Chapter Forty-Nine
Someone was whispering close to my ear - it was Kyle. 'Let's go, Alex. It's time to move on them.' At four in the morning, he gave the signal to breach the house. Kyle was calling all the shots. He had authority over the locals, too. I accompanied a dozen agents outfitted in blue windbreakers. Nobody was feeling too secure about the raid. We moved cautiously to within seventy-five yards of the house, at the edge of the pine forest. Two snipers, who had dug in about thirty yards from the house, radioed that it was still quiet inside. Too quiet? 'These are mostly young kids,' Kyle reminded us before we went in. 'But protect yourselves first.' We crawled on our hands and knees until we were as close as the snipers. Then we rushed the house, using three entrances to get inside. Kyle and I went through the front, the others through the side and back. A couple of flash-bang grenades went off. There was screaming on the ground floor. High pitched. Kids. No gunshots - yet. It was a weird, chaotic scene. Stoned kids - lots of them, most in their underwear or nude. At least twenty teenagers had been sleeping on the ground floor. No electricity, just candles. The place smelled of urine, weed, mildew, cheap wine, and wax. Clown Posse and Killah Priest posters were hung on the walls. The tiny front hall and the living room merged into an open area. The kids had been asleep on blankets, or just the wooden floor. Now they were awake, and angry, shouting,'Pigs! Cops! Get the f*ck out!'
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VIOLETS ARE BLUE
Agents were rousting more of them on the second floor. There were fistfights, but still no gunshots. No one seriously hurt. A sense of anticlimax. A skinny boy screamed at the top of his voice and rushed at me. He seemed to have no fear of my drawn gun. His eyes were blood-red. Color contacts. He was growling and drooling frothy saliva. I took him down in a head lock, cuffed him, told him to chill before he got himself hurt. I doubt that he weighed much more than a hundred and forty pounds, but he was wiry and stronger than he looked. An agent near me wasn't so lucky - a heavy-set redheaded girl bit him in the cheek as he was attempting to restrain her. Then the girl bit into his chest. The agent howled, and struggled to get her off. She held on like a dog with a bone. I yanked the girl away and cuffed her arms behind her back. She wore a black T-shirt with'Merry F*ckin'Xmas Bitch'printed on it. She had tattoos of snakes and skulls everywhere. She was screaming in my face,'You are unworthy! You suck!' 'The one we want is in the cellar! The killer,' Kyle called to me. Trwin Snyder!' I followed him through a dysfunctional kitchen, then out back to a slanted wooden door that led to a cellar. We had our guns drawn. From what we knew about the viciousness and suddenness of the Irwin Snyder attacks, nobody wanted to go into the cellar. I yanked open the door and we edged inside. Kyle, two other agents and I went down three rickety wooden steps. It was quiet and dark. An agent worked a flashlight around. Then we saw the killer. He saw us too.
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