The Impaler

Chapter 79

By ten o’clock that evening, the two blocks of Lewis Street between Third and Fifth had been cordoned off. The residents were ordered to evacuate, and the parking lot across the street from Bradley Cox’s apartment building was completely surrounded by marked and unmarked vehicles.

A SWAT team leader gave the signal, and he and two other officers, weapons drawn, cautiously approached the black TrailBlazer in tactical formation. They looked first into the rear window, then into the front seat. And after a tense thirty seconds, the officer on the driver’s side called out, “Clear!”

A collective sigh of relief was heard as the members of the SWAT team lowered their weapons.

Looking on from across the street, just a few feet from Bradley Cox’s front door, an FBI agent from the Greenville Resident Agency said to his partner, “Call it in to Raleigh.”

The other agent began dialing as the SWAT team leader tried the door handle. It was locked. Another signal, and a local police officer with a Slim Jim rushed up to the Trail-Blazer and slipped it down into the driver’s side door.

“The car’s clear,” said the FBI agent into his BlackBerry. “But there’s still no sign of Special Agent Schaap.”

The FBI agent listened to the tech specialist on the other end. Something about Schaap’s BlackBerry being off the grid; something about it taking time to get the tower records.

Then he saw the TrailBlazer’s door open.

Even from where he was standing he could hear the series of loud clicks across the street. The tech specialist had gone on to say something about Sam Markham being unreachable, too—when suddenly the explosion sent the FBI agent’s BlackBerry flying from his hand.