Last Breath

39

Tanner didn’t say anything to his team during the elevator ride to the third floor. There was nothing to say. The instructions had been given, the plan of attack laid out. It would be a dynamic entry-break down the door of Apartment 310 and flood the interior. Use caution when engaging the target; possible hostage situation. Clear your background. Take no chances.

As the arrow above the elevator doors climbed to number two, Tanner inventoried his gear. Colt. 45 1911 semiauto pistol in a strongside thigh holster. A backup Colt in the pocket of his tactical vest. Flash-bangs, smoke grenades, and other diversionary devices clipped to his utility belt. On his head, a ballistic helmet and a LASH two-way radio headset with a throat microphone on a breakaway strap.

The four men with him in the elevator were similarly attired in full BDU-battle dress uniform. McMath and DiMaria were the two assaulters; in addition to their Colts, they carried Heckler amp; Koch MP-5 9mm submachine guns, each capable of firing eight hundred rounds per minute on full automatic. Weldham was the rear guard, armed with a Benelli Super90 Ml twelve-gauge shotgun. Automatic rifles like the MP-5s got all the press, but Tanner knew that a twelve-gauge was the deadliest gun on earth.

Finally there was Chang, the scout, wearing his earphone and stalk microphone, carrying the 180-degree mirror he’d made himself-an eighth of an inch of mirrored plastic affixed to a telescoping handle. Using it, he could peer around corners without exposing himself to a head shot.

The elevator reached the third floor, and the doors opened. Everyone tensed, but the hallway was clear.

“Last door on the right,” Tanner reminded them. “Switch your flashlights on.”

The flashlights were mounted to the barrels of the MP-5s. In the bright corridor they were unnecessary, but there was no telling what would happen once the shooting team got inside Treat’s apartment.

Tanner led his men down the hall to the door marked 310. There was no legal problem about entering; a judge had already given telephonic approval to a search warrant and an arrest warrant. Even without the warrants, exigent circumstances would have justified the search-and-seizure operation. Treat was no longer protected by anonymity, and he was no longer protected by law.

His apartment was next to the rear stairwell. Just in case Treat managed to get past the tactical team, a pair of deputies from the City of Industry station had been deployed in the lobby to watch the stairs. Another two deputies in an unmarked car watched Treat’s windows from the street. If he tried to climb out, he would be spotted.

No escape.

Unless he was already gone. This was the thought that nagged at Tanner as he prepared to break down the apartment door. Sure, Treat’s van was in the garage, but he might use a different vehicle when committing his crimes. He might be miles away, the apartment empty.

Now that they knew his identity, they would catch him eventually. But not in time to save C.J…

He cleared his mind of those fears and motioned to the first assaulter, who launched the hand-carried battering ram at the door, striking it directly beside the lock. Wood splintered, the door yielded, and then Tanner and Chang were inside, the two assaulters rushing after them, Weldham bringing up the rear.

As always in a raid, he found reality instantly reduced to a series of impressions-stray facts noted almost at random, without evaluation or context.

Living room. Brightly lit by a halogen floor lamp. Unoccupied. To his right, a kitchenette with a wet bar. To the left, an interior hall lit by a low-wattage overhead bulb Movement in the hall.

“Stop, police!” he yelled.

The figure vanished into a room at the far end of the hall, slamming the door.

Tanner’s instinct was to run for the door and force it open, but his training told him to always cover his back. “Check the kitchen,” he said to DiMaria. It was possible for someone to hide behind the counter.

DiMaria looked. “Clear.”

“Roger.” Tanner crossed the living room and opened the linen closet. Empty. Then he was in the hall, pivoting into a guest bathroom. No one there. Halfway down the hall now, his men behind him, Tanner acutely aware that slots were danger areas and he was the first target Treat would hit if he opened fire through the door. He was grateful for the heavy flak jacket, the aramid fibers that would stop most calibers of ammunition.

Another closet to examine-empty also-and finally he was at the door Treat had slammed. It was locked. No surprise.

The overhead light switched off. Now the hall was lit only by the flashlight beams that swept up and down like crisscrossing searchlights.

Tanner kicked the door. It didn’t yield. Not wood. Metal. A steel door, hardly standard issue for a residential apartment. Treat must have installed it himself. It was the door to his inner sanctum-a soundproofed room, maybe, where he brought his victims. Where C.J. might be held prisoner right now.

“Blow it open,” he told Weldham, whose twelve-gauge was best suited for the job.

Weldham took a step forward, feeding a Magnum slug into the tube, and then the screaming started.

It was McMath who screamed first, a high, feminine shriek like no sound any SWAT commando ever wanted to make, followed by a flurry of gibbering profanities and the words, “They’re all over me!”

Tanner swung his flash in McMath’s direction, but he had no time to see what was happening because suddenly DiMaria was screaming too. It had to be screams he was hearing, though at first they sounded like raucous, hysterical laughter. “Get ’em off, get ’em off!”

Now Chang was slapping at the back of his neck, and Weldham was stomping his boots in manic desperation.

Tanner didn’t understand until he looked up, his flashlight beam following his gaze.

Spiders were dropping from the ceiling.

They fell in clouds, like confetti. He knew they were spiders because even in the chancy, flickering light he could see the black bulbs of their abdomens and the stringy strands of webbing that floated down with them, wisps of cotton candy, unreal in the semidarkness.

It was a trap. He’d been trained that hallways were the ideal place for an ambush, but in all his training he’d never heard of an ambush by spiders.

“ Retreat!” he yelled, pushing Chang toward the front of the hall, but Chang merely fell, eight-legged shapes whispering across his face. In his flashlight’s glow Tanner saw one of the shapes scuttle inside Chang’s collar and vanish beneath his clothes.

Instinctively he checked his arms, the front of his flak jacket. He saw one spider clinging to his utility belt and flicked it away. Another one, larger-a tarantula?-had landed on his trouser leg and was curling up in a defensive posture, threatening no harm, but Tanner kicked it loose anyway, not wanting the goddamned thing on his person.

He couldn’t force a retreat-his men, who had been bunched up at the midpoint of the hall and had received the brunt of the downpour, were incapable of withdrawing, incapable of anything except slapping at the spiders that plastered them in quivering bunches.

All right, go forward.

He grabbed the shotgun out of Weldham’s hands, jammed it into the door beside the dead bolt, and fired point-blank, the Magnum slug cratering the metal. Still the door didn’t give. He fired twice more-the Benelli’s standard load this time, 00 buckshot shells-the reports thunderous in the confined space.

One side of the door was a scorched, smoking ruin. The lock had been torn apart. Tanner gave the door his shoulder, and Chang, recovering sufficiently to assist, rammed it at the same time. The door heaved open, tilting on its hinges.

Tanner rushed through-he had no time to slice the pie, and no patience for it either. Dimly he knew that Treat would be counting on him to make the kind of stupid mistake he’d just made.

Well, come on, asshole, Tanner thought. Give me your best shot.

His flashlight swept a large bedroom. Table lamps on nightstands flanking a neatly made bed. Some kind of aquarium in the corner-no, a terrarium, housing another spider, this one behind glass. TV against one wall. A few other items of furniture, none big enough to hide behind.

No C.J.

No Gavin Treat.

Where was he? Bathroom?

Tanner ducked inside. No one there.

The closet, then.

He kicked open the closet door and stepped back, expecting a volley of shots. Nothing happened. He risked a look inside and saw shirts and trousers meticulously arrayed on wooden hangers, several pairs of shoes, a tie rack-and a hole in the wall.

It was a neat rectangular hole, obviously cut with care some time ago. The panel of cutout drywall leaned beside it.

Tanner reviewed the apartment’s layout in his mind and saw that this closet was adjacent to the stairwell.

“Fuck.” Into his radio mike: “He’s taking the stairs, repeat, taking the stairs. Could be going up or down. Watch the lobby and the roof. Control the perimeter. And we’ve got officers down-send an RA.” Rescue ambulance.

He turned to look at Chang and found him leaning on the bed, a sick look on his face. “Itches,” he managed to say.

“Where’d it bite you?”

Chang touched his breastbone. “Here.”

Tanner remembered the spider that had skittered under Chang’s collar. He tried to remember if any spiders injected enough venom to prove fatal to a healthy adult. The black widow, maybe. And the brown recluse? He wasn’t sure. “You’re not gonna die on me, are you?” he asked with a strained smile.

“I’m okay. Just get that cocksucker.”

Chang rarely swore. Tanner liked hearing it. It showed he had some fight left.

“Count on it,” he promised, and he went into the closet again.

The crawlway in the wall was narrow. This Treat must be as thin-shouldered as a girl. With an effort Tanner forced his way through. Then he was on the stairwell landing.

Treat could have gone up or down. The lobby ought to be secured by the unit on the ground.

Tanner went up, wishing they had a helicopter to cover the roof. Treat couldn’t get anywhere if he was pinned in a chopper’s searchlight. But Captain Garcia hadn’t wanted to call in an air unit-afraid the beat of the rotors would tip off the suspect.

He ascended the metal staircase at a run, pausing on the fourth-floor landing to visually clear the hallway. No sign of Treat, so he pounded up the last flight of stairs to the roof access door. Opened it and retreated a step, scanning the roof by degrees, then emerged into the open air and turned instantly to put his back against the stairwell door.

He had an unobstructed view of the entire roof-yards of black tar under the moon and stars.

On the north side, five yards away, lay a dark, prone shape.

Treat? Lying on his belly, armed, sighting his quarry?

Tanner knelt, making a smaller target, then unhooked a smoke grenade from his utility belt. Pulled the pin, lobbed the weapon. It traveled in a high arc and dropped near the shape, releasing a cloud of gray smoke.

The shape didn’t move.

Tanner waited for the smoke to clear, then cautiously approached the shape. As he drew near, he saw that it wasn’t a man. It was a ladder. “Shit.”

The ladder had been fully extended and stretched horizontally between the roof of this building and the one behind it-another apartment complex, as Tanner recalled from his briefing.

Treat must have scrambled across like a monkey on a branch. The other roof was empty. He was already gone.

Tanner used his radio again, telling the deputies on the ground that Treat had escaped via the building to the rear. Garcia’s voice came back to him over his earphone. “We’re sending two units to reconnoiter. He won’t get away that easily.”

He already has, Tanner thought.

Then another voice, which Tanner didn’t recognize, said, “Jesus, what the hell happened in here?”

Backup had reached the apartment, found the four SWAT commandos. Even over his headset Tanner could hear moans of pain. He pictured his men writhing.

“They need antivenin,” Tanner said. “They’ve been bitten by spiders.”

“What kind of spiders?” Garcia snapped.

“All kinds.”

It was true. They had come in every shape and size, even in different hues-some lithe and small like puffballs with threadlike legs, others large and hairy, some jet-black, others brown or reddish.

Tanner took a moment to inspect himself. He found a spider entangled in the laces of his boot and smashed it with his fist. Another one was making its way slowly up his sleeve like a determined climber attacking Everest. He wiped off that one on the stairwell door, leaving a brown smudge.

No others. And none-he patted himself, front and back-none under his clothes, against his skin.

He’d been lucky. As team leader he was supposed to be in front of his men, in a position of maximum exposure, but in this case it had been the safest position to occupy. The rain of spiders had been concentrated in the middle of the hall.

Another minute passed while the units on the ground reconnoitered the second building. Then Garcia reported, “There’s a fire escape from the roof to the ground. Grass near the fire escape has been trampled.”

Tanner sighed. “He’s booked.”

“Roger that. We’re calling in other units to sweep the streets.”

“They won’t find him.”

Garcia’s voice was a dry crackle. “I know.”

“Any sign of the victim?”

“No. Maybe he never had her.”

“Of course he had her,” Tanner snapped.

Walsh had said she had four hours to live. He’d been wrong. It was only 10:15, and she was dead already. Had to be.

C.J. was dead.