Shot caller, p.25
Shot Caller, page 25
“You’re a handy man to have around.”
“Maybe mention that to your father and hint that a raise is a great way to compensate my skills.”
“Nice try. No cigar.”
“Can’t blame a guy for trying.”
“Detective Capello.”
Gemma turned at the sound of her name to find Dr. Peltier behind her, his medical duffel at his feet. “Dr. Peltier? I didn’t expect to see you here.”
“I offered to be on hand for the raid on top of the regular OBCC medical team. Your officers are carrying rifles and may have to use force if attacked, so I wanted to be here in case of injury.”
“Good idea, thank you. I sincerely hope we won’t need your services.”
“Me too.”
McFarland stepped away from the laptop and turned to where Garcia and Tony Capello stood deep in conversation. “Sir.” He waited until he had both of their attention. “We’re ready to go here.”
“You have audio to go with that video?” Tony asked.
“Yes, sir. I have it muted for now. I’ll have audio up on all cameras when it’s time. It’ll be a mass of sound, but we should still be able to pick up specific incidents that can be reviewed later if needed, as their units are recording as well as streaming.”
“Good.” Tony glanced at his watch and then across the room as Sanders led his team out the door. “The stairwell teams are moving right on time.”
Logan and his team followed, and then the rest of the officers filed out.
The room settled into silence.
“Give me one second . . .” McFarland made a quick adjustment and then the grid projected onto the whiteboard and a steady drum of footsteps filled the room.
Sanders’s feed showed him moving down an empty hallway, then up a staircase. Logan’s feed showed Sanders going through the door, trailed by his team. They jogged up several flights of stairs and then broke out into the hallway just down from the ESH2 wing. They jogged through the deserted ESH and through the bright red emergency door which had been left unlocked for them.
As soon as they hit the stairwell, nearly all noises ceased—not a word and only the lightest of footsteps. It was imperative they arrive in position silently, not giving any advanced sign. Logan’s feed stopped at a door that said ESH1 - 2. His head turned tracking one of his men who moved to a panel to the right of the door. “In position and ready to release the door.” Logan’s voice was only a whisper of sound.
Sanders’s feed continued down another flight of steps to a door stamped with ESH1 - 1. “In position and ready to release.”
There was about ten seconds of silence as the other three teams got in position around the corner from the main door to the ESH1. Cartwright eased around the corner just enough to see the ERSU standing off to the side and two A-Team officers standing in front of the doorway, exactly as they had all day. An ERSU officer nodded in Cartwright’s direction as if responding to an out-of-sight hand signal; then he signaled to one of his men who moved to an unlocked control panel and then turned to nod at Cartwright.
“All teams, go, no go for breach.” Cartwright’s voice was quiet but clear.
“Barrow, go.”
“Kirkpatrick, go.”
“Logan, go.”
“Sanders, go.”
“Ready the flash bang, pull the pin.” Cartwright paused. “Doors open on my mark. And . . . mark!” The last word was a shout.
Action exploded on the feeds. At the emergency doors, a single man stepped into the camera’s view as the door swung wide, tossed a grenade, and ducked back out of sight as the camera also turned away from the opening. As the main door rumbled open, three officers ran forward and tossed the grenades in three directions—right, left, and straight ahead—into the facility before they retreated.
A blinding flash of light washed over all five screens accompanied by a succession of blasts in stereo from both the laptop and straight through the hallway door. The flash bangs—175 decibels of deafening noise set off against a burning light that caused five to seven seconds of flash blindness and a disorienting afterimage—were the cover for the men to enter the facility avoiding lethal force.
As soon as the grenades went off, the men were on the move, snaking through the doorway through a thick layer of smoke.
“NYPD! Get on the ground!”
The teams moved fast. Kirkpatrick sprinted for the center stairs, leaping up the few steps, and then he and his team were on the five men on the mezzanine. Blinking with sleep and stunned by the noise, only one of them put up a minimal fight.
Sanders bolted for the staircase to the right of the main entrance, pounding up the steps and then swinging into the first cell. The inmate came at him fast, launching from the bed to ram him, until he saw the M4 pointed at his torso and stopped, his hands rising into the air.
Barrow was on the ground floor and just about to check a cell when an inmate roared out of the doorway. Barrow let him get one step outside the cell before he moved in, raising the butt of his rifle to ram him between the shoulder blades. The man went down, a metal shiv flying out of his hand to clatter over the floor. “Keep going!” He bellowed as he bent down to crank the man’s hands behind his back and restrain them. His men moved past him, carrying on down the corridor.
“First hostage is secure.” It was Logan’s voice. “Cell thirty-five. Duran. Sims is with him.”
“Second hostage is secure.” This time it was Cartwright. “Cell forty-six. It’s Keen. He’s with Clarke.”
“Let go!” The shout echoed around the facility, but it was Kirkpatrick spinning around and looking up toward the upper walkway that identified one of Sanders’s men in a hand-to-hand struggle with an inmate trying to topple him over the balcony.
Kirkpatrick raised his rifle. “Let him go!” he shouted. “He goes over, I will shoot you.”
It only took that brief second of distracted hesitation for the A-Team officer to reclaim control of the struggle, wrestling the man to the floor and cuffing him.
“Close one,” McFarland murmured.
“Too close,” Gemma agreed.
Already things were coming under control, the volume in the facility dropping as men were surrendering. Cartwright had Burk and was muscling him down the second-floor walkway with a bit less finesse and a bit more force than necessary. Reading the anger in Cartwright’s every clipped command, Gemma thought Burk was lucky that was the worst he was getting.
Logan stepped into a cell doorway, rifle pointed at the occupant curled on the bed, who cringed, throwing up her hands to block the light from his rifle as she cried out, “Don’t shoot!” He instantly dropped the barrel, and Andrea Montgomery lowered her hands and smiled in relief.
“Warrick, come in and stay with CO Montgomery,” Logan ordered. “Logan, coming out!”
It was when he cautiously swung out of the cell that he was blindsided.
The attack came from the unsearched cell to his right. Gemma caught a brief flash of motion, a burst of orange leaping out like a speeding freight train, the inmate pushing Logan’s rifle aside where it would be useless in close quarters, his other forearm raised as he barreled into Logan full speed, catching him below the level of the camera. Then everything was in motion as they struggled, but Gemma caught a hand upraised with a blur of white in it, and a face frozen in a snarl of rage.
She knew that face. Rivas had nothing left to lose and was making a last stand. And was using his switchblade one last time to do so.
For several terrifying seconds the camera view was just a blur as the two men grappled, then Logan loosed a grunt of pain, followed by the crack of his handgun and a scream. Logan fell back against the wall, panting hard, his breath whistling through clenched teeth, but when he looked down, the camera feed found Rivas writhing on the ground, clutching his side. Then two other officers were on him, blocking Gemma’s view.
And then it was done. In only the course of a few minutes, the last six days of hell was finally over.
Everyone watching the raid ran down the hallway, past the darkened courtyard, around the corner, and straight into ESH1. A-Team officers were marching cuffed inmates out one at a time while others sat restrained to the mezzanine tables. Officers Jackson and Keen sat side by side on the mezzanine steps looking exhausted but relieved. Keen cradled his left arm in his right hand, but he looked better than the day before. Peltier’s lavage and the antibiotics appeared to be working well for him.
A rap of metal on metal drew Gemma’s gaze upward to find Johnson coming down the south staircase with Logan’s right arm over his shoulder, supporting him as they descended. She couldn’t see Logan’s injury, but the black uniform camouflaged blood all too well. Johnson was being careful, but each step must have jarred Logan from his clenched teeth and what looked like a few choice curses. He’d been hit during Rivas’s attack, but how badly?
Peltier ran over to them, stopped them at the bottom of the steps for a quick examination of Logan’s left shoulder. He turned to Keen. “Officer Keen, please wait there for me. I want to look at that arm before you move around anymore. Detective Logan, come with me.” He traded places with Johnson and walked Logan out of the ESH. As they went, she heard Logan’s protest that he could walk just fine and Dr. Peltier’s response that he’d be the judge of that.
Concerned about the extent of his injury, Gemma took a step to follow, but then movement above her attracted her attention. Looking up, she found Andrea Montgomery coming down the stairs with Peterson. She looked pale and shaky, possibly shocky. Gemma grabbed a blanket off a pile just inside the doorway and met her at the bottom of the stairs.
Montgomery was even paler up close, her dark eyes sunken and stunned, her lips dry and cracked from dehydration. Gemma draped the blanket around her shoulders and wrapped an arm around her, feeling the deep tremors that ran through her. “It’s okay. It’s all over. You can go home now.”
Montgomery bit her bottom lip, her breath catching raggedly. “I just want to see my kids.”
“You will. It’s over now. Your kids are waiting for you at home.”
“I can’t . . . I just need to—” Montgomery’s knees buckled and Gemma lowered her to sit on the bottom step. The CO buried her face in her hands and wept, but to Gemma’s ears, they were tears of relief.
Rubbing a hand up and down Montgomery’s back, she scanned the cell block and met her father’s eyes across the mezzanine. His smile was tired but full of satisfaction. She grinned back at him.
A successful raid, no death, minimal injuries. Thirty-nine inmates contained, all six remaining hostages rescued.
It was a win after all.
CHAPTER 31
Gemma easily found the curtained exam room and rapped her knuckles on the doorframe. “Sean? It’s Gemma. Can I come in?”
“Uh . . . sure.” There was surprise in Logan’s voice. He likely hadn’t expected anyone involved in today’s raid would come all the way to Elmhurst after an already long night.
She tucked the jacket she carried securely over her forearm and pushed aside the curtain in time to see him sit up on the gurney and swing his feet off the end. He was shirtless—his shirt was likely in ribbons in a trash can somewhere after they’d cut it off him to evaluate his wound—but still wore his tactical pants and heavy boots.
A neat white bandage covered the front of his left shoulder. But around the wound, his skin was stained red with blood in smears and rivulets that ran over one side of his chest and down his arm.
“It looks worse than it is,” he said before she could ask. “They wiped down anything that hadn’t already dried, but they’re leaving it to me to clean off the rest.”
Gemma tried not to stare. “It looks bad.”
“It bled a bit.”
“A bit?”
“Maybe a little more than that.”
“Peltier said the blade of Rivas’s switchblade broke off in your shoulder.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t quite as sturdy as Rivas thought. They had to fish out the blade once I got here.”
“No wonder it bled.”
“I’ve had worse. What are you doing here? It’s five o’clock in the morning.”
“And you said I’d be home by three.” Her chuckle couldn’t hide her exhaustion. “I was on my way home, but I wanted to check in on you if you were still here. And here you are.”
“Is it all wrapped at Rikers?”
“As wrapped as we need it to be. The ESH is cleared out and Davis is sending in teams to clean up the mess. All the inmates have been moved to other cell blocks, and the major players have been transferred to solitary confinement.”
“Meaning both Rivas and Burk?”
“And a few others, but yes, those two specifically. Burk directly there, and Rivas eventually after high-security treatment in the hospital unit.” She paused, fussing with the jacket, twisting the blue fabric in her hands.
“That bothers you?”
“No, they got what they deserved. I just . . . I just had higher hopes for my contact with Rivas. That I’d have gotten through to him even a little bit.”
This had happened to Gemma before, and she knew she’d work through it given some processing time. But the act of negotiation—the crucial connection to someone on the other end of the line, especially when it was over days as it was during this crisis—created an inadvertent intimacy between the players. Even though she was satisfied with the final resolution by and large, the fact that she’d never penetrated Rivas’s innermost layers was akin to a small loss.
“I’m not sure anyone would have gotten through to someone as hardened as Rivas. His life circumstances and his place in the Filero Kings wouldn’t allow him to make a connection like that. Not with you. Not with Taylor. Not with anyone outside of his gang life.”
“You’re right. Still, you hope for better.” She gave him a half smile. “And sometimes you get it. Just not this time. Anyway, Rivas is going to have lots of time to think about if he could have handled this differently. He’ll have a host of new charges. As will the other men in the ESH. Some of those charges are obvious—we know who the players are—but some of them I suspect we’ll never know. I wouldn’t consider the inmates dependable witnesses since many of them have agendas with each other, so we can’t trust they’re truthfully telling us what happened. But hopefully we can get enough consensus because I really want to know who’s responsible for Garvey’s murder. Past all that, what’s left for me now is the paperwork.”
“That’ll be no small task.”
“It never is.” Her gaze dropped to his shoulder. “Are you just about done here?”
“Getting close.” He tried to roll his left shoulder and winced. “The doc will be back with a prescription for antibiotics. And he wants to update my tetanus because that facility was so filthy. Then they’ll spring me.”
“Were stitches sufficient?”
“Looks like it.”
“What happened? It was hard to tell from the camera feed.”
“Rivas clearly had the attack planned. Not for me, but for whoever appeared first. He knew whoever found Montgomery would pause momentarily, giving him a chance to get ready. I came out of Montgomery’s cell and he jumped out of the adjacent cell. He led with the hand that pushed my rifle away from him, but he was already too close for it to be any use in such close quarters. He’s big and heavy—probably has two inches and thirty pounds on me—so his entire plan was based on brute force. He rushed me, slammed me against the open cell door with his forearm to my collar, and went for my throat with that goddamn switchblade. In the struggle, I managed to pivot enough out of the way that he only caught my shoulder at the edge of my vest.”
“That was lucky. You could tell just by looking at him that he spends a lot of time working out.”
“Overpowering me was definitely his master plan. I could have done better against him if I’d been fighting with both hands, but I was only using one and went for my Sig with the other. That’s the shot that took him down.” He glanced down at the bandage on his shoulder. “That plastic knife was surprisingly sharp, but considering the force of the blow, it just wasn’t strong enough, and the hilt snapped off. Then the tissues swelled and they had to dig around for the blade to pull it out. They froze it first, so I mostly felt a lot of tugging. Luckily it came out in one piece with nothing left behind. It missed anything major, though I’m pretty sure they dragged the blade over bone pulling it out.”
Gemma winced. “Ouch.”
“Let’s hear it for the meds.” His gaze dropped to the blue fabric draped over her arm. “What’s that?”
Gemma dragged her gaze away from Logan’s injury. “I thought you might like to borrow this.” She shook out the material to reveal a navy zippered, hooded sweat jacket with NYPD emblazoned across the front in yellow block letters. “I assume your shirt is history?”
“Yeah. I think those nurses take some kind of perverse pleasure cutting clothing off a guy. They could have just taken the sleeve, but they cut the whole thing off.”
“They needed access to the whole wound to clean it.”
“That’s what they all say.” Logan’s tone was dry. “That can’t be yours. It’s way too big.”
“It’s not. It’s my brother Joe’s. He left it at my place weeks ago, and it’s been in my car waiting until the next time I saw him . . . which was unexpectedly at Rikers, so it never occurred to me to give it to him. I think you need it right now more than he does. Not to mention it’s a zip-up and you might have trouble putting on anything else for a few days.”
“At this point, I’d appreciate not having to go home in a hospital gown.”
