Horns of the Devil - Jeff Trask [02] (28 page)

“I just heard from the mouthpiece,” Trask said. “Ortega’s holed up in an empty warehouse on the west side of the 1300 block of 5th Street, NE. I brought it up on Google maps. The warehouse front has metal bars, with a door cut in ’em. Center of the block, the only front with no sign above the door. There’s a chain and a padlock on the door. Santos told his attorney that Ortega locks himself in at night to help slow down any rival gangbangers, so we’ll need some bolt cutters on the entry team. Santos said they’ve pulled a dumpster against the back door in the alley so nobody can sneak up on ’em from behind. Ortega has about three other
Maras
with him. I printed a photo of the warehouse front and the block. You can use these to brief your arrest team.”

“Sounds good,” Doroz said. “They’re in the conference room. I’ll get started. We should be able to roll on this about midnight.”

They got up and left the office. Trask made sure to give the chair a nice noisy scrape across the floor on his way out.
Hope you have the goddamn headphones
on yourself, Moreno.

They took the elevator down to the waiting van.

.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Friday, September 15, 10:14 p.m.

A
n ocarina was playing in Trask’s head. The theme from
The Good, The Bad
and The Ugly.
He was on a roof staring southward through the binoculars down the alley that ran between the 1300 blocks of 4th and 5th Streets, NW.
I know who the ugly is. I’ll figure out the rest later. This must be the scene in the flick where the
Blue and the Gray fight over the river bridge. Wonder how old Hugo Montenegro came up with
that ocarina idea?.

The supply building they were on faced southward on Penn where 5th Street T’d into it. At the far end of the block to the south was Neal Place, running parallel to Penn and crossing 4th and 5th Streets. The motel was on his right, across Penn, and he could see the surveillance van in the parking lot in front of the place. Sivella was about forty feet to his left, also looking over the edge of the roof with binoculars. Trask heard him start the communications check.

“ERT set?”

“We’re in place, Commander.” Trask heard Williams’ voice loud and clear through his headset.
Once a marine, always a marine. That sounded like he was about to
brief an admiral.

“Bear, you read us?”

“Gotcha, Willie.”

“Good. Dixon?”

“Yes, sir, Cap.”

“Good. Everybody relax. We’ll let you know when we see anything. Jeff, keep a lookout for vehicles approaching from the north and the west. I’ll watch east and south.”

“Will do,” Trask said.
Twenty-eight years in blue. I almost said, “Roger.” Some things get
burned into your brain if you do them enough.
He trained the binoculars southwestward down New York Avenue and rolled onto his right side to follow the route to the north.
What am I looking for exactly? Anything big enough to hold an assault team. Six to ten
people, probably. A large van or stretch SUV, maybe even a panel truck. If they’re coming from my
side, they’ll have to come up on Florida Avenue from the south or get off New York onto 4th Street.

Trask turned his attention back to the south and west. He saw a pair of headlights turn off New York onto Florida, heading south and east, toward where 4th and 5th crossed Florida, the larger street. The lights turned northward onto 5th Street. The vehicle was close enough now to make out: a long bed van. “Willie, I got a—”

“I see him,” Sivella said. “Van heading north on 5th off Florida. Everyone saddle up.” Sivella watched the van as it drove straight toward him, approaching the target block. When it reached Neal Place, however, the truck turned left. “Turning your way, Jeff. Watch him.”

Trask trained the binoculars southward down the alley. The van slowed, and Trask saw a single figure wearing a ski mask and dressed in black from head to toe jump from the front passenger door. He was carrying a very long-barreled rifle. The second the man was out of the truck, it was rolling again.

“One shooter just bailed at the south end of the alley,” Trask said. He turned the binoculars toward 4th Street. His view was obscured for a moment by the roof of the motel, but the van appeared again, headed north on 4th, then made a quick right onto Penn, right below them.

Sivella saw it, too. “Here we go, guys,” he said.

The van slowed again at the north end of the alley, and a second figure with a long gun ran southward down the alley along the back wall of the motel. The van continued eastward, then turned south down 5th Street toward the warehouse. Trask was about to announce the second shooter’s location, but Sivella beat him to it.

“Second shooter setting up in the north end of the alley,” Sivella said. “They didn’t believe Jeff when he told them the back door was blocked. Dix, you and Tim circle around behind the shooter at the south end of the alley. Bear, you and Crawford take the one on the north end. Be careful, guys. Captain Williams, your party guests are about to ring your doorbell.”

Trask froze and listened. The ocarina wasn’t playing anymore. He saw Carter and Wisniewski disappear across the front of the motel, heading south. Doroz and Crawford came out of the van behind them and started making their way to the north end of the alley, moving slowly along the north wall of the motel. Trask saw the closest sniper set up behind a crate along the west side of the alley, his back to Trask and the north, training his rifle southward toward the back of the warehouse. Doroz looked up at him, and Trask held his hand up. Doroz froze, Crawford behind him. Trask held up one finger and motioned it forward and to the right. Doroz nodded.

“Main raid team’s out of the van. I count five. Point man has bolt cutters,” Sivella said. “Dix, Bear, hold until they go in. If there’s action inside, it’ll divert your shooters’ attention.”

Trask strained to hear, his gaze fixed down the alley. Four or five seconds passed, and he heard Williams’ voice again, shouting this time.

“Police! Drop your weapons! Policia——”

The warnings were interrupted by the low, guttural chatter of the AK clones, followed by a steady scream of higher-pitched automatic fire, the Colt submachine guns used by the ERT. Trask looked down into the alley and saw that Doroz and Crawford were already close behind the north end sniper, screaming at him to drop his weapon. The would-be shooter dropped the rifle and raised his hands in surrender. Doroz bent down to cuff him while Crawford stood to the side, his gun trained on the subject.
You’re too exposed, Puddin’!
Trask raised the binoculars toward the south end and to his horror saw the other sniper, half standing now with the sniper rifle drawing a bead on Crawford.

“
MIKE, GET DOWN!
” Trask yelled.

Crawford spun toward him instead, looked up for a moment, and then dropped into a crouch at the instant two gunshots flashed and echoed from the south end of the alley.

“Our shooter’s down.” Trask heard Wisniewski’s voice report.

“Clear inside, Commander,” Williams reported from the warehouse. “I’ve got one of my guys nicked. Nothing serious. Four targets down. One wounded in custody. We’re calling for two ambulances and some body transports.”

“Got it. I’ll start Crime Scene.” Sivella stood up and walked toward him. “Nice work, Jeff. Let’s go see if anyone wants to talk to us.”

They climbed down the fire escape at the back of the building and walked around to the front. Doroz and Crawford were escorting their prisoner to the curb. Trask heard the sirens of the ambulances as they approached the area.

“Jeff, Commander, I think you better see this before you go in.” It was Carter’s voice in the earphones.

Trask followed Sivella down to the south end of the alley where Carter and Wisniewski were standing by the body of the other sniper. A blood-soaked ski mask lay on the concrete beside the shooter’s head. Sivella took a flashlight from his belt and pointed it down into the lifeless eyes of Marissa Moreno.

“She recognized Puddin’,” Wisniewski said. “That’s why she didn’t shoot. Goddamit. I didn’t know.”

“He
didn’t
know, Cap,” Carter said. “She had the mask on. Tim did the right thing. I was two steps behind him and saw it, too. I thought she was about to fire. I’d have taken her down myself.”

Sivella nodded. “You guys back out a bit. Somebody’s got to tell him. I’ll do it.”

Trask watched as Sivella walked back up the alley, speaking first to Doroz. The lights from the streetlight by the motel silhouetted them. Trask saw Doroz pat Crawford on the shoulder. They started walking toward him.

“Sorry, Mike,” Trask said as they approached. “I saw it from the roof. That’s why I yelled at you to drop. She had a bead drawn on you and was masked up. Tim and Dix couldn’t have known who she was. They were protecting you.”

Crawford didn’t say a word. He sat down beside the body and started stroking her hair and face. When his tears started flowing, he pulled the gun from his holster and handed it to Doroz.

There’s nothing I can say that will mean anything here. I was almost looking at Lynn this
way.
Trask left them and walked around to the front of the warehouse. Williams was barking instructions to his team and waving one of the ambulances over.

The good guy goes to Medstar,
Trask thought.
The bad guy…who is the bad guy? He
said he had a survivor.

Trask stepped through the framed hole in the bars that passed for a door into the warehouse. He looked down to see a chain—cut open by the bolt cutters lying beside it—and a padlock lying on the sidewalk. He noticed as he entered the warehouse that Williams’ team had already pulled the masks off the bodies, but left the corpses in place for the crime scene guys to photograph. Even though the cops were the shooters this time, everything had to be documented as if it were any other homicide. Trask stepped carefully around any shell casings he saw on the concrete floor. He asked one of the ERT guys for a flashlight.

The first face he saw meant nothing to him.
Looks to be Central American. One
of Moreno’s squad from the airport, I think.
He stepped a few feet to his right, and the light’s beam fell onto a more familiar face.
Murphy. Can’t say that I’m surprised at this
point.
The third face also looked familiar.
So you’re the one who was going to kill my wife.
He saw what appeared to be the edges of a bandage sticking out from under the black sleeve on the corpse’s right arm.
I hope that Boo bit the ever-loving shit out of you
and that you cried like a schoolgirl all the way home.
He scanned the other body’s face, not recognizing it.
Dammit. Where is he?

Trask looked up to see two of the ERT troops escorting a man out into the lights in the street. He followed and waited for them to turn the man toward him. It was Moreno.

“Read him his rights, guys,” Trask said. He saw blood oozing from Moreno’s right shoulder. “Get him to the hospital as soon as you can. Go ahead and take him to the ER at Howard. It’s the closest. At least three of you with him in the ambulance.” He looked at his watch.
10:48 p.m. My six hours are running.
He phoned Lynn, told her he was OK, and told her to meet him at the hospital.

“Jeff?” Sivella stopped him as Trask was getting in a squad car. “Think it might be time to give your boss a call? We just shot up a bunch of foreign nationals, killed a State Department employee, and wounded an acting ambassador.”

“Thanks for thinking about me, Commander. Not yet. That call will go much better if what we have planned at the hospital actually works. I’ve got one other call to make.”

The staff at the Howard University Hospital Emergency Room, a Level I Trauma Center, was not unaccustomed to the treatment of gunshot wounds. The hospital staff was not, however, accustomed to treating such wounds without the use of anesthetics or with providing treatment in the presence of large, black-clad ERT officers who refused to leave the patient being treated.

“We have him in a private room now, as you requested,” the doctor told Trask. “The bullet went through the shoulder; some tissue damage but nothing major. All we had to do was sew him up. He’s still in a lot of pain, of course, since he refused any anesthesia. He wouldn’t even let us use a local. Are you sure this can’t wait until morning?”

“Is there any danger to him if I speak with him now?” Trask asked.

“Probably not. Still, tomorrow would be better, if you can wait.”

“Sorry, it can’t.” Trask was already on his way to the room. He passed the nurse’s station where Lynn and Jason Mays were waiting with another man. “Ready?”

Mays nodded and gave him a thumbs-up; Lynn smiled and winked at him.

Trask walked past the ERT guys into the room and shut the door.
Helluva
breach of normal procedure, being in here without a witness, but I’m already conflicted out of the
trial team. No harm in being a witness myself at this point.
Moreno was lying in the bed, one hand cuffed to the rail. He looked at Trask, expressionless. Trask pointed at the bandage on Moreno’s shoulder. “You should have let them give you a local.”

“So you could drug me? Question me with sodium pentathol? Are you wearing a wire now?”

“No.” Trask pulled up the hem of his shirt. “See? No wire. As for the drugs, our Constitution doesn’t allow that for criminal cases. This is a criminal case, and you appear to be the criminal, or at least one of two surviving criminals. The other one—your Mateo—is down at police headquarters singing like a bird.”

“Mateo is a good man. You are lying. He would not talk.”

“I
could
be lying. We are actually allowed to use ruses and trickery in interrogations as long as we don’t violate the rights of a prisoner. We have to carefully guard those rights, regardless of how many people an arrested criminal may have killed, or tried to kill.”

“You have proven very difficult to kill, Mister Trask.”

“So you admit that? Remember that you have been warned of your rights. Are you waiving them?”

“Why not? My rights go far beyond your Constitution. I am the ambassador from El Salvador. I have complete diplomatic immunity, as you are aware. I demand that I be transported to your Reagan Airport immediately so that I can return to my country.”