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“A few early birds going in. Pretty quiet yet.” He lowered his voice. “Good job there. She ain’t ready to rock yet. Girl’s got spine though.”
“There’ll be other ops,” Eve agreed, and studied the monitor. “There’s always another op.”
The church was small, an unpretentious building that might have started out white. It was gray now, a soft and dingy gray that boasted a simple black cross. It had no steeple, and only a scattering of windows across the front.
Eve knew what it looked like inside. She’d studied the blueprints and the record Baxter had taken. He’d dressed as a sidewalk sleeper, had stumbled around inside. Though he hadn’t been able to get to the basement, he’d gotten a good picture of the main level.
And had copped ten credits from the deacon who’d finally moved him along again.
There were fifty pews, twenty-five to a side. A podium centered at the front. There were two doors off the worship area. Baxter had managed to bungle his way into one, snag a quick record of an office area before the deacon had rushed in to fuss over him.
The equipment in the office was top-of-the-line and several levels over what any little neighborhood church could afford.
There were three outside doors. The front, the east side, and the rear that led to the basement.
All were covered. When they moved, she thought, they’d surround the building like the rings around Saturn.
“Pi
cking up more chatter now,” Feeney told her.
Eve lifted up her earpiece, tuned in.
There was talk about sports. How about those Yankees? Women exchanged recipes and talked child care. Someone mentioned a sale at Barney’s.
“Jesus.” Feeney shook his head. “Sounds like a damn PTA meeting.”
“A what?”
“School deal. Parents, teachers. What kind of terrorists are they?”
“Ordinary people,” Eve said. “That’s what makes them so dangerous. Most are just regular Joes looking for a way to clean up the streets. I watched this vid with Roarke. This Old West thing. Bad guys kicking ass in this town. Law can’t stop them ’cause they kick the law’s ass, too. So the people get together, pool some bucks and hire this band of gunslingers—that’s a great word, isn’t it? Gunslinger.”
She savored it for just a moment, snagged a few of Feeney’s candied nuts. “Anyway, they hired these guys to get rid of the other guys. And they do. But then the gunslingers decide, hey, we like it here, so we’re going to hang and run things our way. What are you gonna do about that? So the town ends up under their thumb.”
“Just trade one gun for another.”
“Yeah, plus you lose the bucks, a lot of people who were minding their own get hurt. Ends up this U.S. Marshall type comes in—which should’ve been done in the first place—and after a lot of shooting, people taking dives off roofs, getting dragged around by horses and shit, he cleans up the place.”
“We don’t have the horses, but we’ll clean up the place tonight.”
“Damn right.”
They waited. Dull conversation, long silences, quick updates from other units stationed around the perimeter. Cop work, Eve thought, as she sipped black coffee and monitored, was hours of waiting, mountains of paperwork, stretches of unbelievable boredom. And moments, extreme moments where it came down to life and death.
She glanced over at Peabody. Instants, she thought, and inches. And fate.
“They’re starting,” Feeney said quietly. “Must be all they’re expecting tonight. Bastards are starting their death meeting with The Lord’s Prayer.”
“They’re about to have plenty to pray for.” Eve got to her feet. “Let’s round them up, and take them down.”
She ran checks with each unit captain, ordered all positions held while she and Feeney moved in to join Baxter and Trueheart.
Her unit would hit the basement door first.
She gave Baxter’s chest a quick poke to make sure he was wearing his riot gear. Grinning, he poked her back. “Damn stuff’s heavy, isn’t it?”
“Irritates the hell out of me,” she admitted. She circled her finger. He turned so she could yank down the concealing flap and reveal the NYPSD emblem on the back of his jacket.
