He never expected them to surrender-and they didn’t. As soon as he saw one of them unsling a rifle from his shoulder and level it, he opened fire, aiming three rounds each at the five gunmen he could see across the street.
He saw them jerk and jump as the rounds hit, but they didn’t go down. Two of them leveled big assault rifles with huge banana magazines at him. Staying low, LaFortier ran up J Street to a nearby parked car and crouched behind the left rear fender, again shielded by the engine block, seconds before the suspects opened fire. They peppered his squad car with heavy-caliber automatic-rifle fire, shattering the windshield and blowing out the two left tires, and stopped shooting only when they finally shot out the searchlight.
“Shots fired, shots fired!” LaFortier shouted into his radio. “Heavy automatic-rifle fire coming from the alley, two suspects with rifles, possibly all five have automatic rifles. Suspects are wearing body armor too. Go for head shots, repeat, go for head shots!”
“Get out of there, Cargo!” he heard Lamont yell in the radio. “Clear out east to Seventh or meet up with the unit on Sixth. John Twelve and John Fourteen, John Twenty-One is coming your way. Cover him.”
LaFortier knew that Seventh Street had more units, so he decided to head toward Sixth. “This is John Twenty-One, I’m headed west down J.” He dropped the magazine from his SIG and immediately slammed home another one. Time to get the hell out…
Just then, a cop’s worst nightmare appeared before his eyes. A lone gunman, looking as if he was covered in a suit of black armor, marched out of the alley onto J Street with his AK-74 leveled. When he was thirty feet from the abandoned squad car, he shouted, “Tod allen Polizisten!” and opened fire, spraying it in a side-to-side sweeping motion on full auto. Then he continued to march forward, raising the rifle up so he could aim it at anything that moved on the other side of the car. His walk was deliberate, no hurry in his steps, no effort to hide himself-just as if he were a pedestrian crossing the street.
LaFortier dropped the radio, aimed, and fired five rounds at the guy’s head. He knew he was shooting back toward Seventh, toward Lamont and the other units, but it was a chance he had to take-this guy had to go. One of his shots must have hit flesh because the guy went down and LaFortier heard him shout, “Achtung! Ich bin angeschossen! Ich bin angeschossen!” as he clutched his neck and began to crawl back toward the alley.
But LaFortier didn’t see the second guy until it was too late. The gunman peered out from around the corner of the Sacramento Live! building, took aim at LaFortier with a shoulder-fired antitank missile launcher, and fired. The car Craig LaFortier was hiding behind blew twenty feet in the air and crashed back to earth, a ball of fire and molten metal.
Matt Lamont, who had low-crawled west on J Street up to the alley with his sergeant’s-issue M-16 rifle cradled in his arms, was too late to help LaFortier, but he was going to get a piece of this cop-killer if it was the last thing he ever did. He raised the M-16 and fired three rounds at the gunman’s head, but all of them missed. He leaped to his feet, crouched low, and approached the corner of the building next to the alley, determined to shoot at any head that appeared under his sights. At the corner of the building adjacent to the alleyway, he risked a fast peek around the corner. A tremendous volley of automatic-rifle fire rippled the corner of the building. His semiautomatic rifle was no match for at least three automatic assault rifles in the alley. He hotfooted it back to Seventh Street and took cover behind a tree.
“Officer down, officer down!” Lamont shouted into his portable radio. “Code 900, Code 900, Sacramento Live! complex, heavily armed suspects in alleyway between J and K Streets!”
As he issued the Code 900-the dire-emergency code, the code guaranteed to get every cop in town headed this way on the double-Lamont was watching the alley for any sign of the suspects. But all he could actually see were the remnants of the burning car across J Street, the one that had protected his friend and fellow cop Craig LaFortier. At least Cargo got one of the bastards before he died, Lamont thought grimly.
“What in hell happened?” Mullins asked nervously. The explosion and the volleys of automatic gunfire outside could be heard throughout the complex-it sounded as if the whole damned area was filled with cops, all out for blood.
The Major was listening for reports through his helmet-mounted headset. “One of my men in the alley is dead,” he said.
The radio in Mullins’s hand began bleeping, the all-points alert. “They’ve called a Code 900,” he said. “Every cop in the county will be here in a matter of minutes.”
“Then it is time we are off,” the Major said calmly, and began issuing instructions to his men via his headset commlink.
“What about me?” Mullins bleated. “I don’t have any armor! They’ll cut me down in three seconds!”
“Shall I put you out of your misery now?” asked the Major, leveling his rifle at the turncoat.
“No!”
“Then go, get out of my sight. You are on your own. I let you keep your life, since you served us well. But I warn you: If you are caught, and if you even think about revealing anything about myself or my organization, then you had better pray the police kill you first. Because I will see to it that your agony is prolonged over several long days. Now verschwinde! Go! My troops and I have work to do.”
Paul McLanahan had been taught about the Code 900 in the academy, listened to the instructors, heard the recordings of actual radio calls. But the main thing he learned was never, ever call for one on the radio-it was reserved for someone in a much higher pay grade than himself. He could call for “backup” or “cover” or “officer needs assistance” or “officer in distress” or even “HELP!” but could never call a Code 900. The only reason to ever call one, the instructors had said seriously, was if the earth was splitting open and all the citizens of hell were flying forth.
But he knew that was exactly what was happening. He saw and heard the rocket explosion on the other side of the complex on J Street, saw the fires, heard the gunshots, heard the heavy machine-gun fire in return. Jesus, Cargo, please get on the radio. Say something, man. Say something…
And when Paul heard the “officer down” call, he knew it was his partner. And with the sector sergeant calling a Code 900 over the air, he also knew this battle had probably just begun.
There were men shouting over on Seventh Street, the wail of sirens just a few blocks away. The sounds were reassuring to the young rookie, alone and pointing his gun at a darkened building. All he wanted to do right now was be with his partner, cover him, defend him, carry him to safety. But he would never leave his post until given an order to do so, so he was glad that other officers were responding and rushing to help Cargo. He would just have to…
An ear-splitting explosion blasted him out of his reverie. The main doors of Sacramento Live! on the K Street Mall blew open, scattering a wall of glass and fire thirty feet away. He felt a hard slap to his head, followed by a gust of super-heated air. His ears were ringing so loud, he thought he might be completely deaf. He found his finger had tightened on the trigger of his SIG, and was afraid he might have accidentally squeezed off a round. Then another explosion rocked the night, and Lamont’s squad car burst into flames over on Seventh Street-another rocket had been fired from the alley, destroying the car and sending officers scurrying for cover.
And then they appeared: two columns of four wearing helmets and gas masks, led by a figure dressed completely in thick black body armor who was firing an AK-74 out onto the street as the columns brazenly strode out the shattered front doors of the Sacramento Live! complex. The men behind him fired smaller but still murderous-looking H amp;K MP-5 submachine guns, sweeping both sides of the street with a hail of gunfire. As the column marched down Seventh Street, the Step Van wheeled out of the alley onto Seventh, moving into position to pick them up.