Chapter 9
Ben
The staging point this time was a gravel pull-off on a fire access road half a mile from the target. No streetlights. Trees close on both sides, their branches cutting the moonlight into fragments on the ground.
Jolly was in his harness, once again focused and ready. Donovan climbed out of the passenger side without a word. We walked toward the cluster of vehicles ahead, where six officers, roughly half of what we had last time, were gearing up in the dim glow of a single dome light from Vance’s SUV.
Six was fine. More than enough to get the job done. Reeves and a couple of other guys I recognized, whose names I couldn’t think of at this second but whose faces I filed away for later.
Briggson wasn’t here. I glanced over at Donovan and could tell he was noticing the same thing. Neither of us was sad about it, but it was definitely worth noting.
Vance stood at the hood of his SUV with a flashlight and a rough sketch of the property layout. He didn’t waste time.
“Target is a rental cabin about a quarter mile north, then two hundred yards west on a private drive. Single story, wood frame, one access road in. Patrol flagged a known user making repeat visits, two, three times a week. Surveillance on the property shows short-stay traffic consistent with distribution. We’ve got enough for probable cause, and the warrant came through an hour ago. ”
He tapped the sketch. “Front door here. Back door off the kitchen. Two bedrooms down a hallway on the north side. Small place.”
He ran through the approach, which was similar to the raid a couple nights ago. Donovan would go with the secondary team. Jolly and I would stack with the entry team for suspect apprehension and post-clearance detection work.
Vance had the layout down to where the furniture sat, which direction the doors swung, which rooms had windows worth worrying about. It was impressively polished for relatively recent info.
I’d take it. Info like this could save a life.
“Questions?” Nobody had any. “Then let’s move. Lights off, single file, radio silence until we’re in position.”
The walk in was dark and close. Single file on the fire road, then off onto a narrow dirt track winding through pine and aspen. The ground was soft from recent rain. Less noise underfoot. Good.
I kept Jolly on a short lead at my left side.
He’d gone still in a way that had nothing to do with calm.
No scanning, no ambient tracking. His focus had narrowed to a single point ahead of us, and his breathing had dropped into the shallow, measured rhythm that meant he’d already decided the work had started.
Donovan was somewhere behind me with the secondary team, splitting off to circle toward the back of the property.
The cabin appeared through the trees. Small, wood-sided, a porch light casting a yellow circle on the front steps. One vehicle in the dirt clearing, a gray pickup, mud on the wheel wells. Lights on inside.
Vance raised a fist. The line stopped.
He hand-signaled the formation. Entry team fanned into position on either side of the front door. I held Jolly back, three officers between us and the breach point. Under my hand, Jolly’s body had gone wire-tight, his weight pressed forward onto his front paws.
I could feel it too. That last held breath before the door goes in, when the world contracts to a pinpoint. Every sound sharpens. Every edge gets crisp. And then the pin pulls and everything moves at once.
One click on the radio. The secondary team was in position.
Vance pointed at the door. Then counted down with his fingers and pulled the metaphorical pin.
“Police! Everybody freeze. Search warrant!”
The breaching ram hit the door, and it swung inward hard, cracking against the wall. The entry team flooded through, a cacophony of yells.
“Hands! Show me your hands! Don’t move!”
“Police. Don’t move.”
“Keep your hands where I can see them!”
I moved in behind the third officer, Jolly pressed against my left leg. The cabin was small and cramped. A living area that bled into a kitchen, cheap furniture, a card table with a lamp and an ashtray. Overhead light was a bare bulb, harsh and flat.
One man was sitting at the card table. Late twenties, heavyset, a ziplock bag and cash in front of him. It didn’t get any more caught in the act than that. He saw the guns and raised his hands without being told, eyes wide. His face was flat, resigned. He knew the choreography.
Two more people were on the couch. Both of them were young.
One of them might not have been old enough to buy a beer.
An officer grabbed the guy by the shoulder and put him on the floor.
The woman next to him followed on her own, face pressed to the carpet, hands laced behind her head.
Users who’d come to score and were now watching their nights become something else entirely.
A fourth was in the hallway. Standing at the mouth of the corridor, a cigarette between his fingers, frozen in that half second of calculation when the brain decides between staying and running.
“On the ground! Now!”
He decided to chance escape.
“Runner! Hallway, north side!”
He bolted down the corridor, feet hammering the bare floorboards. The hallway was narrow, maybe four feet wide, doors on either side. The kind of tight space where a footrace favored the man in front.
I was already moving, Jolly surging beside me. “Stop! You are going to get bit!”
I was starting to suspect this guy was either deaf or stupid, because he hurtled out the back door and off the deck into the yard.
I heard Donovan’s team react. Shouting, boots on dirt. But the runner had momentum and darkness on his side. He juked hard left, dodging the first officer, and hit the tree line before the secondary team could close the gap.
Donovan’s voice crackled through the radio. “He’s past the cordon! Into the trees!”
I was off the deck and running, Jolly straining at the lead beside me. The back porch light threw a weak yellow wash maybe thirty feet into the yard, and beyond that, the woods swallowed everything.
I could hear the runner crashing through underbrush ahead of us, branches snapping, no attempt at stealth. Just panic and adrenaline and the blind hope that darkness would save him.
It wouldn’t.
“Jolly, fass.”
I unclipped the lead, and he launched into the dark like a round leaving a barrel. I pulled my flashlight and followed, the beam bouncing through the trees as I ran. Ahead of me, Jolly was closing the distance in seconds, pine needles scattering under his paws.
The scream told me he’d made contact.
I pushed through the brush toward the sound, maybe twenty yards into the tree line.
The porch light was still filtering through the branches behind me, just enough to turn the scene into fragments.
Jolly had the man on the ground, teeth locked on his left forearm, feet braced, shaking just enough to remind the suspect that fighting was a losing proposition.
“Stay down!” I yelled. “Stop moving!”
But he didn’t stop. He was thrashing, twisting, his free hand scrabbling at his waistband. I saw the movement before I understood it. Fingers closing around something, pulling it free.
The distant light caught the glint of the blade.
He swung it at Jolly.
The arc was wild, panicked, aimed at Jolly’s shoulder and neck. I was six feet away, close enough to see the steel but not close enough to stop it.
I dove.
My left hand caught the suspect’s wrist and wrenched it sideways. The blade sliced across my forearm instead. A hot, bright line of pain that registered somewhere distant, behind the only thing that mattered, which was getting the knife away from my dog.
I drove the suspect’s hand into the ground, pinned it with my knee, and twisted the knife free with my right hand. It tumbled into the pine needles.
“Don’t move. Do not move. If you stop moving, I’ll get him to release.”
The suspect went limp under me. The fight left him all at once, the way it did when the brain caught up to the situation and realized it was over. Then the adrenaline faded enough for him to feel what Jolly was doing to his forearm. He looked down at it, made a choked sound, and went still.
“Aus.”
Jolly released. He backed off the suspect and sat, his body still locked in that forward-leaning readiness, eyes on the man on the ground.
Officers crashed through the brush behind me. Donovan was first, flashlight sweeping across the scene. Me kneeling on the suspect, blood running down my left arm, the knife in the pine needles.
“Somebody cuff him,” I said.
The suspect didn’t resist when an officer rolled him onto his side and cuffed his free hand to his belt loop, leaving the bitten arm alone until the medics could get to it.
I stood, pulled the ball from my vest with my right hand, and tossed it to Jolly. He caught it out of the air and chomped down, tail hammering the forest floor. Done. The job was done and the reward had been earned, and nothing else in the world existed for him beyond that ball.
Donovan’s flashlight found my arm. “Ben.”
“It’s a scratch.”
“It’s bleeding.”
“It’ll stop.” I turned to Jolly and ran my right hand over him. Shoulder. Neck. The place where the blade had been aimed. My fingers pressed through his fur, feeling for blood, for a wound, for the wet heat that would mean the knife had landed before I’d gotten there.
Nothing. Jolly was clean. The knife had missed him entirely.
The adrenaline was arriving now, that delayed wave that hit after the danger passed.
My right hand was steady because I needed it to be.
The left one was hot and wet and starting to throb, but I’d had worse from a cooking accident.
The cut was long but shallow, the kind that bled impressively without doing real damage.
Donovan pulled a field dressing from his vest and crouched beside me. He wrapped it around my forearm without asking, pulling the tail tight with practiced efficiency.
“You good?”
“I’m good.”