14th Deadly Sin

CHAPTER 39

WICKER HOUSE PURPORTED to be a wholesale showroom for imported wicker and rattan furniture. It was on the edge of Bernal Heights, on Cortland Avenue, a medium-rent light-industrial area that became more residential as the two-lane road ran uphill.

This particular building was in the middle of the block, blending in with the row of chunky, putty-colored or gray cinder-block two- and three-story buildings, some with wood siding under the eaves, several with fire escapes, none of them giving off a feeling of welcome.

The back of the shop opened onto a parking lot, which was accessed by a service road. The back door was made of reinforced steel and posted with signs reading TO THE TRADE ONLY and APPOINTMENT REQUIRED. The name of the shop wasn’t posted, and neither was a phone number.

At just before three in the morning, there were seven cars in the parking area at Wicker House’s back door. One was a Mercedes SL belonging to the proprietor of Wicker House, Nathan Royce. The other vehicles belonged to the staff.

Also parked in the lot, not far from Wicker House’s back door but out of range of the surveillance camera, was an unmarked white Ford panel van. The man who went by the name of One was behind the wheel.

One had learned the Wicker House layout from an informant. The front part of the building’s ground floor was a half-assed showroom. The back of the ground floor was a lab with rear-door access, convenient for moving chemicals and product quickly.

The lab techs made synthetic drugs: cathinones, known on the street as bath salts, and cannabinoids, synthetic marijuana. The second floor of Wicker House was a short-term warehouse for the product waiting to be shipped out. There was also quite a lot of heroin on that floor, and at certain times, a lot of cash was in transit through the premises.

One’s informant had told him when shipments would move out of Wicker House to the hub of the larger enterprise, final destination unknown. Altogether, the payload was worth upward of five and a half million.

Men inside the building were armed and alert, which made this job riskier than taking out a couple of stoned junkies in a crack house.

One said to his crew of two men, “Ten minutes, OK? We waste men, not time.”

There was tension inside the van as the three men put on Kevlar vests and their Windbreakers, gas masks, and SFPD caps. They screwed the suppressors onto their M-16 automatic rifles with thirty-round magazines. When he was ready, One stepped out of the van and shot out the camera over Wicker House’s back door. The suppressor muffled the sound of the bullet.

Two and Three exited the van, went to the steel-reinforced rear door, and set small, directed explosive charges on the lock and the hinges. They stood back as Two remotely detonated the charges. The soft explosions were virtually unnoticeable in the area, which was largely deserted at night.

One and Two lifted the door away from the frame. Three entered the short hallway that led to the lab and started firing with his suppressed automatic rifle. Glass shattered. Blood sprayed. Once the men in the lab were down, the three men in the Windbreakers rushed the locked door to the second floor.

When the lock had been shot out, the shooters breached the door and bolted up the stairs toward the second floor.

They were met with a furious onslaught of gunfire.