Guardians of the Four Shields: A Lost Origins Novel

by A D Davies

“Always.”

  “Next move?” Massey asked.

  Scale the roof, Jules wanted to say. Drop the one story to the floor behind the largest armed suspect. Disarm him and the other individual. Render the other two unconscious in case they’re armed too, before returning to the first. Tackle them, check for other threats, then bind all four. Free the hostages.

  That wasn’t something Massey, nor any internal investigation reviewing body cam footage, would appreciate.

  Jules said, “Secure the area. Wait on backup. Watch for the suspects fleeing the crime. Intercept if necessary.”

  “What about the hostages?”

  Jules had gotten that part of it wrong. The two red-capped and aproned employees were lying with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while the men loaded boxes into a pickup truck.

  “There are cameras,” Jules said. “Ample time to shoot the staff if that was the plan. The guys on the floor aren’t in immediate danger.”

  “Can you be sure?”

  Jules’s mouth was dry. He didn’t have Massey’s experience in the city, but Jules had already determined several things that he was not allowed to assume without firm evidence. This meant the neural pathways honed over a decade outside the law, chasing high-level smugglers, scaling and traversing tall buildings, and accessing countries and cities impenetrable to most, were useless to him today. And probably would be for as long as he wore the uniform. Or at least until he rewired his brain to fit the job of an NYPD police officer rather than a vigilante-come-thief who operated on the fringes of society.

  He concentrated on the options available to him.

  “Backup is inbound,” Jules said. “We should hold tight.”

  “Kid, I ain’t ever seen a newbie stay as calm as you.” Massey’s teeth shone through his smile as he flicked his head towards the crime scene. “I’m guessing you can handle this.”

  “You mean…”

  Massey thumbed his radio and asked the dispatcher for an ETA on a second unit which had to be pulled from its regular rotation. Jules cocked his head, listening through his earpiece to the answer: seven minutes.

  Massey said, “Let’s take them down before backup gets here. I’m judging the hostages are in danger. You ready for this?”

  “Sure. You want me to go up?”

  “Up?”

  Jules indicated the roof.

  Massey replied with one of his don’t be a dumbass looks, then checked the slide on his SIG Sauer P226, a gun Jules also preferred to the Glocks on offer. Jules checked his again, although he’d already done so twice since drawing.

  “Hard and fast,” Massey said.

  Jules nodded and made his way to the corner and checked the suspects again. They were still moving boxes—an action Jules needed to question. Not yet, though.

  Officers approaching a robbery scene should be alert for escaping suspects and be aware of suitable places to take cover.

  Between him and the loading dock was open ground, except for a metal trash can that might offer some respite from a bullet if it was full of sand or some other dense material. But not on its own. Massey was correct; hard and fast was the only option.

  Massey silently counted them in.

  Three… two… one!

  Jules rounded the corner, his gun aimed. Massey advanced in a wider arc to cover the team of four without catching Jules or the hostages in a crossfire.

  “NYPD!” Jules shouted. “Show me your hands. You reach for anythin’, we open fire.”

  The four men snapped their attention to the cops, frozen in place. The two armed suspects with the masks down wielded handguns but did not raise them, while the other two kept their arms out to the side.

  Massey moved fluidly on a diagonal trajectory, gun steady. “Weapons down, gents. On the floor and step away.”

  The first time Jules had ordered a suspect to drop a weapon, in that case a knife, he’d used a movie cliche ordering the young woman to kick it away. This was despite learning at the academy to move the suspect away from the danger, not risk them booting the blade at the cop or accidentally firing a round from a badly maintained gun. Massey had chewed him out, but Jules was more annoyed at himself. The world he’d left behind followed different rules to the one he’d joined, and his brain kept kicking him back to the former.

  The one he could no longer live in.

  Jules kept his gun trained on the pair of armed individuals as they slowly bent at the knees, lowering their firearms to the ground. Once relinquished, Jules said, “Back up, to your left.”

  This grouped the suspects together, away from the hostages and their vehicle.

  “No sudden moves, gents,” Massey said.

  He passed behind Jules, lifting his gun as he did so it didn’t aim at his young charge, then returned his aim.

  If anyone made a move, Jules had no doubt Massey would shoot to kill. A decision Jules had yet needed to make.

  “You guys on the ground,” Jules called to the two men tied up. “You okay? Need medical assistance?”

  Top priority for a responding officer is to help the injured and protect physical evidence…

  One employee replied in Cantonese, “Do not shoot. They are the bad guys.”

  Jules had learned Cantonese over a one-month period four years ago, in which he’d immersed himself as an intern in a Hong Kong museum. It was partly an education and partly his cover, as a younger man more willing to break the law, hoping to obtain a relic that was stolen from Japan during the second world war. The same ability that allowed him to learn and never forget complex subjects—a near-eidetic memory—often hampered him in his work as a cop. Today, he was happy that his former life aided his new one.

  “Remain calm,” Jules replied in Cantonese, his accent terrible, but they appeared to understand. “More police officers will arrive in minutes.”

  “You know Chinese?” Massey said. “Along with Spanish and Arabic?”

  “I told you, I traveled a lot before coming home.” Jules concentrated on the suspects before him. “We good here, Sarge? I ain’t cuffing anyone 'til we got more hands.”

  “Three minutes.”

  His training sergeant advanced, providing cover as Jules took charge.

  “Hands on heads,” Jules ordered the four suspects. “You’re all under arrest on suspicion of robbery. You have the right to remain silent—”

  “Get down!” Massey suddenly yelled. “Gun!”

  The four men before him hadn’t moved. His sergeant was too experienced to panic. Meaning a fifth suspect was in play.

  An armed fifth suspect.

  After that split-second calculation, Jules ducked and rolled aside—again, not something he learned as a cop—heading for the pickup truck rather than the trash can. It offered a wide shooting gallery for an attacker emerging from the loading dock, but better cover.

  Massey hadn’t moved, but at least there were no gunshots.

  Jules quickly reassessed where he was and found a man of Chinese appearance holding an old-looking revolver toward Massey. He’d positioned Massey between himself and Jules, approaching the older cop from behind. Massey had placed his weapon on the floor and now glared at Jules.

  “Take the shot, kid,” he said.

  Jules was shielded from the newcomer, so kept his gun on the four men they’d just tried to arrest. They hadn’t been searched.

  Jules momentarily aimed at the Chinese man emerging from cover, ducking behind Massey. “I don’t have a clean shot.”

  “I don’t care,” Massey said. “Ain’t no graduate ever filed marksmanship like you.”

  “Everyone, go,” the gunman shouted.

  The four robbers shifted.

  Jules said, “Nobody moves.”

  The Chinese man advanced to within touching distance of Massey and slung his arm around the man’s chest and shoulder from behind, positioning his face in the crook of Massey’s neck. No gun was visible, so Jules guessed it was poking in the sarge’s back. The man backed them up t
oward the dock, stopping eight feet from the wall.

  “Put gun down,” he said.

  Fluent English, accented, from the Chinese mainland. Beijing region, if not the city itself.

  More info useless to the situation.

  “All of you, keep both hands on your head,” Jules ordered.

  “They leaving,” the man holding Massey said.

  Jules needed to keep them occupied for two more minutes. “It’s over. You’re goin’ nowhere. Release my partner, and we can forget this happened.”

  A lie, of course, but there was no law or regulation against promising a hostage-taker the world to preserve life.

  Again, Massey said, “Take the shot.”

  Jules expected the gun in Massey’s back was cocked. Any sudden movement meant it could go off. That close, even if it went into Massey’s vest, it wasn’t clear how much damage it would do.

  A .22, he might be okay.

  A .44, his innards would be mincemeat.

  Jules held his gun one-handed as he unclipped his baton. Then he called in the situation over the radio, officer in need of immediate assistance. The jargon was easy enough to learn, and when one of their own was in trouble, a small army would descend.

  “You got one chance,” Jules said. “Put down your weapon and release the officer, and we will go easy. You keep this up, you got a dozen cops about to smoke your ass.”

  Massey glared at Jules. Eyes narrowed.

  The hostage taker shifted. His gun came around Massey to point toward Jules. It was unlikely he’d be able to hit Jules from there, given he was maneuvering a larger man as his shield, but Jules needed to act.

  He was certain at least one of the four on the dock was armed, and ready to use the gun to aid their escape. He stared hard at the black man who had reached for his waistline prior to the hands-on-head order. The man grinned. His white friend also smiled.

  “I count to three,” the man holding Massey said. “Then I shoot. One.”

  Jules fingered his baton out of its sleeve.

  “Two.”

  Jules turned his head to Massey, roved his eyes to the floor where the Sig Sauer lay four feet ahead. Massey followed his gaze and nodded. The only part of the hostage taker Jules could see was his head, meaning that was the only target.

  Yet another aspect of his former life was his absolute refusal to kill. He couldn’t get away from the fact he had killed in the past, albeit by accident, so he was fairly confident he would not seize up should the need arise again.

  It gets easier. Isn’t that what they say?

  He wasn’t so sure. He’d talked about this with Massey, and although he’d never been in a situation where he’d had to shoot, there’d been two occasions where such force would have been justified. After both incidents, he’d assured his partner he’d have pulled the trigger if he had to.

  If he had to.

  Jules darted from cover. He slipped the baton from his belt and swung it toward the man he suspected was reaching for a weapon seconds earlier, flicking his wrist as he released it. The man dropped his hand to his waist.

  Jules adopted a shooting crouch, aiming not at the person holding Massey, but past him. Calculations burst through his mind in a fraction of a second.

  The baton flew straight into his target’s forehead with a clunk.

  Jules fired.

  The wall behind Massey spat dust, then the hostage taker arced his back with a cry of pain.

  Massey pulled himself away from the Chinese man’s firearm, levered the gun-hand over, and as the man fell, Massey relieved him of the weapon, then slid the gun away before scooping up his own. He came up as the second of the four men on the dock was going for his waistband.

  But Jules had already made it to Massey. He whipped the Sarge’s baton from him, then flung it underarm to slam into the handgun emerging from its owner’s belt.

  The man dropped the weapon.

  By the time it hit the floor, Jules obscured Massey’s shot. He leaped onto the loading dock where he first launched a ferocious jeet-kun-do-style side-kick that slammed the white man back into the roller-door mechanics, then shouldered into the black man he hit with the first baton. He simultaneously swept his opponent’s feet and snagged the small revolver from his belt, flipped the cylinder, and shook the bullets free, then tossed it out of reach.

  The two with the ski masks scrambled for the guns they’d discarded, but as the air filled with sirens, cars screeching to a halt, they froze. Massey was back in position too, holding fast on the danger zone.

  Jules holstered his Sig and cuffed the white suspect he’d floored, before holding out his hand for more handcuffs. Massey tossed them and Jules bound the black suspect too.

  As the remaining pair in ski masks sunk to their knees, hands on their heads, Jules read them all their rights, and looked over to his training officer.

  As three pairs of cops swarmed the area, Massey kept his face slack, but his jaw remained tense—a sure sign he was not pleased. But they had a job to do, and Massey reverted to checking the man Jules had shot with the ricochet.

  Jules was not looking forward to explaining that one.

  While not every rookie who messed up on the job got hauled into the captain’s office, Jules had previously been dressed down by his watch commander, the senior detective on many a shift, and his own training officer. These were all minor issues compared with some officers’ first months on the force, but ones that needed ironing out. Jules had been assured plenty of times—by the same people who occasionally admonished him—that he had the potential to be an outstanding cop, and they were hard on him because they need guys like him to reach that potential.

  Massey had come to terms with Jules’s introverted approach to socializing and his almost robotic precision for memorizing rules and regulations, but he had never been happy with the way Jules dealt with confrontation. Memorizing regs were not the same as employing them during a shift.

  It seemed the captain had taken note.

  Most had considered Carla Demetriou a veteran for the past ten years, and there were few cops Jules had met that didn’t respect the hell out of her. She had participated in some of the biggest busts of the city’s history, not to mention handling riots, politics, and two divorces. But there was another case that Jules suspected guaranteed him additional attention from this particular captain.

  “Sit down, Sibeko.” She motioned with her hand as if she was about to slap a file on the desk, but all reports were digital at this stage. A printout would come along in due course, and her muscle memory could slap it onto whatever surface she chose once it was in her hands.

  “May I stand?” Jules asked.

  “No. I’m your captain. Sit. That’s an order.”

  Asserting her authority.

  Jules couldn’t blame her. She was shorter than Jules when they first met twelve years earlier, and she seemed slightly shorter now.

  Jules sank into the seat opposite Demetriou.

  She remained standing. “That’s three. Massey tells me you refused to discharge your weapon, despite there being grounds to do so.”

  “Ma’am, I did discharge my weapon.” Jules kept his tone even, respectful, and concentrated on ensuring Massey stood on a pedestal, someone he looked up to. “I missed. I got lucky with the ricochet.”

  “Massey ordered you to shoot someone who was holding a hostage. From your body cam, that was a very small target. But your training officer thought you could make it.”

  “He knows I had the highest marksmanship scores in the history of the Academy. Not to show off, ma’am, but if the target wasn’t moving, I would have had no problem.” Jules didn’t want to lie, but the world of the cops differed from the world of a civilian. “Like I said, I got lucky with the ricochet.”

  Demetriou sat, her fingers laced before her on the desk. “Sibeko, being a cop is about more than doing the job. You do almost everything well. But after ‘getting lucky’ you threw your baton when you should have
shot the suspect. Can you refer me to the class at the Academy where you learned that maneuver?”

  Jules said nothing.

  “Seriously, this is the one thing your T.O. can’t teach you. If your partner can’t rely on you, you can’t be a cop. You only have a couple of months to meet the grade. All the memorizing of regs, all the advice you give to the detectives—which, by the way, is another conversation we need to have—and your techniques for subduing suspects when a… more robust approach would have been appropriate, it’s all for nothing if you don’t have your partner’s back.”

  “I do have my partner’s back,” Jules said.

  Demetriou assessed him, the lines at the corners of her eyes softening. “You’re still that little kid. Still searching for something you can’t find.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “How many times did I arrest you back then? Four?”

  “Six. Although, you only booked me four times. The others you sent me straight back to the foster home. So, yeah, technically four.”

  “Do you understand how lucky you were that it was me, not some jacked up guy looking to make a name for himself by being tough on crime?”

  This was not the correct setting to reveal to Demetriou that Jules committed his juvenile crimes during times he knew she would be on a shift. As a child, he read people, and used them when needed. And he needed someone to be kind to him, even when they shouldn’t be. It wasn’t luck. It was a calculated risk. After the first couple of arrests involving her, he’d guessed she’d slipped the reference “Jules Sibeko” to the dispatcher’s desk, so she’d get the call whenever his name came up.

  He said, “I appreciate all you did for me back then. But I’ve experienced a lot. I’ve grown up.” Jules flashed the kind of practiced wry grin that he’d seen many cops aim at their superior after a minor snafu. “I even carry a gun now, ma’am.”

  Demetriou slapped the desk lightly. Not in rage, but in mild frustration. “You never told me if you found that damn bracelet.”

  “It was a bangle, ma’am. And the matter was resolved.”

  She shook her head with a joyless smirk. “And you were always good at that, too. Answering a question without answering it.”