Bland came home at six thirty-seven that evening. He parked in his garage then came out to the driveway, holding a small bouquet of flowers. He examined the moths swirling around the streetlamp. He wore the same gray suit and brown shoes that never seemed to change, the same placid, thorough expression that had gotten him through almost four decades of police work. He looked at the surveillance van for a while, tapping the flowers against his leg, and McMichael wondered if he was going to come over to check it out.
"Don't even dream about it," said Hector.
Bland turned and went back into the garage. McMichael saw the garage door lurch downward and the house door swing open to a rectangle of domestic light.
At seven-thirty they ate cooling take-out tacos and drank more coffee. At nine-thirty the lights in the Bland house went off. Almost an hour later McMichael saw the garage door rise and Bland's take-home Crown Victoria back into the street and turn in their direction.
They slumped down below dashboard level and McMichael watched the Crown Vic's headlights move across the headliner front to back, then heard the big Ford swoosh past fast.
The homer led them south. They picked up Bland on Adams and tailed him three cars back to Interstate 15 southbound. Bland made the light and they didn't, and by the time they got the big van moving on the freeway the Crown Victoria was nowhere in sight. But the homer beeped faster and louder when McMichael hit ninety in the fast lane, just in time to follow Bland onto the 805 south.
"He's in a goddamned hurry," said Hector.
"Maybe he wants to see his shipment arrive," said McMichael.
"If he makes our guys, we're dead."
McMichael had long ago noted that when the situation got tight, Hector's voice rose and he seemed to fret more.
"No," said McMichael. "Once that Mack gets in line, there's no turning around. Even if Bland sees one of us, it's going to be too late."
"That's him in lane two, man. Slow down."
McMichael coasted and Hector called Rawlings. He told the captain the score, said yessir twice, punched off.
"He said the same thing you did. Said they got good disguises. Whatever that means."
They tailed, comfortably back, to the South Bay Parkway. Then onto Interstate 5, headed for the border.
"Yeah," said Hector. "He wants to watch. I still don't like this, Mick. I don't like Bland close enough to recognize our guys, then calling the brothers. Goddamned costumes or not. If they know they're blown, man, anything could happen."
McMichael veered off on San Ysidro Boulevard, took the side streets toward the commercial vehicle gate.
They parked behind a liquor store, grabbed the binoculars and hustled into the shadows. When the traffic got thin they ran across Virginia Avenue and ducked around the corner of a closed carneceria. Looking around the building McMichael could see the commercial gate and the big floodlights up on the scaffolding, the INS and Customs vehicles parked in apparent disarray, the uniformed agents moving in and out of the booths, one line of trucks southbound and another coming back north into the bright lights of America.
McMichael watched as the vehicle exhaust roiled up into the lights then dissipated into the darkness. The walls of the Customs building threw sharp shadows across the tableau. The gunmen on the catwalks looked down with lazy alertness and McMichael had the unwelcome, illogical premonition that they were Axelgaard people, not theirs.
Bland's white Ford emerged from the darkness, glided alongside a chain-link fence topped with concertina wire, stopped forty yards in front of them and thirty yards to the left, directly between the detectives and the border crossing.
"Perfect," whispered Hector, retreating behind the corner.
"Plenty damned close," McMichael whispered back.
They giggled dryly and leaned around the wall again, McMichael standing and Hector kneeling, two half faces peering around the plane of the building like cartoon characters. McMichael saw that Bland had gotten out to lean against the Crown Vic, his elbows propped on the roof and a pair of binoculars snug to his face.
McMichael stepped away from the building just far enough to get his own binoculars up and focused. He could see the breeze moving the hair on Bland's head. Beyond Bland, McMichael barely recognized Rawlings, a black cowboy hat pulled low, a gray corduroy jacket with a yoked back, and scuffed black cowboy boots. He stood with his fists on his hips, watching the drug dogs sniff his pickup truck in the inspection area. The truck had a magnetic sign on the door that said BOB MCGUANE CUTTING HORSES- TEMECULA, CA, and a bed filled with alfalfa bales. McMichael spotted Hatter slouching on a bench, wrapped to his ears in a serape, looking dirty and disconsolate. Bent next to him, similarly dressed against the January chill, her face charcoaled to a black mask of neglect, was Barbara Givens. McMichael noted that her disguise failed to hide her hopeful blue eyes.
Hector pulled him back behind the corner. "You see Barbara and the captain?" he whispered excitedly. "Where the hell is Hatter?"
"Right next to her," said McMichael.
"Oh, too good."
Hector smiled and peered around the corner again. McMichael checked his watch, made sure- for the third time- that his cell phone was on vibrate and not ring, then leaned back out over Hector.
He focused his glasses on the northbound Mexican Customs lane and saw the big red Mack idling three vehicles back. Mason Axelgaard of the Imperial Beach Police was at the helm, and Victor Braga sat next to him, headphones over his ears, gazing out the window and bobbing his head. McMichael lowered the binoculars just slightly, picking up Bland's backside and noting the cell phone now lying on the roof of the Ford, just inches from Bland's right elbow. Too late, he thought. Even if he spots one of them, it's too late now.
But Bland gave no air of recognition or worry. He set his binoculars down on the roof and let his arms drop to his sides, shaking his hands to get the circulation going. He swung around slowly and McMichael stepped behind the wall of the butcher shop, pulling Hector with him.
For the next twenty minutes they took turns at the corner. At eleven-forty the Auto Leather International rig, laden with new Fords, lumbered forward through the hovering exhaust and onto United States asphalt.
McMichael checked Bland: still on point, leaning against his car, field glasses up and aimed. Then the rest of Homicide Team Three- Rawlings looking puzzled as a U.S. Customs agent showed him a clipboard, Hatter and Barbara still on the bench, huddled in their serapes. He could see the gunmen high on the catwalks and the INS patrolmen loitering outside the Customs booth.
A moment later, curly-haired Martin Axelgaard walked from the booth and into the ferocious white light, giving the Mack a hard, accusatory look. He went to the driver's side and said something up to his brother. Mason handed down a slip of paper. Victor leaned over and pulled a headphone away from one ear. Two more Customs men came from the booth, one moving along the trailer and looking up at the new cars. The other came around the front, looked at the license plate and entered something on a handheld device. The dog handlers walked their animals up one side of the trailer and down the other, but didn't bother to get up near the cars.
Martin Axelgaard handed the slip back up to his brother and waved him through.
McMichael thought: here we go.
Rawlings sauntered toward the Mack. Hatter and Barbara stood, loosened the serapes and fell in behind him, heads down.
The Mack's engine groaned and a blast of fresh exhaust spilled from the pipe and into the air. A white panel van moved away from the inspection area and cut a slow angle across the asphalt, stopping a few yards in front of the Mack. Mason Axelgaard hit the horn. The van didn't move and nobody got out of it. He hit the horn again- a nerve-rattling airhorn that made McMichael flinch even this far away. The gunmen on the catwalk unshouldered their carbines.
Golden-haired Martin Axelgaard strode from the Customs booth toward the panel van while Rawlings rounded the front of the Mack, headed for the driver's side.
The back of the van flew open and three FBI men spilled out, sidearms drawn at Mason Axelgaard in the truck. Rawlings drew from under his corduroy jacket and backed off, holding his badge up high with one hand and his automatic at his side with the other, yelling something up at Mason as Barbara and Hatter shed their serapes, drew their weapons and ran to the front of the rig.
Bland's head quickly vanished from the bottom of McMichael's round, binocular view. He was in the Crown Vic and rolling. McMichael stepped away from the building as the Ford sped down the street, Bland's cell phone bouncing to the pavement, and when he got the glasses back up McMichael saw Mason step down from the cab with his hands submissively behind his head while Rawlings shouted something up at Victor.
Out on the driveway Martin raised his hands as the FBI men swarmed him.
Victor tumbled down out of the Mack, trying to keep hold of his CD player. Mason looked back sharply at him, then turned again to Rawlings, and at the same time his hands came together in front of him and a comet of orange flame flashed from his weapon a full second before McMichael even heard it.
Rawlings went down hard, his badge holder suspended for a split second in midair before it dropped to the ground beside him.
Hatter and Barbara, the cab blocking their view, flew around the front. Victor stumbled between Mason and the Bureau men.
McMichael ran into the street and pointlessly yelled "NO!" He was almost to the first fence when Hector blew past him on his short, thick legs.
McMichael saw Hatter round the truck ahead of Barbara.
Axelgaard shot him, too.
Barbara dropped, rolled and got off three, but Axelgaard climbed back into the truck just as an ear-splitting alarm went off and a bank of emergency lights flashed on. The truck lurched forward.
McMichael caught up with Hector at the line of vehicles waiting to leave the country, sprinted along while he dug out his badge and his nine millimeter. They held their badges high as they ran into the inspection area, McMichael half expecting a bullet to find him.
The INS vans screamed uselessly past them, and one of the catwalk gunmen fired down, but another one shot him off the scaffolding and he tumbled down through the lights and shadows and hit the asphalt with a smack. Victor dove away from the rig and the FBI men opened up. McMichael watched the overhead gunman pitch headfirst into the trailer of new cars, his automatic chattering away as he fell.
Martin Axelgaard broke away and sprinted for the Mexico-side fence but the Bureau men cut him down before he got close.
McMichael ran hard, wondering why he couldn't go fast enough to help anybody. He saw the Mack accelerating toward the panel van as Barbara and a staggering Mark Hatter pulled Rawlings to the Customs booth. Victor was crawling in the same direction, head low and butt high. The Bureau agents dove away from the truck and fired, and McMichael saw one of the SWAT snipers place three quick shots in a tight group through the windshield. The Mack slowed and Mason staggered out, wheeling and shooting wildly as McMichael and Hector and Hatter and the FBI men and the SWAT snipers up in the catwalk took him down in a brief, horrendous fusillade of small arms fire. One of the FBI men swung into the truck and killed the engine.
Gunsmoke lingered and slowly rose to join the exhaust and the lights and the darkness. The alarm screamed but for a moment no one moved- thankful prayers or just shock.
The calamity had taken thirty seconds.
McMichael trotted over to Rawlings, who was unconscious and bleeding hard from his ears and mouth while Barbara sat astride him and tried to pound his heart back into action. His cowboy hat lay a few feet away, up on its crown.
"You hang in there, Captain. You're hanging in, Captain. Don, Don? Hang in there with me now!"
She pounded and grunted and looked up at McMichael with hopeless eyes as the blood, sweat and tears ran down her charcoal-smudged face.
"Bland," said McMichael, taking Hector by the arm.
Silence in the family van as McMichael hit the emergency flashers and tried to gun it onto the freeway and Hector called ahead for the backup. Taillights came toward them at a steadily accelerating rate and McMichael laid on the horn to clear the fast lane.
"He got it in the head," said Hector. "All that armor and he gets it in the head. Fucking Axelgaards. Fucking Bland. Fucking Jimmy."
"Hatter's armor saved him."
"Rawlings looked bad. Oh, man."
McMichael sailed on, hands jittery and his eyeballs strangely heavy in his face, the weight of his own heart beginning to register through the dimming rush of adrenaline.
The lights were on in the back rooms of Bland's house. Two black-and-whites were waiting at the nearest corner and they fell in behind the van.
Four uniforms jangled up the walk behind the detectives, two of them carrying riot guns with the ten-shell magazines. McMichael felt alert again, light on his feet and ready. He thought he smelled something burning, wondered if it was the gunpowder from the border still alive in his nose.
He held the search warrant in one hand and his automatic in the other. Hector took the right side of the door and knocked sharply.
The porch light came on and Jerry Bland, dressed in a plaid bathrobe and slippers, opened the door. "What?"
"We've got a warrant, Bland," said McMichael. "This is it."
Bland's face looked ancient in the porch light. He stared past McMichael at the uniforms. "For my home?"
"Here," said McMichael, handing Bland the warrant book. "You can sign off or not. We're coming in."
"What are you looking for?"
"Read the damned thing, Bland. You like watching Rawlings get it tonight?" McMichael held up Bland's cell phone, then slid it back into his pocket.
Bland's mouth opened and his small eyes registered comprehension. "Come in."
McMichael pushed through, followed by Hector and the uniforms. One of them greeted Bland with a "good evening, sir. Sorry to bother you."
"You are not sorry," said Hector with a sharp glance. He shook his head in disgust and patted down the assistant chief, who raised his arms compliantly. Hector then cuffed him, hands behind his back. "You guys are not sorry. Stay with him. Don't let him out of your sight, not for one second."
Bland looked helpless with his robe and slippers and the stunned expression on his face. "I can help you guys find whatever it is you're looking for."
"Cash in a leather briefcase," said McMichael. He smelled smoke again.
"I've got one of those. But there's no cash in it."
Mitzi came into the room from the hallway. "Jerry, what's this?"
"Just a department thing, hon."
Bland padded across the floor and bent so she could hug him. She was a slight woman, short gray hair and a round, pleasant face. Wrapped in a heavy terry robe, she peered at McMichael over her husband's shoulder. She didn't look like she'd been sleeping.
"Can I get anyone coffee?"
"What's burning?" asked McMichael as the answer dawned on him.
"Probably charcoal from the barbecue," said Bland. "We had pork tenderloin to-"
"Money," said Hector.
"Watch them."
McMichael hustled down the hallway, the old hardwood creaking under him, through what appeared to be the master bedroom, then outside through a set of French doors.
Hector barged past him to the smoking barbecue, kicked it over onto the patio and danced through the sparks and embers and smoke, spreading out the half-consumed stacks of bills. The outer layers of cash were curled and rimmed with orange.
McMichael dragged over the garden hose and sprayed it all down while Hector scuffed his boot bottoms across the lawn. He returned from a darkened corner of the backyard with a leather briefcase, raised it in one hand and let the lid drop open.
"What a dumbshit," he said.
They found Jerry and Mitzi sitting together on the couch in the living room. Bland's face was white. He looked like he was chewing something, then not. The four uniforms stood back, watching them with uncomfortable looks on their faces.
"We're going downtown," said McMichael.
Bland took a deep breath, rose and sighed. Mitzi stood and hugged him. Bland bent again, hands still cuffed behind him, settling his face into her hair.
"I love you, Mitz."
"I love you, Jerry." She was sobbing and trembling hard. "I did what you told me to, hon."
"You're the best gal ever."
Bland turned from his wife and kind of backed up against her. For one baffling moment McMichael thought he was groping her. Bland looked at him without interest. Then he bent over at the waist and a terrific explosion concussed the room. Mitzi collapsed. Bland straightened and arched his back and a second shot roared into the walls. A red hole opened on the stomach of his robe and his head flew back. McMichael ducked and cleared leather just as Bland's knees hit the floor. Then his face. The snub-nosed detective special was still locked in his cuffed hands.