Above the Law (9 page)

For all the action he was likely to see, he might as well go home; but he had to be here. This was taking place in his county; he was responsible to his constituents for law enforcement in his county, even if it was being performed by an outside agency.

There was something else, too, more important. More personal. This would be the last big operation he’d ever be involved in. If there was trouble, and he went out in a blaze of glory, it would be a good way to die. He was going to die soon anyway; whether tonight or in a few years, it was there, looming before him. This would be an honorable way, fulfilling on many levels. But that was to be denied him now.

Miller walked over to where the others were congregating. Sixty men in the party. The assault teams comprised fifty of them, the other ten would be at the fence line, manning the artillery that could level every building if it came to that. Which wasn’t going to happen, but they had to prepare for it. Their dogs, in portable kennels, were far enough back from the compound that the sounds of barking wouldn’t be heard inside, although they were trained to be silent except when on the scent.

The advance contingent slipped into the compound. The perimeter was fifty yards all around the main building, clear, unprotected ground. This was the most dangerous part, bridging that distance.

Time was another dimension now, slowed almost to a standstill. Seconds drifted by like leaves on a quiescent stream; five minutes: an eternity.

Everyone was on edge, waiting. Miller could feel the collective adrenaline pumping. His own pulse was quickening, a rare occurrence. Looking toward the target, he saw that the advance party had safely crossed no-man’s-land and were closing in on the house, protected by the shadows cast off from the light of the moon.

Miller looked at Jerome. The man was standing in place, but his body was quivering—you could almost see electrical charges zapping out from him, he was so wired. He was going to explode from his inner pressure if this didn’t come off, and soon.

Jerome put up a hand for silence, even though there was no sound, no movement anywhere near him. He listened over his earpiece.

“All quiet on the western front,” he relayed in a whisper. “Time to rock and roll.”

They filtered into the compound and spread out, Jerome leading the frontal assault, two more teams on either flank, a fourth going around to the back.

Miller had taken a position on the high ground on the other side of the fence, two hundred yards away, where he had an unobstructed view. Standing next to his deputy, he watched through his binoculars. This is dangerous and stupid, he thought to himself, you don’t put yourself in a cross fire, the way Jerome had them spread out. Jerome was too sure of this operation, he wasn’t taking all the proper precautions.

He watched through the glasses as the men inside moved closer to the target. Maybe I’m wrong, he grudgingly had to admit to himself, intently surveying the action. A part of him did not want this to go perfectly. Being shut out didn’t suit him—he was a man who wanted to be in the middle of the action. Even if he was too damn old.

He kept watching. In a few seconds Jerome would be leading the charge through the front door. With any luck, it would all be over before—

The sound was first: an all-points alarm, an earsplitting, pulsing siren, like a maximum-security penitentiary signaling an escape. And then, within seconds, the rest of all hell broke loose. The entire compound was lit up: one moment everything was in darkness; the next brought on dozens of high-density lights that lit the place up like a night game at Yankee Stadium.

The agents in the compound were caught totally off-guard, frozen in their tracks like a herd of deer caught in headlights. Then before they could react further there commenced a firestorm of gunfire from within the house, so deafening it almost obliterated the sound of the alarm.

Miller watched the debacle unfolding, for the first few seconds as dumbfounded and paralyzed as the men inside. Then he came unstuck. Jesus Christ! he thought. They’ve walked into an ambush!

A lifetime of reflex took over. He began running toward the action. He was almost eighty years old, but he could still run pretty well when he had to. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bearpaw, running with him stride for stride.

Inside the compound, the agents were scrambling for cover. Half a dozen were down, wounded or dead, their screams of pain louder even than the cacophony from the siren and the gunfire. The rest were running, crawling, whatever they could do to get out of the line of fire.

Jerome had reached the cover of the edge of the main building, and was shrieking into his headset: “Fuck taking them alive, take this fucking building out! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

Immediately, from outside the compound, the rear-guard agents started laying down a carpet-bomb barrage of mortars at the building. Shells and tear gas. Within seconds they’d hit their target, shattering windows and blowing huge holes in the root. The inside of the building burst into flame, fire and black, tarry smoke pouring out from all sides. There was a brief pause, no more than a few seconds; then came the sounds of bullets and other munitions going off inside.

They’ve got ammunition in there, Miller realized. By now he and Bearpaw had breached the perimeter and were about forty yards from the house. “It’s going to blow sky-high!” he screamed to his deputy above the clamor. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

They turned and started hightailing it back toward the safety of the woods.

Jerome had the same realization. “This place is going to explode!” he cried out. “Everybody get the hell out!”

His men scrambled to their feet and started running for cover. Disregarding their own safety, pockets of agents picked up their wounded comrades and dragged them along the ground, away from the house.

Miller and Bearpaw reached the safety of their former viewing place. They watched the debacle unfolding. Miller was bent over double, gasping for breath. “Bastard Lopez double-crossed us,” he cursed. The first goddamn rule of informants—never trust them.

Bearpaw nodded grimly. Turning their focus to the house, they saw the fugitives staggering out, running in every direction, assault rifles and other state-of-the-art weapons in their hands, firing wildly. Most of them had been blinded by the tear gas—they ran like rabid dogs, weaving incoherent patterns.

Jerome and the remaining agents had safely retreated to the edge of the compound. “Secure the perimeter!” Jerome screamed at his men. “Don’t let them break your ranks!”

Dazed and frightened from the unexpected counterattack, his people managed to form a raggedy circle, forcing themselves to be professional in the face of this world-class snafu. They began returning fire.

Miller had dropped his field glasses. He didn’t need them to view this carnage.

“What a disaster,” he said softly, more to himself than to his deputy, who had never seen such a bloodbath. Miller was both angry and regretful. Men were dead down there who didn’t have to be.

The house blew. Sections went, then in one tremendous blast, a fireball billowed up to the sky, pieces of the structure flying hundreds of feet into the air, then crashing to earth, scattering burning debris all around, some of it falling on the men, federal agents and fugitives indiscriminately.

The DEA agents were badly bloodied, but their enemy was worse off. They couldn’t see, and several of them had been wounded by the force of the explosion of their stored ammunition, and the fallout from the burning rubble.

Jerome was on the bullhorn now. “Drop your weapons and stand in place!” he ordered the surrounded fugitives.

The men who had been inside the house knew when to be brave and when to be smart.

Three federal agents dead, three wounded. Four fugitives killed.

Juarez was not among the captured.

Jerome was birthing a hippopotamus. “Where the fuck is he?” he screamed into the night sky.

The prisoners, lying facedown on the hard dirt, arms and legs spread wide in the prone position, were being handcuffed. Some were bleeding. Their wounds would not be attended to until this was over and they were brought back to civilization, which was going to take a while. Hours, at least.

Jerome bent down to one of the prisoners whom he knew to be Juarez’s second-in-command.

“Was there anyone left inside?” Jerome questioned the man, grabbing him roughly by the throat. Fuck their civil rights and all that other fucking protocol, these motherfuckers were going to give it up.

The man shook his head. “No one stayed inside.” He coughed. “The place was blowing up. We’re not stupid.”

“What about Reynaldo Juarez?”

Another head-shake. “Ain’t been there. Some time now.”

“We
know
he was in there!” Jerome insisted, his rising voice betraying his desperation.

The prisoner spat blood from the inside of his mouth onto the ground at Jerome’s feet. “You know wrong.”

Jerome and his senior agents circled around Lopez. “You said he was in there,” Jerome braced Lopez. His voice had a rasp that could cut glass. “You swore that you saw him.”

“He was in there,” Lopez defended himself.

“Then where the fuck is he?”

Lopez backed up a step so as not to catch on fire from Jerome’s breath. “Still in there, probably. Probably dead. You guys were so fucking gung ho, you killed his ass.”

Miller, standing nearby, listening, silently agreed with the informant. Not about Juarez’s presence—that had been a classic shuck on Lopez’s part. But regarding the tactics Jerome had employed, he was in accord with this slime. Jerome, like all cornered animals of prey, had reverted to his true nature. When in doubt, destroy. Even if you go down with your captive.

“He’d better be in there,” Jerome warned Lopez.

“Or what?” Lopez countered.

Jerome flared crimson. “Don’t push my buttons, man. I’m close to committing justifiable homicide, right here on the fucking spot.”

“He was in there when I left.” Lopez dialed his attitude down a scosh. “That’s all I know. That’s all I promised. The rest was your shit, kemo sabe.”

Fire hoses cooled the burning areas inside. The agents went inside, looking around. Miller tagged after, checking the place out. This is plush, he thought. And why not? These people were making tens of millions of dollars a month, they could afford the Taj Mahal.

The dogs were brought in. They began sniffing around, going from room to room. There were no bodies anywhere. Nothing human could be seen. Luckily the electricity was still running.

The action moved into the kitchen. A huge room, like something out of an English castle. Against one wall there was a bank of refrigerators and walk-in freezers, as big as those in a meatpacking plant.

Jerome watched the dogs sniffing around aimlessly, becoming increasingly agitated. Time was slipping out of their hands.

Miller, posting nearby, watched him. This is how careers are ended, he thought with no regrets for the man. Good men had died tonight because of this shitheel’s decisions. You reap, you sow. His own career had been snuffed for a transgression far less egregious and not even of his own making.

A cacophony of dog-howling broke his reverie.

“Might have something, chief!” one of the handlers called to Jerome.

All the dogs had converged at one of the freezer doors, straining like crazy at their leashes, baying like banshees.

“Open that door!” Jerome yelled.

The door was pried open. A blast of cold air hit those closest to the entrance; then the dogs, pulling their handlers, led the search party inside.

It was icicle-forming cold. Uncovered lightbulbs hung from the high ceiling, casting pale pools of light in the dim chamber. Jerome, leading the rush into the cavernous compartment, noticed a thermometer on a wall: thirty degrees below freezing.

The agents’ shadows leaped against the dark walls as they made their way into the room. Even with their jackets on, they immediately began shaking from the sudden glacial blast.

“Back here!” one of the handlers was calling, holding onto his dog for dear life, the eager animal barking nonstop at something in the far back of the freezer.

Jerome ran toward them, pushing past the dogs.

In the farthest corner of the deep space, huddled behind some pallets, a man was crouching, hunched up into a tight, embryonic ball. He had a blanket wrapped tightly around him, but he was shivering uncontrollably. Frost had formed on his hair, his eyebrows, his neatly trimmed mustache and beard. He looked up as his captors converged on him, his eyes red and watery from near freezing.

The feather was back in Jerome’s cap. It was tarnished, because of the deaths incurred. But he had accomplished his mission: criminal ring busted, mastermind caught alive.

Jerome called the head of his agency in Washington, who patched him into the Justice Department. The attorney general came on the line, offering congratulations for their success and condolences for their losses, which were terrible, but this was a war and regrettably there are casualties in war. It could not be denied—this was a big win. After all the disasters and fiascoes of the last decade, it was great to have a win.

The night was still shrouded in darkness, but not for long, Miller calculated, looking at his watch and then at the sky. In less than half an hour false dawn would begin to show in the east. Bearpaw had gone home—they had come in separate vehicles. There was nothing for him to do anymore.

Miller couldn’t bring himself to leave. It was almost as if he didn’t believe Jerome and his men had pulled this off.

He’d been rooting for them to have blown it. Part of him, anyway. The part that distrusted and disliked men like Jerome, whose careers will forever be on the ascendancy, even when they fuck up. And this had been a fuckup, no doubt about that. It had been dumb luck that Juarez had been captured and alive to boot.

They locked the ringleader in the command trailer. He was given a quick grilling by Jerome and his top lieutenants. The prisoner gave them nothing. That was all right; there would be plenty of time to get what they wanted. Years.