Masked Prey (Lucas Davenport #30)(63)

“Well, poop,” Rae said.

Chase said, quickly, “As soon as the area is cleared, though, we want the three of you in there. You’ve been talking to these people and our SWAT guys haven’t been.”

Bob said to Rae, “The good-guy trophy.”

“All right with me,” Lucas said. “The last time I went on a SWAT raid, some asshole shot me.”



* * *



—

FIVE MINUTES LATER, the SWAT teams were in the parking lot, the agents getting their armor on, a few Frederick cops coming out to look as the news moved through the department. The team was hard to miss, manning three large gunmetal-gray vehicles that looked like products of a bad marriage between a tank and a rec-vee. A minute or so after the trucks arrived, a video came in from the street guy, shots of the two target buildings from all angles. As Rae had suggested, both had back doors not visible from the street.

The SWAT commander, an agent named Adam Carlucci, pointed out relevant considerations to the team members—location of the creek, the quality of the concealment and cover, distances from unloading points to entry points. Bob pointed out the newer metal doors and Carlucci took another look at the videos. “Gonna need the rams on the garage and the back doors,” he concluded.

The team members were all heavily experienced, had been pre-briefed on the way up from Washington; the on-site briefing took six or seven minutes, then the team was loading and moving out.

Lucas could feel the intensity building in his chest: going into combat.

“What do you think?” Lucas asked, as Bob and Rae pulled on their bulletproof vests.

“They know what they’re doing,” Bob said.

“I gotta say, Jane doesn’t skimp on the resources,” Rae said. “She could start a war with those boys. When me and Bob go out, it’s more like a poolroom fight . . . Hey, we got a vest for you. Put it on.”

Lucas put on the vest as the last of the trucks disappeared from the parking lot, and Rae got behind the wheel of the Tahoe. They had been asked to wait at the police headquarters until they got a call from Chase, who was riding in one of the trucks. Because the trucks had to come in on the target from different directions, one of them would be stalling while the other two were running fast on a more circular route, aiming for a simultaneous arrival; Lucas wanted to arrive as the doors were going down.

“Fuck waiting,” he said. “Get on that last truck’s ass.”

“Now you’re talking,” Rae said, and she cranked the Tahoe over.



* * *



—

“LOT OF CIVIL WAR SHIT AROUND HERE,” Bob said, making nervous conversation from the backseat, as they rolled out of the parking lot. “We’re closer to Gettysburg than we are to Washington. If we have time, I’d like to take the tour.” He had two M4-style rifles in the backseat and checked them out one last time as they drove across town, seating a thirty-shot magazine in each.

“Probably won’t have time,” Lucas said. They were gaining on the slow FBI vehicle until they were, as Lucas recommended, right on its ass. Hearing Bob working with the rifles, he took out his Walther PPQ just to be doing something, and Rae glanced at him and said, “Don’t go shooting your big toe.”

“I was winning pistol competitions when you were in diapers,” Lucas said.

Rae snorted. “Diapers? Didn’t have no diapers in the Givenses’ house. We used burlap bags.”

“In Oklahoma, we used dirt,” Bob said. “I’d poop, they’d take me outside and hose me down and throw a little dirt on me. Makes you a tough little baby, getting through winter. Icicles hanging off your little wiener.”

“I got nothin’,” Lucas said. “Though, I gotta say, it amazes me that the Givens family didn’t have diapers, when your father was a pharmacist. Couldn’t he steal some?”

“Fucker’s been reading our files,” Bob said to Rae.

“Shut up, everybody,” Rae said. “We’re coming up on it.”



* * *



—

THEY CAME AROUND A LONG CURVE and the big dark FBI truck swerved into the parking area outside Boone Precious Metals and the SWAT guys came out like peas being shucked out of a pod. Four of them hit the front door of the main building while two of them set up facing the front door of the garage. The agents in the other two trucks would hit the doors at the back of the buildings, and were covering the side doors, and were not immediately visible.

Lucas, Bob, and Rae were twenty feet behind the SWAT agents, running up the steps and through the front door; as they did it, Lucas saw Chase clambering out of the lead vehicle.

Inside, three men, a woman, and a big gray dog were faced off against the SWAT team, the humans with their hands over their heads and the woman was chanting, “Don’t shoot my dog, don’t shoot my dog, I can lock him right there in the bathroom, right there,” and the dog’s teeth were bared and it rumbled a warning.

“Hold him, hold him tight,” one of the agents said, and he eased behind the counter as the women held the dog—Lucas found out later that it was a Belgian Malinois, the kind often used as war dogs—and went to the bathroom door, looked inside, opened a medicine cabinet, then came back out and said, “Lock him in there.”