“Hold fire until he’s clear of that hut,” came the lieutenant’s instructions. Heat and her team countered to the far side of the vehicle for cover and waited.
“NYPD, freeze and drop your weapon!” blasted the bullhorn command from the BearCat. The man ignored that and doubled his pace for the gate, where a rear flank uniform was advancing. The man raised his pistol to shoot. Well clear of the structure, the team unleashed a volley on him that threw his body into the chain link and then to the ground, pouring red onto the old cobblestones.
The backup officer toed the dead man’s weapon aside and cleared him with a hand signal to the group. “In the trailer,” came the next PA call. “This is the NYPD. You are surrounded. Throw out your weapons and come out with your hands raised.” The driver gunned the monster engine as added incentive. No response.
They waited.
But not long. Using hand signals, the Alpha team set up in entry formation, with one cluster taking position behind a concrete ballast block near the steps and the other fanning right to the gap between the silver minivan and the far end of the trailer. Heat joined the squad behind the concrete cube just as they advanced on the door with a battering ram. She waited at the bottom of the steps and, during the ram’s backswing, right before impact, she heard glass break. “Back window!” Nikki called, and ran for the gate.
Heat got to the sidewalk just as another huge guy—the same one who tried for a penalty kick with her head—cleared his legs through the shack’s back window and started scaling the fence.
If he felt the pain of the razor wire, he didn’t show it. He scrambled over the concertina, letting himself fall and land hard in his own blood, which had dotted the sidewalk. Rugged and solid but UFC-quick, he vaulted to his feet and started to run. “Police, freeze!” called Nikki. He slowed and turned to regard her, actually scoffing, while in her earbud, she heard the all-clear from inside the trailer.
No Rook.
In that instant, Heat knew she wanted this one alive. For all she knew, this mouth breather was the only link to finding Rook. Or finding out what had happened to him. She holstered up and charged him.
The shock of realizing that this woman would come at him hand to hand caught the goon so much by surprise that she was able to knock him to the ground with her tackle. He got himself up on one elbow and, flailing with his other arm, tried to throw a clothesline at her as he had on Third Avenue. But she dipped, presenting her shoulder, and his blow struck at an angle that diffused its energy. Heat came back with a quick shot with the heel of her hand up into his nostrils, which brought the sound of crunching bone, but no protest. Instead, he log-rolled away from her and came up kneeling with one hand reaching for his back waistband. In that blink of an eye, Heat heard footsteps racing toward her and overlapping calls of “Gun!” and “He’s got a gun!” plus her own voice hollering “Hold fire!” and yelling “Don’t!” to him while she drew her piece and then, in a flash of instinct or poetry or just plain damn payback, she kicked him in the head, sending him tumbling back on the sidewalk with his Glock sliding into the weeds.
“Clear,” called Heat. Then she rolled him and cuffed him.
As the others rushed up, Nikki stood, bent over her prisoner, repeatedly shouting, “Where is he?” Feller and one of the officers manhandled the guy to his feet, and he gave Heat a stony glower over his swelling nose, but no reply.
“Let me to take this shithead for a ride,” said Feller. “He’ll talk.” He meant it, too. There was a street side to Randall, a part of him that was capable of anything under the right circumstances.