me could have told you the guy didn’t belong there. West Baltimore is almost all black, and a white guy with a surfer haircut and a Ranger stare just doesn’t fit with the general population.
Was I racially profiling him?
Yeah, maybe.
But the guy didn’t fit the neighborhood, and any cop worth his or her salt will tell you that is what the FBI calls a clue that something bad is about to happen.
Plus, the guy had a fine sheen of sweat on his face.
And he was out of breath.
Just a little.
He might have looked normal to anyone else, but like I said, I used to be an operator. I know the breathing drills they teach you. I know how they teach you to step outside of your own OODA loop, how to master it. How to stay glassy calm, no matter what you’re dealing with. How to work the problem. He was pulling himself together right in front of me. Something had happened, and this guy was trying to stay on top of it.
But whatever his problem was, it was my problem now.
I put the milk down on the shelf and steadied my breathing with the same technique Grunt Boy had just used. My hand moved to my sidearm and I thumbed down the holster’s hood. Nice and slow, nice and quiet. Grunt Boy was on full alert. No need to agitate him further. Still, I wanted to be ready. If my instincts were right, and they always are, this guy had a trailer full of trouble dragging along behind him. I wasn’t going to be surprised. I wasn’t going to be last on the draw.
Grunt Boy glanced over his shoulder, just once, and so discreetly someone else might not have noticed it, and then headed toward the back of the store. The bathrooms were back there. I thought maybe he’d lock himself in.
Maybe, I thought, he was a junkie.
That’s becoming more common these days, even in the Ranger community. All that time in the Sandbox has left a lot of guys with some serious hurt, both inside and out, and sometimes, when you come back home and find the world tells you they love you, but shows you nothing but hate and indifference, the needle and the spoon can make that hurt seem a million miles away.
For a little while, at least.
Maybe, I thought, that was this guy’s deal. It would explain the furtive glance over his shoulder. The brief spark of worry that lit his eyes when he saw me. The sweat on his brow.
Maybe.
I looked at Jun Kwai. He answered me with a shrug. This shop was a regular stop for me on my way home from work. Jun Kwai had run this business for twenty years. He’d seen three riots and more robberies than most of the cops I knew, and all of it had given him a sort of Zenlike calm in the face of the weird. Not much of anything fazed him.
It was then I spotted the trucks outside.
Two FedEx trucks pulling up to the curb across the street. Like I said, I was pretty new to the Baltimore Police Department, but I’d worked this neighborhood long enough to know that FedEx rarely puts in an appearance around here, and never at two in the morning.
Much less two trucks at once.
Behind the cash register, even Jun Kwai was starting to get nervous. I saw him fidgeting out of the corner of my eye. I knew from previous experience — actually, a lot of people knew from previous experience — that he kept a Ruger Super Redhawk revolver under the counter. It was an obscenely huge handgun, way too big for him. He was reaching for it now.
I shook my head, gave him a hard look. Don’t do it. Not yet. I had a feeling things were about to get out of hand, and I didn’t want any unintended collateral damage.
Out on the street, the back end of one of the trucks rolled open and a team of soldiers in black BDUs jumped out. They moved quickly and efficiently, a well-oiled machine.
And they were armed to the teeth.
I checked out the other FedEx truck and saw the same scene repeated.
The two teams rolled out, then melted into a dark, vacant lot at the corner.
They were pros. That much was obvious. Who they were I had no way of knowing, but I had a pretty good idea of who they were looking for.
“Keep that pistol out of sight,” I told Jun Kwai.
“You got it, boss. You sure you don’t need any help?”
“You want to help?” I asked. “Keep your finger on the phone. Get ready to call 911.”
“I’ll call right now.”
“No,” I said. I knew my fellow cops. I also knew the kind of men recruited into special teams like the ones I’d seen off-load from the FedEx trucks. If I called in backup without knowing exactly what was going on, somebody was going to get shot, and good men would probably die. I wasn’t ready to let that happen. I’ve been to enough funerals. “Not yet. Let me figure who the players are first.”
“You got it, boss.”
I went to the bathrooms at the back of the store. I drew my weapon and set up next to the men’s room door. Just outside of the kill funnel that would form if the guy decided to start shooting at the door.
The door was the kind that opened outward, so I grabbed the handle and pulled it hard.
Unlocked door.
My first clue.
A junkie would have locked it while he shot up.
I quickly scanned the visible half of the bathroom, then threw my shoulder into the open door and leveled my weapon on the other half.
Empty.
Filthy, covered in graffiti, and stinking of piss, but still empty.
I repeated the drill at the women’s restroom. Same thing. A busted crack pipe and some scorched Brillo pads on the floor, but otherwise empty.
I stepped into the hallway and looked to the only other place Grunt Boy could have gone.
Jun Kwai’s office.
I’d watched about a million store surveillance videos on the TV in there, and I knew he kept it locked.