Secession: The Storm (24 page)

“We’ve got wounded men lying all over the place up there,” one of the officers shouted, his face flush with fear and anxiety. “We’ve got to get them out!”

Special Agent Perkins peered at his watch and shook his head, “We will have to wait. The Harris County armored vehicle won’t be here for another 25 minutes. I can’t order more men into the kill zone.”

Another cop stepped forward, his expression and tone divulging the tortured nature of his soul. “Those guys will bleed out in 25 minutes. Even if they aren’t hurt that bad, that fucker might decide to start taking out the wounded. We’ve got to get our people out of there.”

Perkins was just as disgusted as anyone. “I know; I know. I’ve got people up there too. Anybody got any ideas?”

“We could form a wall with the shields,” somebody suggested. “Put up a barrier while we carry the wounded out of his range.”

“His
range
?” a deputy snorted, “That son of a bitch nailed my commander at 800 yards. I saw another constable fall beyond that, and he was at a dead run. How in the hell are we supposed to carry our guys that far? He’s good enough to pick us off if there’s even the smallest opening. I think it’s suicide to go in there without armor.”

Perkins had to agree, but was out of ideas. He continued to scan the anxious faces, hoping the law enforcement brain trust would generate a solution from its collective experience. It was then that he noticed the line of traffic that had formed, waiting to enter the now closed neighborhood. An oversized vehicle in the gridlock caught his eye.

Pointing, the FBI agent suggested, “What about the garbage truck? Can we use that as cover to go in and get our people out?”

Several heads turned to inspect what sparked Perkins’ suggestion. “That might work,” came a voice from the throng. “Let’s see if we can get two or three of them. Give the EMTs some room to work on our guys,” suggested someone else.

“Let’s hurry,” Perkins added, “They are going to need some modifications for this scheme to succeed. It’s going to be night soon. I don’t want our folks walking around with flashlights.”

Ten minutes later, Abe recognized the sound of a large diesel motor in the distance. He’d moved to one of the other upstairs bedrooms, thinking any remaining snipers would have zeroed in on his previous shooting position.

“Finally,” he proclaimed to the empty house, “Took them long enough to get some armor up here.”

Again moving to a shooting slit, he scanned the street, expecting to see one of the county’s armored cars. A questioning frown formed on his face when instead of a heavily plated battlewagon, he spied a short parade of trash trucks rolling slowly up the road. There were lines of policemen walking behind them.

“I’ve got to hand it to you, Agent Perkins,” Abe observed. “That was clever… very creative.”

Raising the Trackerpoint, he zoomed in on the lead truck, thoughts of plinking the driver circulating through his mind. He had to study the oncoming convoy before he realized the cops had up-armored the garbage haulers. He could see police shields tied to the windshields and grills, a sage tactic to protect the engines and drivers.

Mrs. Fullerton’s residence was also active. Switching his angle, Abe observed three officers appear from the rear of his neighbor’s home, each man brandishing a riot shield, together forming a wall of protection. Two additional officers crouched behind the barrier. Like crabs crossing beach sand, the little huddle moved forward as one, eventually reaching the downed sniper. Abe saw them quickly snatch up their comrade and then scuttle back to the safety of the backyard.

“The brotherhood of blue,” Abe nodded. “I wonder if they would have done the same for my father and brother?” he whispered. “I bet they wouldn’t be so brave if there had been just regular old Americans bleeding on the grass.”

Zach sat on the hotel bed, absentmindedly listening as the Houston cops went about processing the scene.

He was profoundly perplexed.

They had discovered the money, part of the stash in the briefcase, a bit more buried in the closet. The manager, pissed that one of his better rooms would require new carpet, had discovered the rest of the bribe-loot in the hotel’s safe.

But it was the bankroll’s container that rattled the Texan’s cool. The manager produced an old gym bag, faded from wear and age, sporting the emblem of the NY Jets. The Texas Ranger was sure it was identical to the satchel Tusk had been carrying … the same bag Major Alcorn claimed vanished with the only witness.  

The bad guy’s gun appeared to be the perfect match for Sam’s open homicide, the ballistics test likely to confirm the weapon had been involved in at least one murder.

While Sam’s case was surely wrapped up tight and adorned with a pretty, pink bow, Zach’s life had just gotten entirely more complex.

How in hell had that gym bag gotten back into circulation? What possible connection did a dead Latino girl and long-expired cartel henchman have with an H-Town conman? None of it made sense.

The crook had been watching television when the smoking hot detective entered his room, the muted set streaming a breaking news update during the entire forensic process. Zach’s eye was suddenly drawn to the screen, the news station displaying a picture of a guy that seemed familiar. The name under the grainy photo read, “Abraham Hendricks.”

“What the hell,” the ranger mumbled, upturning couch cushions in his scramble for the remote.

One of Sam’s coworkers was standing close by, Zach’s flurry of activity diverting his attention from the laptop in his hands. “You haven’t heard what’s going on up north of the city? There’s a standoff involving an active shooter happening right now. I heard over the radio that they’ve got a least 16 officers down. The nut job that tried to kill Clifton is holed-up and has the entire place booby-trapped.”

“I know that guy from somewhere. Who is he?” Zach replied.

The officer started tapping on his keyboard, spinning the machine around to show Zach the screen.

“Says here he was born in Louisiana, moved to Texas a little over 10 years ago. No warrants, no arrests. Probably one of the Katrina transplants.”

That was it! It all came flooding back to Zach. That was the bloody man he’d carried out of the house in New Orleans.

Turning to Sam, he pointed toward the television and asserted, “Hey, you are not going to believe this, but I know that guy… the holdout. Do you have any contacts working that scene right now?”

Turning to the television, Sam watched the broadcast for a few moments without comment. Finally staring down at the floor, she said, “Yes, as a matter of fact I do. Sal, the head FBI agent, and I have been dating on and off for a while.”

Zach shook his head and thought,
I knew I should have gone with the FBI. They get all the perks.

Memories of New Orleans circulated through Zach’s head as Sam and he drove north toward the standoff. While the episode in Louisiana entered his mind now and then, he’d never taken the time to follow-up. The backlog of cases in the overworked El Paso office simply hadn’t allowed it.

As the HPD teams finished up at the hotel, he made a call to his headquarters, requesting all available information be forwarded to his smart phone. There hadn’t been much.

Sergeant Ford, the only name he could recall from that day, was still with the New Orleans PD, now a captain in their Rapid Response Unit – a kind of politically correct name for what was essentially a SWAT team.

Until the newscast, he hadn’t even known the name Abe Hendricks.

When the emails from HQ began filling his inbox, Zach slowly filled in the gaps, creating a mental picture of the chain of events. Mr. Hendricks had survived his head injuries, but with some difficulty. He’d been hospitalized for over two months. Evidently, he’d hired an attorney because there was a sealed record of a lawsuit. Things got a little sketchy after that. There was another sealed arrest record for Abe, but no trial docket or list of charges. The lawsuit had been dismissed the same day as the charges had been dropped.

Since that time, the ranger knew that Abe had relocated to Texas, procured a driver’s license, paid his property taxes, and kept his nose clean. Other than a divorce some months ago, there wasn’t any other record of the man on any law enforcement databases.

“So fill me in, Ranger Bass,” Sam began, “How do you know this man whose desire it is to make the Guinness Book for killing more cops than Al Capone?”

Zach told his temporary partner the story, filling in as many details as he could recall.

“I remember reading about that gun grab,” Temple responded. “I was in college when that all went down, and one of my professors was going ape shit crazy over the whole thing.”

“Yeah, I remember it not sitting right with me either, but if you had seen New Orleans after the storm… I’m not saying it was justified, but those cops down there were facing something no one had ever seen before. In some small way, I don’t blame the mayor, or chief, or whoever came up with that plan. Their intentions were good, but short-sighted.”

Sam seemed to be rolling his response around in her brain for a bit, staring out the passenger window as the city passed by. Finally, “Didn’t they pass a new law a few years after that all went down? Seems like I remember reading about it.”

“Yes, they did. There was an enormous legal debate over what powers government held when a state of emergency was declared. I guess no one had ever defined the rules as far as private firearms were concerned.”

“The founding fathers didn’t do such a good job of that either,” Sam noted. “Just a few words here or there could have made the Second Amendment crystal clear and avoided a lot of disagreement.”

Zach glanced over at his passenger and grunted. “Seems clear enough to me. The people have the right to bear arms. What more do you need?”

Sam sighed, giving the ranger one of her you-know-better-than-that looks. “I should have expected that attitude from you, Ranger Bass,” she chuckled. “A hardline conservative, through and through. But your position oversimplifies the issue. The framers saw fit to insert the term, ‘well-trained militia,’ and that has opened the door to decades of debate.”

“Not according to Alexander Hamilton,” Zach fired back. “He said the government’s army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens. Sure sounds like Alex intended for the people to be able to hold their own against either the feds or the states.”