Dominion (23 page)

Clarence drove downtown and parked his car in the all day parking garage on the fourth floor next to the elevator, then walked briskly toward the
Trib.
He was about to pass two older white women when one of them looked over her shoulder and saw him approaching. She stepped closer to her friend and clutched her purse tight. Clarence pretended not to notice, not to care.

Funny what you remember.

Ollie escorted Clarence to his desk in the midst of homicide, surrounded by other desks buried in a quantity of paperwork that rivaled even the
Trib.
Ollie’s own desk looked as if it’d been rifled by a burglar.

“Manny’s working on the new case. We’re doing a juggling act.” Ollie pointed at the piles of paperwork. “That murder last night? Ugly. Not our case, but Eisenzimmer briefed me on it. Really shook him up, and he’s seen more homicides than anybody in this city. A fifteen-year-old boy shot in the head at point-blank range, execution style.”

Both men shuddered.

“Get you some coffee?” Ollie asked. Clarence nodded. “Black?”

“Yeah,” Clarence said. “But I’ll have cream in my coffee.”

Ollie looked at him, unsure whether or not he should smile. “The sergeant should be here any minute,” Ollie said. After an uncomfortable silence, he asked, “Have you heard they’re thinking about changing the name of the Washington Bullets?”

“For political correctness you mean?” Clarence asked.

“Yeah. They’re tired of having a name that’s synonymous with violence,” Ollie said. “So from now on they’re just going to call them the Bullets.”

Clarence didn’t smile.

“What’s the difference between a journalist and a catfish?” Ollie tried again.

Clarence rolled his eyes. “I’ve heard it.”

“So, Jake told you all about me? What exactly did he say?”

“He said you were brilliant. And that you didn’t suffer from anorexia.”

“Brilliant, huh? Anything else?” Ollie asked.

“That I’d never mistake you for Gandhi.”

Ollie let out a belly laugh. “Here comes the sergeant now.” He reached out his hand to the slender uniformed officer carrying a black rifle case.

“Sergeant Terry McCamman, Clarence Abernathy. Clarence is with the
Tribune
, but don’t hold that against him. I’ve invited him to sit in with us while you walk me through the details. Okay with you?”

“No problem. First, I’m an armorer.” McCamman spoke like a seminar leader and looked at Clarence to see if there was a nod of understanding. There wasn’t. “That means I’m trained to repair weapons. Sort of like a gunsmith. I’m certified by different manufacturers to fix their guns.”

“Okay.”

“Also, like most armorers, I’m a firearms enthusiast.”

“He means gun nut,” Ollie translated.

“Yeah.” The sergeant laughed. “Anyway, the detective here gave a shell casing to the SERT captain, then he passed it on to me just this morning.”

“What’s sert?” Clarence asked.

“You know, SWAT
is
Special Weapons and Tactics? SERT is Special Emergency Response Team. They’re just different names for the same thing. Anyway, as soon as I saw this brass, I knew what it came from.”

“Terry,” Ollie said, “give me the explanation of how you know this, the one you started on me yesterday when we didn’t have time. Go slowly for us non-armorers, okay?”

“Sure. Basically, there are three types of actions that drive automatic and semiautomatic weapons. One type is gas operation, where the gas created by the gunpowder ignition is bled off a hole in the forward part of the barrel. That drives the action. That’s true of an M-16 or AK-47. The second type is a simple blowback, used mainly in pistol caliber submachine guns. The round just drives the bolt to the rear and cycles the gun. A MAC 10 or Uzi, for instance.”

“Okay, I’m with you,” Ollie said. “And the third type?”

“Delayed blowback. Some mechanical system delays the action cycle until pressures are low enough to safely cycle the action.”

“And what all this means as to our murder weapon is…what?” Ollie asked.

“Well, to jump to the bottom line, what it means is your weapon was manufactured by Heckler and Koch. It’s almost certainly an HK53.I brought one up from tactical so you could see it.”

He took out of the case a black rifle, holding it like a mother holds a three-month-old. The rifle was just under thirty inches long, a precision balance of solid steel and durable black plastic. It wasn’t quite rifle and not quite submachine gun. It looked very sleek and solid, like something out of the future. Compact, with a telescoping buttstock and a flashlight built into the forearm of the gun. Clearly this was no ordinary firearm. It screamed quality from front to back, cutting a stark contrast to the mass-produced weapons Clarence had seen, such as the AK-47. He could imagine it being handcrafted by a spectacled European artisan listening to Beethoven. Clarence didn’t know rifles very well, but he knew enough to be impressed with this one.

“Whoa,” Ollie said under his breath. “Our perps are running around with one of
these?”

“Germans are into quality,” the sergeant said. Clarence could see the admiration on McCamman’s face. He reminded him of a car mechanic pointing out the features of a brand new Mercedes. “Heckler and Koch leads the world in tactical weaponry for police and military.”

“But I still don’t see how you know that’s our weapon,” Ollie said.

“Okay. The HK system is very sophisticated and distinctive—it’s called a delayed roller locking bolt. In order to reliably extract spent casings, the chambers of HK rifles and submachine guns are fluted. Look down this chamber and you can see it.” He raised the gun, opening it up and positioning it just right.

“See that series of longitudinal flutes? They allow gas to come back around the case and prevent it from getting stuck in the chamber after firing. Once fired, the brass looks exactly like this.” He held up the casing Ollie had passed on to him, pointing to the prominent black stripes dug into the brass, reaching over an inch down the one-and-three-quarter-inch casing.

Ollie and Clarence both moved in for a close look as McCamman pointed at the markings.

“The flutes in the chamber always leave these stripes. It’s so distinctive that the moment I saw it I knew it couldn’t be anything else. Go out to the range where the SERT team does target practice. HK brass is different from every other spent case out there. Very distinctive.”

“And the magazines hold…how many rounds?” Ollie asked.

“The standard HK53 magazine holds twenty-five rounds. But there’s lots of after-market magazines that hold forty.”

“We had exactly forty shots,” Ollie said. “A magazine change takes what, three or four seconds?”

“I can do it in two, no problem. But if you aren’t as practiced, I’d say four seconds.”

“Nobody reported a lull in the shooting,” Ollie said. “It was continuous.”

“Then you can pretty much count on the forty-round magazine. Even if you had the original twenty-five round mag, it would be easier and cheaper to buy a forty rounder at a gun show than get another twenty-five from HK. And gangbangers
do
shop at the gun shows—or send their girlfriends to shop for them.”

“Plus the forty-round magazine would look a lot meaner,” Ollie said. “And gangbangers are into looking mean.”

“The HK53 fires seven hundred rounds per minute. So per second, that’s what…?”

Both Terry and Ollie looked up in the air to punch one of those invisible calculators.

“Just under twelve rounds per second,” Clarence said.

“I’m impressed,” Ollie said. “So, Terry, what kind of noise would this baby make at midnight?”

“It would raise the dead, that’s what it would do. This is thunder and lighting. It’s a gangbanger’s dream machine. It’ll make any punk feel like he’s God, for a few seconds anyway.”

“More than your typical nine millimeter auto?” Ollie asked.

“No comparison. Much deeper, throatier, louder than a nine. If he kept the trigger down, the rounds are all gone in under four seconds. But that’s the loudest four seconds you’ve ever heard.”

“Why so loud?” Ollie said.

“The HK’s got a rifle ammo, but it has this really short barrel.” He held it up. “That means lots of noise. Did anybody see the shooter’s face? It was probably visible with the muzzle flashes.”

“What muzzle flashes?” Ollie asked.

“You mean nobody saw the gun actually firing?”

“Yeah. Mrs. Burns saw it. But she didn’t mention any flashes.”

“If she saw it firing she
had
to see muzzle flashes. I mean with an Uzi or an AK you’re going to get little flashes, but with this baby we’re talking flashes the size of softballs at least. I’ve seen them as big as basketballs. There must have been a lot of smoke, right?”

“Yeah,” Ollie said, “a dozen neighbors saw the smoke, but by then the car was gone. The first patrolmen who got there said smoke was still hanging in the air.”

“Sometimes just for fun,” McCamman said, “we do hand loads to enhance the flash on this unit. Of course, from a tactical standpoint, flashes are bad. They night-blind the shooter and identify his position. But civilians aren’t in combat, so they love all the flashes. Pretty macho stuff. You’re sure nobody saw flashes?”

“Mrs. Burns wasn’t wearing her glasses, and nobody else got to the window in time.”

“Too bad.”

“Isn’t that much smoke unusual?” Ollie asked.

“Not with the HK53. It’s this short barrel, just over eight inches. See you’ve still got unburned powder igniting after the bullet leaves the barrel. You know, in a longer barrel, the powder burns in the barrel with the bullet capping it, and there’s just a little muzzle flash. I still can hardly believe it though.”

“Believe what?” Ollie asked.

“That a gangbanger would carry an HK. I can count on a few fingers the crimes I’ve heard of committed with an HK. I mean, there was a California bank robbery where guys used HK rifles in their getaway to keep the cops back. And I think I heard a Missouri State Trooper was killed with one. But HKs are almost always used by the good guys. Certainly not by gangbangers.”

“Why’s that?” Ollie asked.

“Well, for one thing you’re talking incredibly expensive. For the private citizen living in a state where automatic weapons are legal, over three thousand dollars. Police departments can get them for twelve hundred dollars, but that’s a special deal. And even that isn’t cheap. This is an uncommon weapon. You could buy four or five Uzis or AKs for the price of one of these. Now, Hollywood uses them. I’ve seen HKs in
Lethal Weapon, Die Hard
, Seagal’s flicks, you name it. But on the street? Unheard of.”

“Until now.” Ollie scratched his chin. “All right, we know HK is the manufacturer. How can you be sure this one’s the right model?” He nodded at the weapon now cradled in his arms.

“Well,” Sergeant McCamman said, “HK makes a lot of rifles, but your shell casings are .223 caliber. That narrows it down to four. The HK G41 is extremely rare, I’d rule it out. The HK33, which is full-auto, but rifle sized, is possible. The HK93 is a civilian legal rifle, semiauto only. See this selector lever?” He pointed to a black switch on the side of the HK53. “This fire selector lets you choose between three different modes of fire. Semiautomatic, three round burst, or full automatic. You say the witnesses reported nonstop fire?”

Ollie nodded.

“Then you can eliminate the HK93, unless it was converted to auto, which I can’t rule out. But I’d bet big bucks the HK53 is your weapon. Though I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen the casing myself. And I still think somebody should have seen the flashes.”

“Thanks, Terry You’ve been a big help.”

As McCamman took the weapon from Ollie, he said, “Your gangster found the full auto switch, and he’s so impressed with himself he’s dumping the entire magazine in a three second trigger squeeze. In a shoot-out, he’d be more accurate with the semiauto or three shot bursts. But when he dumps the load, I pity anyone who happens to be in front of this gun. They wouldn’t have a chance.”