Phantom Prey

go.”
    The SWAT started in, and Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins armored up, heavy stuff with drop-down groin protection and Level IV armor plates in the chest and back. Del slapped the Velcro bands around his vest and they all put on helmets. Shrake had an M16, Jenkins his 12-gauge pump, Lucas and Del their pistols.
    “It’d be stupid if they were all up there in that apartment, listening to Siggy and Heather getting it on,” Lucas said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was one of them on this side of the street, another one in the garage, another one on the other side of the building, couple in the apartment, plus Siggy. They’ll all have phones. Let the SWAT do the hard stuff, keep your eyes on the windows . . .”
    “Here comes SWAT,” Del said.
    AST. PAUL undercover guy had photographed the interior of the apartment house, and had gotten keys for the lobby door. Since Heather’s apartment was on the second floor, with street-side windows, the squad could be through the lobby, up the fire stairs, and in the hall outside the apartment in less than fifteen seconds.
    As they came in, in three vans, the undercover guy, in plain clothes, would open the door and hold it: the squad would go straight through, up the stairs, and attack the apartment door, knocking down opposition with a couple of flash-bangs.
    That was the theory.
    If they killed the pregnant wife or the baby, they’d be, as the SWAT commander noted, permanent residents of shit city.
    The vans rolled slowly down the street, and the undercover guy walked up the steps to the front door, working the key. Lucas said, “Let’s go.”
    They went out the door and down the stairs in a rush, hit the outside door, and thirty feet down the alley and around the corner of the drugstore and down the width of the store and around the next corner and the SWAT guys were boiling out of the vans and into the apartment.
    As they came around the corner, running into the street, Lucas saw a guy run out of a bagel shop across the street, seventy or eighty yards away from them, looking up at the apartment, a cell phone to his ear.
    Shrake yelled, “Hey!” and the guy turned and looked at them and took off running, away, up Snelling, and Del said, “I’ll get him,” and took off after him.
    Lucas, Shrake, and Jenkins ran across the street and up the sidewalk and heard the flash-bangs go off in the apartment, then the long, ripping stutter of a machine gun, and Jenkins yelled, “Holy shit,” and the machine gun wouldn’t stop and Lucas thought about drywall and plywood walls in apartment buildings, and hoped the shooting was being done by the cops, but it didn’t sound like it, it sounded too uncontrolled and crazy.
    Then Lucas picked up individual shots, and a man ran out the front door, looked at the vans, yanked up a small, short weapon, and fired a burst at the vans and then turned and ran away, up the street, where Del could still be seen chugging after the first runner, and Shrake said, “I got him,” and lifted his M16 and Lucas shouted, “No, no . . .” and behind the runner, a car pulled out of the parking garage and stopped across the sidewalk and Shrake yelled, “Shit!”
    A chair came through the end window on the apartment, and then a blanket dropped over the edge and Siggy looked out at them, saw them, turned the same weapon the second runner had, and fired a burst at them and they all went sideways behind parked cars and the bullets patted and whanked like bees.
    Siggy dropped the gun out the window and threw himself over the edge, hung one second and dropped, ten or twelve feet into a flower bed, and Shrake stood up and the second runner, now eighty or a hundred yards off, opened up again and they all went flat again and then Siggy was running away with the gun, around the car still sitting in the driveway, behind it.
    The driver came flying out the driver’s-side door and sprawled on the ground and Siggy was in the car, fired another burst through the open driver’s door, reached up and grabbed the steering wheel and pushed on the gas pedal with his other hand, and as the car started into the street, Shrake walked out into the street and said, “Fuck this,” and dumped half a magazine into the front of the car.
    The car straightened out and drifted across the street and ran into a parked car in front of the bagel shop, and sat there.
    Lucas was running after the second runner, screaming, “Del, Del,” and Del, at the top of a low