The Standoff Read online

  “What’re you doing?” Rourke yelled. There was blood in his mouth, in his teeth. His voice was plagued with pain and agony.

  His ball cap was off his head. It was back near the tire. His Glock was gone. White had swiped it from out of his hand before he could fire. He was helpless.

  White stood over him with the Glock, a look of utter confusion on his face.

  A tall black man came walking out of the trees to the far left. He had fired the shot that hit Rourke in the chest. The black man was holding the smoking gun.

  The black man yelled out.

  “Put the gun down!”

  He was pointing the gun that had shot Rourke at White now.

  Suddenly, four other guys appeared from out of nowhere. Rourke counted them. One wore all white, as if he was some kind of high priest or something.

  The man in white winter gear spoke to Walter.

  “Son, drop the gun.”

  White didn’t move. He stood there with the Glock in his hands. He was holding it the wrong way like he had never held a gun before. The business end was pointed back at himself.

  White paused. He was thinking about what to do next. Brooks, Abel, Rourke, and all of them could see it on his face.

  Brooks shouted.

  “If you don’t drop that gun, we’re going to shoot you where you stand.”

  White looked up at the loft shutters to the barn. Rourke looked there as well. A sixth man appeared up there holding a serious-looking sniper rifle. It looked military, like a ten-thousand-dollar piece of hardware.

  Rourke kept his eyes on the sniper, who aimed down his barrel right at White’s chest.

  Rourke spoke in a whispered voice.

  “Walter?”

  White twisted fast, which scared Rourke at first. He thought for sure they would shoot him dead right then, but no one fired.

  White looked down at Rourke. Tears streamed in White’s eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Rourke.

  “Walter, drop the gun. They’ll kill you if you don’t.”

  “I’m sorry. I was scared for my family.”

  “Just put the gun down.”

  “They’ll kill you if I do.”

  “You don’t know that. Put it down.”

  Abel said, “Mr. White, what’s with the deliberations? Put the gun down.”

  White begged to Abel, “Don’t kill him. Please?”

  Abel walked slowly from out of the farmhouse and over to the parked trucks and the bleeding sheriff. Cucci and Tanis were close behind him. Abel was the only one not pointing his gun at Walter.

  Abel looked at the sheriff and then at White. He raised his hand and opened his palm.

  “Hand over the weapon. And I’ll let him live. You have my word.”

  White looked into Rourke’s eyes, apologetic beyond anything he could say.

  Rourke nodded and coughed blood.

  Abel inched closer.

  White dropped one hand off the gun and handed it over.

  Abel took it and put a bony-fingered hand on White’s shoulder.

  “Good choice, my boy.”

  Brooks approached and came up to Rourke. He stopped his boots inches from Rourke’s head. He pointed his silenced gun at Rourke.

  “Kill him?”

  White shouted, “No! You promised!”

  Abel looked at Rourke. He stuffed the Glock 22 into one of the pockets of his winter coat and fluttered the tail back off his butt. He squatted down, balancing on the soles of his boots.

  He looked Rourke up and down.

  Rourke was pressing at his chest hard with both hands. He was in pain from the bullet impact.

  Abel reached his bony hand down and opened the sheriff’s coat. He grabbed both Rourke’s hands and forced them to separate from his chest. Rourke didn’t fight back.

  Abel looked at his brown shirt, which was pooling with blood. He reached out a long finger and tapped on the chest, getting blood on his finger.

  “Bulletproof vest, huh?”

  Rourke nodded.

  Abel said, “An old, shit one too. You’re lucky it worked at all.”

  Abel cocked his head like a doctor examining a wound. He grabbed both Rourke’s hands once again and returned them to the wound.

  “Looks like the vest saved your life,” Abel glanced at a name patch sewed into the breast pocket of Rourke’s shirt and said, “Sheriff Rourke. But your vest is old and shitty. Looks like the bullet penetrated and got you, but it’s mostly superficial. The round is jammed into the vest.”

  Rourke said nothing.

  Abel repeated, “You’re lucky.”

  Brooks kept his weapon ready to kill the sheriff right there on the ground.

  Abel stood back up and backed away. He stepped over to White and wiped the blood off his fingers onto White’s coat shoulder.

  “You want him to live?”

  “Yes.”

  “You do what we say, and no one will die. Got it?”

  “Yes.”

  “You disobey me, or one of my guys, just once, and he dies.”

  White swallowed hard out of relief because he thought by the way Abel was talking that he had abandoned the idea of taking his family hostage. That was shattered when Abel said one more thing.

  Abel looked at Cucci.

  “Pick him up. Take him into the barn and find out if the police know anything.”

  Abel saw the look of betrayal on White’s face and he added one more thing.

  “Check his wounds and fix him up first. Then talk to him. That’s all.”

  Cucci asked, “Want me to hurt him?”

  “Give him some time. If he’s not cooperative, then we can use other methods.”

  White interrupted.

  “You said you would let him live.”

  “I didn’t tell him to kill him. He’s just going to have a conversation. And I wouldn’t worry about what happens to him, Mr. White.”

  Just then, Jargo came over the radio.

  “Boss?”

  Abel snapped a nod at Brooks, jerked a radio out of somewhere in his white robes that White hadn’t noticed, and tossed it to Brooks.

  “See what he wants.”

  Brooks caught the radio and clicked the button. He looked up at Jargo in the barn and pulled the receiver end of the radio in front of his lips.

  “What’s up?”

  “Helicopter! Same one from before, I think.”

  Abel, White, Brooks, and Tanis were all in earshot and heard it. Flack heard it off his own radio. Cucci heard it but didn’t react. He had been given a direct order and he was carrying it out. He lifted Rourke like Frankenstein’s monster carrying a victim away into the night.

  Rourke didn’t resist. Cucci scooped him up and carried him off into the barn.

  The rest of them first looked up at Jargo, who pointed out to the northeast. Abel and White both had to spin on one foot to face that direction. Brooks and Tanis stayed where they were and looked up over the trees. Flack stepped farther out to the drive, away from the barn door and past Cucci on his way. He stopped behind Abel and looked up.

  Several of the men raised their hands over their eyes. The sunlight that was there shining through the clouds beamed into their lines of sight like lasers.

  They waited and searched the sky. Abel glanced at Brooks. Brooks got on the radio.

  “Jargo, how far?”

  “It’s three klicks away, but coming on fast like they know where they’re going.”

  Brooks looked at Abel.

  “We should take it out.”

  A look of horror came over White’s face.

  Take it out , he thought.

  Abel thought for a second. They didn’t have the luxury of firepower heavy enough to take out a flying helicopter, not from the ground. The only possibility would be if Jargo took out the pilot. Could he do it? Sure, but not from three klicks away. But once it was a closer range he could.

  Abel made a decision.

  “No. We could
use the helicopter.”

  “How? We can’t get the pipe bombs out of here by helicopter. Someone will notice a helicopter flying around.”

  Abel glanced at White, whose facial expression changed to an emotion that was a combination of confusion and utter terror. He heard the words. He heard the right sequence—pipe bombs.

  The confusion was the same, normal, expected expression that anyone would have. The terror part came on because White realized that they didn’t intend on leaving him alive. Before he heard those words, he thought he stood a chance of surviving. Not now.

  Now, he was a dead man walking. Knowing there were pipe bombs meant that he had heard too much. It may have been a slip by the one called Brooks. Whatever. It happened. He couldn’t unhear it.

  Abel smiled a sinister grin at him that was supposed to be reassuring, but White doubted Abel knew how to be reassuring or comforting.

  Abel turned back to Brooks.

  “We can find all sorts of uses for it. For one thing, it’ll get them off our back. For another, we can use it to get as far as possible. Just do it. Okay?”

  “Sure.”

  Jargo came over the radio.

  “Boss, what do we do?”

  Brooks answered.

  “Nothing. Observe only.”

  Brooks got off the radio and said, “We should take cover again. If they’re coming for us, they’ll do a sweep first.”

  Abel said, “Of course.”

  “What about the vehicles?”

  “Leave them. They’ll see them and stop to take a look.”

  Chapter 32

  S HEP PARKED the patrol cruiser past the circle drive in the spot where Walter’s Tundra had been parked only twenty minutes earlier before Brooks tricked him to drive out to the road.

  Shep unbuckled his seatbelt but left the car running. He looked at Adonis in the passenger seat. She undid her seatbelt and slipped her fingers into the handle to pop the door open and get out. She stopped there because Shep was looking at her, his left hand on the steering wheel. He didn’t get out.

  Shep was about to brief her. She knew it. Over her career, many guys like Shep, lifetime cops, had looked at her the same way before giving instructions or a warning or briefing.

  He pointed the index finger on his right hand across his chest at the farmhouse in front of them.

  “Listen, this is my state. These are my people. I can tell you about the people who live here. They’re not gonna cooperate. Not likely. People out here don’t volunteer cooperation with cops. It’s just a way of life for them. If they have trouble, they tend to take care of it themselves.”

  Adonis waved her free hand up in the air like she was waving off tiny, invisible rockets. Like an old west quick-draw, Adonis ripped her sidearm out of a shoulder holster padded down on her left ribcage under her breast. She pulled it faster than Shep had ever seen someone do in real life, outside of shooting competitions.

  The weapon was a standard ATF Glock 22 with fourteen rounds in the magazine and one chambered. She ejected the clip and showed Shep the bullets.

  The Glock 22 has a 7.32-inch slide length, eight inches in length overall from corner of the butt to the tip of the barrel and it looked huge in her small hands. But she held it like she had fired it a thousand times a month at the shooting range, which was true except during months when she had too much caseload to make it into the shooting range.

  “You were being a really good guy before. Don’t give me this I’m a little lady bullshit! I’m a Resident Agent in Charge in the ATF I’ve seen shit too. I’m not some fragile little woman who got this badge and this gun from affirmative action. I earned it. I earned this badge and I earned every bullet in this gun. Got it?”

  Shep raised both hands in the international sign of giving up, like she was pointing a gun at him.

  Adonis reinserted the magazine into the Glock and smacked it home, a little melodramatic, but she had learned long ago that men responded to visual aids and drama.

  “Okay. Okay. I get it. I just wanted to warn you that they may not be cooperative with us.”

  Adonis reholstered her weapon—fast, almost as fast as she had drawn it.

  “Let’s go.”

  She pulled the door handle, opened it, and got out. She closed the door behind her. Shep followed suit and they both approached the front door. They stepped up onto the porch. Adonis took the front and center position. She rang the doorbell. They both heard the standard doorbell chime through the house. They heard scurrying footsteps, like a child’s, and slow, regular footsteps like an adult.

  The door opened after the doorbell chimed and echoed through the structure and died to silence.

  Standing in the doorway was a short man wearing a worn, gray knit skullcap. Adonis would’ve guessed that underneath he was bald, judging by the way his red hair seemed to abruptly end above the temples, where most people’s continued.

  Standing directly behind him was a woman who was barely shorter than him. She had curly hair and big eyes. She glowed angelically. Standing behind both of them was an entire clan squeezed into a foyer that opened up to a huge floor plan.

  Adonis quickly counted six people in all. Everyone looked related, like members of a family tree hanging out for a family day. One woman looked different. Adonis figured she was married into the family. But everyone else looked like the same genetics, even the two children, one was a boy, who pushed his way to the front to see what was happening. Adonis could see his eyes weren’t on her but were locked onto Shep’s holstered sidearm. The other child was a teenage girl. She came with the rest of them to see who was at the door, but once she saw Adonis, she lost interest and turned and walked back to whatever piece of furniture she had probably been glued to before Adonis rang the doorbell.

  The old man was the first to speak.

  “Hello. Can I help you?”

  Adonis pulled out a black leather wallet with her badge pinned into one side. The wallet was shaped the same as the badge. It was only a badge holder. There was one empty pouch on the rear for her to stuff money in. It was empty. She showed the badge to the whole family. The boy’s eyes flicked from inspecting Shep’s holstered gun to Adonis’s badge.

  “My name is Toni Adonis. I’m with the ATF.”

  She left off the Agent part because she wanted to seem friendly and accessible, at Shep’s implied suggestion that country folk around Spartan County didn’t take kindly to law enforcement.

  Abe White leaned into the badge. He squinted his eyes and stared at the gold badge’s blue center. He mouthed the words he read on it.

  “Department of Justice. A-T-F. Special Agent.”

  Then he retreated back to his stance and asked, “How do I know that’s real?”

  Adonis dropped her hand and pocketed the badge into her coat pocket.

  She nodded and said, “It’s real.”

  “Okay. What can I do you for?”

  “This is Officer Pittman with the Highway Patrol.”

  Abe put his three fingers on his chest and introduced himself like he was teaching someone how to pronounce his name. Adonis didn’t know if he was mocking or it had been a stupid impulse. Either way, he did it.

  “Abe White. And this is my family behind me. Now, why are you here?”

  “Sir, how many people do you have in the house right now?”

  Adonis’s eyes wandered behind him, only it wasn’t to recount the family. Her eyes darted behind Abe to see if there was any evidence of anyone else in the house.

  Abe said, “Why do you want to know? You got a warrant?”

  “Sir, we’re looking for very dangerous men. We’re not here because of you or your family.”

  The wife grabbed at Abe’s arm and jerked him back.

  She said, “Dangerous men? What men?”

  Shep interrupted.

  “Ma’am, it’s urgent that we find these men.”

  Adonis stepped back in and raised a hand for Shep to stay quiet.

  She asked,
“Mrs…?”

  “My name’s Abby White.”

  “Mrs. White, we’re searching for any sign of a group of very dangerous men. Did you all hear about the explosion at the Athenian Compound?”

  The whole family nodded, liked real-life bobbleheads.

  Abe said, “We heard about it.”

  “Several of the men responsible for it have escaped. We believe they’re in this area.”

  Terror overtook Abby’s face. Everyone else looked at each other like they were all keeping a secret.

  Adonis looked at Shep and nodded. He took out his cell phone and swiped and clicked like he was searching for something. He stopped at his Notes app and read off it.

  “Do you guys have a son named Walter?”

  Abby nodded so hard it looked like her bobblehead might fall off. She dug her fingers into Abe’s forearm.

  Abe said, “Yes. He’s not here right now, though. Why?”

  Shep continued to half-glance at his phone.

  “Did he call Sheriff Rourke about something to do with squatters at one of the farms nearby?”

  “Yes. He saw some lights on or something when he drove in late last night.”

  Adonis said, “It could be that the squatters are the men we’re looking for.”

  Shep said, “They might’ve found one of the farms and are hiding out there.”

  Abby said, “Oh, my.”

  Adonis repeated, “How many people are on the premises? Here I mean?”

  Abby said, “Six. Plus, our son. But he’s out.”

  “Where’s he?”

  Abe said, “He drove off to help a gentleman who came to the door. He said he broke down up the road.”

  “A man? What man?”

  Abe said, “Oh, an African fellow? He was tall. Maybe late forties.”

  Adonis asked, “African?”

  Foster stepped forward and gently shoved her mother aside.

  “He means a black guy. He wasn’t from Africa. Least he sounded American. There was no African accent or anything.”

  Adonis nodded and asked, “Who are you, ma’am?”

  “I’m Doctor White. Just call me Foster. The one who left with the black guy is my brother, Walter.”