the front would freeze fifty yards out, where they couldn’t be seen from the target, while the team in the back would cross whatever barriers were between them and the target—most likely, a low fence or a hedge.
When they were in the backyard, they’d alert the team in front, and designated members would heave flashbangs through the windows believed to be bedrooms at the same instant a battering ram took down the front door.
Everything would be done silently until the flashbangs went off: no screeching tires, no cops running in the street.
“These guys do it all the time,” MacIntosh said. “When they hit it, I’m not going to sit here and watch. I’m going over there.”
“I think you ought to stay,” Lucas said. “You’re not tactical.”
“Fuck that,” MacIntosh said. “What are you gonna do?”
“I’m going,” Lucas said.
“Attaboy!”
* * *
—
LUCAS HAD HAD an interest in poetry since taking a class at the University of Minnesota. The class was taught by an aging professor who was also an avid hockey fan. Lucas, a first-line defenseman, had been plugged into her class to make sure his grade point average stayed high enough to keep him on the ice. As it happened, he got an A. Poetry, he thought, was a hell of a lot more interesting than Minnesota history, which was also taught by a hockey fan and had been the other option.
In any case, when the SWAT team came creeping in, he thought momentarily of Carl Sandburg’s “The fog comes on little cat feet . . .”
The SWAT vehicles had stopped well down the street, and the armored cops, in their green tactical uniforms and helmets, were nearly invisible in the early-morning light against the heavy foliage as they closed in on the target house.
“I’m going out the back,” MacIntosh whispered, even though they were still inside the surveillance house with the doors and windows closed.
“Don’t freak anyone out,” Lucas said. “Stay clear and let them work.”
“Got it,” MacIntosh said. “You coming?”
“Right ahead of you,” Lucas said, heading for the door.
They went out the back door and down the side of the house, along the hedge Lucas and Bob had cut the holes in. Looking through one of the holes, Lucas saw the SWAT guys settling in at the neighboring houses. And then, at some command they couldn’t hear, two cops suddenly ran onto the lawn of the target house.
“Flashbangs,” MacIntosh muttered.
It all went to hell in an instant.
* * *
—
A FULLY AUTOMATIC weapon opened up from a corner window of the house, and the two approaching officers fled, one falling, and Lucas called, “Shit, he’s hit,” and there was immediate returned fire from other SWAT team members.
“It’s a fuckin’ war!” MacIntosh shouted. He’d drawn his weapon and started down the hedge toward the street, and Lucas hooked his arm and said, “The SWATs will only see a man with a gun.”
MacIntosh hesitated as the machine gun went silent. Fire continued to riddle the front of the house, and the man who’d gone down, and who Lucas thought had been hit, got to his hands and knees and scrambled off the lawn, apparently unhurt. Then shooting erupted at the back, and then there was more shooting from the front of the house, the muzzle flashes blinking from one window and then the next, a pistol pecking away at the hedges where the SWAT team was digging for cover.
“Fuck it, I’m going,” MacIntosh said, and he scrambled in a deep crouch down the length of the hedge. Though Lucas knew better, he followed. At the end of the hedge, MacIntosh shouted to someone across the street and then ran there, with Lucas behind him, out of sight of the windows of the target.
A couple of SWAT team members had taken cover behind the six-foot-thick trunk of a camphor tree, and one of them shouted, “Stay the fuck down and out of the way.”
A SWAT guy dashed in from the side, close enough to put a couple flashbangs through a side window, then a couple more through a back window, and when the flashbangs went off it was like standing next to a lightning bolt.
Then silence.
Then somebody called out, “They down?” and other cops were shouting from the back and sides of the house.
Then Rocha’s soprano voice shouting, “Everybody sit tight . . . Everybody sit tight . . . Sit tight.”
One of the SWAT team guys with Lucas and MacIntosh stood up and eased his weapon around the tree, aiming at the front