A fireplug of a man with a brown crew cut and a worn sun-blasted face stepped into the hall – John Haug, the SWAT instructor for the Boston Police Department. He snapped his fingers and pointed to the doorway.
‘McCormick, with me.’
2
Darby trailed a few inches behind Haug, as the adrenalin rush of the training exercise – the first part of her final SWAT exam – started to evaporate and give way to a bone-crushing exhaustion. For the past three days she had grabbed fistfuls of sleep while conducting round-the-clock surveillance on the warehouse.
The first week of her SWAT training, she had started each morning with a ten-mile run under a blistering August sun on Moon Island. There were eight other recruits. All men. For the rest of the morning she carried out close-quarter combat exercises and firearms training. Late afternoons were spent crawling through old sewer tunnels wearing blacked-out goggles to test the limits of her claustrophobia. She completed night-time diving exercises in Boston Harbor and abseiled from a Black Hawk helicopter. One recruit broke his foot. Two other men suffered physical injuries and dropped out. The five remaining members graduated to ‘The Yellow Brick Road’, a punishing gauntlet designed to crush the human body.
Dressed in a military flak jacket and combat boots, wearing a backpack loaded with thirty pounds of sand and with an assault rifle strapped across her chest or held above her head, she ran in the sweltering heat until her legs buckled. She picked herself up and ran some more. She crawled through mud. Climbed ropes and nets and scaffolding. She trod water dressed in her SWAT clothing and tactical gear. When she removed herself from the stream, the sand-filled backpack now twice as heavy from the water, she ran until she collapsed. When the fun ended, she was treated to a boxed lunch – two bottles of water, bread and an apple – and ate it along the way to the firing range, where she shot at targets until the muscles in her forearms cramped. The training ended at 10 p.m. After a quick shower, she slumped into her cot at the all-male bunker and woke at 4 a.m. to start the process all over again.
The second phase of training, Darby knew, was also designed to break one’s mental spirit. Without proper sleep, the body couldn’t heal. The physical toll tore down the mind’s protective walls and lead to frustration, anger and, in some cases, dementia. Two more men dropped out. They couldn’t hack it. The final three made it to the live training exercise.
Haug walked quickly down the final set of stairs. Her SWAT partner lay on his back smoking a cigar, his chest and one shoulder covered with blood-red paint. He saw her and waved. The members of Haug’s SWAT team who had been brought in to play the roles of Chris Flynn’s bodyguards smoked cigarettes and cigars and talked among the crates and shelves. They didn’t look at Haug; they were looking at her. She felt their glares drilling into her skin.
They’re pissed I killed them. She grinned.
Haug stepped into the car park. Sweat had soaked through his grey T-shirt. He fitted a thick wad of chewing tobacco in the pocket of his cheek. As usual, it was impossible to read his face. The man lived behind an emotionless mask carefully crafted from his years as a marine.
He walked briskly around the side of the warehouse, his tactical boots crunching against the gravel. The hot air throbbed with crickets.
‘The woman you killed,’ he said after a long moment. He looked straight ahead into the darkness surrounding the woods. ‘What made you think she wasn’t an actual hostage? What tipped you off?’
Darby had anticipated the question. ‘I wondered what a well-dressed woman would be doing working at the warehouse at such a late hour.’
‘You didn’t think she was the owner? During the planning sessions, I told you the owner’s wife saw to the day-to-day operations of the warehouse and often worked late hours.’
‘You also said that Ortiz was a frugal son of a bitch.’
‘Your point?’
‘That woman was wearing a Cartier love bracelet.’
Haug’s head whipped around, eyes wide and brow furrowed. ‘You recognized her goddamn bracelet?’
‘And her Christian Louboutin pumps,’ Darby said. ‘Those shoes cost about eight hundred bucks. The bracelet, around three grand. I don’t know about the suit she was wearing but it looked expensive. What is it? Gucci? Armani?’
‘I strike you as a guy who knows shit about clothes?’
‘The way you dress? No, sir.’
Haug jogged up the road leading to the restricted site for bomb disposal.
‘The intel you gave on the cartel didn’t state whether the ringleader was a man or a woman,’ Darby said. ‘After Flynn released her, she didn’t run into another room. She didn’t scream for help. She ran up the stairs leading to the roof – same destination as Flynn. I thought that was odd, so, after I shot Flynn, I turned to the stairs and there she was holding a Beretta. I take it she was the head of the cartel.’
‘She was.’
‘So the plan was for her to play the hostage role and, once Flynn released her, if he hadn’t killed me then she would when I went to cuff Flynn.’
‘That was the plan.’
‘How many of the recruits got shot?’
‘You’re the only one who pulled it off.’
‘That’s what happens when you send in a woman to do a man’s job.’
Haug spat a dark blob of tobacco juice and turned left on to a new road.
In the distance Darby saw the small ranch building where she had lived for the past two weeks. She could see the glowing lights coming from the locker room and bunker.
‘Why are we heading there?’
‘Some guy is here to escort you back to the city on the orders of the police commissioner,’ Haug said. ‘Don’t ask; I don’t know the details.’
Darby had an idea. She was the head of Boston Police Commissioner Chadzynski’s Crime Scene Unit, a specialized group comprised of the department’s top investigators and forensic specialists. CSU was assigned to violent crimes and missing persons.
Haug spat again. ‘I know you fought like hell to earn a spot on this programme. Your shooting skills qualified you – you’re the best in the group, no question. And I’ll admit to having a lot of reservations about accepting you. In my experience women don’t have what it takes to be SWAT officers.’
‘Glad I proved you wrong.’
‘You’re the second woman I’ve ever trained. The first broad was a world-class cunt.’
Haug didn’t look to see if he’d insulted her. He didn’t care if he had. The man spoke his mind and didn’t give two shits whom he offended. She found his attitude refreshing.
‘This broad demanded her own locker room,’ Haug said. ‘Kept bitching about the workouts, that she wasn’t as strong as a man and didn’t have the same endurance and stamina. All that happy horseshit. The truth was she couldn’t hack it. That didn’t stop her from trying to file a discrimination lawsuit, which the court rightfully shoved up her ass.
‘You, on the other hand, didn’t request anything special. You slept, ate, showered and dressed with the boys. You worked out the logistics on your own. You didn’t burden me with whatever feminine problems you had, and on top of that you survived pretty much everything I threw at you. And not once did you bitch or buckle. You kept your yap shut and your ears open. You worked your ass off.’
Haug spat again. ‘Heard you’re a doctor. Got a degree from Harvard in criminal psychology.’
Darby nodded.
‘Never had a doctor – or a forensics fellow, for that matter – do what you did back there. They teach you to shoot like that at Harvard?’
‘I’ve put in a lot of practice at the firing range.’