was his brother’s weapon and his brother confirmed it and they had a sales receipt. We keep tabs on Toby because of this White Fist thing and because of his record. He went down on ag assault, but that wasn’t a one-time thing.”
Chase took a call, listened for a minute, then said, “Okay, get him out of there. I’ll see you in the parking lot.”
To Lucas, she said, “The SWAT team will be here in two minutes, our street guy has been making some movies of the target, those should be coming in any time now. Three trucks, eighteen guys. They’re asking that you guys, you and Bob and Rae, stand down. We’re all coordinated and they don’t know you.”
“Well, poop,” Rae said.
Chase said, quickly, “As soon as the area is cleared, though, we want the three of you in there. You’ve been talking to these people and our SWAT guys haven’t been.”
Bob said to Rae, “The good-guy trophy.”
“All right with me,” Lucas said. “The last time I went on a SWAT raid, some asshole shot me.”
* * *
—
FIVE MINUTES LATER, the SWAT teams were in the parking lot, the agents getting their armor on, a few Frederick cops coming out to look as the news moved through the department. The team was hard to miss, manning three large gunmetal-gray vehicles that looked like products of a bad marriage between a tank and a rec-vee. A minute or so after the trucks arrived, a video came in from the street guy, shots of the two target buildings from all angles. As Rae had suggested, both had back doors not visible from the street.
The SWAT commander, an agent named Adam Carlucci, pointed out relevant considerations to the team members—location of the creek, the quality of the concealment and cover, distances from unloading points to entry points. Bob pointed out the newer metal doors and Carlucci took another look at the videos. “Gonna need the rams on the garage and the back doors,” he concluded.
The team members were all heavily experienced, had been pre-briefed on the way up from Washington; the on-site briefing took six or seven minutes, then the team was loading and moving out.
Lucas could feel the intensity building in his chest: going into combat.
“What do you think?” Lucas asked, as Bob and Rae pulled on their bulletproof vests.
“They know what they’re doing,” Bob said.
“I gotta say, Jane doesn’t skimp on the resources,” Rae said. “She could start a war with those boys. When me and Bob go out, it’s more like a poolroom fight . . . Hey, we got a vest for you. Put it on.”
Lucas put on the vest as the last of the trucks disappeared from the parking lot, and Rae got behind the wheel of the Tahoe. They had been asked to wait at the police headquarters until they got a call from Chase, who was riding in one of the trucks. Because the trucks had to come in on the target from different directions, one of them would be stalling while the other two were running fast on a more circular route, aiming for a simultaneous arrival; Lucas wanted to arrive as the doors were going down.
“Fuck waiting,” he said. “Get on that last truck’s ass.”
“Now you’re talking,” Rae said, and she cranked the Tahoe over.
* * *
—
“LOT OF CIVIL WAR SHIT AROUND HERE,” Bob said, making nervous conversation from the backseat, as they rolled out of the parking lot. “We’re closer to Gettysburg than we are to Washington. If we have time, I’d like to take the tour.” He had two M4-style rifles in the backseat and checked them out one last time as they drove across town, seating a thirty-shot magazine in each.
“Probably won’t have time,” Lucas said. They were gaining on the slow FBI vehicle until they were, as Lucas recommended, right on its ass. Hearing Bob working with the rifles, he took out his Walther PPQ just to be doing something, and Rae glanced at him and said, “Don’t go shooting your big toe.”
“I was winning pistol competitions when you were in diapers,” Lucas said.