Stealth Attack

by John Gilstrap

  “Don’t shoot!” Jonathan’s guard said.

  “What’s your name?”

  The question startled the kid. His voice trembled as he said, “My name is Juan. Why are you—”

  “What’s yours?” Jonathan asked the other one.

  The second guard’s face had turned into a series of near-perfect circles as he stared at Big Guy. It reminded Jonathan of a jack-o’-lantern.

  “Hey!”

  The kid jumped and shifted his head to face Jonathan.

  “Name.”

  “Carlos.”

  Still in Spanish, Jonathan said, “You don’t want to die here, do you?”

  Their whole bodies pivoted as they shook their heads no.

  “Then you keep your hands away from those guns. Understand?”

  Their bodies shook the other way. Yes, they understood.

  “Thor,” Jonathan called. “Come in here and grab their weapons.”

  Both MP5s were propped against the wall of the guard shack, muzzles up. As Dawkins ducked in and took custody of them, Jonathan said, “Okay, Juan and Carlos, I need you to take your clothes off.”

  The thought seemed to horrify them even more than the prospect of getting shot.

  “Just down to your underwear,” Jonathan said.

  “Why?” Carlos had finally found his vocal cords.

  “So I don’t shoot you,” Boxers said. When he wanted to deeply frighten people, he could make his voice sound like a combination of thunder and an earthquake.

  “We can’t have you making phone calls, can we?” Jonathan said.

  The kids’ hands trembled as they worked on their clothes. Both wore shorts. Juan wore a Nike T-shirt, and Carlos sported a green button-down cotton shirt that hadn’t been washed in a very long time.

  Keeping his rifle at his shoulder, Jonathan took a step back and gestured with his head. “Toss those out into the road.”

  The boys complied.

  “Shoes and socks, too. Don’t want you running off, either.”

  Juan pulled his low-top black canvas tennis shoes off by anchoring the heels with his toes and pulling his feet out, but Carlos sat back in the folding chair to undo the laces of his Jordans and pulled them off one at a time. Neither were wearing socks, and the stench of feet hit hard.

  “Toss them out, too.”

  “These cost me a lot of money,” Carlos said.

  “You can have them back when we are done,” Jonathan said. “I promise. Now, throw them out into the street.”

  They did as they were told, and Dawkins picked up the clothes and shoes and took them to the Durango. A few seconds later, the truck appeared at the head of the driveway.

  “Are your cars parked up there?” Jonathan asked, pointing toward the house.

  “Yes,” Carlos said.

  “I ride a bicycle,” Juan said.

  “Here’s what we’re going to do,” Jonathan said. “We’re going to go up to the house for a little while. I want you boys to stay here and keep any other people from coming in. When we’re done, if you’ve done your job, we’ll stop on the way out and leave your stuff. Nobody has to get hurt.”

  Hope seemed to bloom where before there’d only been dread.

  “But remember that we know where you live,” Boxers menaced. “If you cross me, I swear to God that I will hunt you down and kill you. After I kill your families.”

  The hope vanished, run off by sheer terror.

  “Okay,” Jonathan said in English. “Let’s mount up and get this done.”

  * * *

  As Angelina relayed the details of the attack and her attacker, she was reminded of several lectures she’d received at the Academy. How eyewitness accounts were essentially worthless. Trying to think back now, she remembered the fact that the guy had been staring at her, but she couldn’t relay the color of his eyes. As for his clothes, she was pretty sure he was wearing a sport coat, but again, nothing in the way of color.

  Except for the redness of the blood and how it somehow looked even redder against the black pavement.

  She had no recollection of how his hair was cut or what his nationality might have been. But she knew precisely what kind of rifle he had, and she relayed within millimeters where each of the bullets she’d fired had pierced his body.

  Officer LePew had asked her four times during the past fifteen minutes if she was okay, and each time, she assured him that she was. In fact, the act of talking about it made things a little easier. Her heart still pounded in her chest, but she didn’t feel sick anymore, and her hands had stopped shaking.

  LePew never stepped away from her, though he acknowledged his fellow officers several times with a cursory nod.

  “You know, you don’t need to babysit me,” Angelina said.

  “I kinda do, actually,” LePew replied. “You’ve, you know, been involved in a shooting, and even though I’m sure you’ve done nothing wrong, it’s in everybody’s best interest—”

  “To be babysat,” she said, finishing his sentence for him. Call that Crime Scene 101. For innocent people, it’s always useful to have witnesses who can account for all of your movements. On the other hand, for guilty people, there’s no better time to alter evidence or sneak away than when they’re left alone, even for a few minutes.

  “Uh-oh,” LePew said as something caught his eye over Angelina’s shoulder.

  She turned to see a police Suburban pulling into the lot. “Who’s that?”

  “That’s Chief Rendel,” LePew said. “She’s chief of the department, and she almost never wanders into the field.”

  “Sort of a carpet cop?” Angelina guessed.

  “You didn’t hear that from me.”

  “Didn’t hear what?” She winked.

  “Exactly.”

  If Angelina had been in LePew’s shoes and her boss was arriving at the scene, she would have done everything she could to avoid eye contact, but this cop’s eyeballs were locked on the approaching Suburban.

  “What is she doing?” he asked, probably to himself.

  The answer arrived with the SUV as it pulled to a stop within ten feet of them.

  “Oh, this can’t be good,” LePew mumbled.

  The electric window in the backseat lowered to reveal a tough-as-nails sun-worn face above a white shirt and gold collar hardware. “Agent Garcia?”

  Angelina scowled. “I am.”

  “Chief Rendel. I need you to get in here with me.” The urgency of her tone was unnerving.

  “Why?”

  “I’ll explain once you’re inside.”

  The resistance against climbing into a vehicle occupied by a stranger must be hardwired. It didn’t matter that the vehicle bore the decals of the police department. “Am I under arrest?”

  “I don’t think so,” the chief said. “Officer LePew?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “Is Agent Garcia under arrest?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Okay, then. I need you to get in the car. Both of you, actually.”

  This didn’t feel right at all, but there was no reason to refuse. Angelina had, after all, just shot a guy.

  “Pepé, you climb all the way into the backseat,” Rendel instructed. “Agent Garcia, you sit here with me. Please move quickly.”

  LePew worked the latch to release the near side of the bench seat, thus allowing him to climb into the back. Angelina reset the latch and then climbed in next to the chief.

  “I’d like to know what’s going on, Chief.”

  “So would I,” Rendel said. “Please don’t panic when you hear the next part.” To the driver she added, “Take us to the jail, to the sally port.”

  Angelina recoiled. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I want a lawyer.” She reached for her cell phone.

  “Don’t,” Rendel commanded as the Suburban started to move. “Just don’t. You’re not under arrest, and as far as I know, you’re not even in any trouble.”

  “So, I’m free to go?”

  They were nearly
up to speed as the Suburban hit the parking lot exit. The driver hit the lights and siren.

  “Not exactly,” Rendel explained. “Look, I’m being straight with you when I tell you I don’t really know what’s going on. I got an urgent phone call from a very important person who told me to do exactly what we’re doing.”

  “Important person? What does that mean?”

  “It means Irene Rivers.”

  Angelina felt her jaw drop. “As in Director Irene Rivers?”

  “Of the FBI. I believe you would call her your boss.”

  “Holy shit,” LePew said. “Me, too?”

  “Yep. And I’m in the mix, too.”

  Angelina asked, “Are you aware that you’re not making any sense?”

  “I’m aware that I’m following directions,” Rendel said, her voice showing an edge of annoyance.

  “But you don’t work for her.”

  “A fact of which I am fully aware,” Rendel said. “She indicated that it was of the utmost importance to bring you to safety ASAP.”

  Angelina found herself gaping. “Me? You mean, by name?”

  “Exactly that.”

  “She literally told you to get me. Not just the random person who was in a shoot-out.”

  “Your name’s Angelina Garcia, is it not?”

  She waited for the rest.

  “How would I know that unless she had told me?”

  Angelina waved the chief off. “I’m not suggesting that you’re lying, Chief. I just don’t understand how she would know about any of this. There’s only like a hundred thirty layers of bureaucracy between me and her.”

  “Did she mention me by name, too?” LePew asked.

  “No, of course not,” Rendel snapped. “How would she know your name?”

  He seemed to deflate a little. “Then why am I here?”

  “Because the director asked for everyone who knows about Agent Garcia being involved in the shooting.”

  “Isn’t that a lot of people?” Angelina asked. “Every cop on the ground out there? The nine-one-one call taker? Witnesses?”

  “I checked the tape on the way over,” Rendel said. “None of the callers into the dispatch center mentioned that you were a fed.”

  “But they saw me.”

  “Look,” Rendel said, “you’re wanting me to explain things that I don’t understand myself.”

  Angelina tried to make the pieces fit. This was wrong at so many levels, not the least of which was, why she was in the company of Chief Rendel rather than her boss, Ray Jacobs? “Why are we going to the jail?” she asked.

  “Security,” Rendel replied. “Too many eyes in the station. Too many people to see you.”

  That detail didn’t help her nerves a bit. In fact, it made them even rawer. “Am I being disappeared somehow?”

  “Again, I don’t know. I was told to get you to a teleconference room with the fewest possible number of people seeing you. The jail has a sally port. The deputies who see you won’t have any idea who you are. I’ve arranged with the sheriff to get a secure room. In short order, I presume we will all learn together what the hell is going on.”

  Angelina decided that it no longer made sense to ask questions, at least not out loud. Silently, though, where the hell was Ray Jacobs? She’d called him in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. The office wasn’t that far away. He could have made it down if he’d made it a priority, but he never showed up.

  Was that what was going on here? Had Ray called Director Rivers to tell her about the shooting? Was this a disciplinary thing?

  Surely not. Ray wasn’t a guy to sub out a good tongue-lashing. Ruining careers was one of his specialties. One of his best things. He liked to shout loudly enough to be heard through the walls. No, this was something else. Still, where the hell was he?

  The ride to the jail was only four or five miles. The chief’s driver piloted the big beast around to the back of the building and down the ramp into the pit that was the sally port—the transfer location for prisoners in custody to be moved from the transport vehicle into the jail itself. They stopped at the bottom of the ramp to let an overhead door rumble open. When the way was cleared, they pulled into an overlit concrete cave and the door rumbled down again.

  “This is it,” Rendel said. “Let’s see what’s up.”

  Angelina pulled the door latch on the passenger side, climbed out, then lifted the seat to allow LePew to climb out. Chief Rendel waited for them on the driver’s side, then led the way to the heavy steel door that separated freedom from incarceration for so many.

  Cameras high on the walls and all over the ceiling no doubt documented every move they made. As they arrived at the door, the lock buzzed, and they entered a concrete mantrap that was equipped with even more cameras. The next lock buzzed, and they stepped into misery.

  Angelina had always hated this end of the law enforcement business. There was something utterly soul-stealing about the concrete and steel of a jail. Perhaps literally soul-stealing. For those who were under arrest, that step she’d just taken defined the end of anything that resembled happiness and reset the future to survival, at least for the short term.

  “Please tell me there’s no strip search,” Angelina said, an attempt at humor that fell flat.

  She imagined that there’d been a time when the walls and bars had been painted white, but those times were long gone. The walls had faded to a dingy, filthy cream color, and the bars had been largely chipped away to the bare brown steel.

  Three strides in, a deputy in a crisp brown uniform stepped out to greet them from a room to the right that was sealed off by another solid steel door.

  “Afternoon, Chief,” he said. “Do you have any idea what this is all about?”

  “Hi, Grant,” Rendel said. “Everybody, this is Deputy Sergeant Grant Harper. And no, I have no idea.”

  “You must be Angelina Garcia,” Harper said, extending his hand.

  “I suppose I must,” she said. “Pleased to meet you. What’s the next step?”

  “If you are armed, I need you to put your firearms in the safe over there.”

  Angelina reached to her holster out of habit, only to feel her shoulders sag when she remembered that it was empty. As far as she knew, her SIG sat unattended in an evidence bag in the back of Officer LePew’s cruiser.

  “Don’t worry about it,” LePew said, as if reading her mind. “I texted another officer and had him take custody of your weapon.”

  She nodded a curt thank-you. All the rationalization in the world, and all the calm explanation, could do nothing to reduce the sense of dread brought by being in this terrible place. It was, after all, the very same spot she’d have been if she’d been charged with murdering that man.

  He was shooting at her, goddammit. She had every right—

  “This way,” Harper said, pointing back to the steel door. It buzzed, triggered by an unseen guard. Harper pushed the panel open to reveal a hallway that was every bit as unpleasant as the previous room. Same ugly paint, same dingy lighting. Angelina wondered how people could spend a career working here and still preserve their sanity.

  In this hallway, the interior doors were made of wood rather than steel, and Harper stopped at the first one on the right. He pushed it open, and they were greeted with a plain vanilla long conference table with eight leather swivel chairs arranged around it.

  “Take a seat, any seat,” Harper said. He lowered himself into the chair at the end, farthest from a big flat-screen television. He pushed a button on the remote and brought the screen to life. It showed the image of a county sheriff’s badge. Then he called someone on his cell and said, “Everybody’s in place.”

  He clicked off, yet nothing changed on the wall.

  “Has anyone told you what to expect, Sergeant?” Rendel asked.

  “No one, Chief. I gotta say we don’t do a lot of cloak-and-dagger—”

  The screen blinked, and the sheriff’s emblem was replaced by the famous gold-edged red, white,
and blue FBI shield. Ten seconds later, the frame cleared to reveal an empty chair in a conference room that looked no fancier than the one they were in.

  Irene Rivers served as an inspiration to law enforcement officers around the world. The Bureau’s first female director, she was also the real deal. She’d kicked doors as a member of the Hostage Rescue Team, closed hundreds of cases as a field agent, and, if rumors were true, early in her career, she’d shot and killed a corrupt assistant director.

  When she entered the frame and set herself in the empty chair on the other end of the call, Angelina found herself wanting to stand.

  “Thank you all for gathering on such short notice,” Director Rivers said. She looked up over her glasses, presumably at a video monitor and said, “Which one of you is Angelina Garcia?”

  Angelina raised her hand. “Right here, ma’am.”

  Director Rivers smiled. “How are you doing, Agent Garcia? Shootings can have bad consequences for the shooter.” She chuckled. “Okay, perhaps not as bad as for the shot, but still. Are you well?”

  “Yes, ma’am, I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” the director said. “I’ve been in your shoes. You think you’re fine, but trust me, you’re not. Your SAC will make arrangements for you to talk to someone. Be sure that you do.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” There was no way in the world that she was going to talk to a shrink. Not with Jacobs staring down at her.

  “If anyone gives you shit about that, you are to call me,” Rivers said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Rivers pulled her glasses off and leaned forward. Her gaze shifted from the monitor to the camera lens. To the center of Angelina’s soul.

  “This is the twenty-first century, Agent Garcia. Angelina. It is one my personal goals as director to smoke out the remaining dinosaurs in the Bureau and replace them with a new breed of manager. Do not blow this off, and do not blow sunshine up my skirt. Do we understand each other?”

  “Perfectly, Director Rivers.”

  “Good. Now, who else is in the room. Introduce yourselves.”

  They did exactly that, one by one.

  “What’s your role in this, Officer LePew?” Director Rivers asked.

  “I was early on the scene. I did the first interview with Agent Garcia. I have no idea why I’m here. Ma’am.”