Hot Wire (24 page)

"
Parada
!" a familiar voice yelled. "
Parada
!"

Deacon and Heberto walked out of the stacks and stopped a couple feet from Matthews, shouting at the
locos
to keep it down and hold their fire. Deacon was carrying a double-barrel shotgun and he looked wet and confused, his gut bulging under a flowered shirt. Heberto came off relaxed, pointing a revolver at the rafters and calling to his men in Spanish. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt with an armpit shoulder holster, and he put away his gun when things started to calm down. The yelling died to a murmur and the warehouse got so quiet I could hear the rain beating on the roof and trickling through the gutters. A foghorn sounded in the harbor.

"What is this?" Deacon asked. "Who the hell are you?"

"Matthews. FBI." Matthews gave him his ID. "Tell your men to put down their weapons and withdraw before this gets out of hand."

"Look around you," Heberto said. "You are in no position to make demands."

"We have a crisis situation here." Matthews was sweating bullets. "You're interfering with federal law enforcement and I'm telling you to lay down your weapons and withdraw."

"Bullshit." Heberto frowned at the bomb. "What is that thing?"

"It's a bomb," Matthews said. "It could go off at any time. Tell your men to withdraw. Your lives are in danger. The whole city's in danger."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Deacon looked worried, turning the ID over in his hands, then passing it to Heberto. "We thought you was somebody else." He looked over at the bomb, his eyes narrowing. "What kind of bomb?"

"There's no time to explain," Matthews said desperately. "Listen, I know who you are, but I'm not interested in you or your activities and I don't care why you're here. That's not my jurisdiction. Tell them to lay down their weapons and withdraw and we can resolve this without a lot of pointless bloodshed. Just walk away and that's the end of it."

"Not so fast." Deacon looked over at the Lexus. "We came for the car and the rat who took it. There's some cops who want them back and we ain't leaving without them."

"Oakland cops?" Matthews shook his head. "If you're talking about the Latham corruption scandal, your source for that story is an informer working for a Customs task force investigating your organization."

Deacon blinked at him. "Say what?"

"Just walk away. There's no time to argue about this."

"We are screwed,
socio
." Heberto turned to Deacon, shaking his head. "Leave the car to the pigs.
Me vale or me vale madre
." He nodded at the bomb. "There is some kind of dirty business here."

"There she is." Deacon had spotted me cowering by the Lexus. "I took you in, you piece of shit. I treated you like my own daughter. I bailed you out when you didn't have crap and you tried to screw me like it never happened."

"What?" I yelled back. "What did
I
do?"

"Forget it, my friend." Heberto clutched Deacon's arm. "We'll take care of that later."

"Take care of what?" I jumped to my feet, the lights blurring. "You think I'm a rat?" I had tunnel vision. All I could see was Deacon's flushed and bloated face, his jowls and piggy eyes. "Who told you that? Jacobo? I told you it was Jacobo all along, you stupid jackoff. I tried to warn you, but you wouldn't listen to me you had your head rammed so far up your fat ass."

"You're dead," he yelled, so furious he'd forgotten everything around him. "I'm gonna finish this right now."

He lurched forward, raising his gun, and chambers clattered all around us. Heberto jumped in front of him and grabbed his wrist.

"No,
companero
. No!"

"This ain't over," Deacon ranted at me. "I'm gonna rip your guts out and feed them to my cats."

"Screw you!"

I lost it, I guess. Didn't know what I was doing. I started at him, but Matthews blocked my way, pointing his gun at my head.

"Stop right there, Emma."

"What's the matter with you?" Arn grabbed my arm. "Look where we are, you moron."

He dragged me back to the car while Heberto got his partner under control, stepping between us and putting his arm around Deacon's shoulder. Matthews was really sweating now. He was about to say something when he got interrupted by a squawl of static that echoed through the warehouse.

"FREEZE," a huge voice yelled over a bullhorn. "THIS IS THE POLICE. DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR."

Spotlights kicked on all around us, beams of harsh light flooding the space in front of the office. Between the spotlights and the arc lights around the bomb, I couldn't see jack for a couple of seconds.

"THIS IS THE POLICE. WE HAVE YOU SURROUNDED."

I had to laugh. Matthews had invaded the warehouse, then Deacon and Heberto had come barging in, and now a million cops were raiding the place. They were probably with that Task Force – the same bunch who'd questioned me at the Emeryville station. They must've followed Deacon to Oakland and now all these cops and spooks were colliding with each other like one of those multiple-car pileups on the highway.

The Task Force showed up late, but they made a grand entrance. Once they got their SWAT team together and surrounded the warehouse, they moved in from all sides, nice and quiet, hiding in the stacks and blocking the exits. Then they hit us with the bullhorn and spotlights. The morons probably thought they were raiding some kind of smuggling deal or a big heroin sale and they must've crapped their pants when they saw the bomb.

"LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR. STEP INTO THE LIGHT WHERE WE CAN SEE YOU."

Everybody froze for a second, stunned by the glare, then they started scuttling around like a nest of giant roaches. The lights were blinding, but they created deep pools of shadow in the aisles running between the stacks. We ducked back behind the Lexus and I saw Crewcut edging along the wall by the office, trying to find some cover.

Deacon, Heberto and Matthews looked kind of dazed. They stood by the table, shielding their eyes, while Matthew's team cowered under the lights in dumb confusion. One of Crewcut's thugs jumped to his feet and ran into the shadows. I could hear the
locos
moving around in the stacks, whispering back and forth, looking for a way out, but they were caught in the middle now. The cops were back along the walls, hiding behind the crates with their Tasers and shotguns, just waiting to move in and crack our skulls.

"DON'T MOVE!" the voice bellowed, contradicting itself two or three times. "STEP INTO THE LIGHT. MOVE AWAY FROM THE DEVICE."

Black blobs throbbed in my eyes. Rain beat on the roof and voices jabbered through blasts of static. A couple seconds passed, then Matthews snapped out of his trance and walked into the glare of a spotlight.

"FBI!" he yelled, holding his ID over his head. "Hold your fire!"

We watched from our hiding place by the Lexus and I wondered who was going to barge in next. The Army? A fleet of Martians? Arn pressed against me, grinning like a moron and breathing down my neck. Brown crouched next to him, guarding the money and his precious documents.

We were scared to move. Feral eyes glistened in the shadows around us: feds peeking through cracks,
locos
peering over crates like man-sized rats. I saw a cop wearing body armor and a visored helmet dart through a beam of light in the back of the warehouse.

"Hide under the car if something happens," Arn said. "Breathe through your sleeve or something."

"Take it easy." Brown was twitching like crazy. "Just take it easy."

"Goddammit," Arn said. "Quit telling us to take it easy."

Crewcut had ducked behind a pillar on the other side of the table and he was signaling to someone on our right. Just then, one of Matthew's guys slipped out of the office with a gun in his hand, looking over his shoulder. He wasn't paying attention to anyone in front of him. Crewcut waited for him to go by, then whacked him with a pipe, took his gun and ran into the stacks, leaving him unconscious on the floor by the crates.

"Jesus Christ," Arn whispered. "Where's the cops? Do you see them?"

Maglite beams flickered in the stacks and I thought I saw a reflection off a sniper scope on top of a pile of crates. A police beacon flashed in the parking lot, red and green lights swiping the windows on the other side of the warehouse. Matthews stood in a blinding halo about ten feet away, a shadow in a trench coat waving his ID at the spotlights. Laser dots jumped across the walls.

"LAY DOWN YOUR WEAPONS." The cops were like a broken record. They hadn't expected the bomb or the mob scene and they probably didn't have enough guys to deal with the mess. "STEP INTO THE LIGHT WITH YOUR HANDS ON YOUR HEADS. AVOID SUDDEN MOVEMENTS."

"Kiss my ass!" somebody yelled.

"Tell them to do it," Matthews shouted at Deacon and Heberto. "We're trapped in the middle here."

He signaled his team to lay down their shotguns, then he put his own gun on the table and stepped back with his hands in the air.

"Let me talk to the C.O," he shouted.

Deacon looked baffled. He mumbled with Heberto for a minute, then walked over to the table, blinking at the lights like an actor who couldn't remember his lines.

"Come on out," he yelled at his men hiding in the stacks. "We got nothing to do with this."

He set his gun down on the table and raised his hands at his sides, scowling like an angry hog. Heberto frowned, then he put his gun down and called to his locos in Spanish:

"
Haga como dicen! No se preocupe! No tenemos nada hacer con esto!
"

A bat dropped on the floor behind me. Metal clinked on concrete – a pipe or knife, most likely. It sounded like they were going along with his orders, but there were a lot of them back in the stacks and it was hard to tell what they were doing.

Sirens howled in the distance.

"COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP." The cop on the bullhorn sounded like he was about to blow a gasket. "DO IT NOW OR WE FILL THIS PLACE WITH TEAR GAS."

"Great," Arn said.

"Who's the C.O.?" Matthews yelled at them. "Let me talk to Agent Chang."

"STAY WHERE YOU ARE. DON'T MOVE."

Locos
started to drift out of the stacks with their hands in the air, muttering and spitting on the floor, giving the invisible cops the finger. I counted five or six of them, but the rest of Heberto's crew were hanging back, waiting to see what happened. I didn't see Castel or any of his greaseballs. Dwayne was missing. So was Miguel.

"What are they trying to do?" Brown kept his voice down. "That can't be all of them. It's not even half."

"The pigs don't know that," Arn said.

"SIT DOWN ON THE FLOOR," the bullhorn ordered. "HANDS ON YOUR HEADS."

"Does that mean us?" I asked.

"What do you think?" Arn said.

"Better do it." Brown sat down with the suitcase and briefcase, determined to hang onto them no matter what happened. "I don't like the way this is going."

"Oh, yeah?" I had to laugh again.

Sirens wailed in the bottoms: it sounded like an army was converging on the warehouse. Another spotlight switched on, flaring through the stacks, and a couple shadows jumped out of the way, looking for a new place to hide. The cops were starting to move through the aisles and I heard a dog whining on the dock. This was going to get ugly real fast.

"Dogs," Arn said. "They're coming through with dogs."

We sat in a row by the Lexus and put our hands on our heads. Matthews, Deacon and Heberto were already sitting on the floor by the table, surrounded by Matthew's team, part of Heberto's crew, and some of Crewcut's goons who hadn't managed to sneak away in all the chaos. My head hurt and the muscles screamed in my back and I had this slow-motion panic going on. Too many shots of adrenaline had fried my nerves.

"The bomb's going to explode," I said. "Isn't it?"

"Relax." Brown flinched at a cramp. "If your friends don't do anything stupid, Matthews will get it straightened out as soon as he gets a chance to talk to somebody."

"Stupid?" Arn snorted. "You got to be kidding."

The noise dropped off and I could hear the dogs growling and barking on the dock.

"COME OUT WITH YOUR HANDS UP." Feedback squealed over the bullhorn. "THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING."

Then I saw Baldy and Crewcut. Just for a second.

From where I was sitting, I could look down a long aisle that ran between the stacks all the way to the opposite wall of the building. It was dark back there, a Mars light flashing outside a window at the far end of the passage. Crewcut was standing in the aisle and I thought I saw Baldy crouched down next to him, peering over a crate, but when I looked again, both of them had vanished. A second later, a shadow ran through a cross passage, somebody looking for an exit before the cops moved in with the dogs, then he disappeared and all I could see was the rain falling past that light flashing outside the window.

I wanted to scream. Jump out of my skin.