Red rain 2.0 (28 page)

It goes down.

Blue twilight, thoroughbreds moving ghostlike here and there in distant pastures. We pull up to the gate of Vassily's place—it's almost twin to Dee Dee's—in two Ford vans. I say, in Russian, "It's Shooter and Dog" to the speaker embedded in one of the brick columns. Whirring, a steely click, the gate swings open. Along a tree-lined drive to a graveled area between house and stables. We get out slowly. A wiry Russian, the one who answered the door at the Charles Street house, strolls easily toward us.

"Shooter," he calls in English. I'm sure he's being covered, I'm sure somebody I can't see has his scope reticle on my face. "Your boys all carrying, yes?"

"Sure, wanna see?" I say, tell Dog and both teams to slowly open their jackets or windbreakers, let their pistols be seen.

"No problem with this, Shooter," the Russian says. "Our guys too. Is normal. We meet before, remember? Charles Street?"

"Yeah, it's Nick, right?" I say, taking his outstretched hand, shaking it firmly. "Where's Vassily?"

"Come on in. To stables. You, all your guys." Nick smiles.

"Hell of a welcome, Nick. Stepping in horseshit in the

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fuckin' stables," I say. Now Dugal and the backup know where we'll be.

Nick laughs. "Stables like this, you never seen. Cleaner than house, where nobody lives," he says, leading us into a big round structure—it covers a dirt riding ring—with three wings of stalls radiating from it. Bright spots on the ceiling, light's as bright as a circus ring. I see two rough wooden packing cases in the middle, tops off. I see five Russians standing in a casual semicircle around the crates. Quick scan around. No way to tell if there are others hidden down the stall-ways, or up in the rafters; the light's blinding from there.

"Who are your friends, Nick? I didn't see them at the Palace," I say in Russian.

"Of course not," Nick says. "They are the boys who live down here now. The whole idea, right? Your boys meet our boys, everybody gets to be friends? Better to use English. Some of these boys, they're Russian all right but born in Brighton. Their Russian isn't so good as yours. A shame, but hey, this is America. Come see what we have for you in crates. It's going to give you a hard-on, you're going to love it at first sight."

"Sure. And you look at what we got for you, you're going to come in your pants," I say, motioning Dog to come up with two big Halliburton cases, pop them open. It takes two to carry $750,000 when you can't use hundreds. "But Nick, one thing. One big thing. Where is my friend Vassily? He going to jump out of one of those crates, just to surprise me?"

"Like Vassily said, a good sense of humor you got, Shooter. Vassily, he's very, very sorry. He tells me to make to you a thousand apologies, but he has to go out of town in a hurry."

"Then the deal doesn't happen."

"Shooter, Shooter. Vassily said you would be upset, and please to forgive him. We're here, the product's here, you got the money. We should all be happy, yes?"

Happy? This is the worst. The fucking worst. We do this

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bust without nailing Vassily, all we got to look forward to is Vassily coming back at us. Christ, I'm hoping Dugal's picked up my hint.

"Deal can't happen without my friend Vassily," I say, tossing another plea to Dugal. Please God, let him get it. Don't let him come on with the backup.

"Be reasonable, Shooter. Vassily, he got to go. For the future, yes! Because this is just the start, you understand?"

"Where the fuck did he go? He told me he'd be here." I am not going to say "Comrade." We're going to walk on this.

"Moscow, then Kazakhstan. He go to
source.
That's how much he trust you. He go to source, make arrangements for much more of what we got here," Nick says. He puts his arm around my shoulder. "Everything is perfect. Such a waste, all this trouble we all go to, everything is perfect, and you walk away just because Vassily is working for future? Don't do this, Shooter."

Nick steers me to the crates. Goddamn. Key upon key of smack. Nick nods at one of the Russians, who flicks a switchblade, makes a small slice in one bag, carries over a tiny pinch of white powder on the knife blade, which he points at my face. "You taste that, Luther. Then you know why Vassily go where he go, and can't be here."

I taste it. Rocks me. Pure, pure shit. I can't stop a grin from spreading across my face. Nick sees that, reads it in a way I never intended, gives me a hug, says, "Okay, comrade ..."

Fuck. Pitch black. I seize Nick, scream, "No guns, no guns anybody. It's not a rip. Not a rip!" A lot to say, real fast, in English and in Russian. I almost piss myself when I hear one of the Russian boys call, "Fucking power loss! Stay cool. Happens a lot out here. Stay cool! Shit, I live in this place for two months, happens all the time."

Then we're blinking hard, almost blinded when the lights hit us full force. I look at Nick. He looks at me, serious, ag-

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itated. Everybody in my view has a hand on a weapon. Then Nick laughs, slowly at first, then in big Russian-style bursts.

"Big scare, huh, Shooter? Jesus Christ. Man, make me shake, shit like this. Come on now. Get your boys to take crates to your vans. Me, I'll take briefcases. Let's do it before the fucking power goes again. Shit, that happens, we all be shooting each other. Big fucking mistake. Big fucking shame, yes? And look." Nick waves. "Afterward, party like Vassily said. Everybody gets to know everybody, man to man."

I see—how could I have missed it on the first scan?—a long table draped with white linen at the far side of the ring. Silver ice buckets, bottles of vodka and champagne peeking out the tops. Big plates of food.

"We all get drunk together, get friendly. Our boys, your boys," Nick says.

Dog latches the cases, looks up at me. I nod. He stands and hands them to Nick. Then he waves our guys over to the cases. The Russians are nailing the lids back on. Except for one, who comes over and takes the cases from Nick. "Count?" he asks.

"Fuck no. Here we got trust. Any little bit short by mistake, hey, honest mistake. We make it up later, right, Shooter?"

Got to've been two minutes since the lights went back on. Maybe we're not fucked. Maybe Dugal got the hint. God, I'm too dumb to live. They did the lights on Nick's "comrade." It's gonna go down. Now?

Now!

It's like I'm struck deaf, hearing only the blood roaring in my ears. Tacticals all in black, black-hooded, swarming in from all directions. Assault shotguns, CAR15s, red laser dots butterflying across our chests, flicking back and holding. My arms go straight up in the air. Nick sees two red dots on his stomach, doesn't notice the one steady on his forehead. His arms go straight up too. Swarms of tacticals and city narcs and county narcs wearing blue police wind-

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breakers are on us, shoving us, ripping our jackets, pulling our guns away, kicking our legs out from under us, putting muzzles to our heads as we lie in the dirt. Nick's cursing a hurricane of the worst Russian obscenities I've ever heard. Bullhorns, orders. I realize I'm hearing again. "Any motherfucker twitches, grease him," some asshole bullhorns. These fucks are feeling the rush, they're kicking and yanking us to our feet now. A boot catches me on my way up. I feel one, maybe two ribs crack. Overkill, overreaction, too fucking psyched, moving too fucking fast, somebody's gonna make a mistake.

Freeze-frame. Silence. One of the Russians has Dugal's arm twisted behind his back, switchblade at his throat. I see a tactical in the dirt, geyser of blood from a severed carotid. "Keep the fuck away, keep the fuck away," the Russian kid's screaming, his eyes wild and crazy. A little blood's starting to trickle down Dugal's neck. But the LT's face is blank.

"Let it go, let it go now," Nick roars at the kid, who's edging himself toward the main door, Dugal in front of him as a shield.

"Keep away! Keep away! I'll slit the fuck's throat," the kid screams. Nobody's moving. Except the kid and the LT, slowly edging backward.

PopPopPop.
Like three bottles of champagne uncorked almost, but not quite, simultaneously.

The kid drops, dead before he hits the ground. Dugal swings away, hand going automatically to his throat. Hand comes away, he stares at the blood, expressionless. I see it's minor, the kid was only pressing the blade too hard, not slashing.

"Calm, please, gentlemen," a voice comes from outside. "One of yours, coming in."

Then McKibbin walks through that wide door, AKSU-74 with night scope slung over his shoulder, muzzle down, his hands in the air. "Gentlemen, please remove the laser sights from me. It's very distressing, you know. Thank you."

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Ulster Constabulary, my ass, I'm thinking as we're led, cuffed, to police vans. Ex-SAS, for sure. Cool.

That three-round burst of McKibbin's is the only thing that's cool. I don't mind spending the night and the next day in a holding cell with Dog and our guys, in full view, deliberately, of Nick and his guys in the cell opposite. I don't mind that Nick and his guys almost miraculously make bail before the day's end, while we still sit there. I don't mind the bad, suspicious look disguised with a grin Nick gives me when he walks. Minor inconvenience. Part of the show.

Like hell it is.

It's the sit-down with Dugal that night that is so fucking uncool I can't believe it. Because he can't believe we're fucked. He's convinced we've won a famous victory. He's already seen his face on the TV news, bandage on his little neck nick bigger than it needs to be, announcing the biggest drag bust in Baltimore County's history, seen his photo and his direct quotes in the newspaper, taken calls of congratulation from the county executive, the department chief and who knows what other big swinging dicks, maybe the fucking governor. The man's so high on all this he just will not hear me.

No consolation, feeling sure Dog's eating the same shit as me with his boss downtown at this very moment.

"We fuckin' blew it!"
I explode.

"Take it easy, Luther. I understand you've been under tremendous stress. I empathize. Under a little stress myself for a moment," he says easily, brushing the bandage on his neck. "We got the drugs, we got the players. Perfect. Except for that SWAT man we lost, it would be one for the textbooks. We've hit these guys so hard they've been knocked all the way back to Brighton Beach. They won't come down here again."

"Wrong!"

"C'mon, Luther. Ease off. You're getting excessive here."

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"LT, we missed Vassily. He's still operative. Without him in lockdown, we have not—repeat, not—turned off the faucet."

"You're not thinking clearly, Detective. Just because this Vassily wasn't at the scene does not mean he's not ours. We'll get him through his men, during the grand jury process. We'll turn one of them, make a deal, offer him witness protection. We will, I promise you, get this Vassily. The DEA and FBI have been alerted. So what is your problem?"

"His men will not—repeat, not—give him up. Sir. He will not—repeat, not—be found by the DEA or the FBI or even the fuckin' CIA. Sir.
Nobody knows who he is!
Sir. Nobody knows his real name, nobody's got his fingerprints, nobody's gonna catch him at JFK or any other airport he chooses to fly back into because he's probably got six different perfectly forged passports. Sir."

"I don't believe I'm hearing this from an experienced man like you, Luther. What makes you so sure a drug dealer of this magnitude can come in under the radar of every law enforcement agency we have in this country? It's impossible. He will be found. He will be arrested. Unless he stays in Russia, which, if I were him, I would seriously consider."

"You're not him, LT. I don't know who he is, but I do know very well what he can do, what his capabilities are. Even if the Feds manage to find him, he's untouchable. So we're fucked."

"We will get him ..."

"For what? We don't have any reason to arrest him because he wasn 't there. We have no connection between him and the drugs!
He never got fucking near them. All he did was talk with me and Dog. He's clean. His hands aren't dirty. He's taken a slight loss, is all. Everything he lost— men, dope, money—he can replace. I guarantee he will."

"I'm convinced otherwise, Luther. We'll just have to agree to disagree. Let's leave it at that for now. I don't want to get into a disagreement with a man who's just done some

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of the finest policework I've ever seen. You have done that. Congratulations."

Dugal extends his hand. For a moment I hesitate to take it. For a moment I feel like going ballistic. But I take a deep breath, meet his eyes, shake his hand. "Little advice, Luther," he says as I'm leaving his office. "Don't be thinking failure. Don't be thinking the bad guy got away. Start thinking commendations, promotions. That's what's coming your way."

"Sir," I say.

All that's coming my way, I think on the traffic crawl out York Road toward Cockeysville, is a three-round burst some time, some place when I least expect it. Or maybe something worse.