‘Listen up, gents,’ Fallon said in a commanding voice. The room went absolutely still. He pressed a button and Ken Sands’s latest photograph, the one Hunter had obtained from the prison board, was projected onto the white screen to his right. ‘This charming individual goes by the name of Ken Sands,’ Fallon continued. ‘This is the last known picture we have of him, taken six months ago on the day of his release from the California State Prison in Lancaster.’
‘Looks like a regular scumbag to me, Cap,’ Lewis Robinson, one of the SWAT agents said, causing all the others to laugh.
‘That might be,’ Fallon said, sucking their attention back to him. ‘And that’s why we’re here. Sands is a major suspect in a multiple-homicide investigation. His record shows that he’s very violent, very dangerous, and apparently very intelligent. There’s a good chance that he’s the Sculptor serial killer we’ve all read about in the papers.’
An uneasy murmur broke out among the agents.
‘Which means I don’t even have to tell you how royally disturbed that makes him.’ Fallon pressed the button again and the image on the screen changed to the blueprint of a single-story house. ‘This is our target’s location in Pomona. Our intel tells us he’s inside at the moment.’
The blueprint showed a house with three bedrooms, one of them en-suite, a living room, a dining room, a bathroom, and a large kitchen.
‘Is he alone in the house, Cap?’ Neil Grimshaw, the youngest of the SWAT agents, asked. Grimshaw had joined the team only a week ago. This was his first major operation. He looked tense, but in control.
‘It looks like he’s got at least one other person in there with him,’ Fallon replied and looked at Garcia.
‘That’s the intel we’ve got so far,’ Garcia explained. ‘There’s an LAPD detective watching the house as we speak, trying to gather whatever new info he can.’
‘Do we know if this other person is hostile?’ Robinson asked.
‘We don’t know,’ Garcia replied.
‘Are they armed?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘Do we know which room the target is in?’
‘We don’t have that intel.’
‘Fuck, is this guessing day, or what?’ Robinson said. ‘Might as well walk in there blindfolded. So what
‘All the information we have is in the folders on your desks,’ Fallon cut in. ‘That’s what we have, that’s what we’ll work with. That’s why we are SWAT. Is that a problem, Robinson?’
‘Just a bit worried about walking into any environment with an uncertain number of hostiles, having
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Fallon said, as if addressing a two-year-old. ‘I didn’t mean to scare you. Would you like to sit this one out, shaky-shorts? We can call you when we go looking for the marshmallow monster in the cupcake factory. That won’t be very dangerous, I promise.’
The room burst out into laughter.
‘OK, we all better be on our toes on this one,’ Fallon carried on. The room went quiet again. ‘Sands has been linked to an Albanian drug outfit, and we all know what that crowd is capable of. We’re taking no risks. We’re going in guns first. I want three teams of two, double-back formation – usual partners. Grimshaw, you’re with me. We’ve got surprise on our side. Sands doesn’t know we’re coming for him tonight, so we’ve gotta act fast. Let’s pack it up, gents. We’ve got a scumbag to take down.’
One Hundred and Nine
Dusk had taken over Los Angeles and the wind had picked up considerably by the time they reached Pomona. The house in question was at the end of an isolated road, in a quiet neighborhood. SWAT, together with Garcia and two other police cars, parked at the top of the road and went the rest of the way on foot. At the moment their most powerful weapon was the surprise factor. The last thing they wanted to do was to give away that advantage by alerting the house occupants to their presence.
On their way to Pomona, Jack Fallon had laid out their assault plan to the three SWAT teams. One team was to enter the house through the back, via the kitchen; one would burst through the front entrance; and the third team would enter through the veranda doors that led to the main bedroom at the left side of the house. LAPD would provide cover from the outside, in case Ken Sands tried to escape through a window.
The detective who’d been observing the house had nothing new to report. All the windows and curtains were shut. They’d been shut all day, which made further reconnaissance impossible. No one had left or entered the house in the past two hours.
There was no sign of Hunter. Garcia had tried calling him twice since they left the PAB but had got no reply.
‘