by Marc Rainer
Trask trained the binoculars southward down the alley. The van slowed, and Trask saw a single figure wearing a ski mask and dressed in black from head to toe jump from the front passenger door. He was carrying a very long-barreled rifle. The second the man was out of the truck, it was rolling again.
“One shooter just bailed at the south end of the alley,” Trask said. He turned the binoculars toward 4th Street. His view was obscured for a moment by the roof of the motel, but the van appeared again, headed north on 4th, then made a quick right onto Penn, right below them.
Sivella saw it, too. “Here we go, guys,” he said.
The van slowed again at the north end of the alley, and a second figure with a long gun ran southward down the alley along the back wall of the motel. The van continued eastward, then turned south down 5th Street toward the warehouse. Trask was about to announce the second shooter’s location, but Sivella beat him to it.
“Second shooter setting up in the north end of the alley,” Sivella said. “They didn’t believe Jeff when he told them the back door was blocked. Dix, you and Tim circle around behind the shooter at the south end of the alley. Bear, you and Crawford take the one on the north end. Be careful, guys. Captain Williams, your party guests are about to ring your doorbell.”
Trask froze and listened. The ocarina wasn’t playing anymore. He saw Carter and Wisniewski disappear across the front of the motel, heading south. Doroz and Crawford came out of the van behind them and started making their way to the north end of the alley, moving slowly along the north wall of the motel. Trask saw the closest sniper set up behind a crate along the west side of the alley, his back to Trask and the north, training his rifle southward toward the back of the warehouse. Doroz looked up at him, and Trask held his hand up. Doroz froze, Crawford behind him. Trask held up one finger and motioned it forward and to the right. Doroz nodded.
“Main raid team’s out of the van. I count five. Point man has bolt cutters,” Sivella said. “Dix, Bear, hold until they go in. If there’s action inside, it’ll divert your shooters’ attention.”
Trask strained to hear, his gaze fixed down the alley. Four or five seconds passed, and he heard Williams’ voice again, shouting this time.
“Police! Drop your weapons! Policia——”
The warnings were interrupted by the low, guttural chatter of the AK clones, followed by a steady scream of higher-pitched automatic fire, the Colt submachine guns used by the ERT. Trask looked down into the alley and saw that Doroz and Crawford were already close behind the north end sniper, screaming at him to drop his weapon. The would-be shooter dropped the rifle and raised his hands in surrender. Doroz bent down to cuff him while Crawford stood to the side, his gun trained on the subject. You’re too exposed, Puddin’! Trask raised the binoculars toward the south end and to his horror saw the other sniper, half standing now with the sniper rifle drawing a bead on Crawford.
“MIKE, GET DOWN!” Trask yelled.
Crawford spun toward him instead, looked up for a moment, and then dropped into a crouch at the instant two gunshots flashed and echoed from the south end of the alley.
“Our shooter’s down.” Trask heard Wisniewski’s voice report.
“Clear inside, Commander,” Williams reported from the warehouse. “I’ve got one of my guys nicked. Nothing serious. Four targets down. One wounded in custody. We’re calling for two ambulances and some body transports.”
“Got it. I’ll start Crime Scene.” Sivella stood up and walked toward him. “Nice work, Jeff. Let’s go see if anyone wants to talk to us.”
They climbed down the fire escape at the back of the building and walked around to the front. Doroz and Crawford were escorting their prisoner to the curb. Trask heard the sirens of the ambulances as they approached the area.
“Jeff, Commander, I think you better see this before you go in.” It was Carter’s voice in the earphones.
Trask followed Sivella down to the south end of the alley where Carter and Wisniewski were standing by the body of the other sniper. A blood-soaked ski mask lay on the concrete beside the shooter’s head. Sivella took a flashlight from his belt and pointed it down into the lifeless eyes of Marissa Moreno.
“She recognized Puddin’,” Wisniewski said. “That’s why she didn’t shoot. Goddamit. I didn’t know.”
“He didn’t know, Cap,” Carter said. “She had the mask on. Tim did the right thing. I was two steps behind him and saw it, too. I thought she was about to fire. I’d have taken her down myself.”
Sivella nodded. “You guys back out a bit. Somebody’s got to tell him. I’ll do it.”
Trask watched as Sivella walked back up the alley, speaking first to Doroz. The lights from the streetlight by the motel silhouetted them. Trask saw Doroz pat Crawford on the shoulder. They started walking toward him.
“Sorry, Mike,” Trask said as they approached. “I saw it from the roof. That’s why I yelled at you to drop. She had a bead drawn on you and was masked up. Tim and Dix couldn’t have known who she was. They were protecting you.”
Crawford didn’t say a word. He sat down beside the body and started stroking her hair and face. When his tears started flowing, he pulled the gun from his holster and handed it to Doroz.
There’s nothing I can say that will mean anything here. I was almost looking at Lynn this way. Trask left them and walked around to the front of the warehouse. Williams was barking instructions to his team and waving one of the ambulances over.
The good guy goes to Medstar, Trask thought. The bad guy…who is the bad guy? He said he had a survivor.
Trask stepped through the framed hole in the bars that passed for a door into the warehouse. He looked down to see a chain—cut open by the bolt cutters lying beside it—and a padlock lying on the sidewalk. He noticed as he entered the warehouse that Williams’ team had already pulled the masks off the bodies, but left the corpses in place for the crime scene guys to photograph. Even though the cops were the shooters this time, everything had to be documented as if it were any other homicide. Trask stepped carefully around any shell casings he saw on the concrete floor. He asked one of the ERT guys for a flashlight.
The first face he saw meant nothing to him. Looks to be Central American. One of Moreno’s squad from the airport, I think. He stepped a few feet to his right, and the light’s beam fell onto a more familiar face. Murphy. Can’t say that I’m surprised at this point. The third face also looked familiar. So you’re the one who was going to kill my wife. He saw what appeared to be the edges of a bandage sticking out from under the black sleeve on the corpse’s right arm. I hope that Boo bit the ever-loving shit out of you and that you cried like a schoolgirl all the way home. He scanned the other body’s face, not recognizing it. Dammit. Where is he?
Trask looked up to see two of the ERT troops escorting a man out into the lights in the street. He followed and waited for them to turn the man toward him. It was Moreno.
“Read him his rights, guys,” Trask said. He saw blood oozing from Moreno’s right shoulder. “Get him to the hospital as soon as you can. Go ahead and take him to the ER at Howard. It’s the closest. At least three of you with him in the ambulance.” He looked at his watch. 10:48 p.m. My six hours are running. He phoned Lynn, told her he was OK, and told her to meet him at the hospital.
“Jeff?” Sivella stopped him as Trask was getting in a squad car. “Think it might be time to give your boss a call? We just shot up a bunch of foreign nationals, killed a State Department employee, and wounded an acting ambassador.”
“Thanks for thinking about me, Commander. Not yet. That call will go much better if what we have planned at the hospital actually works. I’ve got one other call to make.”
The staff at the Howard University Hospital Emergency Room, a Level I Trauma Center, was not unaccustomed to the treatment of gunshot wounds. The hospital staff was not, however, accustomed to treating such wounds without the use of anesthetics or with providing treatment in the presence of large, black-clad
ERT officers who refused to leave the patient being treated.
“We have him in a private room now, as you requested,” the doctor told Trask. “The bullet went through the shoulder; some tissue damage but nothing major. All we had to do was sew him up. He’s still in a lot of pain, of course, since he refused any anesthesia. He wouldn’t even let us use a local. Are you sure this can’t wait until morning?”
“Is there any danger to him if I speak with him now?” Trask asked.
“Probably not. Still, tomorrow would be better, if you can wait.”
“Sorry, it can’t.” Trask was already on his way to the room. He passed the nurse’s station where Lynn and Jason Mays were waiting with another man. “Ready?”
Mays nodded and gave him a thumbs-up; Lynn smiled and winked at him.
Trask walked past the ERT guys into the room and shut the door. Helluva breach of normal procedure, being in here without a witness, but I’m already conflicted out of the trial team. No harm in being a witness myself at this point. Moreno was lying in the bed, one hand cuffed to the rail. He looked at Trask, expressionless. Trask pointed at the bandage on Moreno’s shoulder. “You should have let them give you a local.”
“So you could drug me? Question me with sodium pentathol? Are you wearing a wire now?”
“No.” Trask pulled up the hem of his shirt. “See? No wire. As for the drugs, our Constitution doesn’t allow that for criminal cases. This is a criminal case, and you appear to be the criminal, or at least one of two surviving criminals. The other one—your Mateo—is down at police headquarters singing like a bird.”
“Mateo is a good man. You are lying. He would not talk.”
“I could be lying. We are actually allowed to use ruses and trickery in interrogations as long as we don’t violate the rights of a prisoner. We have to carefully guard those rights, regardless of how many people an arrested criminal may have killed, or tried to kill.”
“You have proven very difficult to kill, Mister Trask.”
“So you admit that? Remember that you have been warned of your rights. Are you waiving them?”
“Why not? My rights go far beyond your Constitution. I am the ambassador from El Salvador. I have complete diplomatic immunity, as you are aware. I demand that I be transported to your Reagan Airport immediately so that I can return to my country.”
“That’s not going to happen, Moreno.”
The man with the eye patch frowned.
“Yeah, we know who you really are,” Trask said. “You’re going to be charged Monday morning with importation and conspiracy to distribute cocaine. You’re not going anywhere.”
Moreno snorted in contempt. “You have no authority to deny my request.”
“You’re right, but I told you that Mateo is singing. You thought I was lying. He was very worried when we told him that he could be locked up with hundreds of Mara inmates unless he cooperated with us. He’s just a staff weenie, if he’s on the diplomatic list at all. No immunity for him. As for your status, those cocaine charges will be the tip of the iceberg, but they’ll hold you for now. Assuming that the ballistics on those two sniper rifles we recovered from the alley match the rounds from the Mara victims, there will be murder charges added later.”
“You have no right to hold me for any charges,” Moreno shrugged. “I have full diplomatic immunity, as I said.” His face showed a hint of concern. “One of my party was a girl—”
“Yes, your niece Marissa. Thanks to you, she is also dead. Your hunt for those who attacked your daughter has killed far too many.”
Moreno’s arm jerked against the cuff that restrained him. “You have no right to even mention her,” he growled.
“Don’t rip your stitches,” Trask said calmly. “I have every right to question you about each aspect of this little crime spree you’ve run, including your motives. When did it start? With the murder of the Barrio 18 kid in Northeast? Is he the one who killed Armando Lopez?”
“Yes, he killed Armando.” Moreno’s face contracted into a sneer. “At my direction.”
Trask kept his poker face despite his surprise. I’m in control of this little duel, you psycho, not you. Why? Oh, I get it. “Yes, we thought that might be the case. Frame the MS-13 for that murder, get your college buddy the ambassador to invite you up to solve the problem, and now you’re in the country and free to pursue your hunt of Esteban Ortega. You just had to kill the 18er to tie up a loose end. Is that how it went?”
“Yes. Precisely. It was our only way to get into your country, and the diplomatic immunity was a considerable bonus. I demand transportation to the airport immediately.”
“Pretty sloppy, Moreno, using the same gun on that kid and on the attorneys, then leaving it in my den. You had to know the ballistics would tie the gun to you and your guys.”
“The plan was to leave it in the dead hand of Ortega after I killed him. You would have thought him responsible for all of the murders.”
“Maybe. Did you kill Armando’s parents, too, Moreno? Was that just another frame job to make us think the Maras did it? Must have been at least a little bit difficult carving up your friend and his wife like that.”
“I was going to kill them. The idiots in the new government had signed a truce with the gangs. A stinking truce with the vermin that ruined our nation and killed my daughter and so many more.” He looked at Trask defiantly. “I would not have cut them, I would just have shot them like the dogs they had become. The Maras must have beaten us to them. They were already dead when we got there.”
“I’m sure Ortega blamed them for bringing you and your crew into town and declaring open season on them. And the defense attorneys, Moreno? Why kill them? They were just doing their jobs. They were innocent. They had families, too.”
“They were trying to free the Maras. They spoke for them.”
“And me? My wife? We were trying to prosecute the gangs, get them off the streets.” Explain that to me, you sick son of a bitch.
“You were interfering. If you got to Ortega first, you could have put him out of my reach. You should have just let us manage it in our own way. We would have cleaned up quite a bit of your local gang problem and then returned home.”
“Cleaning it up for us? Is that what you call those slaughters at the car wash?”
“Call them what you like. I prefer to call them eradications. Pest control, I think you call it. I wish to return home now. If you will not honor my request to provide transportation to the airport, please connect me with someone in your State Department so I may make an official demand.”
“I will not do that, Moreno. Your State Department mole is in the morgue with the rest of your team. Murphy can’t help you anymore. What was his stake in this, anyway?”
“Money. He just wanted money, always more money. He didn’t want to come with us tonight. I made him, told him he was going to earn his money like a man, for once. You can call someone else at your State Department.”
“Like I said, I’m not going to do that. I will introduce you to someone in your own Ministry of Foreign Relations. Bring him on in, Jason.”
“What? Who are you speaking to? You said you were not wearing a wire!”
“I’m not, Moreno. There’s a microphone above your bed that can be monitored from the nurse’s station up the hall. Getting out of a hospital bed can be tricky. We wouldn’t want you falling and hurting yourself without being able to send help right away.”
Trask opened the door. Mays and the other man entered the room.
Trask stepped aside, but he never took his gaze off Moreno. “May I present Miguel Navarrete-Ponce, very recently named the new ambassador to the United States from El Salvador. He has something to say which I believe will be of interest to you.”
“Luis Moreno-Montillo,” Navarrete announced officially, “as the officially delegated representative of El Salvador in this country, I now inform you that any diplomatic status which was previously conferred upon you in your true name, or in the
name of Jorge Rios-Garcia, is hereby revoked and waived.” He turned to Trask. “He is your prisoner now, Mister Trask, and may be prosecuted according to the laws of your country.” He handed Trask an envelope. “The written waiver has been signed and sealed by the president of El Salvador.”
“This is a violation of international law!” Moreno screamed.
“I assure you that it is in accordance with the provisions of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations,” Navarrete said. “If you were a real diplomat, and not just a murderous disgrace to your nation, you would know that.”
Trask turned to Mays, who had produced a small metal object from his pocket. “Did your little digital recorder get it all?” he asked.
Mays nodded. “Every word of it. These hospital mics are actually very good. I might have to pick up a few of ’em.”
Moreno continued to scream at them in Spanish, the sounds of fury from a defeated madman.
Trask walked into the hallway and spoke to one of the ERT guards. “Nobody in or out except for verified medical personnel. Verified, OK? Tell the doc he can shoot this guy up with whatever he wants to now, as long as it’s medically justified. He probably needs considerable sedation, and the rest of the patients on the ward will need their sleep.”
“Got it, Colonel,” the man said.
Colonel, Trask smiled to himself. It’s going to take some time to shake that one.
Navarrete had followed him out into the hallway.
“Thank you, Mister Trask. You have served both our countries well today.”
“As have you, Mr. Ambassador. How is the truce going with your gangs back home?”
Navarrete almost spit on the floor. “It is a sham, of course.” He noticed the surprise on Trask’s face. “I am a realist, Mr. Trask. There are some of us in the new government. Thugs are thugs, regardless of their political affiliations. We had several schoolboys murdered a few days ago in Las Colinas. The MS-13 had been trying to recruit them at their school, and when the boys refused, they were taken out and stabbed to death, then dumped into a mass grave. The youngest was fifteen. I am afraid that both our countries will be fighting them for some time to come.” He reached into a pocket of his sport coat. “Here is my card, with my cell number. Please call me at any time if I can be of further assistance.”