Flash and Bang (The Death and Destruction #2)

Prologue

“There! See him? There, Wolfe!”

Special Agent Thayne Wolfe stepped on the gas of the black late model SUV and drove like a bat out of hell down Venice Boulevard toward downtown Los Angeles.

“I see him, Evans.

Shriek in my ear one more time and I’m gonna push you out of the car.”

Thayne’s low threats and blue eyes, dancing with irritation, couldn’t help but put a grin on Jarrett’s face.

The more he was able to frustrate his partner, the more it made Jarrett laugh like an idiot.

Jarrett Evans had to respect his partner’s driving.

It took a particularly practiced driver to be able to weave effortlessly between cars in the early morning rush hour and not crash their vehicle at these speeds.

It wasn’t like he had much choice in the matter though.

Jarrett had been relegated to the passenger seat because he’d had two accidents in the month since he and Thayne had been assigned as partners at the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Office.

The car ahead of them was a 2016 BMW 7 series and it contained three armed men suspected of selling guns to a particularly nasty street gang.

The trunk of the beemer held a crate filled with semi-automatic assault weapons and Thayne and Jarrett had been trying to follow at a discreet pace.

Once the suspects made their vehicle, the gun runners took off, charging down the crowded streets of downtown.

The chase originated at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery on Washington Boulevard, several miles uptown where the head of the 18th Street gang met the suppliers, who’d buried the guns under an old gravestone.

“Not a bad hiding place, actually,”

Jarrett remarked as he effortlessly held on to the grab bar to keep from being flung sideways into Thayne’s lap as they swerved.

“I mean cemeteries are usually pretty dead this early in the mornin’.”

Thayne jerked his head around to stare at him and Jarrett knew he was giving him the hairy eyeball under his black aviators.

“You did not just say that.”

Thayne growled and Jarrett grinned wider.

“What? I’m just sayin’, they would ‘a gotten away with it if they hadn’t been sufferin’ coffin fits.”

“Jesus, how do you come up with cemetery puns this early in the morning?”

Thayne grumbled.

“Hey!”

Jarrett said.

“I work really hard to drive you stark graving mad.”

He snickered.

“Dear God,”

Thayne breathed, swerving in-between two cars.

The suspect’s trunk was heavy with the contraband guns and it made the BMW fishtail through the street.

They were making an all-out last-ditch attempt to flee from the scene of their crime.

“Wolfe! Evans! Where the hell are you?”

Sarah Connor’s voice barked into the earwigs both men wore.

“We have the buyers in custody.”

“Good job, Sarah.

We’re on Venice, approaching the downtown corridor.

Traffic’s heavy but they’re two car lengths ahead,”

Thayne replied.

“Go get ‘em boys.

We get the suppliers and we can shut this ring down once and for all.

By the way, who’s driving?”

she asked.

“Hey! One little accident and you’re tarred and feathered forever,”

Jarrett complained.

“Two little accidents,”

Thayne corrected.

“Only one of those was an accident,”

Jarrett interjected, “The other was an unfortunate meeting of…”

“This is a party line,”

Special Agent in Charge Stanger interrupted.

“If you don’t want to spend the weekend revising all your reports for the last accident, I suggest you shut your mouth right now, Evans.”

Jarrett was certain he could hear Sarah’s snicker through the earbud. “Hell.”

He gritted his teeth.

The suspect’s vehicle turned onto Figueroa headed toward the Staples Center and screeched up to a ten-story bank complex.

Jarrett relayed their location.

Before Thayne could pull up behind, all three suspects’ doors opened and they tumbled out onto the sidewalk carrying MAC-10s, leaving the doors wide open as they bailed out.

“They’re headed into that complex,”

Jarrett pointed.

“Let’s get ‘em, Evans.”

Thayne screeched to a halt behind the suspect’s vehicle and Jarrett watched the three men in all black race into the building.

“They bailed out at the Bank of America building in the Staples Center, carrying MAC-10s and God knows what else,”

Thayne reported to Stanger and the others listening.

“Whatever you do, do not let them out of that building, Wolfe.

We need to contain this or we may end up with a bloodbath.

The office building is probably still mostly empty at this time of the morning.

You hear me?”

Stanger ordered.

“LAPD is on the way.”

“Got it, sir,”

Thayne said, throwing the car into park as he and Evans jumped to the pavement.

Thayne clicked the door locks as they ran through a set of glass double doors.

Pedestrians and early-morning window shoppers screamed as they stopped in the center of the outdoor Bank of America shopping plaza.

“ATF! Who saw where they went?”

Jarrett yelled, holding up his Glock and his badge.

“They went toward the elevators,”

a bank employee said excitedly.

The young man pointed to an exit around the side of the bank and Jarrett took off running.

He could hear Thayne coming up right behind him as he burst through the glass doors and into a marble lobby area which led into the ten-story office complex.

They sprinted toward an elevator door as the last arms suppliers jumped into it and the doors closed behind him.

Jarrett’s momentum caused him to splat against the door with a hollow crack as Thayne came up behind him, stopping to gaze up at the lit display of floors.

The elevator where they were was traveling up… two… three… four.

He glanced at his partner who was standing ten feet away.

“I’ll take the stairs!”

he screamed.

“Let me know where they stop, Wolfe.”

“You got it. Go on,”

Thayne said.

Jarrett nodded, ran toward the door to the stairs, and yanked it open.

He stepped into a wide stairwell in the modern building and began taking the stairs two at a time.

He concentrated on climbing, listening for the slamming of doors above him so he wouldn’t run over someone as he climbed.

“Just passing the fifth floor!”

Jarrett panted, a minute later.

“We hear ya,”

Sarah said.

“Just got here.

Keep going.

Location, Wolfe?”

“I’m in elevator two.

Suspect’s elevator stopped at nine.

Jarrett, they may be headed for the roof.”

“Roger,”

Jarrett said, breathless.

“Just passing seven.”

He was genuinely panting as he rounded the corner for seven, staring at its door as he passed.

His thighs burned with the effort to sprint up the stairs, grateful that he’d been doing his workout with Thayne at 24 Hour Fitness every day.

Above him, he heard a door to the stairwell open and shut, then the sound of pounding feet.

“Someone’s in the stairwell a couple floors up from me,”

Jarrett gasped.

“You’re right, Connor.

Headed for the roof.”

He panted as he climbed.

“Jesus, I’m too old for this shit.”

“How the hell are they gonna get away?”

Sarah said into the earwig.

“No connecting buildings.

Are they planning on flying down?”

“Be careful, Evans.

They’re gonna be cornered up there,”

Thayne’s voice came through loud and clear and Jarrett could hear the genuine concern.

“Thanks, Wolfe.”

He heard another door wrench open above him, then slam closed again.

He passed the door to the ninth floor as he headed for the roof door.

Once he got up there, he knew he’d be outgunned and exhausted from running when the three suspects had taken the elevator all the way to the ninth.

His legs and lungs protested loudly as he approached the landing to the roof, half a floor up from the door to the tenth.

“At the roof door,”

he gasped, “Suspects are on the roof.

Repeat, suspects are on the roof.”

“An LAPD aerial unit is five minutes out,”

Stanger called.

“It’s too dangerous to go out onto that roof alone, Evans.

With all three suspects packing semi-automatics, we need to let Metro handle it.”

The SAC’s growl came through Jarrett’s earbud like the hum of a mosquito.

“I got this, sir,”

Jarrett growled.

I just ran up ten flights of stairs.

The fuck if I’m letting LAPD have all the fun.

He reached out and turned the handle to the metal door, inching it open a crack.

A volley of automatic gunfire exploded from the other side of the door and noisy thumps clanged against the metal door a second after Jarrett pulled it closed again.

“Shots fired! Shots fired! Son of a bitch,”

Jarrett shouted.

He was determined to get out on to that roof but opening the door was suicide.

Jarrett had no idea what kind of cover he’d find out there and trying to take on three suspects with semi-automatics alone was a sure fire way to end up six feet under in that cemetery they’d just come from.

“You open that door again, and I’ll shoot you myself, Evans!”

Thayne screamed in his ear.

Jarrett wanted to laugh but instead he inched the door open another crack and noticed a large metal air-conditioning unit a mere twelve feet away from him.

Another metal structure was located another twenty feet beyond that, and still another paralleled the second, separated from it by twenty-five feet.

One of the suspects was hunkered behind the first larger structure, peeking his head out to look toward Jarrett.

One was on the other side of the one parallel, and the last behind the air conditioner closest to Jarrett and the stairwell door.

“ATF! Throw down your weapons and put your hands behind your heads!”

Jarrett called through a crack in the door.

An answering retort from a semi-automatic silenced him as more rounds hit the metal door in front of him.

“Fuck this,”

he muttered.

Jarrett stuck his Glock through the crack in the door and fired at the suspect closest to him, getting him just above the bulletproof vest in the V between his clavicles.

Blood sprayed out of the hole in his neck and the man dropped to the rock roof instantly, his arms thrown wide, his semi-automatic skittering away across the gravel.

A shot to the brainstem like that one was something the sniper in Jarrett was adept at.

The man’s fingers never got the chance to squeeze off a single shot which was the whole point.

Jarrett opened the door and rushed out, sprinting the twelve feet that separated him from the air-conditioning unit and took a flying leap toward it, rolling as he hit the ground, and slamming into the metal box beside the dead man as automatic gunfire from the two remaining suspects peppered the unit.

“One suspect down!”

he shouted.

“God dammit, Evans,”

Thayne screamed in his ear.

Jarrett could hear his breath, panting as he sprinted up the stairs, probably having exited the elevator somewhere around the floor where the suspects got off.

“Can you ever follow orders, idiot?”

Jarrett smirked. “Nope.”

“Still on the party line, Evans!”

Stanger screamed into Jarrett’s ear.

Jarrett reached up and tapped his earwig.

“Can’t hear you.”

He paused. “Com’s…”

he paused.

“Cutting…”

Jarrett made the sound of static and then… “There’s something wrong with this com,”

he said, yanking the unit out of his ear canal.

He crushed it on the rock roof with the butt of his Glock, knowing he was going to get read the riot act.

But the way Jarrett figured, he’d already broken protocol and disobeyed orders.

That left very little to lose in his book.

He peeked his head around the A/C unit and spotted the two remaining suspects.

“Nowhere to go, assholes.

Give yourselves up!”

he shouted.

Just as Jarrett said it, he noticed one stepping into a nylon rock-climbing harness.

He was unwinding a long rope, looking for an anchor to tie it off.

The only thing on the roof besides the metal buildings offering them cover was the A/C unit where Jarrett squatted.

A few covered vent pipes stuck out of the flashing that attached them to the roof but they’d never hold the weight of a full-grown man in a bulletproof vest and rappelling gear.

The other suspect aimed his MAC-10 at Jarrett and fired.

Little tufts of smoke rose from the tar paper under the rocks as bullets pinged beside him.

He ducked back behind the air conditioner.

Enough of this bullshit.

Jarrett closed his eyes, forming an image of the two men and their positions which he’d mentally marked in his mind only seconds before.

He took a deep breath and stood up, pivoted, and aimed his Glock at the suspect behind the first building… the one who’d been unwinding the rope.

He squeezed off two rounds and the suspect dropped the rope, falling to the ground and clutching at the holes Jarrett had just opened in each knee.

Jarrett dropped back behind his A/C unit.

“Told you to give yourself up,”

Jarrett shouted as the guy screamed bloody murder.

Jarrett stuck his head out again, noting the final suspect standing behind the last metal building staring at his friend who was howling in agony as he rolled back and forth on the roof, holding his knees, the rope forgotten at his side.

Knowing he’d have a better shot at the last suspect if he could make it to the side of the guy he’d just kneecapped, Jarrett shot out from his cover behind the A/C unit, firing his Glock as he tore across the roof, sprinting at full speed.

Automatic gunfire followed him as the third suspect opened up with the MAC-10 he carried.

Jarrett ran fifteen feet and took a running leap at the second suspect, tucking into a roll and coming up in a squat as he took cover behind the metal building while the man he’d shot writhed in pain only five feet from him.

Semi-automatic gunfire pinged off the roof beside him.

“What the fuck, man? That was cold!”

the suspect shrieked at him.

“I’m never gonna walk again!”

He burst into sobs.

Jarrett grinned at the guy, poking his head out from behind the building, only to note the third suspect watching him from behind his cover of the second building, holding his MAC-10 at the ready.

“Sorry, dude,”

he said, unsympathetically.

The guy was still rocking back and forth holding his bleeding knees.

“Crime don’t pay.”

The guy’s auto-loader was lying ten feet from the man and it was a good thing.

If he still had it, Jarrett was pretty sure he would look like Swiss cheese by now.

“Fuck him up, Billy!”

Kneecaps howled at his friend.

“All he’s got is a Glock!”

A spray of automatic gunfire answered him.

“Shut the hell up,”

Jarrett said, reaching for the black nylon rope a few feet away.

Outgunned, Jarrett was pretty sure the third suspect was going to figure out that he was a sitting duck in a matter of seconds.

The way he saw it, he had only one option.

He glanced around for a place to anchor the rope.

There was nothing.

The building providing his cover was too large and he had no way to circumnavigate it to tie a rope around it without getting shot.

The only other thing on the roof besides him and the two remaining suspects were those flimsy vent pipes coming up out of the roof.

He swept over the roof with a second glance, stopping on the suspect he’d kneecapped.

He was still wearing the rappelling harness.

“Take that harness off and throw it to me.”

The man sent him a murderous glare.

“Fuck you, man.”

Jarrett grinned and pointed his Glock at the man’s face.

“Now, asshole!”

Abject fear crossed the man’s features.

“Jesus! You’re certifiable.

You know that?”

The man wrestled with his harness, his knees bleeding like crazy, and threw it to Jarrett.

Jarrett stood up and stepped into it, slinging it over his shoulders and cinching it up as he watched the other suspect peeking out from behind the building.

Jarrett grabbed the rope and threaded it through the harness, looking around for an anchor as he did so.

His glance finally landed on the second suspect, still whimpering from the pain of his bleeding knees.

Jarrett began to smirk.

“Hey, dickhead, how much do you weigh?”

****

Thayne got to the top of the stairs and peeked out of the crack between the door to the stairwell and the roof just in time to see his insane partner jump off the roof backward into thin air.

Thayne almost crapped his pants in the ten seconds or so that it took for him to realize that a black nylon rappelling rope was threaded through a harness Evans was wearing around his body.

He was holding a MAC-10 in one hand and his Glock in the other, screaming something over the din of the blood roaring through Thayne’s veins.

It sounded distinctly like Yee Haw! One of their armed suspects was charging across the roof toward the spot from where Jarrett had just jumped.

“Oh my God, do you see that?”

Sarah Connor’s voice sounded shocked in Thayne’s earwig.

He knew Sarah must have been watching from the ground ten stories below.

“Is that? Is that… fucking… Evans? Did Evans just jump off the roof?”

she screamed.

Thayne’s heart hammered in his chest and he forced the door open the rest of the way.

What the hell is he doing? Thayne shot out onto the roof, jumping over a bleeding suspect who was clearly already dead, and charged toward the still-armed second suspect who had his back to him, peering over the side of the roof.

The suspect watched for a few seconds and then pivoted around to his friend, running back toward him, completely oblivious to Thayne’s presence.

He dropped his auto-loader on the roof while he grabbed something tied around his friend’s waist.

“ATF!”

Thayne screamed, “Put your hands behind your head! I don’t want to shoot you!”

The crouched suspect turned toward him and complied, instantly putting both hands behind his head as he moved to kneel.

His friend, laid out flat on the roof, was bleeding from both knees and screaming his fool head off.

Thayne’s heart thundered in his chest, still uncertain what the hell was happening to Jarrett.

He was rappelling down the building and it was only then that he figured out that Jarrett was using the suspect’s body as a counterweight.

The suspect with bloody knees had the end of Jarrett’s rope tied around his waist, two MAC-10 magazines providing a splint on either side of his torso so that he wouldn’t be cut in two from Jarrett’s weight.

Holy Christ, Jarrett.

Thayne quickly cuffed both suspects and then ran to the side of the building to look over.

Jarrett was rappelling down, using the long black nylon rope and pushing off from the building over and over as he lowered himself to the sidewalk.

The street below was filled with LAPD patrol cars, ATF and FBI vans, and several black SUVs.

“One suspect down and two in custody up here,”

Thayne said so that he could be heard in the earwig.

When Jarrett didn’t respond, he realized he must have taken out the earwig.

The door to the roof opened up again and ATF, FBI, and LAPD began filing out onto the roof like ants.

Thayne turned and looked back down at his partner.

I’m gonna fucking kill you.