Allies

by Wolf Riedel

  Since they weren’t expecting anyone to be in the house—what with Malita at the hangar—there were only three of them on this search; Sage, Platt and an AFOSI agent. A TPD uniform patrol had been assigned to augment the small group. Whitlock had remained back at TPD headquarters monitoring the phone taps on the two Juárez family phones; Isabella’s land line and her eldest daughter’s cell phone.

  A large Florida maple spread its branches over the empty front driveway. Platt walked up the drive and around the right side of the house to cover the backyard. Sage accompanied the AFOSI agent who walked up to the front door with a battering ram. She cast a glance into the large bay window that looked out on the street. A dim light glowed from the kitchen in back. The rest of the house appeared dark. Nothing was moving.

  The AFOSI agent positioned himself to the left of the front door with the ram. Sage covered him from the right with a hand on her holstered gun.

  “Police! Search warrant!” he yelled, waited for a count of three and then hit the door at the deadbolt. Sage watched the door and the frame crack and heave once and then erupt in a spray of splinters with the second strike. She wondered how exactly things would be resolved for the new owners. The door had once been very attractive; not now.

  “Police! Coming in!”

  Sage and the agent drew their sidearms and stepped over the threshold.

  There were several entryways into the hangar which, at this time of night, was usually empty and locked. Occasionally, operational necessity required that round-the-clock services be provided here but mostly, like tonight, the hangar was the site of a daytime work force. Hurley’s team had brought keys to let themselves in at two of the entry points. He had briefed everyone that when they went in they would find a KC-135 Stratotanker undergoing an isochronal inspection by the 6th MXS. Every twenty-four months, or eighteen hundred flying hours, whichever came first, each of the fifty-year old aircraft would have to be taken apart from stem to stern and inspected for corrosion and part functionality over a period of several weeks.

  One such aircraft now occupied a large part of the hangar, its inspection panels open, ladders, scaffolding mobile work tables and computer testing equipment scattered around the floor, nestled up against its fuselage and tucked under its massive wings.

  Overhead a reduced number of ceiling lights kept the hangar bathed in a mellow light. Here and there, around its perimeter, a workstation’s lights had been left on adding to the myriad of shadows that crisscrossed the floor.

  The two elements of the team noiselessly made their way along the sides of the building focusing on the door to the machine shop where they knew Silvera was still at work. Hurley’s group reached it first and waited until their partners had arrived as well. Hurley gently tested the door. His role was to open and hold it while the rest of the team rushed in. Sal would go in last following after Hurley.

  All eyes were on Hurley who held the door knob with one hand and held up his other with three fingers showing and then rocked it three times, each time dropping one finger to count off the entry. On the last rock of his now closed fist, he threw the door open as the rest of the team rushed in with their MP5Ks with shouts of “Police!” and orders to Silvera to get on the floor.

  By the time Sal made it into the room the two lead agents were already crossing the workshop’s floor in a quick step, their machine pistols up to their shoulders and pointed directly at Silvera who stood at a workbench frozen in terror.

  The workbench top was littered with the disassembled parts of what Sal estimated were four AR-15s and one fully assembled automatic pistol. Hurley noticed it at the same time that Hurley did.

  “Don’t even think of it Silvera. Don’t even think of it!” he ordered. Four red laser pointers played across her chest.

  Silvera still hadn’t gotten to the ground by the time the agents reached her. Sal had kept his eyes trained on her eyes and had stepped to the side so as to keep a clear shot at Silvera if she went for the gun. He’d already resolved that any move in that direction on her part and he’d take the shot regardless of whether any of the AFOSI agents did or not.

  In the matter of the five seconds that it had taken the agents to cross the floor of the machine shop, Silvera’s eyes had gone from fear to defiance to defeat. One agent swung his MP5K around his side to his back and grabbed Silvera roughly, forced her to the floor, cuffed her and patted her down for weapons. With Silvera under control, Hurley read her her rights and had her brought back up to her feet.

  “Take her back to the det,” he directed the two agents at her side. He turned his attention to the remaining agents. “All right. Let’s get the gear in here and get all this shit tagged and bagged.” It was going to be a long night.

  The lights were on all around Cabello’s house. Around the perimeter of the house, pot lights in the soffits washed white light down the rose stucco walls while small flood lights on the lawn filled in the void spaces in between. The house stood out like a birthday cake against the darker hulks of the neighboring houses and the blackness of the bay.

  They rolled up without using their emergency lights to gain a precious few extra seconds of surprise. On stopping the St. Pete’s officers walked quickly across the lawn, one on either side stopping at each of the two front corners, the second of each pair heading around the house for the back yard corners. Mark and DiAngelo strode directly up the walkway to the six stairs that led up to the main entrance’s portico. Behind them Ingrim carried his M4 in his right hand and a battering ram in his left. A Halligan tool was secured to the back of his armored vest by Velcro straps. King was rapidly jogging down the street in their direction coming from the surveillance house.

  It was hard to take cover at the front door. A series of bay windows to their right, on the west corner of the house, extended outward and around like a bastion on the corner of a castle. It gave a perfect all around view of—or shot at—anything from the front door to the side yard. King took up a watch position next to Mark; both their M4s leveled at the windows. Ingram stood to the left of the door with the ram at the ready and DiAngelo to the right his M4 at the low ready in his left hand. With his right he gave several sharp back-handed raps on the door and then pushed the door bell for good measure before switching his M4 back to his right hand.

  “Police! Search Warrant!” he yelled. “Open up Cabello! It’s CID. Open the door or we’re taking it down!”

  Mark started to give a mental count. He was going to give him ten seconds and then take the door.

  DiAngelo shook his head. “The fucker’s probably burning everything already. Let’s take it.”

  Mark shook his head and finished the count. No sign of anyone.

  “Take the door,” he said.

  Ingrim swung back on the ram and hit the door handle square on. He struck it twice more opening it a crack but still it held. King reached up Ingrim’s back and slid out the Halligan. There was enough of a gap to get it in place.

  “Do it!” said Mark to King who immediately slipped the bar into the crack and reefed hard on it while Ingrim gave the door another blow. This time the door flew open just in time for a series of shots from inside to smack into the swinging door.

  “Gun! Gun!” DiAngelo yelled unnecessarily as all four of them scrambled away from the door. Mark and King tumbled down a few steps and brought themselves to a halt searching the upper windows for a threat while DiAngelo and Ingrim ducked back to either side of the door hoping that the walls were thick enough to stop a bullet.

  The firing stopped.

  The St. Pete’s patrolman closest to Mark had also taken cover close to the foundation of the front porch. Mark could hear him calling in “Shot’s fired,” on his portable radio and requesting backup.

  Mark’s mind quickly ran through the options: a quick assault to help preserve evidence or wait for reinforcement and negotiate a surrender in which case any remaining evidence would most probably be long gone. Risking lives versus risking the case.

&
nbsp; The decision was taken out of his hands when they heard a series of shots from the rear of the house two of which were clearly a shotgun the remainder more like rifle shots. Ingrim instinctively grabbed for an M84 stun grenade out of a pouch on his tac vest and tossed it through the door and yelled, “Stun out!”

  Mark barely had time to cover his eyes. The flash-bang inside the hallway was almost instantaneous and loud; very loud. He looked up in time to see DiAngelo disappear into the door going right, Ingrim, having abandoned the breaching tools immediately on his heels going to the left inside the foyer.

  DiAngelo yelled, “Next man in left!” and Mark sprang up to follow them in through the doorway halting just inside the left side of the doorway scanning the room and all entrances. To their right was an open glass French door leading to a large and empty living room; to their left a stairway leading to the upper level of the house and straight ahead a wide hallway which, judging by the cabinets and counter top visible, was undoubtedly a kitchen. Mark called, “Next man in right!” and King quickly came in and halted just to the right of the door.

  Mark noted two empty shell casings on the tile floor of the kitchen and drew DiAngelo’s attention to them. He then gave DiAngelo and King a hand signal to go ahead and “clear right!” To Ingrim he gave a signal to “hold fast!” and to cover both the upper stairway and the hallway.

  The living room was quickly cleared and Mark gave what had now become the DiAngelo/King fire team the signal to clear ahead. Behind him he could hear the sounds of sirens. DiAngelo and King cautiously made their way along the hall and started quartering the corners at the end with their M4s.

  “Ingrim. Hold here. When we get reinforcements leave a guard here at the door and take three or four cops with you to clear the upper level. Remember to tell the cops that there are probably kids in the house.”

  Ingrim nodded and Mark made his way down the hallway to the kitchen. He snugged up behind DiAngelo who had made it to a position of observation of the back of the house which consisted of a large open-concept kitchen, dining room and family room all in one. A large garden door to the outside stood open.

  Because of the shotgun blast, Mark was tempted to go directly for the back door and to the yard but prudence dictated that the back rooms be cleared first and so directed DiAngelo and King to clear from right to left while he covered them as they checked behind furniture and in cupboards, the pantry, closets and the laundry room. It took no more than two minutes—but had felt like an hour—before they were ready to take the backyard. Mark didn’t like the idea of going through the exposed doorway but quickly rejected all of the slower options. There was no way, however, that he would ask either DiAngelo or King to be the first through the door so called for them to cover him while he threw a stun grenade onto the back deck and followed it out. He went low and immediately to the right of the door along the yard’s raised deck yelling “Police coming out!” to identify himself to the St Pete’s patrol man and set himself up in a position to observe and cover the yard.

  The yard, however, was not conducive to easy observation. Maybe sixty feet wide and and maybe the same distance deep, it was bounded on the sides by heavy bushes, contained a swimming pool in its middle and at the far end dropped off a small sea-wall to a narrow beach. Virtually every house on the street had a long—maybe a hundred feet or so—dock running out into the water. Cabello’s dock had a mid-sized cabin cruiser tied to the left side of the dock.

  Mark chastised himself. He couldn’t remember the name of the St Petersburg PD patrolman that had been assigned to this corner.

  “St Pete’s PD? You down there?” he called down from the deck.

  “Yup,” came a voice from the dark. “Down here.”

  “We heard shots. What happened?”

  “Dickhead came out of the door. I identified myself as police and he snapped off a couple of shots at me. I shot back.”

  “You hit?”

  “Don’t think so. Nothing hurts.”

  “What about him?”

  “Don’t know. Maybe I got a piece of him.”

  “Where’d he go?”

  “Took off down the dock and to the boat. I called it in and they’ve got the County Sheriff’s marine patrol boat firing up to come over this way to back us up.”

  “Good work. Any sign of him starting the boat?”

  “Nope. On the other hand I don’t have a good view of things from here and for all I know he might have gotten off around its back and might have swum away in the dark.”

  Mark turned around and called to the door, “next man out left!” He covered DiAngelo as he came out and once he had made it to the far side of the deck called, “Next man out right!”

  Mark took a second to radio directions back to Ingrim to have him set up the arriving St Pete’s PD in a perimeter for two hundred feet along either side of the street and from there down to the waterline.

  “Roger that,” Ingrim said. “We’re just going up the stairs to search the upper level.”

  “Good. Take a second to ensure that everyone up there knows that CID’s going to be in the backyard and advancing on the boat at the end of the dock. That’s where Cabello was last seen. Keep clear of the windows.”

  Mark turned to DiAngelo and King.

  “Okay guys. Let’s see if he’s still in the boat.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Bayfront Medical Center, St Petersburg, Florida

  Thursday 22 Mar 07 0330 hrs EDT

  Sage strode across the polished floor of the emergency reception area. The room was relatively empty at this time of night what with it being a weeknight and the majority of the bar fight crowd having already been sewn up and sent on their way.

  Her objective, Mark, sat at the far end of the wall on the right on a fake leatherette chair typing on his laptop. As she stopped in front of him he looked up.

  “Looking at porn?” she asked.

  “I wish,” he replied. “No WI-FI here. No, just bringing my Activity Summary up to date. All done with Silvera?”

  She shrugged her shoulder noncommittally.

  “Hurley’s tried his best but she’s lawyered up. When I left them she still hadn’t figured if it was in her best interest as to whether to make a deal or not. My guess is that she will. She’s not the top of the food chain. There’s a deal available here if the lawyer can ever figure it out.”

  “Should get her hooked up with Winchell. He’s done okay for Sandoval.”

  Sage laughed.

  “Yeah. That would be great having a lawyer for an MQ-27 thug also working for a Los Paras armorer.”

  “Bit of a conflict of interest, I guess.”

  “Ya’ think?” she said. “Anyway Hurley’s boys and Sal are still busy going through all the shit we took out of Silvera’s house and workspaces. Platt went home though. Tomorrow morning they’ll hit up any and all financial links that they dredge up.”

  “Gonna be a long night and a long day.”

  “Yeah.” Sage looked down the hall toward the emergency bays. “How’s Cabello doing?”

  “They had him down here for about an hour and then got him up to surgery. No word back yet.”

  “Sounds serious.”

  Mark nodded his head.

  “Pretty much. When we found him in the boat he was unconscious and bleeding out. He took the better part of a load of double-aught buck in the right side. Assuming he makes it, it will probably be some time before we can talk to him.” Mark sighed. “Probably not much sense in my staying here. I was just waiting around to see which way it’s going but I might as well just head back to Cabello’s house and have one of the Benning twins come down here. What about you? You heading home now?” He looked at his watch. “Shit! It really is oh-dark-thirty, isn’t it?”

  She nodded her head.

  “No I’m not and yeah it is. I think I’ll head back to headquarters first and see how Whitlock is doing on the phone taps. Keep your fingers crossed.”

  Tampa PD headq
uarters was as quiet as Bayfront Medical had been; so quiet that Sage could hear the squeak of her shoes’ rubber soles as she strode down the halls to the facilities of the Criminal Intelligence Bureau where Whitlock had been set up to monitor the Juárez family’s phones. If she had thought that the surveillance would be a long term affair, she would have had Whitlock sign the equipment out and set it up in Major Crimes. In this case, however, a small workspace at CIB would do.

  Whitlock sat tilted back in an office chair with his feet on the desk. He wore a headset and was reading a paperback while on the desk two monitors followed the operation of the Pen-Link intelligence and analysis software and the LINCOLN collection systems software.

  “Anything?” she asked.

  Whitlock jumped an inch at the surprise interruption. He shook his head.

  “Mom’s made a couple of calls but they’re all to older folks; friends or family. Nothing but chit-chat. The older sister’s made several calls on her cell phone. The ones that connected were to friends and was the usual girl stuff . . .”

  Sage raised her eyebrows as she sat down across from him.

  “You know,” he said. “What are you wearing to school tomorrow? Do you have Sandy’s number? Why is Elaine being such a slut? That kind of shit. But there were also five attempts to call a cell phone that didn’t answer. We searched the database on the number and found it assigned to a TracFone bought four months ago at a Target in Tarpon Springs. That phone’s history shows that the only calls on it were to the sister’s cell phone, the mother’s land line and the mother’s work phone number. Nothing else on it.”