voice said over the radio.
Peterson looked inside the van as Wicks ran over, pulling his pistol.
The back was empty.
Fifty yards to the west a skinhead suddenly appeared from around the boulder, having wandered out of the camp to take a leak. As he unzipped his fly, he looked up.
And stared at Hendricks, his team and Marquez, five yards in front of him.
It took just over a second for the thug to register what he was looking at. His hand flashed towards a semi-automatic pistol tucked into the back of his waistband but Hendricks was already raising his shotgun. The pistol appeared in the skinhead’s right, headed in a sweeping arc towards the trio of NYPD detectives.
And Hendricks fired.
Seconds earlier, Wicks had joined Peterson. But he hadn’t fired his pistol. He was staring inside the empty van, confused. There was nothing inside.
‘What the hell?’
Then a shotgun blast echoed across the estate. Down by the van, the neo-Nazis all turned.
‘Oh shit!’ Faison said. He grabbed his radio. ‘All teams, move in! Move in!’
FORTY SEVEN
As shouts of ‘ATF!’ and ‘NYPD!’ suddenly filled the estate, Hendricks and his squad moved in from the left as the ATF came in from the right. They were approaching fast. Down below, scores of the skinheads were starting to react, pulling weapons from cars or retrieving them from wherever they’d been left around the camp.
‘NYPD!’ Hendricks shouted, moving past the skinhead he’d just taken down, closing in on the camp. ‘Drop your weapons!’
Instead, the neo-Nazis started to fire.
The night quiet of the estate was instantly shattered by the echoes of automatic and semiautomatic weapons. The ATF agents and NYPD detectives were forced to take cover as bullets and shotgun shells started smashing into rocks and trees around them.
However, Hendricks didn’t withdraw, firing his Mossberg and racking the pump. He edged forward, keeping low, seemingly unconcerned as bullets whizzed past him as he returned fire. Straight ahead was a big neo-Nazi, one of the meth cookers, a modified Glock 17 in his hands. It seemed most of them had this weapon. The guy was aiming it at Hendricks which gave him no choice. He pulled the trigger and the shotgun boomed, hitting the goon in the chest and blowing him back.
As Hendricks racked the pump, he realised the Latina detective Marquez was right by his side. Around them, the gunfight was escalating, agents and detectives taking cover, but she seemed completely unfazed. She fired her shotgun at a man running towards them, the blast hitting the guy in the chest and punching him off his feet. She racked the pump and fired again, hitting another man. Hendricks and Marquez’s determined approach was causing the skinheads to take cover. The ATF and other NYPD detectives moved up to join them, firing down at the camp. Although the gunfight was now in full savage swing, momentum was swinging the law enforcement’s way.
Hendricks and Marquez had worked their way to the edge of the camp but were forced to take cover around the corner of a building on the edge of the estate as they came under sustained attack. Hendricks risked a glance, but bullets from automatic weapons and shotgun shells drilled into the wall beside him, chalk and dust spraying into the air. They were pinned down. None of the neo-Nazis were surrendering. It was a full-on shootout, automatic weapons and pump-action shotguns on each side, the air filled with the sound of gunfire and the stink of cordite. Hendricks and Marquez’s position had been spotted and the two of them were under heavy fire.
To their right and further back, some of Hendricks’ team saw their boss pinned down and increased the rate of fire, giving him an opportunity to peer round the wall.
He saw bullets hitting the three meth trucks at the back of the campsite, smashing the windows and drilling the walls as scores of the Chapter members returned fire from behind cars or bikes. The caravans were directly behind the neo-Nazis so hitting the labs was unavoidable but extremely dangerous. They could go up in a second.
And just then, Hendricks caught sight of the white-haired guy who’d arrived in the van. Wicks. He was firing off rounds with a silenced pistol. When it clicked dry, he ducked behind one of the cars, the wheels either side of him bursting and deflating as rounds took them out.
Hendricks watched him yank open the trunk and pull something out from the back. It was a case.
He opened it up, and Hendricks’