by Margaret Kay
Sloan motioned to his team. They’d circle around the front. “Circling to your one o’clock, Red Team,” he whispered.
“Roger,” Lambchop’s whispered voice replied.
Sloan led the Birdman and Jackson, silently creeping up to and along the plastic cordoned off area. He caught sight of product sitting on the worktables within the space. This was a meth lab, alright. And by the looks of it, it produced a large volume. There was a half dozen cooking stations. He motioned to the Birdman and Jackson to breach the plastic space. They had to be sure nothing was still hot. As fast as the occupants had probably departed, they had to be sure the place wasn’t about to explode. Meth was highly unstable while it was being cooked.
Immediately, the two men sliced open the plastic and went within, shutting down the equipment. Damn, the bastards had left it on. “Cooking operations neutralized,” Sherman broadcast.
“Roger that,” Yvette’s voice replied. “I’ve notified the DEA. Continue to clear the building. They’ll enter after it’s secure.”
Sloan proceeded, circling to join up with Red Team.
“There is a door ahead on the north wall we didn’t have on our building schematics,” Lambchop’s voice came.
“I’ve got it in view now,” Sloan said. He did a quick check of the room to his right and behind himself. No one. “Jax, cover my six.”
“Roger, Undertaker,” his reply came.
Glancing back, he saw Jackson kneeling at the slit open plastic, rifle aimed behind them. Sherman was still within the plastic moving along the workstations.
Approaching the door on the north wall, Lambchop, Mother, and Garcia moved in, in classic cover formation. Sloan moved up to join them when they reached the closed door. Lambchop motioned. Mother and Garcia would go in first, followed by Sloan, then himself, covering left, center, right and behind, in that order.
Lambchop pushed the door open and Mother slipped in, followed by Garcia, followed a split second later by Sloan. Sloan aimed his rifle, straight ahead. They were in a hallway. A wall was eight feet away. He immediately swung his rifle to the left, at a double metal door on the far wall.
Sloan felt two taps to his shoulder, the signal to move forward to the door. He knew Lambchop and Razor would follow the hallway the other direction. He and Mother proceeded forward to the closed door. Razor and Lambchop had already disappeared around the bend in the hallway and were out of sight.
“Birdman, Jax, hold your twenty. We’ve split and are following a hallway.”
“Roger, Undertaker,” Jax’s voice came.
Sloan nodded to Mother. Mother nodded back. He was ready too. They thrust the metal door open and invaded the space. A set of cement stairs was all that lay in front of them. It led down. They heard the sound of a door closing, echoing up from the stairwell. And then it got quiet. And it was dark. He and Mother activated the rail mount lights on their AR-15s and rushed down the stairs. At the bottom, the hallway narrowed. It was barely five feet high. They had to crouch as they made their way through the passageway. They came to a wood door. It looked strangely out of place.
The door was locked. Mother kicked it open. It opened with a tremendous wood-splintering echo through the hallway. They emerged into a storeroom. No one was within. They mounted the stairs on the far wall and came up at the rear door to the bodega. Damn! A half-dozen people who were near the rear of the store stopped and gasped at the sight of the two, armed men.
“ATF!” Sloan declared. “No one move.”
“ICE!” One of the shoppers yelled, seeing the letters plastered on Mother’s bullet-proof vest. This caused a panic and two dozen Hispanic shoppers ran towards the front door and out of the store.
Through their comms they heard Razor and Lambchop’s voices. “Let me see your hands! Show me your hands!” Then they heard gunfire through their comms.
“SitRep, Lambchop,” Sloan demanded. If their teammates were in trouble, they would return to help, otherwise, they needed to recon the bodega and outside the back door.
“One suspect down. Area is clear,” Razor’s voice came.
Mother pulled his phone out and shot video of everyone who was still within the bodega.
“Who works here? Who owns this place?” Sloan demanded. He strode to the front of the store and the wide-eyed clerk behind the counter. “You work here. Tell me about the tunnel into your storeroom downstairs!”
“I don’t go into the storeroom. Only the owner, Mr. Patel, goes into the storeroom.”
“Get on the phone and get Mr. Patel down here, right now,” Sloan demanded.
The clerk nodded and pulled his cell phone from his back jeans pocket. “The police are here. You need to come now,” he said.
Sloan grabbed the phone from the clerk. “Mr. Patel? This is Agent Sloan, ATF. You need to get down here now.”
“ATF?” The man on the other end of the phone repeated. “I swear, I didn’t know those cigarettes were stolen.”
“Just get down here.” Sloan smacked the counter after he disconnected the call. Great, stolen cigarettes to deal with too. He made note of the phone number before handing the phone back to the clerk.
“DEA is onsite,” Sherman’s voice came through their comms. “Where are Jax and I needed?”
Lambchop’s voice was next. “Get me an ETA on that ambulance. Undertaker, I could use you.”
“Birdman, I need you in the bodega. There is a passageway in the basement, left from the door on that north wall. I’ll report to your location, Lambchop, as soon as the Birdman relieves me here. ATF has the scene. The owner is en route, something about stolen cigarettes.”
“Fuck,” Lambchop swore. “All I care about is where the meth lab workers went.”
“I’m pretty sure here to this bodega, but I’m also sure they’ve all rabbited by now,” Mother answered.
“Yeah, Mother’s ICE status didn’t help us one bit,” Sloan said.
Mother shrugged.
As soon as Sherman arrived, Sloan got directions from Lambchop and proceeded to their location. He arrived in the shipping area of the building they’d breached. One suspect was down in front of the closed garage door, a bullet wound in his right shoulder. He was conscious and screaming. His wound bled profusely, something Lambchop hadn’t been able to stop with the direct pressure he applied to the wound. Sloan opened his pack. He cut a portion of the man’s shirt away and examined the wound. He pressed a quick clot bandage to the wound. The ambulance was three minutes out.
Sloan’s eyes scanned over the Hispanic man’s features. He appeared to be in his late twenties, had close cropped hair, a nicely trimmed beard and mustache. He wore a polo shirt and expensive blue jeans. He wasn’t your run-of-the-mill junkie, probably not one of the meth cooks.
“You’ll live,” Sloan told him. “Now stop screaming like a little girl.”
“Fuck you, man! It hurts.”
“You should have showed me your hands, and not pointed this at me,” Garcia said. He held up a rifle in his hand. “Seriously, a Ruger, 450 Bushmaster with camo stock. A hunting rifle? What the fuck, dude? Where did you get this gun in this city?”
“Fuck you!” The man repeated.
“Well, we know you’re not one of the cooks, so that makes you management,” Sloan said. “That makes you valuable. If you’re smart, you’ll start talking.”
“Fuck you!”
“Man, a broken record,” Sloan said with a laugh. “The question is, are you legal or will we be turning you over to ICE when we are done with you?”
“This is a Sanctuary City man; you can’t do that.”
All the members of Shepherd Security laughed.
“You must not know what these alphabets stand for. We’re all federal law enforcement, not city, which means we don’t acknowledge Sanctuary Cities,” Lambchop said.
“DEA,” Garcia said, pointing at his vest. “No city cop will be anywhere near you. You’re playing with the big boys now, jefe.”
“Fuck you,
” he repeated.
“Well, that was a bust,” Sloan said, leaning against the side of the SUV. Both of the SUVs used by the Shepherd Security personnel were parked in the back by the loading dock.
DEA was on site, securing the lab. The camera at the back door of the bodega caught a dozen people’s backs running out, after the team had driven up on the Dental Implant Office. ATF was at the bodega. The bodega owner had a large stock of stolen cigarettes they were selling. The injured man was at the hospital. DEA was with him.
“Not necessarily. We got one of them. That might be all it takes,” Garcia said. “He’s illegal, got a wife and kids here, that much we do know. DEA will flip him.”
“And the heat on the bodega owner for the illegal cigarettes may get him to flip on whoever paid him to use his basement as an entry and exit point. We shut the lab down. It’s a win,” Lambchop said.
“There will be a new lab up within a few days, the same workers who ran out of here manning it,” Sherman said. “I don’t see it as a win. I wish we would have busted every single one of them.”
“We take what we can get,” Lambchop said. “We are all walking out of here, no civilians were hurt, and except for one scumbag, there were no injuries, thank God. This is a win.”
It took another hour before the Shepherd Security personnel were cut loose from the scene. They went back to the hotel. The company Lear was in use elsewhere. It would be morning before it could come pick them up and Shepherd didn’t want to send any of the other aircraft after them, costs.
The team went out for a steak dinner and knocked more than a few beers back. They all agreed they didn’t get enough of these nights. Even so, Sloan wished they’d just been able to head home. Kennedy waited for him. His eyes landed on Garcia, who sat across the table, who he noted watched him closely. Then his gaze shifted to Jackson, who laughed loudly at something Lambchop said at their end of the table. He wondered if they both felt the same way he did, just wanting to get home, or if they welcomed the night with the team.
“So, how’s things with Kaylee?” Mother, who sat beside Sloan, asked him.
“She’s good, excited to start her new job.”
“Sienna thinks she’ll do great in that job,” Garcia spoke up. “Now you gotta get her moved over by us.”
Sloan shook his head. “I think she’ll be fine at my condo until we can buy a unit near you. She likes it there, redecorated it all these dark colors, says it reminds her of our apartment in college. She’s happy. That’s all I care about.”
Garcia nodded. He still looked like he had something on his mind. Sloan wasn’t sure what it could be, and he didn’t want to ask here, now. The waitress came and brought them another round of beers. She had been very attentive throughout the entire meal. Sherman and Mother both flirted with her a lot. Sloan had to laugh, just a few weeks earlier, he would have been chatting her up too.
After she left with the company credit card, presented by Lambchop, Sloan made eye contact with Mother. “Down boy, you don’t want to be cheating on Dr. ASS.”
Mother pointed at him. “Don’t you even start. I’ve never met and will never meet Annika.”
“Whoa, do tell!” Garcia cut in. “Dr. ASS?”
Sloan and Sherman laughed.
“His word games. He’s got like ten games with the same chick, and his game app allows them to have text conversations,” Sloan said.
Garcia laughed. “I’m so glad I have a real woman now.” He shook his head at Mother. “Do you sext with her in that app?”
“Fuck you both!” Mother said.
They filled the restaurant with roaring laughter from their table. The waitress returned with the bill; credit card ran. “It probably would have cost Shepherd less to send a plane out for us,” Lambchop remarked as he signed the bill and left the waitress a hefty tip. Then the men drained their beers and came to their feet.
“I’m gonna hang here for a bit and see if our server is free after work,” Sherman said, slapping Sloan on the back. “Don’t wait up for me.”
Sloan laughed and left without him. He was glad Sherman would not be returning to the room right away. He wanted to get back to the room and call Kennedy. He welcomed the opportunity to have a private conversation with her. It didn’t quite work out that way though when they got back to the hotel. Garcia followed him to his room and insisted on coming in.
Garcia sat himself on one of the two beds in the room. This time the team had three rooms. Sloan and Sherman shared, as always, Mother and Lambchop did as well, leaving Garcia and Jackson to bunk in the same room.
“What?” Sloan asked after a lengthy silence. “I saw earlier you had something you wanted to say.”
Garcia nodded. He looked serious. “Kaylee completely lost it when she heard Phil Lewensky was out on bail. I don’t think she’s doing as well as you think she is.”
“She told me how hard that hit her. We talked about it and I think she’s better. She told me that you and Sienna really helped her.”
A smirk formed on Garcia’s face. “I had to tell her to calm the fuck down. She lost it, man, was screaming, demanding I get Shepherd on the phone. Just watch her. I still think she’s on the edge.”
Sloan ran his hand through his hair. Damn, and just when he thought things were calming down with her. “I will. Thanks for telling me.”
Garcia came to his feet.
Sloan watched him walk to the door. Before he opened it, he turned back to face Sloan. “Also, don’t rush to marry her and get her pregnant. She needs time with her new life.”
A sarcastic sound left Sloan. “Pot, kettle, black.”
“It was different with Sienna and me. I notice you didn’t argue that those thoughts had crossed your mind.”
Sloan frowned. No, he hadn’t. “I know she needs some time, but she also needs to feel secure that we are together and that I’m not going anywhere.” He never thought he’d be getting relationship advice from Garcia, of all people.
“She’s got to get used to a new career in a new city, a normal life, living with you and the job. That’s a lot. That’s all I’m saying. It’s hard on them, us being gone as often as we are. That’s why she needs to be over by the rest of us. After this baby comes, I know it’s going to be hard on Sienna when I’m gone. I’ll have to cut my hours at the office a bit, too.”
“Like only work sixteen-hour days?” Sloan said with a grin.
“Yeah, that’s why I’m working so closely with Smith, to turn some things over to him, or rather to test him out, to know I can turn things over to him. I don’t want to be a blip in my kid’s life. I want him or her to know me and know I was there for everything I could be.”
Sloan couldn’t help but smile. Garcia really did have his shit together. “You’ve given it a lot of thought.”
“I did before I knocked Sienna up. You need to know the ramifications of everything you do, before you do it.”
Whiskey
Kennedy closed her laptop. All the online paperwork to officially be hired by the school district was complete. Next week, she would be gainfully employed as a music teacher at the kindergarten through eighth grade neighborhood school. She felt as excited as she did before a concert.
Gary had left her five hundred dollars, cash, when he left last week for this current mission. She had gone to the bank the previous day to open a checking account. That account number was plugged into the school district’s payroll system to have her paychecks automatically deposited. She had a debit card in her name in her purse linked to that account and temporary checks. Did anyone use paper checks anymore? She hadn’t written one in years.
She felt like she was really on track with getting back into life, into what would be her future, a future she was excited for. It no longer mattered that Phil was out on bail, under house arrest, something that just three weeks earlier had sent her over the edge.
Her phone rang, startling her. Checking the display, it was Angel. It was nine a.m. on Wednesday morni
ng.
“Hello.”
“Hi Kaylee,” Angel greeted.
The loud, piercing squeal of Sammy sounded through the phone.
“Hi, Angel,” she replied, shaking off the shock to her eardrums from Sammy’s shriek.
“I have a huge favor to ask. I have a big project I have to get done for Shepherd this morning, that I need to concentrate on and Sammy isn’t cooperating. He’s in a mood because he’s teething, and his daddy’s been gone nearly a week. Can I ask you to come into the office and help keep him occupied until he goes down for a nap after lunch? I know this is asking a lot. Elizabeth was supposed to come in to help me for a few hours with him, but Olivia had her up half the night and she’s beat.” Angel’s voice was apologetic.