“Gentlemen, our ground transportation’s courtesy of DEA undercover. They’ve got a florist’s truck and a plumbing van. So Vernon, Eddie, into your long handles and your civvies. If we go in behind stun grenades, remember you’ve got no flash protection on your faces.”
Vernon muttered to Eddie, “Make sure you cover up your cheeks.”
“Did he say don’t moon? I thought he said don’t flash,” Eddie murmured back.
Vernon and Eddie, who would make the initial approach to the door, had to wear thin ballistic armor beneath civilian clothes. The rest could go in hardshell armor, proof against rifle fire.
“Bobby, make sure and put one of your handsets in each van for the driver, so we don’t get fucked up talking to those DEA guys,” Randall said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration uses UHF radios in raids, while the FBI has VHF. There had been problems in the past.
They were equipped for most eventualities, day or night: for walls they had basic rappelling equipment, to listen they had Wolf’s Ears and a VanSleek Farfoon, to see they had night-vision devices. The weapons with night scopes looked like band instruments in their bulging cases.
This was to be a precise surgical operation and the weapons reflected it—there was nothing that fired from an open bolt.
The team shrugged into their web gear as the flaps went down.
Randall got news from Calumet on his headset. He covered the microphone and spoke to the team again. “Guys, they got it down to two addresses. We take the best one and Chicago SWAT’s on the other.”
The field was Lansing Municipal, the closest to Calumet on the southeast side of Chicago. The plane was cleared straight in. The pilot brought it to a stop in a stink of brakes beside two vehicles idling at the end of the field farthest from the terminal.
There were quick greetings beside the florist’s truck. The DEA commander handed Randall what looked like a tall flower arrangement. It was a twelve-pound door-buster sledgehammer, the head wrapped in colored foil like a flowerpot, foliage attached to the handle.
“You might want to deliver this,” he said. “Welcome to Chicago.”
CHAPTER 56
Mr. Gumb went ahead with it in the late afternoon.
With dangerous steady tears standing in his eyes, he’d watched his video again and again and again. On the small screen, Mom climbed the water-slide and whee down into the pool, whee down into the pool. Tears blurred Jame Gumb’s vision as though he were in the pool himself.
On his middle a hot-water bottle gurgled, as the little dog’s stomach had gurgled when she lay on him.
He couldn’t stand it any longer—what he had in the basement holding Precious prisoner, threatening her. Precious was in pain, he knew she was. He wasn’t sure he could kill it before it fatally injured Precious, but he had to try. Right now.
He took off his clothes and put on the robe—he always finished a harvest naked and bloody as a newborn.
From his vast medicine cabinet he took the salve he had used on Precious when the cat scratched her. He got out some little Band-Aids and Q-tips and the plastic “Elizabethan collar” the vet gave him to keep her from worrying a sore place with her teeth. He had tongue depressors in the basement to use for splints on her little broken leg, and a tube of Sting-Eez to take the hurt away if the stupid thing scratched her thrashing around before it died.
A careful head shot, and he’d just sacrifice the hair. Precious was worth more to him than the hair. The hair was a sacrifice, an offering for her safety.
Quietly down the stairs now, to the kitchen. Out of his slippers and down the dark basement stairs, staying close to the wall to keep the stairs from creaking.
&n
bsp; He didn’t turn on the light. At the bottom of the stairs, he took a right into the workroom, moving by touch in the familiar dark, feeling the floor change under his feet.
His sleeve brushed the cage and he heard the soft angry chirp of a brood moth. Here was the cabinet. He found his infrared light and slipped the goggles on his head. Now the world glowed green. He stood for a moment in the comforting burble of the tanks, in the warm hiss of the steam pipes. Master of the dark, queen of the dark.
Moths free in the air left green trails of fluorescence across his vision, faint breaths across his face as their downy wings brushed the darkness.
He checked the Python. It was loaded with .38 Special lead wad-cutters. They would slam into the skull and expand for an instant kill. If it was standing when he shot, if he shot down into the top of the head, the bullet was less likely than a Magnum load to exit the lower jaw and tear the bosom.
Quiet, quiet he crept, knees bent, painted toes gripping the old boards. Silent on the sand floor of the oubliette room. Quiet but not too slow. He didn’t want his scent to have time to reach the little dog in the bottom of the well.
The top of the oubliette glowed green, the stones and mortar distinct, the grain of the wooden cover sharp in his vision. Hold the light and lean over. There they were. It was on its side like a giant shrimp. Perhaps asleep. Precious was curled up close against its body, surely sleeping, oh please not dead.
The head was exposed. A neck shot was tempting—save the hair. Too risky.