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As she waited, ticking off the minutes on the phone, a man’s head popped up through the hatch that led down to the office loft. He was heavy, red-faced, bald. “What the hell are you doing?” he demanded.
“Who are you?” Letty asked.
“I’m the manager. I just got back and they told me some bullshit about you being FBI. You’re not even a fuckin’ teenager. Come down from there before I drag your ass down.”
Letty put her gun hand on the parapet, so he could see the pistol. “Let me tell you something. The FBI SWAT squad will be here in two minutes or less. All you have to do is wait two minutes, or maybe three, and then you will know it’s not bullshit. If you come up here and try to drag me away, I’ll probably shoot you, and not only will you be shot, if you don’t die you’ll go to prison for endangering the life of a federal law enforcement officer in the midst of what could turn into a firefight... and all that could be avoided if you go away for two minutes. Think about it.”
And her phone rang: she looked down at it, hit the speaker icon. Jackson said, “We have three men coming down the alley in back. Wave to them so they know exactly where you are. Do it now.”
“Okay.” She scrambled to the back parapet, trying to stay low, though she realized in the back of her brain that wasn’t yet necessary, and saw three agents in full armor with helmets, carrying assault rifles, jogging down the alley. She stood and waved and the leader waved back. The three continued to the back of the garage, and as she watched, took up a triangular formation, fifteen yards apart and fifteen back from the steel door.
She turned back to the deli manager, who said, “Okay, I heard that. I’ll go lock the door.” He disappeared down the hatchway. A moment later, he popped back up. “What they’d do? The guys you’re after?”
“Murdered two people,” Letty said.
“Okay.” He was gone again.
Baxter called: “Something’s happening. There are some bad-looking trucks at the end of the block... coming slow.”
“That’s them,” Letty said, and hung up. Tasted a little salt in her mouth, waiting.
The show beganwith the sound of trucks in front of the garage and idling there. A few horns honked, and then she heard a bullhorn. Letty could hear it, but not make out the words.
She was sitting halfway down the length of the deli roof, and moved forward, hoping to hear better. She still couldn’t make out the words, but she did see parts of two large dark square trucks parked on the wrong side of Ventura and men in dark armor behind them.
More honking horns; the commuters were getting pissed.
As she was looking at the trucks, she heard shouting from the back of the building, and turned and went that way, in time to hear a door slam. When she looked down from the roof, she saw the three SWAT members standing in the alley, pointing their guns at the steel door, which had apparently been opened and then slammed shut. The people inside the garage were surrounded and now they knew it.
She started to walk back to the front of the building, where the bullhorn was at work again, when she heard the door rattling on top of the garage roof. Locked from the inside, she thought, and probably stuck shut with rust and dirt. Now it was being opened. She sat down behind the parapet, peeking out from behind a crenellation, and watched as somebody kicked the door, and then pushed through it.
A man came out and looked around, didn’t see Letty, whoshowed nothing more than one eye between the plywood crenellations. The man was in a hurry, but she didn’t know exactly what he was doing. He had one arm locked across his chest, as if he was carrying a bunch of bottles, more than he could handle with two hands. Then he paused, still with one hand locked across his chest, and started making flinging gestures with the other hand.
And she thought, “Are those...?”
They were. Safety rings on hand grenades.
Letty screamed, “Grenades, he’s got grenades! Man on the roof with grenades!”
She thumbed the safety on the 938 and snapped a shot at the man who’d started trotting toward the back of the building. She knew she’d miss as she was pulling the trigger, and she did, but she had no time for accuracy, she had to stop him from dropping the grenades on the SWAT team members in back.
“Watch out, watch out, grenades...”
The man lurched sideways, nearly stumbled at the sound of Letty’s scream and the nearby shot and he half turned toward her as he flung his hands away from his chest, heaving the grenades at the back parapet.
Three of the grenades, the arming levers flying free, went over the parapet, but a fourth one hit a crenellation and bounced back toward the man and he turned to run away from it.
Letty, now tracking him, but at the same time distracted by the grenade that was rolling in circles around the adjacent roof, missed him with a second shot, but took a half second with the third, and shot him in the hip and he went down and then immediately began crawling toward the air conditioner housing.
Letty, still screaming “Grenades,” and who had only a Hollywood idea of what a grenade might do, dropped below the parapetand then all four grenades went off one-two-three-four in fast order. The blasts seemed disappointingly small, and a tiny piece of burning-hot metal, the size of an eyelash, landed on her hand. She brushed it off, but it left a white eyelash-sized burn mark.
Seconds later, automatic rifle fire snapped out at the back of the building but didn’t seem to involve her. Letty had to pay attention to the man she’d shot on the garage roof, who’d managed to take cover from the fourth grenade behind the air conditioner housing.
When she peeked at him, he was on his back, but had a pistol in his hand and began spraying the rotten parapet on Letty’s building with a full seventeen-round magazine, the bullets buzzing past her like bees, splinters of wood and tar paper spraying from the bullet holes.
Somebody at the back was shouting, “Men down, we got men...” but Letty was scrambling as best she could to get behind her own air conditioner housing. She was almost there when a nine-millimeter slug hit the heel of her shoe with the impact of a hammer, twisting her ankle.
As she made it behind the air conditioner, breathing hard, there was another small explosion at the front of the building—another grenade?—but then Letty heard more shouting from the front and thought that the SWATs may have blown open the door at the front of the building.
