10
Four men occupied the seats in the twin cab pick-up truck. A heavy-duty canvas sheet was strapped over the truck bed, covering two automatic rifles and four handguns. Behind the truck was a nondescript, five-year-old sedan. There were two men in the front seats with another two automatic rifles in a bag in the trunk of the car.
The six men travelled silently in the tension that builds before a battle. They were all veterans and used to the stress of such situations. It did not matter to them that their adversaries this time would be their fellow countrymen and officers of the Federal authorities.
These men were now on the other side of the line. And the pay-off that awaited all of them was all that mattered now. No one was going to take that away from them. Not one of their own and not the FBI.
The enemy was the enemy, no matter what flag they operated under.
The cars moved on through the night, ten miles from Denver city centre.
11
The flat was at the top right of a block of four. It was a familiar local authority property probably built sometime in the fifties or sixties. The entry door was located at ground-floor level beside the door for the lower flat. The stairs up to the first floor were internal.
Armstrong pulled up to the kerb outside the block and switched the engine off. Irvine looked up at the windows of the flat facing the street.
‘Curtains closed,’ she said.
‘Maybe no one’s home.’
‘Probably still asleep. Let’s go wake them up?’
Two young children, no older than seven or eight, were playing alone in the front garden of the neighbouring house on the left. Irvine smiled at one of them and got a two-fingered salute in reply.
‘Nice,’ she said under her breath.
Irvine stood behind Armstrong as he knocked on the door of the flat. They waited for thirty seconds and Armstrong tried again – harder this time. Third time, he banged with his fist until they heard movement on the stairs inside. A woman’s voice, groggy from drugs or sleep or something else, asked who was there.
‘Police,’ Armstrong said. ‘We need to speak to you.’
There was the sound of the woman ascending the stairs and a muffled conversation with someone. They couldn’t make out the voices from behind the closed door.
Armstrong turned to look at Irvine and she raised her eyebrows at him.
‘Probably trying to work out where to hide their gear,’ he told her, turning back to hammer on the door again.
They heard the lock being fiddled with and the door swung inwards. A woman of about twenty stood in the lower hall in a dirty bathrobe. Her eyes were hooded and her jaw muscles slack.
‘Come on,’ Armstrong said, stepping into the hall and taking the woman by the elbow to lead her upstairs.
Irvine followed, smelling ripe body odour and marijuana smoke. The carpet on the stairs was worn at the edges and threadbare. It looked like one of those patterned efforts that had been popular thirty years ago.
Armstrong reached the top of the stairs with the woman and pushed at the door leading to the hall inside the flat. He went through the door. Irvine was two steps below him when the first gunshot sounded.
The brain takes a little while to react when encountering something unexpected. Irvine stopped where she was at the sound of the shot.
Another one sounded.
A woman screamed.
Another shot.
Irvine ran up and into the hallway.