Chapter 68 – The Invisible Man Problem, or: Ella Was There the Whole Time
Sean kept his voice low and flat.
"He's armed. Pistol. If you have a shot, take it."
José Hernández was not moving.
This was, he had decided, his best option. He was in the grass, the grass was dark, the police flashlights were still forty feet out and sweeping wide. If he stayed completely still and did not repeat the catastrophic decision-making of thirty seconds ago — the two shots that had turned his position into a lit billboard — he might still walk out of this on his own feet.
He gripped the M1911 and told himself not to fire.
Do not fire.
The flashlight beams moved in slow arcs through the vegetation. Three figures, maybe four, working a methodical grid. Patient. Not rushing.
That was the part that worried him. Rushing people made noise and mistakes. Patient people found things.
José pressed himself lower into the wet grass and focused on breathing through his nose.
He was going to be fine.
He was going to disappear into the dark like he had done a dozen times before, in places considerably less forgiving than a Los Angeles apartment complex.
He had almost convinced himself of this when he became aware, in his peripheral vision, of something approximately eight inches from his face.
He turned his head slowly.
In the shadow of the grass to his right — in a patch of darkness so complete that he had looked directly at it twice and registered nothing — there were teeth.
White teeth. A crescent of them, slightly curved.
And above the teeth, catching the barest trace of ambient light: two eyes.
They had been there the whole time.
Oh no.
The cold started at José's feet and arrived at his skull in approximately one second. His pupils did the thing pupils do when the body has received information it does not want and cannot process fast enough.
How long has he been there?
Ella looked at him.
The expression on Ella's face, in the half-inch of it that was visible, was the specific expression of a hunter who set the trap three hours ago and has been waiting ever since with total serenity.
José's gun hand and his survival instinct were having a debate that his rational brain was too frozen to moderate.
The debate ended when Ella moved.
The lunge came out of the dark with the compressed explosive speed of someone who had been coiled and still for a long time and released everything at once. One tactical boot came down on José's right wrist with the full weight and precision of a man who knew exactly where the gun was and exactly what needed to happen to it.
The crack was the kind of sound that arrives in the ears before the pain arrives in the body.
Then the pain arrived.
"AAAGH —"
The M1911 was in the grass six feet away.
Ella was already shouting, loud enough to reach every position on the perimeter: "CONTROL — I'VE GOT CONTROL — COMING IN — DON'T SHOOT — DO NOT SHOOT —"
The last part was not optional. In a perimeter operation at night with armed suspects, the difference between teammate subduing suspect and teammate becoming a statistic was a shout and a half-second of recognition time. Ella had learned this. Ella shouted.
Lamb heard it from forty feet out.
Lamb did not deliberate.
Lamb was five-foot-seven, built like a defensive end, and was currently running at full sprint through vegetation with the tactical grace of a man who has adrenaline where his caution used to be. He hit the grass in a full airborne dive, leading with his shoulder, and came down with the impact of something that had been dropped from a height.
CRASH.
A beat of silence.
"OW — what the — LAMB, YOU ABSOLUTE —" Ella's voice had jumped two full registers. "THAT'S MY ARM. THAT IS MY ARM YOU ARE ON. I AM YOUR TEAMMATE."
"I — where — I can't see anything, it's dark, where's the —"
"GET OFF ME AND GRAB THE GUY TO YOUR LEFT."
"Which one's —"
"THE ONE MAKING THE NOISE."
José was making considerable noise.
Lamb scrambled, located the correct person through a process of elimination, and applied his weight to the situation in the correct direction. Waters arrived four seconds later and found a solution for José's remaining free limb.
The three of them, plus José, occupied approximately four square feet of vegetation and accounted for a significant amount of the evening's ambient sound.
Sean pushed through the last branch and put his flashlight on the scene.
Ella, Lamb, and Waters were extracting themselves from the grass with the dignity available to people who have just successfully completed a task in the least elegant way possible. José Hernández was between them on the ground, face carrying the universal expression of a man who has run out of options and is now waiting to find out what the options look like from here.
His right wrist was the wrong shape.
Lamb had grass clippings on his vest, in his hair, and on his face. He was wearing the expression of a man who knows he tackled the wrong person and is hoping nobody makes it a whole thing.
Ella looked at Lamb with the sustained, patient expression of someone who has decided to table the conversation for now and revisit it at length later, in a context where firearms are not present.
Sean looked at all of them.
He let a moment pass.
"Good work," he said.
On Two and a Half Men, Charlie had once described the aftermath of a plan that had mostly worked as "a win is a win, even if you need a shower afterward." Alan had said that standard was too low. Charlie had said Alan had never played a gig where half the equipment failed and the crowd still went home happy.
Sean crouched down in front of José.
The man's face was a summary of the evening — wet, dirty, in pain, and still carrying, somewhere underneath all of it, the residual defiance of someone who had operated with impunity for long enough that the current situation still felt temporary.
"José Hernández." Sean said it the way you say someone's full name when you've read their file and the file was long. "You came up from the border personally for this one. That tells me things weren't going well at home."
José said nothing.
"Twelve charges," Sean continued, conversationally, the way you might discuss a menu. "Narcotics trafficking. Distribution. Weapons. Two counts of assault on law enforcement tonight alone." He paused. "Human smuggling. Tax evasion. The kidnapping charge is going to be the one the DA talks about at press conferences."
José's jaw moved.
"You got lucky," he said finally, his voice rough. "Numbers. You had the numbers."
The three officers behind him — Ella, Lamb, Waters — exchanged a look of the specific quality that occurs when someone says something in circumstances that make it either very brave or very optimistic.
Sean tilted his head slightly.
"One-on-one," José said. The defiance had found its legs. "You and me. You wouldn't last two minutes."
Lamb's expression shifted into something that wasn't quite admiration but was adjacent to it. Waters pressed her lips together. Ella, who had a broken wrist and a grass-covered colleague to be annoyed about, still found a corner of her face that acknowledged the audacity.
Even Sean's mouth moved, briefly, at one corner.
It was the involuntary response of a person who has heard something that exists so far outside the current context that the face reacts before the professional composure catches up.
He stood, looked down at José, and said, "You have the right to remain silent."
He looked at Lamb. "Get him up."
Lamb got him up.
The operation was over. The paperwork had not yet begun. These were, in Sean's experience, the two most reliable facts about any given evening in law enforcement.
He clicked his radio.
"Perimeter team, suspect in custody on the left flank. Confirm status on your positions."
The acknowledgments came back one by one, clean and professional, from people who had spent the last four hours waiting in the dark and were now, collectively, ready to go home.
Sean looked at Erin, who was standing at the edge of the grass, gun holstered, taking stock of what she had just witnessed.
"Still nervous?" he asked.
She considered this honestly. "Less than before."
"That's how it works," Sean said, and started walking back toward the building.
[Support Goal: 500 PS → +1 Chapter]
[Support Goal: 10 Reviews → +1 Chapter]
Your review helps the story grow.
P1treon Soulforger (20+chapters ahead)