A trap?
Jefferson took a turkey peek, hooking his head around the doorpost into the living room, and his left arm motioned for the other two to come down. His mask still in place, he took a long sweep before he withdrew his head back from the room. After one second, he swung back briefly as though to confirm something. “Five perps,” he whispered into his helmet microphone when he was back in the corridor, his back hard against the wall. “Two immobilised, seated centre of room. Backs to me, facing toward front windows and computer laptop on coffee table. Two pistols on table… one’s a Glock, the other’s a Siggy P226.” The Sig-Sauer was one of Jefferson’s favourite hand-guns; he loved its Colt/Brown short recoil.
“Computer monitor shows a timer… numbers going down second-by-second. Last one I saw was 185. 185 seconds. Three other men… huddled below front windows… armaments at feet…. zero movement. Believe weapons to be MP5 and M16 fitted with M203s.” Jefferson was impressed—these men carried some serious protection: the classic M16 was fitted with a 40mm grenade launcher mounted under the barrel, and a Heckler & Koch MP5 carbine that handled beautifully as a machine gun. Jefferson preferred it for its laser-sighted single shots. Giving cross-hair accuracy up to 600 feet, it fired the same 9mm Parabellum rounds as the Siggy, just a lot more of them and a hell of a lot faster, at 800 rpm.
“Jefferson, there’s a bomb on a timer at 42nd Street subway on Manhattan. The caller suggested this might be connected. The two men at the computer? Are they functioning?”
Jefferson edged his mask back in again. The gas had pretty much cleared and the screen was already counting down to 178… no, 177.
Not even three minutes to go. They must be detonating the subway bomb from here. His bones told him it couldn’t be a coincidence.
Jefferson stepped sideways and filled the doorway. “Hands away from the computer,” he ordered. “Back off…! I said back off… now!”
Neither man moved a muscle.
“Back off or we shoot to kill.”
One of the men shunted his arm toward the Siggy on the table. Jefferson fired, hitting him square in the back of the head and propelling him to the floor. The other man moved—maybe the first guy had nudged him as he fell, but no one was taking chances here and Fredericks, who’d followed Jefferson inside, fired a single shot into his back, smack into the curve of the “2” on his Michael Jordan basketball jersey, Chicago Bulls number 23.
One of the three men slumped under the window rolled his head, and his arm agitated toward the M16. Fredericks fired a three-burst shock round and took all three men out, though Jefferson wished he hadn’t—they’d have no one to interrogate.
Surveying the dingy room for anyone else was quick work—there was scant furniture to hide behind. Fredericks headed back to search the rest of the ground floor. Smith did a dead-check on Fredericks’ kills by the windows while Jefferson attended to the two computer jockies.
“Checking three perps below window… All in paradise fucking virgins,” Smith reported into his microphone. He patted them all down. “No body weapons.”
Jefferson removed a glove to pulse-check the necks of the other two. “Two at computer… same. Okay, men… all inside the house… NOW!” he ordered. “Full search. Fast.”
As they entered from the rear and from the street, his men re-entered every room to search for anything or anyone missed by the first sortie, including booby traps. Cortes placed his detector near the phone and when it beeped an all-clear, he picked up the handset and dialled HQ so the line could be checked and all recent calls analysed, particularly any during the last twenty-four hours… who to… who from. After an automated phone drone identified these addresses in mere seconds, HQ would dispatch SWAT teams to “visit” them. If they were cell phone numbers, their locations could be triangulated from the network towers, provided they were switched on.
Jefferson’s job was to work the computer. Time was not on his side. He dumped the body that was still on the sofa on top of the Chicago Bull on the floor, and was about to sit in his place to face the screen when he saw he needed a rag—the splatter of blood meant he had no accurate idea where the timer was at now, but he guessed it was down to around 85.
His eye caught the chicken-wire print of a Palestinian-type kefir hanging out of the back pocket of the topmost corpse, so he fished it out and dabbed the red off the screen as best he could.
His ear picked up something from the computer.
A hum? A voice?