Above the Law

by J. F. Freedman

Sixty other men looked at their watches. They were all digital watches, not an analog among them, except for Miller, who wore the same Longines he’d had since his wife had given it to him as a present upon his graduation from the FBI Academy, fifty years ago.

  What a crock, the sheriff thought as he watched this hoary exercise. Almost 2000 and these guys are still setting their watches the way they did back in World War II.

  “Eighteen minutes,” Jerome said.

  The agents dispersed, spreading around the perimeter. They were an overwhelming force, who would be in the compound and the house before the men inside knew what had hit them.

  Miller approached Jerome. “What’s our assignment?” He gestured toward Bearpaw, his deputy, standing a few feet from them.

  Jerome looked at him. This was awkward, and annoying. “You observe.”

  “From where?”

  Jerome looked around. Miller was here as an obligatory courtesy, because he was the local sheriff, a former FBI agent, it’s his county, and he’s not a man you deny—basically, he’d forced his way into this. But this was a federal bust, Miller had no standing, and everyone knew it, including him. If it was up to Jerome, Miller would be home in bed, sound asleep.

  Jerome pointed to a hill that overlooked the compound. “There.”

  Miller looked at where the DEA honcho had pointed. He shook his head.

  “That’s too far away. I can’t observe anything from there.”

  Jerome could feel his gut tightening. This was an incredibly delicate and dangerous undertaking; he needed grief from some eighty-year-old has-been like he needed the Tijuana runs. But he held his tongue—he didn’t have time to get into a personality riff with this old man.

  “What do you suggest. Sheriff?”

  They’re trapped in there. Hunker down and starve ’em out, Miller wanted to say. But that wasn’t the point of this exercise. If they went that route, establishing a beachhead and digging in for the long haul, it would become a public siege, with all the attendant problems that had befallen those of recent history. Press up the wazoo. Pro and con interest groups. Meddlesome congressmen. The goal here was surprise, overwhelm, get in and get out.

  One caution Miller wanted to give Jerome—if Lopez is your only source of information, you could be so far up shit’s creek all the paddles in California won’t save you. His reliability quotient is zero. And never let him out of your sight.

  Miller said none of that. The question had been rhetorical. “Where are you going to be?” he asked the honcho.

  “First one in the door,” Jerome told him.

  Miller nodded. Jerome had to lead the parade, his ego wouldn’t let him do otherwise.

  “How’s about I follow you in?” Miller suggested. He gestured toward Bearpaw. “My deputy can stay up here, see the overall picture.”

  Jerome had been blindsided—he should have realized this crafty old soldier would try to finagle a way to be in the middle of the action. But he wasn’t going to allow that to happen.

  “No.” He shook his head firmly. “This is a federal takedown. We told you that when we briefed you. You’re not part of the game plan,” he added bitingly.

  The sheriff didn’t acknowledge the insult. “I’ll find my own spot, then,” he assured Jerome. “Away from the center.”

  “Good.” Jerome turned away.

  Miller looked at Jerome’s retreating back. Goddamnit, he was uneasy about this raid. Part of his trepidation was historical—government agencies, particularly these agencies, had screwed up too many times. They were too arrogant, cocksure. And they were bulls in a china shop, their instinct was always to charge in, especially if the plan wasn’t working as they’d penciled it.

  More ominously, their mission was at cross-purposes with itself. Breaking into an armed citadel and physically destroying a major crime ring was one thing; taking a prisoner alive was entirely different. One was a balls-to-the-wall enterprise, no holds barred, individual consequences be damned. The other was an act of extreme delicacy. The two were antithetical, 180 degrees.

  He also felt, in his bones, that Jerome had badly downplayed the possibility of armed resistance. Men like those inside the compound don’t fall asleep at the wheel. They may be sloppy around the edges, but they’re always on the alert. Their survival depends on it.

  Hubris. The man’s ego was too damn big. Jerome felt that he was impervious, that he had it knocked.

  Miller was a student of the history of war. He’d analyzed the classic battle philosophies, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, Bismarck, Robert E. Lee, his personal hero. Attacks on an unknown enemy, without having reliable sources of intelligence, often led to crushing defeats: witness Lee’s at Gettysburg, caused by Jeb Stuart’s not being on time with the correct information about the size and scope of the Union Army.

  He would not have authorized this raid based on nothing but information provided by a turncoat like Lopez. Snitches are fundamentally unreliable. He would have found a way to get his own mole inside.

  But this was not his operation.

  He thought about something else, peripheral but related to this action, something no one knew, not even Bearpaw, whom he trusted like a son: he had decided to hang it up. The next election was coming in a year, and he wasn’t going to run again—he was going to retire. Time to pass the torch.

  From Bearpaw and resignation, his thoughts turned to his son, James. They had fallen out over Vietnam and had never reconciled. Miller blamed James for the loss of his career with the Bureau and had hardened his heart against him.

  He had not heard from James since Dorothy’s funeral. He didn’t know if he ever would again.

  He came back to the present. He would be all right—since Jerome had rebuffed him, he wasn’t going to be in any direct line of fire; and he had no need to be a hero and disregard Jerome’s directive. Still, there was always risk in something this dicey, and he was going on eighty. You shouldn’t be doing something this risky, this physical, at his age, even if you’re in great shape and could pass for being a decade and a half younger.

  For all the action he was likely to see, he might as well go home; but he had to be here. This was taking place in his county; he was responsible to his constituents for law enforcement in his county, even if it was being performed by an outside agency.

  There was something else, too, more important. More personal. This would be the last big operation he’d ever be involved in. If there was trouble, and he went out in a blaze of glory, it would be a good way to die. He was going to die soon anyway; whether tonight or in a few years, it was there, looming before him. This would be an honorable way, fulfilling on many levels. But that was to be denied him now.

  Miller walked over to where the others were congregating. Sixty men in the party. The assault teams comprised fifty of them, the other ten would be at the fence line, manning the artillery that could level every building if it came to that. Which wasn’t going to happen, but they had to prepare for it. Their dogs, in portable kennels, were far enough back from the compound that the sounds of barking wouldn’t be heard inside, although they were trained to be silent except when on the scent.

  The advance contingent slipped into the compound. The perimeter was fifty yards all around the main building, clear, unprotected ground. This was the most dangerous part, bridging that distance.

  Time was another dimension now, slowed almost to a standstill. Seconds drifted by like leaves on a quiescent stream; five minutes: an eternity.

  Everyone was on edge, waiting. Miller could feel the collective adrenaline pumping. His own pulse was quickening, a rare occurrence. Looking toward the target, he saw that the advance party had safely crossed no-man’s-land and were closing in on the house, protected by the shadows cast off from the light of the moon.

  Miller looked at Jerome. The man was standing in place, but his body was quivering—you could almost see electrical charges zapping out from him, he was so wired. He was going to explode from his inner pressure if th
is didn’t come off, and soon.

  Jerome put up a hand for silence, even though there was no sound, no movement anywhere near him. He listened over his earpiece.

  “All quiet on the western front,” he relayed in a whisper. “Time to rock and roll.”

  They filtered into the compound and spread out, Jerome leading the frontal assault, two more teams on either flank, a fourth going around to the back.

  Miller had taken a position on the high ground on the other side of the fence, two hundred yards away, where he had an unobstructed view. Standing next to his deputy, he watched through his binoculars. This is dangerous and stupid, he thought to himself, you don’t put yourself in a cross fire, the way Jerome had them spread out. Jerome was too sure of this operation, he wasn’t taking all the proper precautions.

  He watched through the glasses as the men inside moved closer to the target. Maybe I’m wrong, he grudgingly had to admit to himself, intently surveying the action. A part of him did not want this to go perfectly. Being shut out didn’t suit him—he was a man who wanted to be in the middle of the action. Even if he was too damn old.

  He kept watching. In a few seconds Jerome would be leading the charge through the front door. With any luck, it would all be over before—

  The sound was first: an all-points alarm, an earsplitting, pulsing siren, like a maximum-security penitentiary signaling an escape. And then, within seconds, the rest of all hell broke loose. The entire compound was lit up: one moment everything was in darkness; the next brought on dozens of high-density lights that lit the place up like a night game at Yankee Stadium.

  The agents in the compound were caught totally off-guard, frozen in their tracks like a herd of deer caught in headlights. Then before they could react further there commenced a firestorm of gunfire from within the house, so deafening it almost obliterated the sound of the alarm.

  Miller watched the debacle unfolding, for the first few seconds as dumbfounded and paralyzed as the men inside. Then he came unstuck. Jesus Christ! he thought. They’ve walked into an ambush!

  A lifetime of reflex took over. He began running toward the action. He was almost eighty years old, but he could still run pretty well when he had to. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Bearpaw, running with him stride for stride.

  Inside the compound, the agents were scrambling for cover. Half a dozen were down, wounded or dead, their screams of pain louder even than the cacophony from the siren and the gunfire. The rest were running, crawling, whatever they could do to get out of the line of fire.

  Jerome had reached the cover of the edge of the main building, and was shrieking into his headset: “Fuck taking them alive, take this fucking building out! Fire! Fire! Fire!”

  Immediately, from outside the compound, the rear-guard agents started laying down a carpet-bomb barrage of mortars at the building. Shells and tear gas. Within seconds they’d hit their target, shattering windows and blowing huge holes in the root. The inside of the building burst into flame, fire and black, tarry smoke pouring out from all sides. There was a brief pause, no more than a few seconds; then came the sounds of bullets and other munitions going off inside.

  They’ve got ammunition in there, Miller realized. By now he and Bearpaw had breached the perimeter and were about forty yards from the house. “It’s going to blow sky-high!” he screamed to his deputy above the clamor. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  They turned and started hightailing it back toward the safety of the woods.

  Jerome had the same realization. “This place is going to explode!” he cried out. “Everybody get the hell out!”

  His men scrambled to their feet and started running for cover. Disregarding their own safety, pockets of agents picked up their wounded comrades and dragged them along the ground, away from the house.

  Miller and Bearpaw reached the safety of their former viewing place. They watched the debacle unfolding. Miller was bent over double, gasping for breath. “Bastard Lopez double-crossed us,” he cursed. The first goddamn rule of informants—never trust them.

  Bearpaw nodded grimly. Turning their focus to the house, they saw the fugitives staggering out, running in every direction, assault rifles and other state-of-the-art weapons in their hands, firing wildly. Most of them had been blinded by the tear gas—they ran like rabid dogs, weaving incoherent patterns.

  Jerome and the remaining agents had safely retreated to the edge of the compound. “Secure the perimeter!” Jerome screamed at his men. “Don’t let them break your ranks!”

  Dazed and frightened from the unexpected counterattack, his people managed to form a raggedy circle, forcing themselves to be professional in the face of this world-class snafu. They began returning fire.

  Miller had dropped his field glasses. He didn’t need them to view this carnage.

  “What a disaster,” he said softly, more to himself than to his deputy, who had never seen such a bloodbath. Miller was both angry and regretful. Men were dead down there who didn’t have to be.

  The house blew. Sections went, then in one tremendous blast, a fireball billowed up to the sky, pieces of the structure flying hundreds of feet into the air, then crashing to earth, scattering burning debris all around, some of it falling on the men, federal agents and fugitives indiscriminately.

  The DEA agents were badly bloodied, but their enemy was worse off. They couldn’t see, and several of them had been wounded by the force of the explosion of their stored ammunition, and the fallout from the burning rubble.

  Jerome was on the bullhorn now. “Drop your weapons and stand in place!” he ordered the surrounded fugitives.

  The men who had been inside the house knew when to be brave and when to be smart.

  Three federal agents dead, three wounded. Four fugitives killed.

  Juarez was not among the captured.

  Jerome was birthing a hippopotamus. “Where the fuck is he?” he screamed into the night sky.

  The prisoners, lying facedown on the hard dirt, arms and legs spread wide in the prone position, were being handcuffed. Some were bleeding. Their wounds would not be attended to until this was over and they were brought back to civilization, which was going to take a while. Hours, at least.

  Jerome bent down to one of the prisoners whom he knew to be Juarez’s second-in-command.

  “Was there anyone left inside?” Jerome questioned the man, grabbing him roughly by the throat. Fuck their civil rights and all that other fucking protocol, these motherfuckers were going to give it up.

  The man shook his head. “No one stayed inside.” He coughed. “The place was blowing up. We’re not stupid.”

  “What about Reynaldo Juarez?”

  Another head-shake. “Ain’t been there. Some time now.”

  “We know he was in there!” Jerome insisted, his rising voice betraying his desperation.

  The prisoner spat blood from the inside of his mouth onto the ground at Jerome’s feet. “You know wrong.”

  Jerome and his senior agents circled around Lopez. “You said he was in there,” Jerome braced Lopez. His voice had a rasp that could cut glass. “You swore that you saw him.”

  “He was in there,” Lopez defended himself.

  “Then where the fuck is he?”

  Lopez backed up a step so as not to catch on fire from Jerome’s breath. “Still in there, probably. Probably dead. You guys were so fucking gung ho, you killed his ass.”

  Miller, standing nearby, listening, silently agreed with the informant. Not about Juarez’s presence—that had been a classic shuck on Lopez’s part. But regarding the tactics Jerome had employed, he was in accord with this slime. Jerome, like all cornered animals of prey, had reverted to his true nature. When in doubt, destroy. Even if you go down with your captive.

  “He’d better be in there,” Jerome warned Lopez.

  “Or what?” Lopez countered.

  Jerome flared crimson. “Don’t push my buttons, man. I’m close to committing justifiable homicide, right here on t
he fucking spot.”

  “He was in there when I left.” Lopez dialed his attitude down a scosh. “That’s all I know. That’s all I promised. The rest was your shit, kemo sabe.”

  Fire hoses cooled the burning areas inside. The agents went inside, looking around. Miller tagged after, checking the place out. This is plush, he thought. And why not? These people were making tens of millions of dollars a month, they could afford the Taj Mahal.

  The dogs were brought in. They began sniffing around, going from room to room. There were no bodies anywhere. Nothing human could be seen. Luckily the electricity was still running.

  The action moved into the kitchen. A huge room, like something out of an English castle. Against one wall there was a bank of refrigerators and walk-in freezers, as big as those in a meatpacking plant.

  Jerome watched the dogs sniffing around aimlessly, becoming increasingly agitated. Time was slipping out of their hands.

  Miller, posting nearby, watched him. This is how careers are ended, he thought with no regrets for the man. Good men had died tonight because of this shitheel’s decisions. You reap, you sow. His own career had been snuffed for a transgression far less egregious and not even of his own making.

  A cacophony of dog-howling broke his reverie.

  “Might have something, chief!” one of the handlers called to Jerome.

  All the dogs had converged at one of the freezer doors, straining like crazy at their leashes, baying like banshees.

  “Open that door!” Jerome yelled.

  The door was pried open. A blast of cold air hit those closest to the entrance; then the dogs, pulling their handlers, led the search party inside.

  It was icicle-forming cold. Uncovered lightbulbs hung from the high ceiling, casting pale pools of light in the dim chamber. Jerome, leading the rush into the cavernous compartment, noticed a thermometer on a wall: thirty degrees below freezing.

  The agents’ shadows leaped against the dark walls as they made their way into the room. Even with their jackets on, they immediately began shaking from the sudden glacial blast.

  “Back here!” one of the handlers was calling, holding onto his dog for dear life, the eager animal barking nonstop at something in the far back of the freezer.