wall, Vail worked his way over to the door. A board creaked under his feet. A burst of three rounds ripped through the solid wooden door. Without standing completely in front of it, Vail kicked at the edge of the door just above the knob. It didn’t give at all. He had kicked in enough doors to know that this one was heavily barricaded and it was going to take more than foot-pounds to open. Moving back along the walls, he exited the front of the house. “Kate!” he yelled.
“Yeah,” she called back.
“You all right?”
“Fine. You okay?”
“He’s barricaded himself.”
“LAPD and our people are on the way.”
“Just hold your ground. He can’t get out.”
Vail could already hear sirens in the distance. As they grew louder, he heard a single gunshot, this time muffled. He knew what that meant.
FOURTEEN
AN LAPD CAR SWERVED INTO THE DRIVEWAY, AND VAIL WAVED THE and took out a shotgun, jacking a round into the chamber as he trotted to Vail’s position. Vail asked him, “Can you go and cover the back? There’s a female agent there with a handgun, but I’d feel better if it were covered with a long gun. Go along the east side of the house. There’s a window, but he’s barricaded in a room on the opposite side.” The officer didn’t hesitate, taking off in a low trot.
Within seconds, Kate joined Vail. “Did he shoot at you?”
“Yeah, but that last round wasn’t fired through the door.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Suicide?”
“If I were a betting man…”
An hour later both LAPD and FBI SWAT teams were in the small parking lot of the abandoned auto salvage yard that crowded up against the west side of the house. After a short disagreement as to how to broach the room that the gunman had barricaded himself in, the PD team agreed to take the perimeter while the Bureau made entry. First, bullhorn pleas were made for him to surrender. The only response was silence. Vail told the team leader that he didn’t think the standard battering ram or pry bar was going to be enough to open the inner door. “Well, let’s give it a try and see what happens,” the agent said.
Vail and Kate waited outside while the team leader gave the go-ahead. They could hear the battering ram thudding against the door. After almost a minute, there was a metal clang as the ram was dropped on the floor. One of the SWAT team members came out and got an explosive kit and took it inside. Within a couple of minutes the team backed out of the house, the leader holding the detonator attached to wires that ran back inside. “Everyone stand clear of the windows and doors,” he yelled. He waited a few seconds for all movement to cease and then yelled, “Fire in the hole.” He pressed a button. An explosion erupted and the team ran back inside.
Vail followed them in. A heavy metal rod ran from the floor two feet inside the bedroom door to just below its knob, anchoring into heavy metal plates at both ends. The door was twisted and hanging from one hinge. Vail stepped into the room.
In the corner lay Stanley Bertok, a nine-millimeter hole neatly torn through his right temple, a single trickle of blood less than two inches long now dry against his skin, his face recognizable in the sunlight that was coming through the barred window. Vail studied the body for a while before carefully touching the blood from the wound. It had already crystallized. Bertok’s mouth was open slightly, and without anyone noticing, Vail bent over to smell his breath. In Bertok’s curled hand lay the most sought-after gun in recent FBI history, his Glock model 22.
VAIL WATCHED as the evidence agent, using a cordless saw, carefully cut out a small section of wall that contained one of the bullets fired at him. It was the fourth one the team had recovered in addition to the five ejected shell casings. The fifth bullet, they decided, had been fired out the open front door and would probably never be found. It didn’t really matter; one was all that would be needed to match the gun taken from Bertok’s hand. The day’s events had left little doubt in anyone’s mind that it would match the four slugs extracted from the Pentad’s murder victims.
Assistant Director Don Kaulcrick and the SAC came through the door. “Everybody okay?” Kaulcrick asked.
“Not counting Bertok, everyone’s fine,” Vail said.
The assistant