She looked at Soto, who said his first words: “Fuck you.”
Rae said to him, “Let’s go for a ride, Stan.”
—
KORT HAD TRAILEDSoto to the town house complex, had checked the place out in two passes, finally agreed with Soto that he should go ahead and make the approach to the manager, whose apartment number they’d gotten from the town house complex’s website, along with a map of the complex.
She was a block behind when Soto turned into the parking lot, and she stopped on the side of the street, watching. He sat in the car for a couple of minutes, doing God knew what, then got out and walked toward an apartment door.
The rest of it happened like a bad dream: the cop from Darling’s place popped out from behind a car, pointing a pistol at Soto, and then she saw a tall black woman running across the parking lot carrying a black rifle, and she grabbed her phone but it was way too late and the whole thing was going up in smoke...
She’d been thinking about what Soto had said about giving everything up to the cops, to avoid the needle, and she felt the panic clutching at her throat. She’d never been arrested. Soto would give her up...
The big cop, Davenport, ran across the lot and disappeared into the town house like an actor in a silent movie, and the black woman went in behind him. Then she heard the shots... a machine gun, not Soto’s pistol. Was he dead? She put the car in gear and rolled toward the apartment complex...
—
THE MANin the cargo shorts came out the back door and asked, “What happened?”
“Sorry about that,” Lucas said. Bob had Soto by one arm, Rae had him by the other, Lucas was off to the side. “We had a complicated situation out front and he managed to get to your door. Didn’t want to risk a shot with civilians around. Like you.”
“He doesn’t look all that tough,” the man said. He was built like a construction worker, thick arms with a Statue of Liberty tattoo on the right bicep, a heavy gut. “I coulda kicked his ass.”
“He is the worst man you’ll ever see in person,” Lucas said. “He might even be worse than anyone you’ll ever see in the movies.”
“No kiddin’?” The man was checking out Soto again.
“No kiddin’.”
Rae and Bob were walking Soto around the building, to the front parking lot, and Lucas hurried to catch up. Bob had his phone out and was talking to the Addison police, saying, “It would be helpful if we could have a crime scene person come by...” and a second later, with a hand covering the phone’s microphone, he called to Lucas, “They’ll have some cops here in five, crime scene guy in ten.”
Lucas said, “Okay.”
Rae was asking Soto, “Who were you trailing? We know you were trailing one of us, and thought it might be...”
They had come out from behind the building and were walking toward Lucas’s Jeep. They would handcuff Soto to one of the steel seat supports and take him to the lockup at the federal building, until they could arrange something more permanent.
At that moment, the maroon Ford stopped on the street and a woman got out of the far side of the car and looked toward Lucas and the other three and Lucas saw the gun coming up and screamed, “Down, everybody, get down...” and his gun was coming up and as they all dropped to the ground, the woman swept them with a burst from an automatic rifle, and Lucas was banging away at the car with his.45 and Rae was struggling to get the M4 off her shoulder and then the woman was in the car and speeding away. Lucas’s mag was empty and he dropped it and slammed in another and he turned and looked and Rae had her M4 up but wasn’t firing, and Bob had his pistol up...
The Ford made a turn at the corner and was gone. Lucas ran halfway to the Jeep, realized that a chase would be hopeless—the Ford was out of sight for too long, he’d have no idea of where she went in the tangle of streets around the airport. He stopped, said, “Goddamnit,” and turned and hurried back to the others to see if anyone had been hurt.
Bob was on the phone again, calling out a description, and said, “Then get me to nine-one-one... Wait a minute, I’ll dial from here.”
Soto lay flat on the ground, faceup, eyes open and fixed. Rae still had her gun up, looking out at the surrounding streets, shook her head as Lucas walked back, and then they both walked over and looked down at Soto. Rae said, “My God.”
Soto’s chest was soaked with blood. He’d been hit at least a half dozen times, Lucas thought. When he, Bob, and Rae had dropped to the ground, Soto had stayed upright, maybe thinking he could run out to the woman’s car. Not a good idea.
Bob was talking to a 911 operator, giving a description of thefleeing car and where it was last seen. Rae was staring at the body. “What the hell? What the hell was that?”
Lucas said, “She wasn’t shooting at us. She was taking out a guy who might talk.”
Rae squatted next to Soto and shook her head. The man in the cargo shorts came out the front door, a beer in his hand, and looked at them and said, “Oh, boy. That’s... Oh, boy.”
—
AFTER THAT,it was paperwork and long conversations with bureaucrats at SOG and with Forte in Washington, and local cops coming and going, and the crime scene guy picking up the dropped revolver and brass and measuring distances. The medical examiner’s van came and Soto’s body went away, and a crew from the fire department washed away a six-foot-wide blood puddle on the tarmac.
The local police hadn’t seen the shooter’s car, except when they saw too many of them: the Addison police department stopped eight cars of the right description, but said they could’ve stopped a hundred, or a thousand, if they hadn’t given up first.
