Last part here, a few twists, time for tea I think.
Music matters? Even In The Quietest Moments. Then When the Levee Breaks.
Part III: Truth
Sara Rosenberg was an anomaly. An aberration. She was Jewish, a progressive white liberal, a Democrat, and the valedictorian of the latest class to graduate from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police’s rigorous Academy. She was physically fit and tough, both physically and emotionally. At five foot six inches and 110 pounds, she was about average height for female graduates of the academy, and a little lighter than that average. She was all muscle and ran a six-minute forty-second mile. Long blond hair and freckles, blue-green eyes over a pleasant enough smile, most considered Rosenberg cute, and most of the guys in the academy had tried hitting her up for dinner or a movie and been shot down. With no known boyfriend, it didn’t take long before the rumors started: she didn’t have a guy so she had to be a rug muncher.
Sara Rosenberg grew up in a progressive Jewish American family, which meant that she went to temple a couple of times a year, but only if absolutely necessary. Her parent’s home was in the Fox Chapel neighborhood, on Fairway Drive overlooking the Pittsburgh Field Club’s golf course. Everyone in her family was liberal, everyone watched MSNBC and everyone looked forward to Rachel Maddow’s nightly take on the state of the American political landscape. She was a graduate of the Shady Side Academy, with highest honors. She aced the SATs with a 1600 and had offers from Harvard and Princeton. She decided to stay in Pittsburgh and took a degree in History at Carnegie Mellon. She’d been exposed to public service in high school, at Shady Side, doing everything from working in homeless shelters to riding with ambulance crews and Pittsburgh cops.
And it was riding with the cops that had stuck with her.
It was plain enough to see that the world was coming apart at the seams everywhere you looked, but somewhere along the way Sara Rosenberg had decided that enough was enough. The world didn’t need more teachers or more accountants or lawyers. Pittsburgh needed cops. The bureau had been designed to function with about a thousand sworn officers on the street but by the mid-2020s that number had slipped to six hundred. The police were confronting deteriorating conditions throughout the city just at the time when young people had tuned out. To say that things were bleak was an understatement, but the commitment to public service inculcated at Shady Side, when combined with the experiences she shared during her many ride-alongs with Pittsburgh’s finest had been enough to make the decision easy.
Her parents were stunned. And furious.
They’d always assumed Sara would go to med school, preferably at Harvard where both her parents had studied. Becoming a cop was so far beneath their expectations that they both simply began to tune their daughter out.
And Sara knew then that she’d made the right choice.
Academy was tough, the hardest thing she’d ever done. Physically demanding, emotionally draining, yet most of the academics required little more than rote memorization and was not all that demanding. Tests were, however, stressful, because failure meant dismissal. Her academy class was interviewed by the local NBC affiliate for a segment on recruitment challenges faced by law enforcement agencies in Allegheny County, and when the reporter discovered who she was and that Cadet Rosenberg’s parents were the Rosenbergs of the Rosenberg Cardiovascular Clinic and that she had grown up in Fox Chapel…well…the story changed a little after that. It soon became a story about how everyone had to do their part, pull their weight if the city was going to survive the onslaught of criminal immigrant gangs invading the city. Sara did her best to answer all the reporter’s questions but hated being in this spotlight. But people recognized her after that, and some people even came up on the streets and thanked her.
Used to being the best at whatever she started, she took highest honors in the 33-week-long academy, and she thought she was well prepared to face life on the city’s mean streets. In order to find out whether or not this was in fact the case, she was slated to finish out her year of training by riding for three months with three Field Training Officers. First up, a month on Third Watch, or Evenings, working from four to midnight, then First Watch, or Deep Nights, from midnight to eight, and finally to Second Watch, or Days, from 0800 to four in the afternoon. At the end of that three-month rotation, she would ride with one of the department’s senior FTOs for a week, this being the last test before being cut loose and assigned to a precinct, or Zone.
All the senior FTOs had reputations. Some were on the mean side and these liked to create a tense, high-pressure atmosphere and see how the rookie handled stress. Others were the exact opposite, easy-going, almost laid-back officers who were no less observant, often taking their rookie to high-pressure encounters and seeing how they handled the change. There was a third type, as well. Cerebral. Nonjudgmental. Cold. Calculating. And almost all-knowing but like an empath, able to read people – like a book. There was only one FTO in the department like this third type, and he had a reputation. A bad one. Few people were assigned to ride with this FTO because few could take the pressure, and in the end, few rookies met his standards and ended up leaving the department.
Thomas Jefferson Warren, also known as Doc, was this third type of FTO.
He was an eighteen-year veteran of the department and the word around the academy was he’d been a Green Beret over there, in Afghanistan and Iraq. He’d been a medic and that was why people called him Doc. He was educated, had a Master’s degree in something esoteric, and apparently was still single and unattached, though in his mid-to-late 40s. He’d worked with the feds on an anti-gang task force and on drug interdiction programs with the DEA. He taught Aikido and the department’s street survival course and had been a motorcycle officer for five years before moving back to patrol after an accident. Most of the female officers in the department thought he was a hunk, which meant that most had tried to go out with him. None had succeeded. Word was he lived alone and spent all his off-duty time working one-on-one with kids before they got scooped up into livin’ the life. The word on the street was that no one in the department knew more about the city’s gangs than the Doc, so riding with him meant instant immersion in how gangs operated, and that meant working either in Zone 3, aka Shit City, or the projects and the hood around Garfield in Zone 5. And those two areas were parts of the city where cops were always walking on very thin ice.
And yet the Doc seemed welcome in the ‘hood.
Sara Rosenberg wanted to know why the Doc was so warmly accepted there, and how he’d pulled that off, because like everyone else she didn’t understand?
+++++
And yet when she first saw Thomas Jefferson Warren that afternoon he seemed disheveled, almost exhausted, like he’d been up for days. His eyes were red-rimmed and rheumy; his uniform looked slept in. This first impression was not at all what she’d expected.
She was already in their assigned patrol car, an almost brand-new Ford Explorer, silver and black with yellow accents. Parked under bare trees in the Zone 5 precinct parking lot at Washington and Highland, she was filling out the header information on their DAR, their Daily Activity Report, in the process making sure the computer terminal situated between the two front seats was linked to the computer in central dispatch.
Warren was walking out of the station with his briefcase, and her second impression was that this guy didn’t look like some kind of bad-ass special forces kung fu warrior. No, this old cop had gray hair and was as thin as a rail. Thin, as in sickly thin, like maybe too much exercise or not enough food. Or both.
The Doc opened the rear hatch and put his briefcase back there, then slammed it shut and went up to the front passenger seat. “You inventory the vehicle?” Warren asked softly.
“Yessir. Good inventory. The 870 and the M4 both checked, safeties on, rounds chambered.”
“Spare battery pack for your radio?”
“Uh, no sir. Do I need one?”
He nodded. “Yes, always.” His voice was distant, careworn and distant. Like ‘why don’t you know this already?’
“You want me to go back in and get one?”
“I brought two. I won’t tomorrow.” His meaning was clear, and he was letting her know she was still green, still a rookie.
“Yessir. Understood.”
“Okay. South on Washington, to Bennett. Hang a left and go slow, real slow.”
“Yessir. Did I miss something at briefing? We looking for something?”
His cell phone chirped, his personal phone, and he answered. “Tugboat. Go,” he said, then he listened, starting to cry at one point and a few seconds later he hung up.
“Sir? You alright?”
“Do I look alright, rookie?”
“No, Sergeant. You look upset.”
“Yeah? Well? So you have astute powers of observation, rookie. Any chance you know how to drive, and if so, would you? I’ll sort this shit out.”
She put the Ford in drive and turned out of the parking lot onto southbound Washington Boulevard. Traffic was afternoon rush hour heavy, thunderstorms had blown through an hour ago but the streets were wet, the air humid, lost somewhere between cool and turning colder. Third Watch units checking into service, dispatch already on the air, sending units to calls that they’d been holding during shift change. Accidents, a couple of bad ones. An in-progress burglary. An old man, naked, standing in the middle of the intersection at Broad and Center, screaming about the coming apocalypse to shoppers coming out of the Target there, paramedics already in route. The usual crap. Endless. Just fucking endless. And most of all, most of these calls were mindless. Stupid people doing stupid shit. Endlessly. Mindlessly.
Warren looked at his watch. One of those ‘smart’ watches stupid people suddenly couldn’t live without. An alarm had buzzed on his wrist, his pulse was almost one hundred so he leaned back, shut his eyes and did a minute of deep breathing exercises. “Okay, Rook, coming up on Bennett,” he sighed after he stifled a yawn. “And remember, go slow.”
“What are we looking for?”
“We aren’t. I am. You keep your eyes on the road and try not to run over anyone.”
She looked away, suppressed the desire to tell him to fuck off. For the last three months everyone she rode with had wanted to let her know just how dangerous and inexperienced she was. Not just her, but every rookie just out of the academy. But she already knew that. Already understood that academy was just the first step. And she had desperately wanted to earn her FTO’s trust, to show them that she was ready to watch and listen and learn, so why did these so-called training officers want to belittle her. Was it like in the Kubrick film about the Marines? Full Metal Jacket? Did belittling rookies, stripping each recruit’s ego bare, in effect dehumanizing them, and then rebuilding each one in the image of their drill sergeant, really make for better Marines? Or, in this case, cops? Apparently these FTOs still thought so, but this new one, Warren, was supposed to be different. He was the FTO who could wash her out with the wave of a hand, just because. His reputation, and the respect he commanded throughout the department – and around the city – was immense. She wanted his respect, of course, but wasn’t sure what she needed to do to get it.
“Slower,” Warren said.
She tried to see what he saw but nothing registered.
“Okay. Right on Lang,” he added, speaking so softly she could hardly hear him now.
A couple of blocks and as they approached the St. Charles Lwanga parish church he looked around attentively. “Turn into the lot across from the church, real slow, and stay close to the fence.”
As she turned into the lot she saw a black kid, sitting with his back up against a gray vinyl fence, almost invisible in the overgrown corner.
“Stop. Unlock the doors.”
The kid stood slowly and walked up to the Ford, got in behind Rosenberg. Warren turned and looked at the gangbanger; Sara Rosenberg just sat there, eyes scanning.
“How ya doin’, Broadway?”
The kid shook his head. “It’s bad out here, man. These Trennies, man, they be some mean shit.”
“You guys behind the hit?”
“Yeah man. They was waitin’ for us. You know how many of my homeys got dead?”
“Four. Last I heard, anyway. Three more in ICU, not looking real good.”
The kid shook his head. “They got my crib, shot it up good. Kid next door, his grandmother got hit too.”
“She need help?”
“No, Doc, she dead. What about Dres’?”
Warren nodded. “Yeah, it was his daughter.”
“Oh, man, that’s the shit.”
“What about the kid’s grandmother? Where’s the body at?”
“Trennies took the body, man. Like no crime, ya know?”
Doc nodded. “You got anything new?”
“Yeah, Doc, yeah. They got two more kids in they basement, more of that cuttin’ up shit goin’ down.”
“When was their last shipment?”
“Thursday. Last two Thursdays.”
“What about the kid next door to you? He okay?”
“Naw, man, he fucked up. Lost his mama in a drive-by, now this shit. Doc, he be like twelve, ya know? Go to school and all that shit. Don’t seem right, ya know?”
“Where is he now?”
“He hidin’, Doc. They after him.”
“Why?”
“He saw they faces, man! They gonna git him too so he be hidin’ deep now.”
“There’s too much rain now, Benny. He can’t stay down there.”
“It ain’t da rain, Doc. It da snakes and shit. Warm down there, ya know?”
“You with him?”
Benny Broadway nodded. With his gang decimated he had nowhere left to go but the sewers and nobody trusted the cops enough to go with them. Not even the Doc.
Warren pointed at the church across the street. “You need something to eat or just want to get out of the cold, Father Boyle will help. Door on the back, three knocks, pause, then one more.”
Benny nodded. “You gonna git them Trennies, Doc?”
Warren didn’t answer the question. “We’ll be back later, like around nine or so, if you need anything.”
“Couple of burgers if ya can, Doc. And something to sleep in.”
Warren nodded. “Okay. Be careful, Benny.”
Rosenberg watched as the kid slipped out of the Explorer, even here taking care to be quiet, to move quickly into the shadows.
“Okay,” Warren said to her, his voice now even softer, “up to Frankstown, take a right.”
She u-turned out of the parking lot and turned left, headed north. “You wanna tell me what’s going on?” she said sarcastically. “Or would you rather I be a good little girl and just sit here with my mouth shut?”
He ignored her, then pulled out a small UHF radio, one that was definitely not department issue. “Tanker, Tugboat.”
“Tugboat, go.”
“15-25, echo-1”
“Echo-1 received.”
Warren put the radio away and started scanning the road ahead. For lookouts, primarily, but also for anyone who looked like they might be flying a drone.
Rosenberg sighed, paid attention to traffic and kept her mouth shut. Warren was obviously working some kind of undercover op and she wasn’t going to be in the loop, at least for now, and she assumed he was playing her, seeing how she responded to these unconventional moves.
“Speed up a little, and look off to the left.”
“At?” she asked.
“Anything. Just look left.”
‘Now what?’ she wondered.
“Okay, slow, then right on Hale, then hang another right, on Kelly.”
“What going on?”
“Lookouts. Mexicans. With radios.”
“Where? I didn’t see anything…”
“I know.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“You don’t know what to look for, but you’re doin’ fine.”
“What? You mean, just sit here and look dumb?”
He nodded. “They know our patrol routes and routines, they know me and they know who’s riding with me this week, which means they already know who you are.”
“What? What are you talking about? How do you even know shit like that?”
“Because that’s what they do everywhere. Penetrate the locals. Get their people inside. Usually dispatchers, PSOs, sometimes just buy cops on the inside. They start gathering intel before they move into an area.”
“What did you mean by they know me?”
“You. Your family. Your parents are rich so they know not to bother trying to compromise you, but you’ll make a pretty good target if they want a hostage or to make a statement.”
“A statement?”
“Yeah, kill you, to send us a message to back the fuck off.”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter now. They’ve probably got a file on you and your family.”
Sara Rosenberg suddenly felt sick to her stomach.
“Don’t worry, kiddo. You’re not alone, not by any stretch, but I’ll need you to pay attention when I talk. No daydreaming, no inner voice shit. Listen. When I tell you stuff you gotta listen to everything I say. Okay?”
“Got it.”
“We’ve been working Tren de Aragua in Pennsylvania for a while, a couple of years, anyway. They absorbed parts of the Sinaloa Cartel on the North Side last year, and that marked their first big move into the city. We’ve been on ‘em ever since.”
“Who’s ‘we?’”
“The feds and the locals in the task force, and the relevant state agencies.”
“Do you know if what you said about my family is fact?”
He shrugged. “We’re never one hundred percent sure of anything, Rosenberg, at least not until we get one of their captains. Sooner or later we get our hands on someone who’ll sing.”
“You mean, like, what by that?”
“People always talk, Rosenberg. And their MO is the same, wherever they go. Penetrate the locals, find out who’s vulnerable, who’s broke, which cops gamble or do drugs, where the weak spots are inside local agencies, identify high value targets. The LAPD mapped all this shit out 20 years ago when they penetrated the cartels; Tren de Aragua is just following that playbook. Same shit when they move into a new neighborhood. ID the key players, the lookouts and mules, where meth is cookin’ or who’s cutting horse, and with what. ID the weak spots, the vulnerabilities, then take out the mules, cut off supply, negotiate with leadership and decapitate if they don’t go along.”
“You make it sound like a formula…”
“It is. The funny thing is…the same shit is goin’ down in Afghanistan, in Myanmar, Central Africa, you name it. It’s the basic counter-intel playbook. Nothing new. Man, it sucks when they don’t follow the playbook, sucks the big one when they pull off a surprise, even a little one. That’s when people get fuckin’ hurt.”
“Funny? You think this is funny?”
“Yeah, sure. Funny. Funny, as in funny as Hell. I’ve been doin this shit for more than 20 years and it never changes, they were doin’ it in ‘Nam and before we got there, too. And everyone says the spooks were financing their war and then brought it home to pay for the next one, but I doubt that’s true. Anyway, one way or another the stuff came home to roost, and we’ve been fighting it on our streets ever since. Like a poetic injustice, ya know; it’s a disease that never goes away. Like a wasting disease, eating us from the inside out.”
“I had a professor, an intro to international relations. Her thesis is that drugs have always been used by governments to control low income groups. Here, in France, all over Southeast Asia.”
Warren nodded. “Yeah, and one more time the whole thing is so tragic it’s funny. Like the Democrats were above that kind of shit. Right. And now that’s come back to bite ‘em in the ass.”
“Like a genie, once she’s out of her bottle you can’t get her back in. Why the Chinese keep flooding the market. No way to tear apart a society faster than to flood it with drugs.”
He looked at her and nodded. “You did History, right? At Carnegie Mellon?”
“Yup.”
“Okay, make a right here, keep an eye on the Yukon behind us.”
“The white car back there?”
“Yup. You gotta start memorizing front grill patterns. Helps you ID the soldiers they put on your tail. I think we just picked up Beni Navarro,” Warren said, reaching for the UHF radio. He flipped it on, then keyed the mic: “Tugboat, Lighthouse. Gonna need an airedale. Bravo November, black is white. Repeat, black is white.”
“Lighthouse received.”
“Excuse me,” Rosenberg said, “but what’s going on.”
“We’re moving a drone in to take a look at our tail.”
“Who’s this Ben Navarro?”
“Beni. He’s head of Tren de Aragua in Pennsylvania and Ohio, hangs out mainly in Pittsburgh these days, and Cleveland. Nasty son-of-a-bitch, right now he’s moving into Homewood and Hamilton, pushing out the Crips. Dos Hermanos. You’ll hear that a lot, the Lemon brothers, Porfirio Limones and his brother. We think his name is César. They just bought six houses on Oakwood, we’re picking up indications they’re tunneling up there, setting up a distribution network and safe houses.”
“What? Tunneling? Are you kidding?”
“Lighthouse, Tugboat, eyes on target, imaging now.”
“Roger,” Warren said.
“Lighthouse, Tugboat, positive ID on subject Lincoln Paul behind the wheel, Bravo November right front, two more in rear, thermal image only at this time.”
“Okay Sara, speed up a little, then turn on the overheads.”
“You wanna run code?”
“No siren for a minute; if they don’t break off we’ll go code-3 and see if that won’t shake ‘em.”
She accelerated to 50 miles per hour and turned on the overhead strobes, and almost instantly the white Yukon broke off and turned off on a side street. Warren keyed the mic again: “Tugboat, Lighthouse, follow target, track to and ID destination.”
“You want to slow down now?” Sara asked.
“Go to code-3, take Washington to the Highland Park Bridge, go to code-1 in a minute or so.”
She flipped on the siren and sped up, turned right on Washington and went silent about a minute before they passed the Zone 5 station. She slowed to 30 and kept in the right lane. “I think we picked up another tail,” she said, “when we turned on Washington.”
“Turn into the station, now.”
She just made the turn and Warren watched as a silver Suburban passed by, the driver staring at them as the large SUV roared past. There were at least four men in there and he was sure at least one of them had a rifle.
“Okay, get behind them,” he said, hanging on as she whipped the Ford into a tight u-turn, busting back into the northbound lanes, the silver Suburban now almost a half mile ahead. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, northbound Washington, silver Suburban ahead, armed men inside, now at the curve, now westbound towards the bridge.”
“Who’s Lighthouse?” Rosenberg said.
He ignored her. “Okay, they’re going for the bridge, northbound on Highland Park.”
Lighthouse acknowledged.
“Lighthouse is the command center, DEA/FBI anti-gang task force. They’ll be moving the Predator now, get eyes on the license plate.”
“The LP is 789 IPG2,” she said.
“You saw it?”
“Yeah, of course.”
He read off the info to Lighthouse and entered the data on the Ford’s mobile data computer, and the registration came back to a plumbing supply house out by the airport.
“That figures,” Warren sighed.
“Why?”
“They’ve got several cars plated there, some they use for legit work, others less so.”
“How close do you want me to get?”
“Two hundred yards for now. Lighthouse, subject vehicle now turning east on 28.”
“Airedale has the vehicle, you can break off now.”
“Roger.”
“Why aren’t we going to follow them?” Sara asked.
“We know who they are, where they’re going, so why provoke a confrontation when they’re not carrying product. They are sending a message. They know who you are and they’re letting us know they know, so like I said, you’re a target now, which means they know all about you and your family. We’ll have to put details on your father’s house and on their clinic, but we’ve got dozens of people under protective details right now, just here in the city.”
“I can’t fuckin’ believe this,” she sighed. “I don’t know you from Adam but you’re telling me a cartel knows all about me and my family?”
“As soon as you were assigned to ride in Zone 5, yeah.”
“Which means the department is penetrated?”
“You obviously weren’t listening to me.”
“I was. I just can’t believe it.”
He shook his head. “The reason these guys are doing so well is that most of their leadership has military experience, and when they need training they get it from the best. Retired Mossad. Wagner. Even retired Army. Just because they’re mean and ruthless doesn’t mean they’re stupid. By the way, in present circumstances, stupid means not learning from your mistakes.”
“You talking about them, or me?”
“If the shoe fit…”
“You saying I should quit?”
“Not at all. I am saying if you want to play in this league you need training. You need more training, more school, new skills.”
“Such as?”
“Put in two years here then go to the feds. Spend five years with them, more if you like the work. Come back here and make a real difference. You’ve got the basics down, now you need to sharpen your instincts, get to know the street. What goes down there, how people survive. You grew up riding horses and going to country clubs and summer camps. The street is an abstract concept to you right now so you’re dangerous, to yourself. If you want to change that, let me know by the end of our week together. If you don’t, no big deal. Go to traffic and work wrecks, or go to CID and work homicide. If you want to work gangs, let me know.”
“I can already answer that one. I’ve never been interested in gangs, and I’m still not.”
“Okay. What are you interested in?”
“Just patrol. Working a district.”
“The street, you mean?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Where? Fox Chapel? Where you grew up?”
“No, not at all. Here in the city.”
“And if the streets are being taken over by gangs, just where does that leave you?”
“Is that what it comes down to?”
“No, not really. You could work a beat downtown or over on the strip, do traffic control, take reports, put in your twenty, maybe get married along the way, have a couple kids. No shame in that. Then again, not too many History grads from Carnegie Mellon join the bureau. With your GPA you ought to be at Harvard or Georgetown but you’re not, so there must be something else going on.”
“You read my file?”
“And your transcripts. I even talked to a few of your professors.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Nothing but good things to say about you, too. Though everyone I talked to was disappointed in your decision to join the force, said it was a waste of talent. So you tell me. Is it?”
“Is it what?”
“Is this the best possible choice for Sara Rosenberg? Could she do more meaningful things, such as, say, become a physician like her parents? Or a lawyer? Or work for the FBI or CIA?”
“Or…why not just be a housewife? Is that what you’re telling me?”
He grinned. “Pretty big chip on that shoulder, Sara.”
“Or maybe I should run off and be a stripper? Huh? Would that make you happy?”
He laughed at her anger, shook his head as he looked out the window at the passing landscape. “Never considered that one, Sara. You’re cute, but somehow I don’t see you dancing.”
“I’m cute?”
“Yeah, of course you’re cute. You not notice that before?”
“Me? No, not really. I always thought I was kinda frumpy.”
“Frumpy? Now I haven’t heard that one in a long time. Frumpy, huh. I’ll have to think about that. No. No way. You’re cute, not frumpy.”
She glanced at him quickly then back at the road ahead, and she shook her head, too. “You look almost like you’re sick. Way too skinny. Are you?”
“Am I what? Sick?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You been to a doc recently?”
“Few months ago, but I run, Sara. I mean I do marathons and triathlons, stuff like that.”
“Oh. I guess that would explain it, but even so you look pale. Like I said. Sick.”
“Okay. I’ll get a checkup.”
“Thanks.”
“See? Your instincts are maternal, protective, and grounded in empathy,” he said. “Like you’re a born physician.”
“Why are you pushing that on me?”
“Because you look out of place, the uniform doesn’t look right on you.”
“Wow, Warren. That’s harsh.”
“Call me Doc, would you? All my friends do.”
“We going to be friends?”
“Never know.”
“Why Doc?”
“Medic. The name stuck.”
“Now there’s some major league irony for you, ladies and gentlemen!”
“Yeah, ain’t that the truth.”
“So, why didn’t you go to med school?”
He sighed, leaned back a little and looked ahead, then at the computer screen between them. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, is the target on 76 now?”
“Affirmative.”
The sun was going down and darkness was coming on fast. He looked at his phone, checked the current temperature and the forecast for the night. “Shit, going down to 20 tonight. Hard freeze.”
“Yeah? What are you thinking?”
“Those two kids, hiding down in the sewers in sub-zero conditions. Weather will kill them before the Trennies can get to them.”
“Options?”
“None that would be worth a damn. Get ‘em to a shelter and they’d get it there. Take ‘em into protective custody and odds are someone on the inside would get to them. Best option is probably sleeping bags and a small camp stove with some food, but now I’m not so sure we didn’t blow their cover.”
“You think we might have led them to the kid?”
“It’s possible.” He double-checked the time again, seemed to make up his mind about something. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, code zebra.”
“Lighthouse, Tugboat, four hours.”
“Tugboat to all units, stop repeat go. Say again, stop repeat go.”
“What was that all about?” Rosenberg asked.
He turned and looked at her. “So, what do you want for dinner?”
“What?”
“You like Thai? The place on Ellsworth is in-district.”
“What?”
Doc shook his head, sighed. “Man, you got to put shit where it belongs. Compartmentalize, prioritize. Time management. Our slot to eat begins in twenty minutes, miss that and you won’t eat ’til tomorrow morning. We’re going to be writing reports all night as it is…”
“What? Wait, how do you know that? We haven’t even been on one report call.”
“It’s early, Rookie.” He looked out the window and a chill ran down his spine. “And our night hasn’t even started yet.”
+++++
After dinner, green curry and spring rolls times two, he took over driving. After checking back into service he waited about five minutes then called in again: “3 X-ray 77, show us out sixty-one Union Charlie.”
“2130,” dispatch replied with the time checked out.
“I’ve never heard that one before. What is it?” Sara asked.
“We’re checked out on a special assignment, narcotics related.”
He was pulling into the massive homeless shelter at Lincoln and Trenton, then under the carport. “Wait here,” he said as he got out of the Explorer and disappeared inside the door that read Men’s Shelter. He came back about five minutes later with two trash bags full of stuff, and he put these in the rear cargo compartment. Back behind the wheel he took off for the ‘hood again.
Rosenberg knew now not to ask. ‘Just sit back and pay attention,’ she told herself.
And a few minutes later he pulled out the little UHF radio. “Tugboat, Lighthouse. Has the party started yet?”
“Lighthouse. Party started.”
He put the radio away then turned on Oakwood and drove by the Limones brother’s house slowly, giving their lookouts time to respond, then Warren turned down Hamilton before making a left on Hale, but he stopped at Mumford. There was a plumber’s van parked outside the little Baptist church, and Warren looked up at the top of the three-story crenelated tower and her eyes followed his. Two men were up there with some kind of tripod mounted device, but he made a left on Mumford and drove back up Hamilton until the Ford was facing the Limones house again.
“Do you smell gas?” Doc asked.
She rolled her window down and took a sniff. “Yeah, I do.”
He made a right on Oakwood. “Call it in, would you?”
She got dispatch, told them to call the gas company and the fire department, and Warren made another turn, right this time, and he circled around to the little church again and parked behind the plumber’s van. She saw the men up there again, only now the two men were aiming a bright green laser at the Limones’ house.
“You’ll want to shut your eyes now,” Warren said, and as she turned to look at him a concussive roar filled the night sky. She turned in time to see a huge fireball erupting from the Limones’ house, then heard windows shattering all over the neighborhood. A second later the house next to the Limones house went up in a second concussive blast, then the next house went, and the next.
“Jesus Fucking Christ!” she yelled. “What the fucking Hell was that!?”
“Gas leak,” Doc said as he watched the two ‘plumbers’ hop in the van and drive away. “You better call it in. Advise four houses are involved.” He drove over to Hamilton and got as close to the raging inferno as he dared, then he stepped out of the Ford, pulling out the UHF again and calling it in. “Tugboat, Lighthouse, Charlie Echo Paul high order zero.” He put the little radio in his coat pocket and watched as the first fire trucks arrived on scene, then he leaned in and spoke to her. “Okay, let’s go take some notes for our report.”
She looked at him, shellshocked.
“No? Okay, why don’t you just sit there. I’ll be back in a few.”
She sat there for a minute then got out and followed him up Hamilton. Warren was up there talking to the Fire Department’s on scene incident commander, telling him about the gas leak, and she listened to his explanation with a growing sense of unease. Like he was lying his ass off. And the Assistant Fire Chief was doing his part, taking information he knew was a lie and dutifully writing it all down. Four pumpers were on scene now, flooding the hillside with water and fire retardants, getting the four fires under control, and she looked around at all the gawkers that were gathering on the sidewalks across the street from the blazing houses, then she looked back through the trees, noted the clear sightline between the little church and the houses.
Sara Rosenberg had zero military training. She had never heard of a laser guided bomb, had no idea what kind of ground or aerial support was required to use these devices, but any idiot could smell the air and this air smelled all wrong. Strong chemicals lingered in the air, but once again she had no idea what it was she was smelling, or where this foul odor had come from.
Could it have come from a gas leak? Sure. Maybe.
‘Just what the hell was that?’ she asked herself. ‘Who were those guys up there? Why was Doc so interested in them?’
Yet she had no idea she was being played.
Several vans appeared, local TV stations. Cameramen got out and set up tripods, reporters roamed the crowds, looking for eyewitnesses. One of them spotted Sara; this reporter had done the first in-depth report about Sara in the academy and immediately recognized her. Warren watched this and smiled.
The reporter was just doing her job, the narrative was simply being massaged a little in real time, shaped as circumstances warranted. Doc watched the interview, noted how easily Sara slipped into the role. Authoritative, easy going in front of the camera, a natural.
“So what can you tell us?” the reporter asked. “Do you know what happened?”
“My partner and I were patrolling the area and we smelled gas. We called it in but less than a minute later this house went up, then the next three, over there. As soon as these fires die down a little we’ll search for survivors…”
‘And there won’t be any,’ Warren said to himself as he walked over and stood behind Sara. Very deliberate. Very visible. When regional leaders of Tren de Aragua saw him standing there they would understand that this was no gas leak. They would understand that they needed to pull out of Pittsburgh, move on to greener pastures – while they still could – because the gloves had come off. This was just the next phase in the constantly evolving war on drugs, but things change. They always do.
+++++
Back in their patrol car. Sara behind the wheel again. Still clueless.
The UHF radio in Warren’s pocket chirps. Incoming call. He pulls it out, puts the earphone in his right ear, away from her. “Tugboat. Go.”
He listens. His jaw clenches. He pulls out a notepad and starts writing.
“Just three?” he asks. “Okay. On our way.”
She looks at him as they pull up at a traffic light.
“Turn here,” he commands.
“Left?”
“Yes, left.” Anger, frustration. But way more anger. “Wood to Moosehart, turn right and go up the hill.”
Soon they are patrolling behind the house on Oakwood. And it soon becomes clear that three vans are up here searching, too. Dark gray vans, no windows. They stop at a stop sign and one of the vans pulls up alongside, driver’s door to driver’s door. Window rolls down in the van.
“Window down, please,” Warren tells her. She complies.
Sara hears radio chatter. The van’s interior is dimly lit – blood red.
The driver speaks. He ignores Sara. “He’s in the silver Yukon, on 76 eastbound.”
Warren crosses his forearms over his chest and scowls, then he nods. “Parker know?”
“Aye, sir. You want him? Need to talk to him?”
“No, not necessary.”
The van drives off. Sara sits there, speechless. “So, Navarro got out?” she asked.
He looked at her slowly, carefully, measuring her, then he nodded. “They’ve got tunnels all under this hill, safe houses everywhere. He must’ve been down there in one of them.”
“When the bombs hit, you mean?”
He made eye contact again, as he turned up the heat on the AC panel. “Getting cold out, isn’t it?”
“You enjoy speaking in metaphors, don’t you?”
“No, actually, I’m cold.”
“Oh. Why don’t you put a heavier coat on?”
“Forgot to bring it.”
“That’s a rookie’s excuse, Warren,” she said, smiling.
“Ain’t that the truth. So, I asked you earlier, where do you see yourself in a few years.”
“I said I wasn’t sure yet, didn’t I…?”
“That you did.”
She’d made up her mind an hour ago, but here it was. “I want to know what you know. I want to be able to pull off what you just pulled off.”
He sighed, nodding his head as he slouched back in his seat. “After I came back from The Stan…”
“The what?”
“Afghanistan. After I came back to the city I enrolled at Pitt. Sociology. I was so sure I wanted to go into social work. You know. Make a difference. Man, there were drugs everywhere, and everywhere we went we ran into that shit. Homeless people? Homeless because of drugs. People getting out of prison? In prison on drug charges. Even when a crime wasn’t obviously about drugs you could dig a little deeper and find out drugs were behind whatever it was that landed them in jail. And the cops, they’re like the little Dutch boy with his fingers in the dyke, ya know. You plug one leak and two more start on the other end of the dam. Every time we thought we’d made progress another torrent would break open and wash away all our progress, and pretty soon we realized there was no way to keep up. You know, back in the 90s there were more than a thousand cops in the bureau; now there are barely six hundred. Kids aren’t interested, even though the money these days is pretty good. Same with the armed services. Can’t meet enlistment goals, sometimes by fifty percent. We can’t fill an academy class. Used to be 40 in a class, then 30, and now it’s 20-something.”
“I know. That’s why I…”
“I know that’s why you joined, Sara. Believe me, I know. But we need 300 more just like you and that ain’t happening. And because it’s not happening we’ve had to change tactics. Another executive order, from the White House. Get the drugs off the street. At any cost. And this order is off the books. Secret. Go after the dealers and if that doesn’t work we’ll go after the end user, but Sara, there aren’t enough jails in the world if we go down that road. We have to make this work or society is going to be fundamentally altered. As in militarized.”
“Logical,” she said. “And probably inevitable. Half the country has been sliding down into the sewers for damn near a hundred years, ever since the Chinese started flooding California with opium.”
“Yeah, I know. They did it to the British in Hong Kong, and then in Burma and India. And it worked, too. The Brits are gone from Asia now, and pretty soon we’ll be gone from the world stage, unless we can turn this ship around.”
“So,” she said, “what you’re saying is that action speaks louder than public policy pronouncements, feasibility studies, and congressional subcommittees. Is that about right?”
Warren took out his cell phone and quick-dialed a number. “You still up?” – then – “Mind if I come over?” He rang off and turned to her, then nodded his head. “I want you to meet someone.”
“Okay. Now?”
“Yeah. Your old neighborhood. Raynor Road. Let’s go.”
It took a half hour but he directed her to a huge estate behind a stone wall, entry blocked by a motorized wrought-iron gate, open at the moment, and the reason why soon apparent. There were a half dozen black Suburbans parked beside the massive three-car garage, and at least one armed guard standing beside every window or door Sara could see. She parked the Explorer and followed Warren up to the front door; the door opened before they reached the brick porch and Sara immediately recognized Senator Andre Lutz. His wife, Judge Amari Brown-Lutz, was by his side. Both were distraught.
But when Dre’ Loos saw his old friend he came forward and the two men hugged. Both were soon crying; Sara Rosenberg was confused. She followed the men into the house, noting that the judge had suddenly disappeared. They walked into an immense living room, a huge, lighted swimming pool visible on the far side of the room, on the far side of the largest windows Sara had ever seen. Her father’s house was not far from this place but it wasn’t even half this size, so she was kind of impressed. The furnishings were kind of ‘country-French’ and quietly elegant, the art on the walls looked expensive, like they’d be in museums one day. Federal agents with earpieces dangling stood by the windows, another was just visible out by the pool wearing night vision goggles.
Judge Brown returned with two young boys in tow; when they saw Doc Warren they ran across the room and jumped into his outstretched arms as he knelt to catch them. The judge introduced herself to Sara, then the Senator did, as well.
“We’ve heard so much about you,” Andre told her. “We were hoping we’d get to meet you, just not under these circumstances.”
Warren stood and kind of coughed a little, interrupting his friend. “Dre’, she’s still in the dark about Alex. I’m still getting her up to speed.”
“I thought she started with you last week?” he said, startled.
“No, sorry, but this was her first night riding with me.”
“Ah.” The Senator turned and faced Sara, his eyes boring into her. “How was it out there tonight?”
“Informative, to say the least. And instructive. Sergeant Warren is a good teacher.”
“Always has been,” Dre’ said. “Would either of you like something to drink? Ginger ale, a Coke?”
Both shook their heads; the two little boys were clinging to Warren, begging for attention. He knelt and picked them both up and walked to the windows that looked out over the swimming pool, leaving Sara with the Senator and his wife.
“So, the story here is they got our daughter about three weeks ago. I was in D.C. and our nanny was supposed to pick up Alex, uh, Alexandra, from kindergarten. Turned out the girl worked for this Navarro character, for Tren de Aragua. We got a ransom note a few days later. We learned last Friday that they killed her…”
Judge Brown excused herself, walked off into the house.
“My wife is not taking this well. She feels it was her fault.”
“Why?” Sara asked.
“She’s refused protective details for over a year, ever since we started getting threats from them. I don’t think any of us ever figured they’d go after our kids. That’s always been off limits, but these guys have been rewriting the rules for a while now. Well, this was the straw that broke the camel’s back. The President has said ‘no more,’ no more Mr Nice Guy. Use whatever means are necessary. So tonight was our first move.”
“Are we going to wait for them to respond?”
Dre’ shook his head. “No. We’re moving against them in Florida and Texas tonight, too. Tomorrow the attacks will escalate to known hideouts in Venezuela and Panama. We’re also coordinating with agencies in Spain and Portugal, and we’ll be hitting them there this week.”
“I’m sorry about your daughter, sir. I, well, I don’t know what else to say.”
“I appreciate that. All in all, we just wanted to meet you, but after you’d been with the Doc for a week…”
“Tonight pretty much decided things for me, sir. I’m all in.”
“Well, you finish up your week with Thomas and we’ll have our conversation then.”
“Thomas, sir?”
When he heard that, Senator Lutz started laughing until he was red in the face.
+++++
“He said I’m supposed to call you Hooker from now on.”
“Oh he did, did he?” Warren sighed.
“Why? Why Hooker?”
“Oh, who knows? You’re not, by any chance, a William Shatner fan, are you?”
“Who’s that?”
Warren smiled and looked out the window as she steered the Explorer over the Highland Park Bridge one more time on their way back to their district. “You know, I’m not sure.”
“Oh. Okay. Those kids sure seem to love you…”
“I’m their Godfather.”
“Really? How’d that come about?”
“Dre’ and I go way back, all the way to grad school.”
“In sociology? Both of you?”
“That’s a fact.”
“So, you knew Alexandra?”
“Yup.”
“Well?”
“Yup.”
“And you don’t want to talk about it, right?”
“Yup. I do want to get those sleeping bags over to the boys.”
“Back to that church?”
“Yup.”
She shook her head and drove back to the ‘hood, to the empty church parking lot, and as they pulled in she was the first to see the boy. He was face down in a pile of leaves, and the boy wasn’t moving.
“Oh, goddamn, no,” the Doc sighed, grabbing the M4 carbine from under his seat and then running over to the body.
He rolled the still-warm body over, and saw the catastrophic bullet wound in the center of Benny’s forehead. “Turn off the headlights, now!” he shouted. “Get the 870 after you call us out on a homicide at this location, then take cover…”
The window inches behind her head exploded; a split second later the sound of the gunshot arrived and she felt little chunks of tempered glass rain down on her back as she ducked low and pulled her door to. Another round slammed into the dashboard and bits of plastic splintered the back of her neck as she reached for the radio’s mic.
“3 X-ray 77,” she yelled into the mic, “33 our location, shots fired at our squad, one vic on the ground…”
Another round slammed into the Ford’s door and everyone listening heard her scream in pain as the bullet tore into her thigh. She pulled herself over the center console and out Warren’s door, then turned and pulled the Remington 870 out.
“You hit?” she called out.
No reply.
Two more rounds fired, then four more, different sound from this one. Four more of the same, then two more. Sirens converging. A helicopter getting closer. She pulled out her hand unit and tried to talk: “3 X-ray 77, I think I’m hit…”
Sirens getting close, engines under heavy acceleration. Tires squealing, Someone over her, moving her gently. She opened her eyes and looked up, saw Warren bent over her legs and wondered when she’d fallen. She tried to say something, anything, but everything was turning cold and white and she hated to admit it just then, even to herself, but she was starting to feel a little afraid.
Coda
Damarius King was at a crossroads, because he’d never seen anything like this. Never, in all his thirteen years. The Christmas tree was huge. The number of presents under the sagging branches was perplexing. Daunting. Because some of them had his name on them. Nothing made sense here, like sometimes his dreams made no sense.
He’d always loved football and knew he was supposed to love the Steelers, but like everything else in this place he didn’t understand why. Because he had two brothers now, even though they weren’t really his brothers. He had a mother, too. A real mother, even though she wasn’t really his mother. But bestest of all was his dad, even though he wasn’t really his father. But his dad had been a Pittsburgh Steeler and that made up for a lot.
He’d never had a big dinner on Christmas Eve, had never watched old TV shows about Christmas, and everyone had looked around like they were kind of sorry when he told them this was his first Christmas tree. His grandmother had never been able to afford a tree, or even Christmas presents, for that matter. He was sorry he’d mentioned it because he didn’t like that look on their faces, that look caught somewhere between pity and regret. Every time he saw that look on their faces he felt like he didn’t really belong here, even though his new dad said he did.
He was sitting beside the tree now, looking at the lights. His little brothers were sitting beside him, staring at the tree then looking at all the presents spilling out onto the floor, and his dad was sitting in a chair not too far away, looking at the tree with grim satisfaction etched across his face. Weird music was playing, some old man dreaming of a white Christmas. His mom came in with hot chocolate and he loved that stuff, then she went and sat with her husband.
A while later and his dad said it was time for bed and he followed his brothers down the long hallway to their bedrooms. There were big windows here, windows with real glass that didn’t need to be boarded up because no one shot up this ‘hood. He had his own room now, too, and his own computer. He had a nice collection of astronomy programs on it and he was learning the names of all the constellations, and the names of all the planets in the solar system. His dad had taken them all to the planetarium and that had been the best day ever, and when he got lonely he looked at the pictures he’d taken that day and he remembered his grandmother at times like that. He remembered the drugs and BennyB and those last three or four nights in the sewer after she was killed.
How Benny had told him to stay put, to not leave the sewer no matter what he heard. Then all those gunshots, all that screaming. Helicopters and those lights that were so bright they almost looked blue, sirens and more gunshots. He’d climbed up that rusty old ladder and looked around and it had been snowing then. And someone was looking for him, calling his name. A cop, an old white guy, and the sun was starting to come up then and the cop had seen him.
And everything had started to change after that.
The old cop. He’d made all this happen. Uncle Doc.
Damarius King still didn’t understand, and while he liked having a room all his own in a way he liked his old room better. He’d been able to lay there in his old room and look up through the shattered ceiling at the stars, and he missed that.
+++++
His brothers got him up early. Way too early. Some shit about Santa Claus.
And they couldn’t go to the living room yet, couldn’t go see the presents under the tree. Mom was making pancakes, huge suckers bigger than a Frisbee. And bacon. And oh God, the maple syrup…that stuff was so good.
And then Uncle Doc came in with his girlfriend, Sara. She was still walking with a cane and she wasn’t a cop anymore. She was going to go back to school to be a doctor. Uncle Doc came over and hugged his mom, then the same with his dad, then he came and sat down beside Damarius.
“How you doin’, kiddo?”
“Good.” He didn’t know why, but he still felt small next to his uncle, almost afraid to talk.
“Looks like some good presents out there. You must’ve been a good kid this year.”
Damarius nodded.
“I got you a present too, if that’s okay…?”
Damarius looked down and shrugged. Warren looked at Dre’ who just shook his head.
They went out to the tree after that and Damarius saw a big orange telescope over by the window that hadn’t been there last night, and his uncle told him Santa had brought it for him because he’d been such a good boy and that didn’t make sense because why had Santa never come before? Had he been bad? And what was he doing now that made him good?
He had other presents. A Steelers helmet, a real football just like the pros used, some new programs for his computer. Math programs, and more science stuff like an atlas of the Moon and he couldn’t wait to get them loaded but that telescope seemed to be calling his name so he went over and looked at it. And Uncle Doc came over too. He explained how everything worked.
“Will you come over and help me use it?” Damarius asked.
“Sure. Sure I will. You know it, kiddo.”
“Like tonight?”
“If the sky’s clear, sure, but we don’t have to wait until tonight. You’ve got a special filter that lets you look at the sun.”
“I do?”
“Yup. Sure do. I made sure Santa brought you one, ‘cause you’ve been such a brave kiddo this year…”
“Brave? What do you mean?”
“Well, lots of bad things happened, right? And you didn’t give up. You kept trying hard in school, and you’ve been trying real hard ever since that night…”
“That was a bad night.”
“Yes it was,” Doc sighed. “Yes, it surely was.”
Sara was watching them and there it was, the reason why she loved Doc, and always would.
+++++
MaryAnn and Aaron were in the kitchen, putting the finishing touches on their Christmas Dinner. Sarah Caldwell was in her room, still getting dressed, still stressing about her clothes. She finished her hair and then went downstairs. She plugged in the lights and their Christmas tree came back to life, though all their presents had been cleared away.
The little bell rang and Sarah scampered off to his room.
Peter Wells looked regal, though he habitually wore turtlenecks these days – to hide the scar on his neck. Still, he had that manner about him. Wealthy, like a patrician. And wealthy people wore navy blue cashmere turtlenecks, didn’t they? She helped him into his wheelchair and pushed him out to the living room, to the big window next to the Christmas tree.
“You three did such a marvelous job this year,” Peter Wells said as he gazed up at the tree, “I do so hate to take this one down. Maybe we could leave it up for a while? To the New Year, perhaps?”
“There’s no law that says we can’t,” MaryAnn said as she carried a platter of something to the dining room table.
“I’m with you, Dr. Wells,” Aaron sighed. “You know, they grow on you.”
“When are our guests arriving?” Peter Wells asked.
“They should be here momentarily,” MaryAnn said. “They’re just looking for a parking place.”
“And what have you two been up to down here?” Wells asked. “It smells just heavenly…”
Aaron and MaryAnn smiled. “Gravlox, lobster bisque, endive salad, and prime rib.” Mary Ann sighed seductively, adding coquettishly: “And a special treat for dessert.”
“Dear God, how on earth could anyone top that!” Wells smiled expansively, as always admiring MaryAnn’s skills in the kitchen, and letting her know how much he appreciated them. And her.
The doorbell chimed and Sarah took off, and came back a moment later with the evening’s guests of honor, Sergeant Thomas Jefferson Warren of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police and his fiancé, Sara Rosenberg.
“There he is!” Wells cried. “My hero!”
Warren looked down and shook his head, his arms full of Christmas presents he’d wrapped himself; he carried the loot over to the glittering tree and put them there. “None of that hero stuff tonight, Dr Wells. I was just doing my job and you know it.”
“Such modesty does not become you, my lad. If not for you at least two of us wouldn’t be here to enjoy this night, and you have our eternal thanks, young man.”
Warren walked over and took his new friend’s hand. “Right place at the right time, sir. Now, how are you doing.”
“Me? I’m doing quite well, thank you. Yes, quite well. And Miss Rosenberg, you’re looking elegant tonight, and walking much better than the last time I saw you.”
“I am, thanks,” Sara said. “Still, I have days…”
“Ah, yes, don’t we all,” Wells replied warmly. “Now, would either of you care for something warm, or perhaps something with a little kick to it?”
Soon they were all gathered at the table, enjoying the feast MaryAnn had prepared, then the conversation turned to more recent events.
“So, Sergeant Warren,” Peter Wells said, and he always addressed Doc formally when the Senior VP of Intelligence for the Rand Corporation wanted to discuss matters of state, “now that the president has invoked war powers how are things progressing?”
“Well sir, the so-called ‘soft war’ in Mexico has been partially successful. The Juarez cartel in particular has been hammered into irrelevance, but our insertions have been limited to cross-border ops so far and that limits us to moving only about a hundred miles into the interior. What many in Washington don’t understand is the terrain in the northern Sierra Madre has many of the same characteristics as the foothills west of Da Nang, in Vietnam. This is air-cav territory, sir…”
“Yes, I know, I know, but I’m more interested in progress here in our cities.”
“That’s harder to quantify, Dr Wells. Using Predators and Reapers over our cities has generated some serious political pushback, despite recent successes. For example, our strikes out on Oakwood were more than effective. Those deep penetrator warheads got down to the depth where most of their tunnels were located, and as you’ll recall, we sent in Delta Force to take out the rest of the Trennies in the area…”
“How many got away?” Sarah Caldwell asked.
“The two that jumped you, Dr Wells, including their regional leader and his kid brother…”
“And that was good shooting, Sergeant,” Peter Wells said.
“I’m still not sure how I did that,” Warren sighed. “That ball lightning…man…that scared the crap out of me…”
“You’re not the only one,” MaryAnn added, a shiver running down her spine as she remembered bailing out of the Subaru to help the stricken Wells, only to see that thing floating across the lawn and vaporizing Navarro.
“Anyway, We had about fifty Delta Force operators working Hamilton and Garfield going door to door, house to house, and it was just like Fallujah. Cartel and Crips dug in like ticks.”
“What was the final tally, do you know?”
Warren nodded, cleared his throat. “Sir, these figures are still classified.”
“You can speak freely here, Sergeant. We’re among friends.”
Warren looked down, and nodded. “Aye, sir. We lost twenty men, and took out 270-plus. Most of that latter figure includes gang members under 17 years old, all heavily armed but undisciplined and with no effective leadership cadre. Unsophisticated, I guess you could say. No booby traps, no hidden mines. It was a straightforward op, sir, but we’ll never really know how many of those people were collateral kills. Several elderly women are in that body count, all unarmed…”
“But do you have any proof that our men killed them?”
“Not really, sir. Most of the gang members were using the 5.56 NATO round, same as our guys, so there wasn’t any real way to differentiate at autopsy.”
“And if not for you, Sergeant, I would have been on the coroner’s slab. Don’t you ever forget that? We’ve been at war for three decades, only we’ve just now responded. It will take time to root these invaders from our cities.”
“I know, sir.”
“Now, how was the boy? Damarius?”
“I guess I’d call it PTSD, sir. He’s still withdrawn and suspicious…”
“You must learn to put yourself in his shoes, Thomas.”
“I know, sir. Still, it’s difficult. His experience of our world was limited…”
“From the photographs I’ve seen, Thomas, those people were living almost like animals. Fearful and in hiding, not sure where the next barrage would come from. Who was a friend, who was a predator? Impossible way to live, really. We can’t have an engaged democracy while people are living like that.”
“I think this will be the work of generations, sir. If we have the political will to restore these people’s lives and not to simply blame them and shove them aside.”
“Oh, that will happen,” Wells said, “but then again I’m a pessimist when it comes to the relations between races. And it’s not just our problem, is it?”
“No sir. Immigration crackdowns in Europe have proven that beyond any reasonable doubt.”
“Oh, it’s not limited to just Europe, Sergeant,” Wells sighed. “Religious intolerance plays its fair share, too. And it’s odd, don’t you think, that no one offered to take in the Palestinians?”
“Nobody wants that kind of trouble, sir.”
“Exactly. But is that not racism?”
Warren smiled. “No sir, it’s realism.”
Wells smiled too, steepling his hands over his chest as he looked at the police officer. “Realism has always been a loaded word, Thomas. Rooted in the word reality and so often at odds with words like idealism, and even pessimism, yet how do we proceed if we don’t first acknowledge the reality of the current situation. I fear most of all that we don’t have time to waste coming to terms with all our inadvertent climate modifications, to adjust policy to meet the realities of the current situation. Fighting wars wastes the time available. These conflicts distract us from the work that needs to be done to mitigate what we can, while we still may. We must build resilience and sustainability as we confront this future, and not fight endless brush wars…
And in an air conditioning duct above the dining room table, a small blue sphere no larger than a mote of dust listened to this exchange. The listeners far, far away took note of what was said – and wondered what to do next.
(c)2025 adrian leverkühn | abw | this is fiction, every word of it.
Adrian Leverkühn Writes 