Alone (Detective D.D. Warren, #1)(3)

Arriving at the corner of Marlborough and Gloucester, Bobby processed many details at once. Blue sawhorses and Boston PD cruisers already isolated one tiny block in the heart of Back Bay. Yellow crime-scene tape festooned several brownstone houses, and uniformed officers were taking up position on the corners. The ALS ambulance was now on-scene; so were several vans from the local media.

Things were definitely starting to rock and roll.

Bobby double-parked his Crown Vic just outside a blue sawhorse, jumped out the door, and jogged around to his trunk. Inside, he had everything a well-trained police sniper might need for a party. Rifle, scope, ammo, black BDUs, urban camo BDUs, ghillie hood, body armor, changes of clothing, snacks, water, a bean bag, night-vision goggles, binoculars, range finder, face paint, Swiss Army knife, and flashlight. Local police probably kept spare tires in their trunks; a state trooper could live out of his cruiser for a month.

Bobby hefted up his rucksack and immediately started assessing the situation.

In contrast to other SWAT teams, Bobby's tactical team never arrived en masse. Instead, his unit consisted of thirty-two guys located all over the state of Massachusetts, from the fingertip of Cape Cod to the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Headquarters was Adams, Mass., in the western half of the state, where Bobby's lieutenant had taken the call from Framingham Communications and made the decision to deploy.

In this case, a domestic barricade with hostages, all thirty-two guys had been activated and all thirty-two would arrive. Some would take three to four hours to get here. Others, like Bobby, made it in less than fifteen minutes. Either way, Bobby's LT prided himself on being able to get at least five officers anywhere in the state in under an hour.

Looking around now, Bobby figured he was one of those first five officers. Which meant he needed to hustle.

Most SWAT units were comprised of three teams: an entry team, a perimeter team, and snipers. The perimeter team had the primary job of securing and controlling the inner perimeter. Then came the snipers, who took up position outside the inner perimeter and served as reconnaissance—appraising the situation through their scope or binoculars, and radioing in details on the building as well as all people and movement inside. Finally, the entry team would prepare for last-resort action—if the hostage negotiator couldn't convince the suspects to come out, the entry team would storm in. Entries were messy; you prayed it didn't come to that, but sometimes it did.

Bobby's STOP team brought all those bells and whistles to the table, but they didn't specialize. Instead, given that they arrived piecemeal, they were cross-trained on all positions so they could get up and running the second boots hit the ground. In other words, while Bobby was one of the team's eight designated snipers, he wasn't looking at taking up sniping position just yet.

First goal—establish the inner perimeter. The inner perimeter was the area looking in at the scene. Establishing a good inner perimeter solved ninety percent of any tactical unit's headaches. You controlled and contained. It took at least two guys to form a perimeter, each standing on opposing corners, monitoring the diagonals.

Bobby was one guy. Now he was looking for a second. He spotted three other state police cruisers parked across the way, so he had teammates around here somewhere. Then he noticed the white van set up as command center. He jogged toward the van.

“Trooper Bobby Dodge,” he announced five seconds later, climbing into the command center, setting down his gear, and thrusting out a hand.

“Lieutenant Jachrimo.” The CO took his hand, handshake tight but quick. The thin-faced lieutenant wasn't from the state police, but from BPD. That didn't surprise Bobby; the scene was technically Boston jurisdiction, plus the state police commander was probably still two hours away. While Bobby would've preferred his own LT, he was trained to play nice with others—up to a point, of course.

Jachrimo had a white board up in front of him and was making a Gantt chart in the upper left-hand corner. “Position?” the CO asked Bobby.

“Sniper.”

“Can you hold a perimeter?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Great, great, great.” Lieutenant Jachrimo broke away from the white board long enough to stick his head out of the van and yell at a Boston uniform, “Hey. Hey, you. I need the phone company. Understand? Use your radio, call in to dispatch and get the goddamn phone company, 'cause nothing in this van is working, and you can't really have a command post if it doesn't command. Got it?”

The uniform went flying, and Jachrimo returned his harried attention to Bobby. “Okay, so what do you know?”

“Domestic barricade, male subject believed armed with a gun, wife and child also on the premises.” Bobby repeated the message he'd received on his pager.

“Suspect's name is Jimmy Gagnon. Mean anything to you?”

Bobby shook his head.

“Just as well.” Jachrimo finished his Gantt chart, then started an overhead sketch of the neighborhood on the lower part of the white board. “So here's where we're at. Woman called nine-one-one shortly after eleven-thirty. Claimed to be Catherine Gagnon, Jimmy's wife. Said her husband was drunk and threatening her and their son with a handgun. The nine-one-one operator tried to hold her on the line, but there was some kind of disturbance and the call was disconnected. About sixty seconds later, nine-one-one received a call from a neighbor reporting sounds of gunfire.