A Long December

CHAPTER 25

Saturday, December 22, 2001 22:41

Volont and Gwen Thurgood, who were basically there for information purposes, attended my debriefing. An Iowa DCI agent named Phillips did the recorded interview itself. I didn’t know him.

It was pretty simple. Volont was particularly interested in the fact that, immediately before I opened fire at the group of men, there had been some sort of grenade thrown at the barn.

“What a screw-up,” he said.

“What? “I thought he was referring to us in the barn.

“What we have here is some recruits, trained by somebody who might have been trained in a terrorist camp. The routine is, throw the grenade, then run into the objective, and then fire your automatic weapons. You don’t fire first and then throw the damned grenade, because you get caught reloading. Good thing you knew what you were doing.” He was saying that for my benefit, and for the record. “You got ‘em just in time.”

He made me sound a little more “heads-up” than I’d been at the time. I hadn’t really known what to do. I’d simply made a pretty good decision. I kept that to myself.

Volont excused himself right after that, leaving Gwen to keep their notes.

As I emerged from the DCI van where the debriefing had taken place, Lamar spotted me. He’d obviously forgotten I was still there. I could forgive that, he was pretty busy tonight.

“Carl? You’re still here…look, you better get home. ATF is going to be here tomorrow, and you, you gotta be here with ‘em. The bomb in the ambulance is our baby, too.”

“Can’t we get somebody else?”

“I want my best officer on this one.”

That was that. “You got somebody who can give me a ride to my car? “It was still parked up at the Heinman farm, a good mile and a half from where we were, and it was starting to snow.

“Sure. Just a sec.”

“And who’s got my rifle?”

“That’s on its way to the lab in Des Moines. It’s evidence,” he said.

Of course. They needed to make sure that the rounds that had struck the first two dead terrorists had actually come from my weapon. And while they were at it, they’d check it to make sure it was functioning properly. God forbid that the sights were off, and I had hit terrorist three instead of terrorist two.

I made my way toward the northern edge of the cordoned-off area, where I was sure I’d find at least two or three cops securing the road. One of them should be able to break away for long enough to provide a ride to my car.

There was a little knot of media people clustered around a van. On top were three cameramen with impressively long lenses, attempting to get the best view of the action at the barn. As I passed, I saw movement in the east side ditch. I almost drew my gun before I realized the dimly lit figure was waving at me.

I walked over. “Jesus Christ, Hector,” I said, as I reached him, “how in the hell did you get over here?”

“My sister dropped me off,” he answered, climbing up onto the roadway. “Way over there, on the good road.”

He must have walked a quarter of a mile through a field.

“You weren’t stopped?”

“By who?”

“Cops.”

“No way, man,” he said. “I just walked over here. There ain’t no cops until you get here to the road.”

So much for our secure perimeter. I held up my hand, indicating that he should wait, and pulled out my walkie-talkie. “Three to the command post…”

“Three? “Sally answered almost instantly. I wondered how long she’d remain on duty.

“You might want to check with somebody, just to see if there’s any security on the paving. I’m talking with an individual who just walked across the field, and wasn’t even noticed.”

There was a pause, then an amused, “Ten-four, Three. I’ll relay that.”

“That’d be nice,” I answered. “Then you might think about going home.”

I shifted my attention back to Hector, as Sally acknowledged. “So, you just had to see the place?”

“No, I didn’t, man. But I got to talk to you. It’s real important.”

“Look, I’m on my way to my car. Come on. We can talk now.” The two of us headed north. “Your sister wait for you?”

“Yeah, over on the other road.”

“Okay. I’ll give you a ride. So,” I said as soon as we were out of the hearing of the media crews, “what’s up?”

“Listen, Miranda called my sister and said that somebody called her and asked for a ride from this area somewhere.”

“Who’s Miranda?”

“She’s a friend of my sister; she used to hang around sometimes with Rudy Cueva and some of his friends.”

“You never said anything about her before.”

“Hell, man, she is just a slut who my sister is trying to… make her into a better woman. She don’t know nothing.”

“Hector,” I said, “you got some learning to do about police work. Anyway… what is it she said?”

“I think some of the people who got Rudy want a ride from her. She calls my sister, she don’t know what to do because she knows there is trouble up here. So she tells them her car is broken. But she is very scared.”

“When did they call her?”

“I doan know, man. But she talked to my sister, who called me after I talked to you. I came up looking for you because your office says you’re coming back here.”

“Okay. So, just where did they want her to go?”

“This I do not know.”

That’s always the way, it seems. Never a complete item, just pieces and bits of data that have to be put together.

As we were still heading through the congestion of press, fire, ambulance, and police vehicles, I heard a familiar voice say “Houseman?”

The intrepid Judy Mercer, KNUG.

“Hi. I see you got here…”

“In plenty of time. We were first,” she said with a smile. “It just didn’t do us a lot of good, because the rest were close enough to get here before airtime. We were here, but we didn’t beat anybody where it counts. You were in that barn?”

I sighed. “Yeah. That was us.”

“Wow. You got a minute?”

I was her advantage. None of the other media had recognized me as one of the officers from the barn.

“You know, Judy, I’m really tired. Look, I’m gonna take this gentleman somewhere, and then maybe head to the office. Most likely, though, I’ll be going home.”

“Okay.”

I noticed another reporter and cameraman approaching. They were one of the national bunch, and were smart enough to key on a local reporter talking to somebody.

“Maybe tomorrow,” I said. I meant it. I was feeling really tired.

“Sure. Sure thing,” said Judy.

“You might check at the Lemonade Stand back there, for a release. I think the feds might have one pretty soon.”

“Okay. Thanks,” she said, and turned away.

Hector and I continued to the north roadblock on the gravel road. Four squad cars, all state troopers, had been parked two abreast, leaving about eighteen inches of roadway open. There must have been a dozen spectator’s cars lined up on the southbound side of the road.

“One of you guys able to give us a ride to my squad? “I asked the oldest of the troopers. “It’s at the next farm to the north.”

While the northernmost trooper got his car into a position where he could open the passenger doors without having us stand in the ditch, I used my cell phone to call Sally at the Lemonade Stand.

“There’s a pretty good chance that we’re looking for a couple of suspects who are trying to catch a ride. Tell the TAC team that, and make sure the roads are patrolled really well. And tell Volont, too.”

“Got it,” she said. “You’re coming back here, then?”

“No. I’ve got an informant that I’m going to take home to Battenberg. Then I’m heading north.”

“Hey, great. You want to stop and pick me up on the way? I’ve just got myself relieved.”

As I thought about it later, I figured I’d reached sort of an information overload at that point, with both pertinent and extraneous information piling up. It wasn’t like I was tearing my hair out, but I was just a little distracted by unusual events colliding with routine stuff.

We hitched a ride with a young state trooper who was glad to have something to do.

“You the one who shot two of ‘em up at the barn?”

“That’s what they tell me,” I said as I settled into his car.

“Good job!”

“Thanks.” I turned to look over my shoulder. “You okay back there?” As I did so, I saw a set of headlights behind us.

“Ya, you betcha,” said Hector, in his best Norwegian voice. The young trooper looked a bit startled.

We drove very slowly past the spectators, and then picked up a little speed on the way north.

“We still got headlights behind us?” I asked.

“Sure do,” said the trooper. “It got lit up as we passed through the roadblock…it’s a media vehicle. This place is lousy with em.”

“Okay.” I glanced back and saw that Hector was trying to become inconspicuous in the backseat.

About halfway to my car, once we’d cleared the congested zone, the trooper said, “Can I ask you question?”

“Sure.” Between the hiss and heat of the defroster and the slow squeaks of the windshield wipers, I was almost asleep.

“How do you prepare for a thing like that? In the barn, I mean.”

“Well…well, you pack lots of good food,” I said.

It got quiet again for a few seconds. I was just starting to think about getting back down tomorrow and having to help with the blown-up ambulance, when he spoke again.

“There were four of you, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Two women officers?”

“Two of ‘em,” I replied. “That’s right.”

“Boy,” he said as we reached the Heinman mailbox, “I would have been nervous with two women. I mean, that’s half your force, in a fight like that.”

I pointed toward the dimly lit house. “This is it. Just let us out at the mailbox, so you don’t have to try to turn around in that barnyard.”

“Sure.”

“You check with me again, about the women,” I said. “In about ten years. If you’re as good as they are by then.” We stopped next to my car. “But you’re gonna have to work really hard,” I said as I opened my door. “Thanks for the ride, and you might tell your sergeant that I-388’s car is here, too. They better pick it up. She’s gonna be in the hospital for a while. She kept working for a long time after she was hit.”

By then, I was out of his car, and bent down to speak before I closed the door. “You be careful.” I nearly said “sonny,” but I stopped myself. Not out of consideration for him, but to avoid appearing to be a hundred years old. “And you might want to stop that media vehicle that was behind us. It’d be awfully easy for one of these terrorists to snag one of those and just drive away from the scene.”

I truly didn’t think that was the case, but I did feel that it was something that needed to be done, just in case.

“Right.” He didn’t sound very happy about it, but I noticed that he turned north out of the drive and accelerated in the direction the media van had been heading.

As Hector and I approached my car, I noticed there were lights on in the Heinman boys house.

“That’s my car, there,” I said, unnecessarily. “I’ll be there in a minute; I’ve gotta see these folks for a second.”

I trudged up their porch stairs and knocked. I thought it would be nice to thank them for their help and to give them just a little information about what had happened. Sort of an inside account, to be taken to the coffee shop in the morning.

I could see lights in the kitchen and in the living room, and saw that the TV was on. I knocked again. No response. They were probably asleep in front of the TV. I turned and walked down the steps, and across the yard to my car. The amber sodium-vapor yard light gave the falling snow a gold tint. I thought we just might have our white Christmas after all.

“I guess they’re asleep, Hector,” I said. “We can go.”

I fumbled around for a second for my car keys, and unlocked my car door. I didn’t hear a sound as the lock worked, but just assumed it was still my temporary hearing loss. I reached across the car as I got in and unlocked the passenger door for Hector. Being a cop car, the switch that automatically turns on the interior lights when the door opens had been disconnected, so I was sitting in the dark as I tried to insert my key into the ignition. My hand encountered a sharp edge, and a bunch of what felt like exposed wiring. I looked down, and saw that the plastic cover of the steering column was beat to hell, and some of the wiring was hanging down.

Somebody had tried to bypass the steering wheel lock. Somebody had gotten into my car. Somebody had tired to steal it.

“Get out of the car!” I said to Hector.

I got out of that thing as fast as I’ve ever moved and ran for the shadow cast by the barn. “Over here, this way!”

Hector slipped once, and then was right with me.

I stopped there, drew my gun, and looked back toward the house, catching my breath. I took in the quiet scene. There was no movement, no sound, nothing. Our foot tracks in the quarter inch of snow were the only ones in the yard.

It had been snowing for a good half hour, I thought, as I slowly scanned the area around the house. It might take ten or fifteen minutes for enough to accumulate to show decent tracks. That meant that there hadn’t been anybody but me around the two cars since the snow had covered the ground. At least. I pulled out my walkie-talkie, and tried to call the sheriff’s department. No luck. Way too far down in the hollow, and I already knew my cell phone wouldn’t do the job from here.

I changed channels. “One, Three?” I spoke in a low voice and hoped I was clear at the other end.

It took him a second, but then Lamar answered. “Three?”

“One, I’m here in the Heinman’s yard, and it looks like somebody tried to steal my car. Could be our suspects. You want to send somebody up this way? “I tried very hard not to whisper, because whispers are very difficult to copy over a radio. But I was talking so low with my damaged hearing that I found it difficult to hear myself.

“Ten-four, Three. Are they there now?”

“Unable to advise, One. I’m gonna try to wake up the Heinman boys and see if they saw anything. I’ll be at the house.”

“Ten-four. We’ll get somebody right up.”

“Be advised I have a Hispanic subject with me, in a”-I looked at Hector- “a blue jacket and a blue baseball cap. Repeat, he’s a Hispanic male, and he’s with me.”

“Ten-four.”

“Thank you,” said Hector.

“Stay here. Don’t move, and put your hands up every time you see a cop,” I said.

“You got that right, man.”

I put my gun away and walked back up to the Heinmans’ porch. This time, I knocked harder. Nothing. I sighed, opened the outer door, and walked onto the porch proper. I knocked at the kitchen door hard enough to rattle the glass pane. I tried to see into the living room area to my right, but the refrigerator stuck out too far from the wall for me to see through the interior door. There was a wall rack between the fridge and me, and there were two coats on it. They were definitely home. After a second, I thought I heard somebody moving around, but couldn’t tell for sure.

“Jacob! Jacob, it’s me, Deputy Houseman.” I knocked again. Silence. “Hey, Jacob! Wake up!”

I tried the door. Unlocked, of course. I turned the knob and pushed, and I was in the kitchen. “It’s Deputy Houseman! I gotta talk to you for a second!”

This time, there was a “yes, coming” from the direction of the living room. It didn’t sound like either Jacob or Norris, but they’d been asleep… no. No. That was a rationalization. My gun came out again, and I held it down at my side.

“That you, Phil?” I asked.

“Yes,” came the reply. It sounded closer.

Phil, my ass. Nobody named Phil lived in this house. My gun came up, and I pressed my back against the wall, with the refrigerator now between the doorway and me.

“Where are you,” said the voice, sounding like it was just about in the kitchen.

If I’d been really, really lucky, the refrigerator door would have been hinged on the left, and I could have just reached out and thrown it open to startle whoever it was. I found myself, however, staring at the right-hand hinge just below my chin. Shit. I heard the floor creak, and thought somebody had crossed the threshold to the kitchen. I was absolutely convinced that if I stuck my head around to see, it would be the last thing I ever did.

I lowered my shoulder and pushed that refrigerator harder than I’d ever pushed anything in my life. It shot across the doorway so much faster than I thought it would, I lost my footing and went down on one knee. The big white box tipped away from me, and I heard a startled yell from the doorway, just as the refrigerator crashed over onto the floor. It shook the whole room.

I brought my gun up and pointed it in the face of a man on his knees who was trying to pull his AK-47 out from between the fallen refrigerator and the doorframe. We were eye to eye.

“Don’t!”

He didn’t.

“Put your hands over your head. Now!”

As he started to comply, a second man suddenly appeared in the doorway, pointing the business end of an old shotgun at me.

“Drop the gun.”

“Well, shit,” I said. I don’t know about me, sometimes. But that’s just exactly what I said. I did not, however, drop my gun.

“Drop the gun!”

“Can’t do that.” I didn’t look at him, concentrating on the forehead of his partner. “You just better give up right now.”

“Arrogant American Zionist pig!”

The one I’d got with the refrigerator kept glancing up at the one with the shotgun. It struck me that the man on his knees was the subordinate, and the man with the shotgun was the leader.

“You must be Mustafa Abdullah Odeh,” I said. Odeh, or whoever the guy with the shotgun actually was, sucked in his breath, and I figured I had the right guy. “Just give up now. You’re done.” I was still concentrating on the forehead of the kneeling man, and saw his eyes widen. He wasn’t making the decisions. The “up” man must be Odeh, all right. Good.

“I must kill you.” Odeh said it very coldly.

“Why on earth do you think that?” I asked, stalling. Make ‘em talk. Always get ‘em to talk.

“You have seen me.”

I was very much aware that it was going to take a second or two for the kneeling man to retrieve his AK-47 from where it was wedged beneath the refrigerator. Therefore, he really wasn’t the immediate threat. Odeh, on the other hand, had just announced his intentions. I merely flicked my gun about six inches to my right, and pulled the trigger as I fell to my left.

There was a scream, and the shotgun went off, and the man in the doorway disappeared. The other man on his knees jumped back, and he, too, left my field of view. He had heaved on the stock of his AK-47 and it came free, causing him to sort of fly backwards into the living room and out of my line of sight.

As I tried to maintain my balance and get to my feet, it was pretty obvious I had a choice to make. Either go charging into the living room, where there were two pissed-off armed men I couldn’t currently see, or get the hell out of that place and regroup outside.

I’m not that fast, but I was on my feet and out onto the porch in two seconds, onto the steps, and heading for the shelter of the barn.

Call it instinct, call it a reaction to recent events, but I changed course halfway to the barn and went thundering down into the tall, frozen weeds between the barn and the driveway. “Come on!” I yelled toward Hector. “This way!”

I continued toward cover, moving as fast as I could. Hector caught up, and I think the only reason he didn’t pass me was that he wasn’t sure where we were going. I wasn’t all that sure myself, but I knew one thing: No more barns for this deputy. As soon as I got into shadow, I knelt down behind a skinny crab apple tree, shoved my keys into my pocket, and grabbed my walkie-talkie. Hector slid in the fresh snow and came to a stop about ten feet past me.

“Three to anybody! Ten-thirty-three, I repeat, ten-thirty-three!”

Sally, who was apparently still at the Lemonade Stand, answered in an instant.

“Three, go!”

“Up here… at the Heinmans’,” I said, breathing hard. “They’re here.”

“Who’s there?”

“Two suspects from the farm. The one’s we’re looking for.” I needed to catch my breath. I slowed my speech as much as possible and tried to sound matter-of-fact and calm as hell. “Somebody broke into my car and tried to hot-wire it.”

“Ten-four.”

“It sure as hell wasn’t the Heinman boys,” I said.

“Ten-four. They’re on the way.”

“Hustle it up,” I said, and released the mike button. It occurred to me that I had heard Sally very clearly. Given the present condition of my hearing, that meant that I must have the volume turned up way too high to be able to hide. I fumbled around, found the little dial, and turned the volume on my walkie-talkie way down. Since I’d never be able to hear somebody sneaking up, I sure didn’t want them to be able to hear me.

“Hector?

“Why we running, man?”

“The bad ones are in the house. Listen, get a little closer here, and if you hear this walkie-talkie, let me know. My ears are all screwed up from the bomb at the barn; I can’t hear all that well.”

“Sure.” He shifted closer.

“I shot one of ‘em. I don’t know how many more there are. I hope just one.”

I started scanning the area. From where I was, I couldn’t see a single light in the house. They’d turned them off. Great.

I wondered where the Heinman boys parked their car. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember. I dimly recollected being able to see into their garage, and that the little building was chock-full of tools and shop things. No room for a car there. Had I ever really seen their car? I had an image from years ago, of the Dodge Dart they’d been driving when it had been hit by the bus. It was the only car I’d ever associated with them. Well, whatever kind it was, there wasn’t any car visible but the two cars we’d driven into the place. Regardless of the reason for its absence, that was why Odeh had tried to steal my car.

My eyes were becoming better adjusted to the dark. From my new perspective in the shadows, the front half of the house was between the yard light and me. In the golden glow, I could see through the thinly curtained front windows on the upper floor, and into what I guessed would be the kitchen on the ground floor. There was no movement there, and the back half of the building was pitch black.

We’d left some pretty clear tracks leading right to where we were. Great. Nothing to be done about it, but I was beginning to feel that a white Christmas was a little overrated.

It always becomes quieter when the snow starts to fall, but the deadening effect of the snow-filled air was emphasizing the shriek in my ears caused by the nearness of the shotgun blast. It was a little distracting.

The crab apple tree that had become our little bastion wasn’t nearly as thick as I was. I seemed to remember reading somewhere that an AK-47 round could easily penetrate ten inches of wood. Not good, but it was definitely time to stop moving around. In the dark, movement is the tattletale.

A staccato clang behind me just about scared me to death.

“What…?” escaped from Hector.

I twisted around and caught a silvery shape in the darkness. The hog feeders. We were almost at the wooden fence that separated the hogs from the yard. There apparently was a hungry hog behind us. “Hog feeder,” I said, with a long breath I hadn’t realized I’d sucked in, and turned back toward the house. Just in time to catch a flicker of movement in the upper window. It was one of those things that happens in the dark, where you just aren’t sure you’ve actually seen anything. I looked back at the hog feeder, and then brought my gaze back to the house. I did that three times, and never once caught a hint of movement. That pretty well satisfied me that I’d actually seen something.

But what had I seen? Whatever or whoever it was, it wasn’t there now.

I was beginning to wonder where the cavalry had gotten to. I placed my ear as close to the mike-receiver as I could, and called Sally.

“Three to Mobile Comm?” I heard something like a response, but it was too faint. I pressed the little speaker right to my ear and adjusted the volume upward.

“Three to Mobile Comm?”

This time, I heard Sally say, “Three, go ahead!”

Hector punched me in the arm, apparently to let me know the walkie-talkie was receiving. Just like I’d asked him to do. “Okay, uh, where’s everybody at?”

“Some of them are there already,” she said. “Where have you been? We’ve been calling…give me your exact ten-twenty.”

My exact location. I did the best I could. “We’re kind of southeast of the residence. About a hundred feet.”

“Stand by.”

Like I had a choice.

“Three,” said Sally, after about five seconds, “would you be near a small tree?”

That was a surprise. “Ten-four, I am.”

“Stand by.”

I did. The “some of them” she’d referred to must have night-vision equipment.

“Three?”

“Go.”

“Three, a team member has you in sight. Remain where you are if at all possible. And who’s this ‘we’?”

“The Hispanic male subject is with me. We’ll sit tight, ten-four on that.” That’d be pretty easy. “Be sure they know there’s two of us.”

There was a pause, and then, “They know.”

I looked around me. Nothing moved. No indication of where the team member might be. I was hoping I didn’t have to “remain” all that long, as the cold was starting to seep through my clothes.

“Stand by one moment, Three…” and it got quiet again. Then she was back. “Uh, and, Three, be advised that there’s an unidentified subject just entering the yard from the east side of the residence, apparently armed, and about twenty-five yards from you.”

Holy shit. I stopped talking and just clicked the mike button in quiet acknowledgment.

I could tell Hector had heard the conversation, because he instantly looked in the right direction. I wasn’t sure about Hector’s younger eyes, but I looked as hard as I could into the deep shadow cast by the house and didn’t see anybody. I tried looking to one side and then the other, hoping to catch a movement in my peripheral vision. No go. But if he was on my side of the house, my tracks ought to be pretty apparent in the yard light. I fervently wished it hadn’t snowed.

A moment later, Sally’s voice was back. She spoke very fast. “Three, he’s spotted you, get down!”

Since I was kneeling already, I just dropped down on all fours and then kicked my feet back. I was as down as I could ever get. I was aware of Hector flopping to the ground, too. He had good ears.

I kept looking toward my right, at the house, and heard a loud voice from my far left say “Police! Put your weapon down! Police!”

I saw the man with the gun, then. He was crouched down and had just stepped about two feet out of the shadow of the house. I heard a crashing sound, and saw an orange muzzle blast leap out of his shape, first horizontally and then vertical so fast it described a bright orange arc, and then it was gone as he fell backward, back into shadow.

“Holy shit!” said Hector.

“The unidentified subject is down, Three,” said Sally. He sure was. I could very faintly make out his lower legs and feet. There was no movement.

I risked a 10-4.

“They advise stay put, Three. They think there’s another suspect in the residence.”

“No problem,” I said, and meant it.

Now that I was stretched full length on the ground I was getting colder. A lot colder. Snow was beginning to fall on the exposed back of my neck, and I was reluctant to reach back and turn up the collar. Lord, that was cold. I stayed put, though. I hadn’t seen a flash or heard a report, but I was certain that somewhere there was a very good sniper who had taken out the “unknown subject” with one shot. I could stand by as long as they wanted. I was in absolutely no hurry to get up and move at this point.

“Three, there’s movement again,” said Sally, just as I saw shadows near the kitchen area. The shadows continued to the porch, and the door opened.

Exposed to the yard light, two men stood crowded together in the doorway. One was Jacob Heinman in a shirt and overalls. The other was dressed in a heavy parka, and had a ski mask pulled down over his face. He also had a weapon, which looked an awful lot like an old shotgun. He was holding Jacob in front of him.

“I have this hostage!” he yelled. I recognized the voice. It was Odeh. “I am armed.” He held the shotgun out at arm’s length, just to prove it. As he did, I heard a crack, and his gun just kept on going, out of his hand, off to his right and onto the ground. It looked for all the world as if he’d thrown it. That sniper was a really great shot.

He hollered something I didn’t get, and pulled Jacob Heinman back into the house with him. Instantly, I could see HRT people going up the little cement steps and into the door right behind him. I saw lots of movement, a flash, and then two HRT members came hustling out with Jacob and Norris Heinman. They hurried them off to my left and disappeared behind the barn. Immediately, there was a loud noise that apparently was a combination of a shot being fired and the yard light blowing up, and the barnyard was plunged into darkness.

It got vewy, vewy quiet, as Elmer Fudd would have said. I could imagine the HRT members going from room to room in complete darkness, using their night-vision goggles. Spooky, but very effective.

After about five very long minutes, I heard a helicopter approach. It sounded like “mine,” but since I couldn’t see it, I couldn’t tell. I heard it make three passes over us, and then fade as it began to circle quite a way out from the house.

A moment later, lights started coming on in the house, and two cars and an ambulance appeared in the driveway.

“It’s all clear, Three,” said Sally. “One suspect in custody, two hostages secured.”

“Ten-four!” I said. “Can we get up now?”

“Yep,” said a male voice, very near. “Name’s Howell,” said the black-clad figure that stood up on the other side of the fence that separated the hogs from the house. As he stood, a hog squealed in surprise.

I stood, too, but Hector stayed down. “Christ, man,” I said. “How long you been there?”

“Too damned long. He came over the fence and scraped his boots in the fresh snow. “Glad it’s not summer. Frozen hog shit is bad enough.”

Hector got to his feet, and the three of us walked together over to the cars, which were rapidly being covered with snow.

The Heinman brothers were being escorted back out of the barn.

“You’re still alive,” said Jacob when he saw me.

“Glad you two are, too,” I said, noticing a large swelling on his forehead.

“Too old to go easy,” he said.

The ambulance crew hustled past us and into the house.

“Better have ‘em check you out, too, Jacob,” I said.

He indicated one of the HRT members. “He’s already told me to do that.”

“Shit, I cannot believe this, man. I saw you running, and I thought, ‘what is going on with him,’ and then you said to come on with you, and I thought it was a good thing to do, and I didn’t know where we were going to…and they took that dude out, man. They snuffed his ass like that. And then when this dude comes up behind us from nowhere, man, and scares the living shit out of me…” Hector was talking very fast, coming down from an adrenaline high. He wore an enormous grin. “This was just so fucking cool!”

“Glad you liked it,” I said.

Volont came over to us. “You do tend to get into deep shit, don’t you? “he asked.

“I do what I can,” I said.

“Just FYI,” he said, coming a little closer, “our prisoner is Odeh. For sure.”

“Excellent.”

“Somebody shot him in the thigh,” he said with a broad smile. “You?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Too bad you missed his nuts,” he said. “The dead one over by the house is the one they call Chato. Odeh’s told us that already.”

“That was just stupid, Odeh holding the gun out that way,” I told him. “I thought you said he was a trained terrorist.”

“Oh, he is. He is. But he’s not one of those who’s at the tip of the spear, not by a long shot.” Volont glanced around. “It helps if you think of him as a middle manager. Sort of their version of Hawse,” he said with relish.