Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport #29)(30)

Rocha had gone home to get some sleep but said she’d be up late, and MacIntosh called her: “We got him, Lu. Rae was right on. I got a close-up of his face in the garage light and it’s Nast. We got all three of them in the house. And maybe four, if that BMW was two guys in it like when Bob was trailing it . . .”

A half hour later, with no more movement at the target, Lucas pulled the cushions off the couches in the family room, threw them on the floor, and stretched out.

The raid was complicated, he thought as he slipped into sleep. Three different agencies were involved—LA city cops, LA County sheriff’s deputies, and the Marshals Service.

He, Bob, and Rae had tracked down the LA suspects, who were wanted by the City of Los Angeles and a couple of other jurisdictions, but not by any of the cities covered by the sheriff’s department or by the Marshals Service. The one suspect wanted by the marshals, Clayton Deese, wasn’t wanted by any of the local agencies and might or might not be in the house.

Whatever the outcome of the raid, the legal entanglements would be intense. Which was why there were about a billion lawyers out there, he supposed . . . It was almost like they deliberately tangled the laws to keep themselves in fees. But, nah. Too cynical. He smiled into the darkness and went to sleep.


LUCAS WAS sleeping soundly when one of the sheriff’s deputies shook him awake. “It’s quarter ’til six, if you want to brush your teeth. They’re saying they’re gonna hit the place about quarter after. It’s already getting light outside.”

Lucas rolled off the cushions, feeling stiff. Bob and Rae had gone an hour earlier to rodeo with the other agencies at the sheriff’s station. He brushed his teeth, looked at his phone to check the time, decided to shower and shave, and got down to the living room in time to hear Rocha say, on the radio, “Saddle up. You all know what you’re doing. Let’s do it.”


THE SWAT TEAM, including Bob and Rae, would be traveling in several different vehicles and would come at the house both from the front and from the back through the yard of the house behind the target. The team coming in from the front would freeze fifty yards out, where they couldn’t be seen from the target, while the team in the back would cross whatever barriers were between them and the target—most likely, a low fence or a hedge.

When they were in the backyard, they’d alert the team in front, and designated members would heave flashbangs through the windows believed to be bedrooms at the same instant a battering ram took down the front door.

Everything would be done silently until the flashbangs went off: no screeching tires, no cops running in the street.

“These guys do it all the time,” MacIntosh said. “When they hit it, I’m not going to sit here and watch. I’m going over there.”

“I think you ought to stay,” Lucas said. “You’re not tactical.”

“Fuck that,” MacIntosh said. “What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going,” Lucas said.

“Attaboy!”


LUCAS HAD HAD an interest in poetry since taking a class at the University of Minnesota. The class was taught by an aging professor who was also an avid hockey fan. Lucas, a first-line defenseman, had been plugged into her class to make sure his grade point average stayed high enough to keep him on the ice. As it happened, he got an A. Poetry, he thought, was a hell of a lot more interesting than Minnesota history, which was also taught by a hockey fan and had been the other option.

In any case, when the SWAT team came creeping in, he thought momentarily of Carl Sandburg’s “The fog comes on little cat feet . . .”

The SWAT vehicles had stopped well down the street, and the armored cops, in their green tactical uniforms and helmets, were nearly invisible in the early-morning light against the heavy foliage as they closed in on the target house.

“I’m going out the back,” MacIntosh whispered, even though they were still inside the surveillance house with the doors and windows closed.

“Don’t freak anyone out,” Lucas said. “Stay clear and let them work.”

“Got it,” MacIntosh said. “You coming?”

“Right ahead of you,” Lucas said, heading for the door.

They went out the back door and down the side of the house, along the hedge Lucas and Bob had cut the holes in. Looking through one of the holes, Lucas saw the SWAT guys settling in at the neighboring houses. And then, at some command they couldn’t hear, two cops suddenly ran onto the lawn of the target house.

“Flashbangs,” MacIntosh muttered.

It all went to hell in an instant.


A FULLY AUTOMATIC weapon opened up from a corner window of the house, and the two approaching officers fled, one falling, and Lucas called, “Shit, he’s hit,” and there was immediate returned fire from other SWAT team members.

“It’s a fuckin’ war!” MacIntosh shouted. He’d drawn his weapon and started down the hedge toward the street, and Lucas hooked his arm and said, “The SWATs will only see a man with a gun.”

MacIntosh hesitated as the machine gun went silent. Fire continued to riddle the front of the house, and the man who’d gone down, and who Lucas thought had been hit, got to his hands and knees and scrambled off the lawn, apparently unhurt. Then shooting erupted at the back, and then there was more shooting from the front of the house, the muzzle flashes blinking from one window and then the next, a pistol pecking away at the hedges where the SWAT team was digging for cover.