Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(62)

“When I said a while, I meant an hour,” Chase said. “If Charlie sent Gibson to interview Toby Boone, and Gibson saw Cop and Linc there . . . then Charlie has an address for us.”

Lang did have an address, on his old-fashioned Rolodex, in Frederick, Maryland, an hour outside of Washington.





CHAPTER

THIRTEEN



Rae drove the Tahoe down Rosemont Avenue in Frederick, Maryland, past Boone Precious Metals and Pawn, which FBI files on White Fist identified as the group’s headquarters. The store was a converted two-story clapboard house remodeled with larger windows above a two-step stone porch; a red LED sign in the window blinked, successively, Gold and Silver and Bought and Sold. A ten-foot-tall orange Gumby, the kind inflated with a shop vac, was dancing outside the house with a banner that read, “Gold, Gold, Gold.”

A detached garage sat behind the house, and, as with Charles Lang’s place, had an apartment or storage area on the second floor above car parking spaces, with a window looking out at the street. The business building, garage, and a surrounding parking lot were set into a heavily treed lot, which made it impossible to see the back of the place—but also provided an approach for the FBI SWAT team.

“Count the doors,” Rae said. “We know there’s one on the side, probably gotta be one in the back, so that’s three on the main house, probably two on that garage, if it really is a garage.”

“Looks like a garage,” Lucas said.

“Could be a meeting space,” Rae said.

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

Bob was inspecting the place with imaged-stabilized Canon binoculars. “It has an air of being sorta old and fucked up, but I don’t think it is. You look close and everything seems to be in good shape. Those garage doors aren’t old wood, they’re metal, and they don’t look that old, and the windows are in good shape. The side door looks to be metal. There’s that hip-high concrete foundation on three sides, nothing’s going through that.”

“I’ll talk to Jane,” Lucas said, as they passed on down the street. “The SWAT guys are on the way. They should know they may be cracking a bunker. They need to do some serious recon, maybe make a video.”

“Sidewalks, but no pedestrians,” Rae said. “That’s one good thing.”

“Lotsa cars,” Bob said.



* * *



—

THEY MADE ONLY THE SINGLE PASS, then continued on to the Frederick city police headquarters, a red-brick building eight minutes through traffic from Boone Precious Metals and Pawn. On the way, Lucas called Chase, who said that a reconnaissance and a video were underway.

When they got to police headquarters, Chase was huddling with the police chief and two other ranking officers. Lucas, Bob, and Rae were ushered into the chief’s office, and when Chase saw them she said, “Half an hour,” and, to the cops, “U.S. Marshals SOG team.”

“Where’re your people?” Lucas asked Chase.

“They’re on the way. They’re staging here in the parking lot. It’s not too visible and I’m told we’re reasonably close to Boone’s place.”

“Eight minutes,” Bob said.

Lucas told her about the layout and the bunker aspect—the concrete foundation—and she said they’d already looked at it from a satellite view, but couldn’t tell from that what might be at the back of the buildings. “We’ve got one of our street guys from DC, he’ll be going into those trees in the next few minutes with his camping stuff and a GoPro. There’s a creek in back but a driveway comes in from the side of the buildings. We’ll hit both front and back.” She looked at her watch. “Doug should be there now. The street guy—he’s convincing, if anybody sees him. He stinks to high heaven.”

The Frederick police would not be involved in the raid and most wouldn’t know about it, or the target, until a few seconds before it took place, when patrol cars would be given a general alert in case there were reports of gunfire from the area.

“Lot of traffic in there, residential single-family homes across the street,” the chief said to Chase. “You gotta be careful. I know for a fact that Toby Boone’s got a handgun and what he calls hunting rifles in there, though they’re ARs and AKs that supposedly belong to his brother. His brother doesn’t have a felony record, so he can buy what he wants. With all those guns . . . I mean, I don’t need any innocent citizens getting killed.”

“Does his brother actually work there?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know the exact arrangement, but I think he does. When Toby was still on probation on his ag assault conviction, two of our investigators went in there looking for a couple of stolen guitars. One of our guys spotted the pistol and braced Boone about it, and he said it was his brother’s weapon and his brother confirmed it and they had a sales receipt. We keep tabs on Toby because of this White Fist thing and because of his record. He went down on ag assault, but that wasn’t a one-time thing.”

Chase took a call, listened for a minute, then said, “Okay, get him out of there. I’ll see you in the parking lot.”

To Lucas, she said, “The SWAT team will be here in two minutes, our street guy has been making some movies of the target, those should be coming in any time now. Three trucks, eighteen guys. They’re asking that you guys, you and Bob and Rae, stand down. We’re all coordinated and they don’t know you.”