by Jon McGoran
A weathered wooden sign next to the driveway said CROOKED CREEK FARM.
I pulled into a driveway fifty yards down on the other side of the road and parked far enough up that I couldn’t be seen from the street, halfway on the grass so there was enough room for another car to get by. I wrote “Back in Five Minutes” on a Dunkin’ Donuts napkin and put it where it would be visible through the windshield. No need to piss off the neighbors and have them call the cops on me.
I called Stan, and while I was waiting for him to answer, I flipped open the glove compartment. After a tiny hesitation, I grabbed my gun.
“Doyle,” he answered.
“We’re on Shady Lane, about a quarter mile east of Ridge Road. I’m parked in the driveway across the street, but I’m going to walk up, see if I can get a closer look.”
“Wait, wait, wait, Doyle, don’t…” He paused, thinking about it. “Okay, go and look, but that’s all. Nothing more, okay?”
“Absolutely,” I agreed, tucking the gun into my waistband before I trotted back down the driveway and across the road.
31
The other side of the road was so overgrown with tall grasses and wildflowers that at a low crouch I was mostly obscured. Once I was far enough from the road, I turned and ran parallel to it, making my way closer to the driveway. When the driveway was still thirty yards away, I turned and followed it toward a small cluster of buildings surrounding a gravel lot.
Directly in front of me was a low cinder block building, maybe twenty yards wide. It had two doors, twenty feet apart, each facing out onto the lot. Three or four oil drums sat out front.
To the right was a run-down wooden house, and to the left was a rusted grain silo. Between them was a pair of newer-looking aluminum shacks. One was padlocked. The van was parked in front of the other one, with its back doors opened.
As I watched, Roberts and another guy emerged from the shack. I got down low as they each grabbed an armload from the back of the van and carried it back into the shack.
From where I was, I couldn’t see what they had, or what was in the back of the van. I waited in the weeds to see if they were going to come back out for another load. A minute later, they did, and when they went back into the shack, I darted toward the cinder block structure, keeping it between me and them. Then I crept around to the front, past the two doors, and up behind the oil drums.
One of the doors was open, meaning my back was exposed, but there was nothing I could do about that now. I touched my gun, reassuring myself, and peeked out over the drums.
I could see directly into the door to the shack, but the interior was dark.
In the back of the van, a tarp was thrown back, revealing stacks of plastic-wrapped bundles, each containing half a dozen smaller plastic-wrapped bundles sealed with red or yellow tape.
There was a lot.
I ducked down as I heard Roberts’s voice. Through a gap between the drums, I watched as the men emerged again from the shack. They each grabbed a bundle. This time, the other guy got careless, and his bundle snagged on a hinge on the van’s back door.
A wispy column of white powder fell from a hole in the plastic, and Roberts savagely slapped the guy.
“Goddamn it, Paulie.” Roberts bared his teeth in a snarl that made the other guy step back, cowering.
When they retreated back into the shack, I took a photo of the back of the van with my phone, and sent it to Stan to let him know this shit was for real. I turned off the ringer before I slipped it back into my pocket.
That was enough for me. I would wait until Roberts and Paulie came and got another load, and when they went back inside, I’d hightail it out of there and watch from a safe distance.
The only problem was, when they came out of the shack, they didn’t grab another load. Instead, they started crossing the lot, directly toward me.
I figured I had five seconds to make a move. No way I could get back around to the side of the building without being spotted. One option was to jump out with my gun drawn and tell them they were under arrest. But even if I wasn’t suspended, I was still out of my jurisdiction. Making matters worse, as Roberts and Paulie approached, two other guys came out of the shack to continue unloading the van. One of them was Arnett. I recognized him from his mug shot—that same expression, equal parts badass and dumbass.
I decided to retreat as best I could. Staying low, I slipped through the nearest open door and into the cinder block building.
It was dark inside, but I didn’t have time to let my eyes adjust. I was in a narrow corridor about twenty feet long. At the end of it, in the light of a single bare bulb, I could see another hallway, going left to right, and in the middle of it, another doorway.
Pausing at the end of the first hallway, I looked up and down the second one. In addition to the doorway in the middle, there was also one toward each end, both facing back toward the front of the building. I took the easiest option and darted in through the open doorway directly in front of me.
One of the other options might have been better.
Slipping through the door, I almost bumped into a chubby guy with pink cheeks and blond hair awkwardly parted in the middle. He was probably coming to investigate the sound of my frantic footsteps.
He had an automatic rifle slung over his shoulder, and when he saw me, he took a step back, swung the rifle down, and took a shot without aiming. It went over my shoulder, and I hoped it hit one of the guys coming up behind me, because I knew at the sound of it they’d all come running.
I took a shot without aiming, too, but I was better at it than he was. He staggered back against the far wall with a small, red-black hole in the middle of his forehead.
32
I felt bad for a second, because I had just killed the guy, but also because I knew shooting him was going to greatly complicate my life.
As I turned, I could see Roberts and his friend Paulie in the hallway behind me. Roberts was back by the entrance, legs braced wide, two-handing his gun. Paulie was running along the wall.
I held up my badge and yelled, “Police!” then jumped out of the way as they both fired. I fired back, but none of us hit anything.
As I got to my feet, huddled against the wall, I could hear footsteps as Paulie turned the corner and ran toward the doorway down the hallway to the left. I tried to tag him as he ran, but I only got off one shot before Roberts and someone else pinned me back. It was Arnett.
There were three of them now, Paulie to my left and Roberts and Arnett straight ahead.
In the quiet between the gunshots, I could hear a single set of muffled footsteps and the sound of doors opening and closing inside the rooms to the right. I figured the fourth guy had come in through that second entrance, and one way or another, it had led him to the doorway down the hall, to my right.
We traded sporadic bullets for a minute or two, like in a bad cowboy movie: I would shoot at them and duck back, then they would shoot at me.
If I stayed flat against the wall, right next to the doorway, I could see out into the hallway to the room where Paulie was hiding. Natural light spilled through it, which meant there was probably a window. As I watched, I saw the barrel of his gun poke out through the doorway, followed a moment later by his face and an explosion when he fired. From his angle, he was shooting at a narrow sliver of doorway, but I guess he figured if he could get a round through the doorway and into the room, maybe it would ricochet around and hit me. Each time, right before he took a shot, the barrel of his gun appeared, followed a moment later by his face as he scoped out the shot.
Counting the beats between shots, I took a wild shot at Roberts and Arnett, right down the middle, then immediately set up my next shot at Paulie. Sure enough, right on cue, his barrel poked around the doorjamb. I adjusted my aim higher, and when his face peered around the corner, I caught him just above his left eye.
His head snapped back, or most of it did. The rest of it spattered the wall and the doorjamb with red. He did a little fl
ip, his feet coming out from under him, and landed heavily on his back. His feet were poking through the doorway, jerking and shaking for a moment before stopping abruptly.
Roberts and Arnett sent a torrent of bullets my way, but I figured I was okay as long as I stayed back from the doorway. At least, until the wall disintegrated. As the bullets continued to slam into the wall behind me, I was troubled by the thought that wall disintegration might actually be a problem. I was also troubled by the fact that I was running low on ammo.
Most troubling of all, however, was that out of the corner of my eye, the guy with the pink cheeks sitting on the floor across from me looked like he was trying to get up. I was pretty sure that wasn’t going to happen: His legs were folded under him, and in addition to the hole I had put in him, he must have been hit a dozen more times. There wasn’t much left of his midsection. Still, every couple of seconds he would rise up an inch or two before settling back down again. It freaked me out the first few times he did it. Then I realized the impact from the stray bullets slamming into him was lifting him up. The bullets meant for me.
That freaked me out, too.
I was leaning against the wall across from him, next to the doorway that was letting in all the bullets. I made a mental note that if I ever died in a shootout, I’d try not to do it directly across from a doorway. I’d also try not to do it any time soon.
But while the guy slumped across from me had more than his share of problems, he also had an automatic rifle strapped across him, and as far as I knew, he’d only used one bullet.
The gunfire coming down the hallway had settled back into that call and response rhythm. I slid out my clip and saw that I only had two bullets left, plus one in the chamber.
That meant one for my regularly scheduled exchange of gunfire, and then two to cover myself when I went for my roommate’s gun.
I fired my shot, waited for them to return it, and then I sprang across the room, firing as I did.
The strap was wound around the dead guy’s forearm, and I knew that if I just grabbed the gun and pulled, it would tighten. Then I’d be standing in the open, wrestling with a two-hundred-pound dead guy. As I slipped the strap off his arm I fired my last bullet through the doorway. That brushed them back for a moment, but then I think they saw me standing out in the open and they poured it on. The sound of automatic weapons discharging in the hallway was deafening. I aimed out the doorway and pumped the trigger a few times, pushing them back again while I got the hell out of the way.
I curled around my new gun in the opposite corner of the room, and as the echo of the gunfire dissipated, I heard a new sound—a tightly clenched moaning sound coming from down the main hallway. Another one down. I was pretty sure it was Arnett.
The good news was that they were down to two and a half. The bad news was, I had wasted half the clip getting the gun and tagging Arnett.
For the next few minutes, I exchanged fire down the hallway with Roberts and the new guy, up the hallway to my right. Occasionally, one of the incoming bullets would hit my dead roommate, causing him to jump in his disturbing parody of life.
I was counting down my bullets each time I pulled the trigger, and I found myself once again down to three. Getting another weapon was the next tactical move, but what I really needed to do was get the hell out of here. Roberts and what was left of Arnett were straight ahead. The other guy was down the hallway to the right.
That left the hallway to the left, with dead Paulie and the natural light. Light from a window. Dead Paulie won.
Wrapping the strap around my hand, I silently counted to three. As I sprang through the door, I sent one bullet straight down the hallway toward Roberts. I sent another one down the hallway behind me as I jagged left. The last one I was saving, just in case.
As I went into my roll, I heard voices on the roof. Then, on the wall ahead of me, I saw my own outline in the reflection of a flash from behind me. The entire building shook, and I heard a bang and a whoosh as I went tumbling airborne. The wall at the end of the hallway came at me fast, already bloody from where I’d shot Paulie. I hit it hard, butt first and upside down, jarring every inch of my body.
Falling to the floor next to Paulie’s blood-spattered boots, I could feel myself losing consciousness. I knew about concussions, and I thought I should really be more careful, but as my vision faded, I saw Paulie lying there, the top of his head missing altogether, and I thought, “Things could be worse.”
33
When I came to, a pair of agents in DEA windbreakers were running toward me down the hallway, guns out in front, aimed in my direction. They were both shouting at me, but between the ringing in my ears and the way they were shouting over each other, I had no idea what they were saying. I figured they were telling me to stay down, but I had no intentions of getting up just yet anyway.
Then they were both standing over me, holding their DEA badges and their guns in front of my face.
I nodded. “All right, all right,” I said. They both seemed too young and too excited.
One kept shouting at me until his jacket suddenly pulled tight around him and his eyes went wide. Then he rose up and away and disappeared altogether and Stan Bowers was standing above me, glaring at the other guy, who suddenly disappeared as well. Stan crouched down, asking loudly and slowly if I was okay.
I nodded, and he reached out a hand to help me up. As he pulled me to my feet, I realized I might have been a little hasty when I said I was okay.
I pitched a little to one side, but Stan didn’t seem to notice. He was talking over his shoulder as he walked back down the hall. The strap of the rifle was still tangled around my hand, so I slung it over my shoulder and tried to keep up. I was just starting to make out what he was saying.
“… asshole out front took a shot at us, so that was that for him. We found one guy still breathing in the room up ahead. They took him to the hospital, but they don’t expect he’s going to make it, either.”
“Did he have any piercings?”
“What?” he asked, like I wasn’t making sense.
“His face. Did he have any, like, nose rings, or anything on his face?”
Stan laughed and winced, shaking his head. “Not counting the bullet.”
He stopped at the room where I’d been pinned down. “Then there’s this guy, all shot to shit,” he said pointing at my old roommate. “Took one in the forehead from not too close.” He turned to me. “You do that?”
I nodded. “They started it,” I mumbled.
“‘Look, but that’s all,’ I told you.” He laughed and shook his head. “Fucking Carrick. Anyway, good shot. We’ll need some paperwork on that.”
“Yeah, I know it.”
“You sure you’re okay?”
I nodded again.
“All-righty then.” He turned down the hallway that led outside. “Good call on the van. We’re talking some serious weight.”
We walked out onto the gravel lot, now swarming with agents in DEA windbreakers. Roberts and Arnett were both dead on the ground. It seemed unnaturally bright outside after the gloom inside.
A medic came up and checked my pupils, then started dabbing my forehead with a cotton pad. I swatted him away.
“I’m eyeballing it at something like fifty keys,” Stan continued. “Field test is positive for heroin.”
That penetrated the fog. “Heroin? Not meth?”
“Heroin, baby. High grade, too.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Fifty keys of heroin?” Meth houses and heroin busts; what wasn’t going on in that town? I took the gun off my shoulder and leaned it against the wall.
Stan stopped and gave me a big smile. “That’s right, my friend. Massive.”
As he said it, part of the buzzing in my ears resolved into a rhythmic thumping, and I looked up to see two news choppers from Philly stations circling overhead.
Stan followed my gaze. “Yeah, word gets around fast. Big fucking bust.”
A pair of ambulances drove
slowly up the driveway. Behind the second one, almost on its bumper, was a familiar car with the Dunston Police Chief decal on the door.
I tapped Stan on the elbow. “Locals are here.”
Pruitt stopped his car in the driveway and got out, red-faced and sputtering. “Who’s in charge here?” he roared.
A couple of people looked up at him, but then they went back to what they were doing. Stan held up a hand and opened his mouth to speak, but Pruitt had already spotted me.
“You?” he screeched, his rage now mixed with disbelief.
Stan held up his ID and stepped in front of me. “I’m in charge here,” he said. “Special Agent Bowers, DEA.”
Pruitt glanced over at him, then back at me. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded.
Stan stepped to the side and held out his arm. “Can I have a word with you, sir?”
Pruitt’s eyes shifted back and forth between Stan and me. Then he took a few steps along with Stan.
Stan put his arm on Pruitt’s shoulder. He spoke in a quiet voice that was nonetheless clearly audible. “Chief Pruitt, I apologize for the breach of protocol, but I’m going to ask you for your cooperation, retroactively.”
“Retroactively? What the hell are you talking about?”
“Sir, we had live, real-time intelligence that this drug deal was going down, and there simply was not enough time to follow proper procedures. It was either act immediately or lose the opportunity. I’m sure you’re just as relieved as we are to have these dangerous drugs, and these dangerous people, off the street.”
Pruitt hooked a thumb in my direction. “Why’s that asshole here?”
“Detective Carrick was acting as a concerned citizen. He spotted the deal going down, and he called me. We’re very grateful for his assistance.”
Pruitt snorted and rolled his eyes.
Stan continued. “Chief Pruitt, in about two minutes, the press is going to be here asking for a statement.” He smiled. “There is nothing I would like more than to say that this operation was part of a joint effort between DEA and the Dunston Police Department. But I can only say we’re cooperating if we are. Are you on board?”