The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 52.

The ranch Jeb had found was small and only a quarter of a mile from Rancho San Diego. It was a holdout property that had finally been sunk by California's high state taxes. The few farm buildings were in desperate need of repair. We pulled up the drive and parked next to an old barn with faded, peeling paint.

Hitch and I walked over to the SWAT van and borrowed a couple of Second Chance flak vests, strapping them on over our clothing. Then we each checked out Heckler amp; Koch MP-5 9 mm submachine guns from the weapons box. These full-autos were acknowledged by most cops to be the Rolls-Royce of assault guns.

LAPD SWAT squad teams were commanded by a sergeant and consisted of two five-man elements. There was a hard-entrv team and an intelligence officer who was assigned the job of detailing everything about the target and the location.

The two-man sniper teams consisted of a shooter who carried a long-barreled AR-15 and his spotter, who was assigned the job of identifying potential targets with a scope.

We waited for our two additional SWAT teams, who had just called to say they were ten minutes out.

The first pictures appeared on the intel officer's closed-circuit monitor in the back of our black ARV, sent down to us by a camera in SWAT's hovering air unit. Everyone in the truck huddled around the screen and looked at the shots being beamed down by the chopper, currently flying at five thousand feet over Rancho San Diego. We could hear the faint THUMPA-THUMPA of the rotor blades.

The air unit was broadcasting a front-down view of the huge ranch house. Even on TV, it looked impressive. The two-story California Spanish with its magnificent courtyard sat facing a stable building and horseshoe-shaped paddock.

"Looks like nobody's left yet," jeb commented, watching the monitor, which showed half a dozen Lincoln Town Cars and Suburbans parked in front of the house, being loaded with bags. Off to one side, next to the big horse barn, I could see the red and white Bell Jet Ranger that had been out at Trancas Canyon this morning.

"You need to keep that bird from leaving," I told Jeb, who relayed that instruction to our air unit.

Then the two arriving SWAT units rolled up the drive in their new black Armored Rescue Vehicles. The commanding officers of the three SWAT teams began making geographic drawings of the site.

About ten minutes later we reviewed the layout of Rancho San Diego. As we watched the monitor, we could see the red and white chopper was now being loaded with big suitcases.

"If you want to keep it contained, we need to do this now," the SWAT lieutenant advised. He was a tall, raw-boned guy with too much chin named Rick Sherman.

He called his guys together and huddled with his SWAT sergeants, working out the plan.

Jeb, Hitch, and I were given radios and told to stay on TAC frequency six. We were also instructed to follow the entry teams up the drive, but to stay well back until the site was secured.

"We don't want you guys getting hurt or in the way," Lieutenant Sherman said.

"In the movie, we can take a little creative license with that," Hitch assured me after Sherman left.

There were over thirty of us as we drove off the borrowed property and headed up Potrero. The first line of resistance was the guard shack, which sat under the driveway arch. When the plastic badge saw our armored black caravan, he stepped out and held his hands high over his head.

"I surrender," he said. "Don't shoot."

The security guard, in his late sixties, was ordered to toss his gun in the dirt and was quickly cuffed.

We left two men to secure the exit and our army of flakked SWAT officers drove up the lane in the deadly looking black ARVs toward the beautiful two-story Spanish farmhouse that sat at the top of the hill. Hundred-thousand-dollar grazing thoroughbreds turned their heads and watched placidly as we rumbled past.

The SWAT teams poured out of the vehicles just below the house and, with their MP-5s at port arms, quickly fanned out to secure all first-floor exits. Several stewards who were just coming out of the house carrying luggage stopped in surprise.

"LAPD! Hands in the air! Everybody on the dirt. Spread em!" Sherman shouted.

The men dropped Gucci bags, threw their hands in the air, then proned out on the ground and were handcuffed.

The SWAT teams ran up the short hill and went through the open front door into the main house. Hitch and I brought up the rear. In the entry hall, five more Colombians were carrying suitcases down from upstairs. All of them surrendered without incident.

"The shootings gonna start any time now," Hitch panted in my ear, still out of breath from running up the hill.

We followed a SWAT team into the kitchen, where we found two more men and one woman packing food into a wicker basket.

"SWAT. Put em up. Assume the position!" a SWAT sergeant shouted.

They all hit the floor and spread their arms, then laced their fingers behind their necks. They were cuffed and pulled into the entry.

Hitch and I stood with them under an old Spanish wagon-wheel chandelier, pointing our MP-5s at these frightened employees who sat handcuffed as SWAT teams continued to sweep through the house.

We heard doors being thrown open upstairs and officers yelling, "SWAT! You're under arrest!"

Several minutes later one man and three women in household staff uniforms were herded down the staircase by SWAT members and secured next to our picnic basket packers.

So far, not a single shot had been fired.

"I think there's a large contingent of shooters in the backyard," one of the SWAT sergeants said over the radio TAC frequency.

"That's where they'll make their stand," Hitch told me earnestly.

"Right," I replied. We were both gripping our 9 mm machine guns with sweaty palms.

SWAT took the backyard in less than ten seconds.

Every single person back there threw their hands up and submitted immediately to arrest without incident.

We followed SWAT into the courtyard, where ten or so celadores were being arrested, cuffed, and pushed down on their haunches next to a garden wall. There was only one person left.

An elderly gray-haired gentleman was seated in a high-backed wicker chair beside a large Spanish fountain. He had a blanket over his knees and was holding a calico cat on his lap.

"Diego San Diego?" Lieutenant Sherman demanded.

"Yes," the old man replied in a weak, shaking voice. He was no longer the powerful, fit man I'd seen in the picture from four years ago. He looked sick. He had lost weight. His hair had thinned.

"You are being issued an arrest warrant as a material witness and potential suspect in the hijacking of a Brinks armored truck and the murder of two guards," Sherman said as he put the paper in the old mans hands. "Get up, we need to cuff you."

"I'm sorry, I can't stand," the almost ninety-year-old man said. "My doctor forbids all movement. I've got severe phlebitis in my legs."

"In that case, stay where you are and remain absolutely still," Sherman said.

"We're clear upstairs," one of the SWAT teams called out.

"Clear in the main house," another called.

"Courtyard is clear," someone behind us shouted.

Lieutenant Rick Sherman turned and looked at Jeb.

"We're secure here, Captain."

The cat on Diego San Diego's lap stood, arched its back, and yawned.

Then Hitch leaned in toward me and whispered, "This ending is gonna need a big fuckin' rewrite."