Florida Firefight

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Florida Firefight

Randy Wayne White writing as Carl Ramm

one

7:33
P.M.

Only minutes before he lifted the sniper rifle and took the shot that would end his career as a Chicago cop—and force him to become America's deadliest vigilante—James Hawker adjusted his climbing belt, cradled his weapon and flipped out the little pocket transceiver.

“SWAT One to Ground Leader. Copy?”

The transceiver crackled.

“Yeah, what's up, Hawker—besides yourself, I mean.” It was a rare attempt at humor for Captain Boone Chezick, and his laugh sounded like grinding glass.

Hawker was seventeen stories high, strapped to window-washer bollards on the outside of the Fidelity Insurance Building.

He wore a black oilskin sweater and black watch cap.

A bleak November wind pounded across Lake Michigan, ricocheting around the cement and stone canyons of downtown Chicago. South, toward Lake Shore Drive, the Playboy Club beacon scanned the night, as if seeking Jap Zeros from some 1940s war movie. The Sears Tower—the tallest building in the world—and the twin towers of the Hancock Building loomed above the city, bathed in piercing light.

“Our boy's getting nervous, Chezick,” Hawker said softly. The rubber antenna of the transceiver was frigid against his cheek. Hawker flexed his fingers, trying to work away the cold and stiffness. “He's got all twelve kids lined against the north wall of the room. He's been pacing back and forth, swinging that .357 stainless around. The telephone is on a desk in the west corner of the room. Every time he goes to the phone to negotiate with the governor, I get about a second-and-a-half look at his face, free and clear.”

“So?”

“So give me the shot, Chezick.”

“What, the great James Hawker is finally asking permission to kill?” There was another hack of laughter. “Maybe that private warning you got from the police superintendent made it through your thick Irish skull, huh?”

Hawker willed his voice to remain calm, and it came out a hoarse whisper. “Chezick, those hostages in there are kids. Maybe fourteen or fifteen—about the same age I was when old Ed knocked you on your ass for trying to force payoff money on him. That was twenty years ago, so let's cut the crap, huh? You hated my dad; you don't like me and, to tell the truth, I'm not going to be inviting you on any canoe trips—but that's all personal. This is business, Chezick. You're a good enough cop to know the difference. We've got a crazy Guatemalan locked in a room with a bunch of rich school kids, and I want permission to put him away.”

The entire time he spoke, Hawker's eyes never left the seventeenth-floor window of the building across West Webster Street that held kidnapper and hostages.

“And I'm telling you, Chezick, if you make me wait too long again, and someone dies because I don't take the shot when I have it—”

“You've got your orders, Hawker,” Boone Chezick said firmly, but his voice had changed. It was tinged strangely with regret. For the first time he sounded almost human. “And those orders come straight from the superintendent, and the superintendent is getting his orders from a hell of a lot higher than that.” He cleared his throat, almost as if embarrassed. “It's a political thing, Hawker. It's an election year, and a certain public official likes the idea of all the free national coverage. They've got enough footage of him in sincere negotiations with that Guatemalan to make you gag—and the son of a bitch doesn't speak a word of Spanish. But that asshole up there with the .357 is a natural Dan Rather subject, and this politician doesn't want you blowing away his meal ticket—”

“
Oh, shit
.”

“So those are your orders, Hawker. You've got a rep for playing it close and acting on your own. I know you got some bum orders the last time you were in this situation, and we've all had bad luck—”

Bad luck, my ass
, thought Hawker.
A man and four women died the last time I followed orders and waited
.

“But not this time,” Chezick continued. “The superintendent says to tell you personally that if you fire without permission, it's immediate suspension—no questions, no excuses. From that distance, shooting through glass, there's too much chance of your hitting one of the kids. That's exactly the kind of coverage the politicians don't need. Also, if one of the kids dies because you don't take out the Guatemalan with your first shot, you're off the force—and in jail. Because you can be goddamn sure our elected officials are not going to take the rap.”

“And what if he opens fire first?”

“The interpreter says the kidnapper sounds pretty stable. Says he's under control. All he wants is a million in cash and an air ticket home—everything but Dolly Parton's tits. Don't worry—if things start to go sour, the negotiating team will sense it and give you the word.”

“Right.”

“And Hawk”—Chezick was suddenly awkward—“if it was up to me, that goat fucker woulda been dead fifteen minutes ago when you got your first clear look at him, and we'd all be on our way home. Your old man and me may not have been best buddies, but I respected the hell out of him. And I was as sorry as anybody on the force when those two sleazy punks put him away. God help them if a member of the Chicago PD ever finds them.”

It hadn't been easy for Chezick to say, and Hawker thanked him. He signed off after making sure the other four men on his SWAT team had heard the orders, then settled back against his climbing belt, legs braced against the stone wall of the Fidelity Building.

The wind was gusting now, and he could smell the stink of the lake and the industrial stench of the city.

Below him miniature squad cars threw bursts of blue light across roadblock gates, and miniature people stood in groups, braced against the cold. Men shouldering television news cameras and young women carrying microphones hustled from group to group, hoping to squeeze out every last juicy detail.

Hawker knew the news people, and he liked most of them. But he also knew that to them, the difference between a local story and the chance to be picked up by their New York affiliate was death. A cop's death. A kid's death. A kidnapper's death. It didn't matter. It took a lot of death and misery to pay for Dan's penthouse or Walter's wardrobe.

He wondered if they slept well at night.

Movement across Webster Street caught his attention. He lifted his rifle and had a look. The rifle was a Remington 700, military issue, which meant it had a dull finish. Its five-round magazine held NATO 7.62 caliber ammunition, which produced a muzzle velocity of 850 meters a second. Effective range was close to a half mile. Atop the weapon was fitted a massive Star-Tron Mark 303a night vision scope. It had a 135 millimeter f16 lens, which worked on a light intensification system. All available light—from moon, stars, streetlights—was collected by the objective lens, then focused onto an intensifier tube, where the light was amplified some fifty thousand times.

The Guatemalan kidnapper had kept his stronghold in almost total darkness. But when Hawker sighted in, focusing carefully, the room across the street was bathed in amber daylight.

As usual, the kidnapper was out of view, but the twelve kids still stood in a line, backs to the wall.

Hawker fingered the safety to be certain it was on.

The Star-Tron made it seem as if he were in the room with them.

One by one he scanned the teenage faces. Two of the five boys had been crying; their eyes were puffy. The faces of the seven girls displayed various degrees of shock. The white designer slacks of the prettiest girl—a tawny-haired adolescent with the body of a twenty-year-old—showed a dark funneling stain at the crotch. She had wet herself, presumably when the Guatemalan had first threatened them with his .357.

Hawker sighed, disgusted. They were all students at the most exclusive private school in Chicago: Sherwood Anderson Prep. It was more expensive than Latin Private—which once had asked applicants for their bank account numbers—and even more liberal than Francis W. Parker School, which was a bastion of the noble and naive left-wing politics so chic among the very rich and the very spoiled.

Somehow these kids had become associated with the Guatemalan—probably through a student whose father had once been a South American embassy official. The Guatemalan was some kind of ultra left-wing political outlaw, and the chance to offer him help was just too romantic for the dumb little bastards to pass up.

Now they were paying a big price for it.

The climbing belt cut into Hawker's back, and the cold wind sieved through the oiled wool sweater.

He kept the Remington 700 sighted on the window across the street: ready, waiting. He had his orders, and reluctantly he would follow them.

Something Chezick had said touched one of his memory electrodes.

“I was as sorry as anybody on the force when those two sleazy punks put your dad away. God help them if a member of the Chicago PD ever finds them.”

It was more than five years ago that the two amateur thieves, by taking him by surprise from behind, had killed his father; the father who had raised him, instructed him and inspired him to follow in his footsteps to the Chicago PD. Working alone, Hawker had tracked the bastards down within twenty-four hours of the murder—before the homicide squad assigned to the case had even gotten started.

And Detective Lieutenant James Hawker knew that if the killers were ever found again, it would be a piece at a time, in some very deep, very cold water.

7:39
P.M.

Rigaberto Laca, a lieutenant in the Guatemalan left-wing guerrilla Tigre squad, felt a terrible roaring in his head, and his heart pounded high in his throat. If he was to die, he knew he must take as many Americans with him as possible.