The Tin Man (13 page)

He found his heart racing, his breathing shallow and rapid, and his forehead and neck sweating as if he had just sprinted a hundred yards instead of jogging a hundred feet. He had stationed himself between the right front tire and the right door, with the engine block between himself and the doors across K Street. Visibility was poor in the rain, but he could make out all three Sacramento Live! doorways that emptied out on the K Street Mall.

Paul turned up his radio, but it was silent. Was it working? Were the batteries charged? Did he leave the South Station with dead batteries in his radio? He double-checked that he was on the correct channel, then turned the squelch knob and got a loud rasping rumble of static. Shit! Enough to alert bad guys for three blocks around. He turned the volume down a couple of notches, then turned the squelch knob until the static disappeared. Leave the friggin’ radio alone, he told himself.

Now what? Draw his weapon? Why? There was no threat in front of him. What if a wino or a transient wandered onto the mall? Should he break cover and move him, or stay hidden and hope he’d pass? And if he did either, what if the bad guys decided to make a break from the building right then? Or what if the wino was one of the bad guys? …

Snap out of it, Paul! he told himself. Stop confusing yourself with endless scenarios. Just pay attention and stay alert.

Paul tried the squad car’s door—it was locked, as it should be. He saw that the 12-gauge Remington police-model shotgun was still in the electric quick-release clamp on the front seat, and filed that info away in his head in case he’d need it—he had a set of car keys on his key ring, and all of the department’s car doors and trunk locks were common-keyed so he had access to the car if necessary. He scanned the street, looking for escape routes, hazards, and other places for cover and concealment. Not much out here—a couple of concrete traffic barricades, some concrete trash cans, a few directory/advertisement kiosks. There were few places to hide along the mall.

More help would be arriving any minute. Good. Something was bound to happen soon.

•    •    •

A
ll right, out there!” the general manager of Sacramento Live! shouted from inside the cash room on the second floor. “We’re coming out! We’ll open the door, then the guards will toss their guns out, and then we’ll be unarmed. Do you hear me? We surrender! We’re coming …”

The claymore mine blast slammed into the steel door, ripping it from its hinges and hurling it inside the cash room like a two-hundred-pound leaf being tossed around by a tornado. One security guard inside died instantly, crushed by the flying door; the body of a second one shattered as the force of the blast hit him square-on. The third guard was just picking himself up off the floor, leveling his weapon at his attackers, when he was killed by a burst of automatic gunfire from their assault rifles.

The Major now had his helmet on. A grenade launcher was slung over his shoulder and he was carrying an AK-74 combat assault rifle with a laser aiming sight; a small backpack held additional ammunition. He went into the devastated cash room with his heavily armed personal guard and Mullins, the renegade watchman.

The general manager and his three club managers were cowering on the floor, blood seeping from wounds on their faces and hands and from their ruptured eardrums. The Major scanned the room. None of the money bins were visible—apparently they had all been locked away in the safe at the back. He raised his rifle and aimed it at the man in the middle. “Who is the general manager?” he shouted.

Mullins pointed to the man on the left, who was crouched over the mangled body of one of the guards. “He is,” he said, praying it would help save these poor bastards’ lives.

“Sie!”
the Major said in a loud voice so they could hear him through his gas mask and through
their shattered, blood-filled ears. “Open the safe now or you will die.”

“I can’t,” the general manager said. “It’s on a time lock. It won’t open until nine tomorrow morning. Any attempt to open it will trigger an alarm, and it can’t be—”

“Liar! Idiot!” The terrorist pulled the trigger of his assault rifle, and the head of one of the club managers burst open like an overripe melon. The general manager, showered with blood and brains, screamed, then stared in horror at the destroyed head.

“Open that safe or you will watch the rest of your employees die.”

The general manager was on his feet in an instant, fumbling for keys. He inserted a key into the combination dial with shaking fingers, turned it, entered a combination, turned the key again, completed the combination, and pulled the safe door open.

“Schweinehund!
You needlessly caused the death of one of your workers to save your profits!” the Major shouted, and shot the general manager point-blank in the groin with a three-round burst from his assault rifle. The burn from the muzzle blast was a full foot in diameter, and the noise in the small cash room was deafening—but not as loud as the agonized screams of the emasculated manager until he finally bled out and died.

“Schnell!”
the Major shouted, and three more of his men rushed in, as heavily armed as their leader. “Get the bins to the truck!” They pulled the steel cash bins out of the vault and wheeled them outside. The Major ignored the two surviving club managers, issued more instructions through his radio, then turned to Mullins. “How will the police deploy outside? Will they use heavy weapons?”

“I don’t think … no, they won’t,” Mullins replied, more afraid than ever of saying he didn’t know to a guy who had just killed five men in cold blood right in front of him. “I haven’t heard any reports of a SWAT call-out, and anyway this city’s SWAT teams are only on fifteen-minute alert during graveyard shifts—it’ll take them at least a half hour to get here. The shift sergeant might have a semiautomatic M-16, but they don’t train with it much …”

“Ein einziges Gewehr? One
rifle? What kind of police force does this city have?” The Major laughed. “A child with a Kalishnikov can do battle with the police in this city and have a good chance of winning!
Kinderpolizei!”

“Hell, only SWAT had M-16’s until just a couple months ago—and half the politicians in this city want the cops
completely
disarmed,” Mullins said. He was so glad to actually know something that he was babbling. “All the other cops only got sidearms or shotguns with double-ought buck. Your only real problem is that the county jail is only three blocks away, and police headquarters is only six. Once the call goes out, lots of help will arrive real fuckin’ fast.”

“We will be out of here long before that,” the Major said confidently. “Kill all the police!” he shouted to his men as they made their way down the stairs to the rear exit, heading toward the alley and the waiting truck: “I will tolerate no gunfights with them. We hit
hard
, and we hit
first.”

T
he explosion from the claymore mine rattled the windows and rippled the glass front doors of Sacramento Live! Paul McLanahan jumped. He dropped the radio, fumbled for it in the darkness, picked it
up from the wet pavement, and mashed the mike button: “I heard explosions! Explosions coming from inside the building!”

“Clear this channel!” came another voice, probably Lamont. “KMA, Edward Ten, show a 211 and 994 on this location, all downtown units respond Code Three, set up a perimeter on Capitol, Eighth, Fifth, and I streets, bomb explosion inside the Sacramento Live! complex, repeat, bomb explosion inside Sacramento Live! … stand by … KMA, add a 246 on this location, shots fired … Jesus,
more
shots fired … requesting SWAT and Star unit call-outs for a 994 and 246 inside Sacramento Live! and request a 940-Sam on my location on Seventh Street.”

“Edward Ten, One Lincoln Ten responding,” came another radio message. That was from the downtown-sector lieutenant, obviously monitoring the radio. He was the one who would take charge of the scene when he arrived.

T
o a supercharged Paul McLanahan, the automatic-rifle fire from inside the complex sounded even louder than the explosion. His SIG Sauer P226 was out and leveled at the front entrance to the Sacramento Live! building before he realized it. The gunshots seemed so close, so goddamn loud, that he ducked as if the bullets were pinging off the walls around him. His gun hand was shaking, and every little sound, every gust of wind, made the gun muzzle jump. He felt vulnerable as hell, exposed to the entire world.

He started running through scenarios again. What do I do if I see a guy come out of the building? Should I challenge him? But won’t that give away my location and make me a target? If he’s got a gun,
should I shoot first? What if he’s got more bombs, or even grenades?

The bulletproof vest he was wearing underneath his uniform shirt didn’t seem nearly as thick and protective as it did half an hour ago.

C
raig LaFortier had the squad car’s spotlight aimed right at the delivery door that swung open behind the Step Van truck parked in the alley. It lit up the three black-clothed armed men who came rushing out of the building pushing the big wheeled bins that LaFortier knew the clubs used to hold their cash. He saw the hydraulic lift mounted on the rear of the truck rise to the level of the loading dock. Two more armed men in black were standing in the back of the truck, ready to pull the bins inside it.

“Five 211 suspects in the alley on the loading dock!” LaFortier shouted into his portable radio. “All suspects 417. Request immediate backup!” He reholstered the radio, then took a firm Weaver grip on his service pistol, crouched as low as he could behind the right front fender of his squad car, and shouted,
“Police! Freeze! Drop your weapons! Now!”

He never expected them to surrender—and they didn’t. As soon as he saw one of them unsling a rifle from his shoulder and level it, he opened fire, aiming three rounds each at the five gunmen he could see across the street.

He saw them jerk and jump as the rounds hit, but they didn’t go down. Two of them leveled big assault rifles with huge banana magazines at him. Staying low, LaFortier ran up J Street to a nearby parked car and crouched behind the left rear fender, again shielded by the engine block, seconds before
the suspects opened fire. They peppered his squad car with heavy-caliber automatic-rifle fire, shattering the windshield and blowing out the two left tires, and stopped shooting only when they finally shot out the searchlight.

“Shots fired, shots fired!”
LaFortier shouted into his radio. “Heavy automatic-rifle fire coming from the alley, two suspects with rifles, possibly all five have automatic rifles. Suspects are wearing body armor too. Go for head shots, repeat, go for head shots!”

“Get out of there, Cargo!” he heard Lamont yell in the radio. “Clear out east to Seventh or meet up with the unit on Sixth. John Twelve and John Fourteen, John Twenty-One is coming your way. Cover him.”

LaFortier knew that Seventh Street had more units, so he decided to head foward Sixth. “This is John Twenty-One, I’m headed west down J.” He dropped the magazine from his SIG and immediately slammed home another one. Time to get the hell out …

Just then, a cop’s worst nightmare appeared before his eyes. A lone gunman, looking as if he was covered in a suit of black armor, marched out of the alley onto J Street with his AK-74 leveled. When he was thirty feet from the abandoned squad car, he shouted,
“Tod alien Polizisten!” and
opened fire, spraying it in a side-to-side sweeping motion on full auto. Then he continued to march forward, raising the rifle up so he could aim it at anything that moved on the other side of the car. His walk was deliberate, no hurry in his steps, no effort to hide himself—just as if he were a pedestrian crossing the street.

LaFortier dropped the radio, aimed, and fired five rounds at the guy’s head. He knew he was shooting
back toward Seventh, toward Lamont and the other units, but it was a chance he had to take—this guy
had
to go. One of his shots must have hit flesh because the guy went down and LaFortier heard him shout,
“Achtung! Ich bin angeschossen! Ich bin angeschossen!”
as he clutched his neck and began to crawl back toward the alley.

But LaFortier didn’t see the second guy until it was too late. The gunman peered out from around the corner of the Sacramento Live! building, took aim at LaFortier with a shoulder-fired antitank missile launcher, and fired. The car Craig LaFortier was hiding behind blew twenty feet in the air and crashed back to earth, a ball of fire and molten metal.

Matt Lamont, who had low-crawled west on J Street up to the alley with his sergeant’s-issue M-16 rifle cradled in his arms, was too late to help LaFortier, but he was going to get a piece of this cop-killer if it was the last thing he ever did. He raised the M-16 and fired three rounds at the gunman’s head, but all of them missed. He leaped to his feet, crouched low, and approached the corner of the building next to the alley, determined to shoot at any head that appeared under his sights. At the corner of the building adjacent to the alleyway, he risked a fast peek around the corner. A tremendous volley of automatic-rifle fire rippled the corner of the building. His semiautomatic rifle was no match for at least three automatic assault rifles in the alley. He hotfooted it back to Seventh Street and took cover behind a tree.

“Officer down, officer down!” Lamont shouted into his portable radio. “Code 900, Code 900, Sacramento Live! complex, heavily armed suspects in alleyway between J and K Streets!”

As he issued the Code 900—the dire-emergency
code, the code guaranteed to get every cop in town headed this way on the double—Lamont was watching the alley for any sign of the suspects. But all he could actually see were the remnants of the burning car across J Street, the one that had protected his friend and fellow cop Craig LaFortier. At least Cargo got one of the bastards before he died, Lamont thought grimly.

W
hat in hell happened?” Mullins asked nervously. The explosion and the volleys of automatic gunfire outside could be heard throughout the complex—it sounded as if the whole damned area was filled with cops, all out for blood.