Phantom prey

LUCAS TALKED TO the SWAT commander: “We know he’s got at least three security guys- we’ve seen them. He might’ve had more people with him, when he came in. You gotta count on five or six guys. Just looking at them, I’d say they’re cocked and ready to go.”

The SWAT started in, and Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins armored up, heavy stuff with drop- down groin protection and Level IV armor plates in the chest and back. Del slapped the Velcro bands around his vest and they all put on helmets. Shrake had an M16, Jenkins his 12 gauge pump, Lucas and Del their pistols.

“It’d be stupid if they were all up there in that apartment, listening to Siggy and Heather getting it on,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one of them on this side of the street, another one in the garage, another one on the other side of the building, couple in the apartment, plus Siggy. They’ll all have phones. Let the SWAT do the hard stuff, keep your eyes on the windows…”

“Here comes SWAT,” Del said.

AS T. PAUL undercover guy had photographed the interior of the apartment house, and had gotten keys for the lobby door. Since Heather’s apartment was on the second floor, with street- side windows, the squad could be through the lobby, up the fire stairs, and in the hall outside the apartment in less than fifteen seconds.

As they came in, in three vans, the undercover guy, in plain clothes, would open the door and hold it: the squad would go straight through, up the stairs, and attack the apartment door, knocking down opposition with a couple of flash- bangs.

That was the theory. If they killed the pregnant wife or the baby, they’d be, as the SWAT commander noted, permanent residents of shit city.

THE VANS ROLLED slowly down the street, and the undercover guy walked up the steps to the front door, working the key. Lucas said, “Let’s go.”

They went out the door and down the stairs in a rush, hit the outside door, and thirty feet down the alley and around the corner of the drugstore and down the width of the store and around the next corner and the SWAT guys were boiling out of the vans and into the apartment.

As they came around the corner, ru

Shrake yelled, “Hey!” and the guy turned and looked at them and took off ru

Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins ran across the street and up the sidewalk and heard the flash- bangs go off in the apartment, then the long, ripping stutter of a machine gun, and Jenkins yelled, “Holy shit,” and the machine gun wouldn’t stop and Lucas thought about drywall and plywood walls in apartment buildings, and hoped the shooting was being done by the cops, but it didn’t sound like it, it sounded too uncontrolled and crazy.

Then Lucas picked up individual shots, and a man ran out the front door, looked at the vans, yanked up a small, short weapon, and fired a burst at the vans and then turned and ran away, up the street, where Del could still be seen chugging after the first ru

A chair came through the end window on the apartment, and then a blanket dropped over the edge and Siggy looked out at them, saw them, turned the same weapon the second ru

Siggy dropped the gun out the window and threw himself over the edge, hung one second and dropped, ten or twelve feet into a flower bed, and Shrake stood up and the second ru

The car straightened out and drifted across the street and ran into a parked car in front of the bagel shop, and sat there.

Lucas was ru

Lucas saw the second ru

All of a sudden, it was absolutely quiet in the street. Lucas ran across and looked in the car Siggy had tried to take. Siggy was dead, his face a hash of blood and meat where Shrake’s.223 slugs had torn into him. Jenkins was talking to the car’s driver, a young guy in a blue suit, now wearing a pair of broken glasses and a stu

Up the street, Del was approaching the man on the ground. The SWAT commander ran out of the apartment and said, “We okay?"

"Got a loose ru

“What happened?”

“Guy on the front room couch with a fuckin’ M7 and we came through the door and man, he opened up and didn’t quit; we shot him.”

“Any of our guys…?"

"We’re all okay, got some cuts and splinters and shit."

"Heather and the baby…?"

"They’re okay.”

DEL’S BULLET went through the second ru

They never saw the first ru

They got Heather dressed and took her out in cuffs, and downtown to be processed, but she was already screaming, “I didn’t know he was coming, I didn’t know…”

She wanted a lawyer; and had his card in her purse. Jenkins asked, “Where’d they get those fuckin’ machine guns?” Lucas shook his head: “They were coming in from Miami."

"But we got him,” Shrake said.

THEN EVERYBODY in the world came down on top of them: TV and newspapers and even a public radio guy with a tape recorder and a boring voice, a dozen cop cars, the cops to check the neighborhood for any collateral injuries or damage, crime- scene people. The street and the various shooting scenes were cordoned off, and crime- scene guys landed in force, the ME’s investigators, Jackson with his Nikon D3 and every lens in the world, the St. Paul police photographer with an inferior Canon camera, a variety of deputy chiefs, homicide investigators, and a partridge in a pear tree.

It all took forever, it seemed; and Lucas was there, the whole time, and they all talked about it over and over, what everybody had seen and done, and Lucas had this sense that he hadn’t done much, but he was there, and it all felt pretty large.