Wednesday 4:17 pm
Warehouse District
Beckett entered just behind Esposito's left shoulder. As soon as they cleared the door, Ryan drifted right towards the wall and she angled left towards the assembly line, spacing out their lines of fire. She could barely hear Demming's footsteps behind her and to her right. Castle stayed in the hallway.
The back of the trailer was thirty feet directly in front of Esposito. Ten feet further, the back of the armored car could be seen above them on the trailer bed, a bare bulb work light illuminating the broken doors and the scorched internal safes. Ryan had his riot gun trained on a man's back as he was pulling a large wrapped package of bills out of the back of the armored car. Esposito's shotgun was pointed at a man just to the left of the trailer, bent over to put a package in a wheelbarrow. Esposito floated left to get a better angle of fire, and Beckett matched his move, maintaining separation. Her Glock was in a two handed grip, pointed at the man who was wheeling a moving dolly towards the back of a white cargo van. The van was now 50 feet in front of Beckett, halfway up the left side of the big rig. Its doors were open, and a multitude of bundled packages were already stuffed inside.
Ryan's man yelled, "Cops!" and pulled a pistol from his belt in a lightning fast move. It wasn't nearly fast enough, as Ryan's shot hit him in the sternum. He spun around, reflexively fired a shot straight down into the truck bed, and dropped off the right side of the truck out of Beckett's line of vision. Ryan squeezed between a huge red tool box and the back of the trailer and disappeared between the trailer and the wall, too.
She could hear Esposito screaming "NYPD. NYPD. Freeze!" as he approached the middle man. The man had taken half a dozen steps towards the van, but now stopped and raised his hands. He turned around to face Esposito.
Beckett's man had ducked behind his money dolly, now only five feet from the back of the van. Suddenly, the van engine started. Shit! There was a fourth man in the van! Her man stood up with his hands raised, but started backing up towards the van. She yelled, "FREEZE! QUIT MOVING" as she continued to approach. When the van started moving, her man spun and dove through the open rear doors, yelling "Go. Go." Beckett quickly moved right and yelled, "ESPO! SWITCH!" She pointed her Glock at Esposito's man as Esposito ran forward, making sure not to cross into Beckett's line of fire. Beckett started yelling at Esposito's prisoner, now her prisoner, "GET ON YOUR KNEES NOW! GET ON YOUR KNEES NOW!"
She could see out of the corner of her eye Esposito stop, raise his weapon, and fire. The front right tire of the van exploded. Instead of the accelerating van turning left around the assembly line towards the front, it slid straight and crashed hard into the far wall. She could see the driver bail out and run towards the front of the building, a long weapon in his hands.
By now she'd reached her prisoner. He was crying and babbling, "We were so close. So close". Beckett muttered, "Shut the hell up." She spun him around and when he wouldn't kneel despite the pressure she put on his left shoulder with her free hand, she expertly kicked his legs out from under him. He landed hard on his knees. "Get on your stomach now!" She pushed the crying man down the rest of the way, then straddled him on the back of his thighs. She patted him down, making sure he was weaponless. She holstered her weapon and took out her handcuffs. She cuffed his right wrist, pulled his left over, and cuffed that one too behind his back.
Before she had a chance to look around for teammates, a shot rang out and a bullet whizzed next to her head. She could hear the ricochet of the near miss carom off the side of the armored car. Without conscious thought, she took three quick steps and dove head first behind a pallet stacked with boxes, like a runner going into second base. Unfortunately, nobody was yelling 'safe'. She had her hands covering her head, lying prone on the finished concrete. If she could have dug a hole and hid under the concrete, she would. Her terrified internal voice was babbling 'They're shooting a rifle at me! A fucking rifle! I know rifles! I hate rifles! I don't believe it! Another fucking rifle!' Three shots from someone's pistol rang out behind her and to her left. Demming, trying to pin down the sniper. Another rifle shot and a box on the pallet she cowered behind sported a new bullet hole, just three feet above her head. Little microscopic packing material bits started floating down on her. As her ears registered the passing bullet, she rolled to her right until she was at the end of the pallet. She was ten feet from decent cover, something more solid than empty cardboard boxes. She got up on all fours and crawled quickly, looking like an ungainly and petrified crab. She ducked behind an I-beam pillar and a squat, bulky, and blessedly metallic packing machine. It had seemed like the longest ten feet in Beckett's life.
As she crouched behind the machine, she could see Esposito next to the front fender of the truck, pointing his gun at the back of the van. He was talking to someone to his right, so Ryan must be up there as well, which meant Demming must be back with Ryan's prisoner in an over watch position. She took a deep breath, re-drew her weapon, and stood up behind the vertical I-beam on shaking legs. It felt like the bravest thing she'd ever done. Using the machine as cover, she peaked out.
The driver of the van was waving an M16 rifle in her general direction, walking sideways along the west wall toward the front of the building, partially covered by the far end of the assembly line. Moving slowly and staying as covered as possible, she laid out her weapon on the surface of the machine and took aim. At this range, it would be sheer luck to hit him, but maybe she could scare the bastard and get him to take cover. She fired two quick shots.
Both clearly misses, but they had the desired effect. The man, too far away to be identified, skittered behind a big box. Beckett was lining up another shot, hoping her target was hiding behind empty boxes like she had, when she heard Castle's frightened voice scream her name behind her and to her left. She instinctively turned her head in that direction, and saw a stranger 30 feet directly behind her.
In the space between two heartbeats, she realized three things. The first was the man behind her was on their suspect list, an Internal Affairs Detective named Kauthman, who must have been hiding upstairs or in the offices they'd bypassed. The second thing was that he was holding one of those combat shotguns, an AA-12, currently pointed at the floor but coming up at her.
The third thing she realized was that she was going to die. A 12-gauge at that range didn't even have to be pointed at her, it could miss by ten feet in any direction and the expanding buckshot spread would thoroughly shred her. The I-beam at her left shoulder blocked a move in that direction. She spun her head and feet back around to the right, a pirouette, trying to get her sluggish body to follow. She felt like she was moving in molasses. Her thoughts were morbid. 'I'm glad Lanie's on vacation. My autopsy is going to be an unholy mess. Serves Permlutter right for being such an ass. I'm so sorry, Castle!'
As her head came around she noticed that Esposito, seeing that she'd had the sniper pinned behind some boxes, had started to move towards the guy hiding in the van. No help from there – Espo wins the 'Bad Timing Award'. A pistol shot rang out from what was now her right – from behind the trailer under the window. Demming's position. Kauthman was hit in the side and back. He spun ninety degrees to his right, and his shotgun boomed.
The side windows and mirror of the big rig blew out, and Esposito, caught out in the middle halfway between the truck and the van, went down so fast it was like he'd stepped through a trapdoor. What the buckshot did to Beckett's prisoner, handcuffed on the floor ten feet directly in front of the shotgun blast, was horrific. Another pistol shot rang out from behind the trailer, this one aimed higher. It hit Kauthman in the side of his head, and seeing the pink and gray mist from the exit wound Beckett knew he was dead. Kauthman's corpse hadn't started falling yet, and Beckett was already moving towards Esposito. A scarily unmoving Esposito.
The shotgun boomed to her right as she ran past: Kauthman's body hitting the floor with his fingers still around the trigger. Another boom and another and another as the drum emptied; all aimed at and under the side of the armored car and trailer. Then a huge, rippling explosion from over near the wall under the windows. It was as if a huge bolt of lightning had struck a foot to her right. The shock wave knocked Beckett to her knees. Every window and lightbulb in their part of the building was shattered, and Beckett wondered if she'd gone deaf. She looked over. The truck and trailer actually ROSE up and tilted to her side before settling down again. A fireball mushroomed along the concrete wall, spreading up above the windows and around the ceiling 40 feet above them before dissipating, leaving the room seemingly much darker. "Jesus Christ" she moaned, both a curse and a prayer, as the sprinkler system kicked on.
She scrambled back to her feet. She snatched her two-way radio and screamed, "Dispatch, this is One Lincoln Forty, I have an officer down, I need an ambulance NOW. This location." She looked to her left at a flash of light and saw the forgotten sniper exit through the front door, running for his life. She kept her gun pointed at the back of the van, and skidded to a stop next to Esposito, who Ryan was already crouched over and working on. Blood was SPURTING from his leg, and Ryan was using one of his hideous ties as a tourniquet. Beckett, somehow, managed to tear her front shirt tail off left-handed, and knelt down clapping it to the upper leg wound. She glanced at Esposito's mangled lower leg and felt nauseated.
Ryan FINALLY finished the knot, and the blood spurt slowed to a trickle. Beckett kept pressure on the wound, her hand slick with blood and water from the sprinkler. She said to the very glassy-eyed Esposito, "Hang in there, Javi. Help is on the way." Demming ran up from her left, panting heavily and looking wild-eyed, his pistol still in his hand. She was amazed he'd survived the explosion, but was ecstatic to see him. Keeping pressure on Esposito's thigh wound, she yelled at the van "NYPD. You in the van. Come out with your hands up. I'm going to count to three. ONE." She shot a bullet through the roof of the van. "TWO." She put a bullet through the remaining unbroken rear safety glass.
"Hold it. Hold your fire. I'm coming out." The guy, who'd dove into the back of the van seemingly ages ago, backed out with his hands raised. Demming moved in to cuff him. As soon as he had him subdued, she holstered her weapon and picked up her two way again. "Dispatch, this is One Lincoln Forty, where the HELL is that bus?"
She heard "One Lincoln Forty, ambulance is four minutes out."
She grabbed Esposito's hand and held it. Ryan was working on wrapping his lower leg with strips from his shirt. Esposito was fading in and out. He'd lost a lot of blood, but he didn't have the pallor of someone bleeding to death. When Demming squatted down, she looked at him and said, "I think Espo is going to make it. Thank you. You saved my life."
Demming just stared at her, still panting heavily. "What?"
Demming must be in shock. She explained, like talking to a child, "Taking out Kauthman. The guy with the shotgun. You saved my life. Good shooting."
"Beckett, I broke left when we received the rifle fire."
She stared at Ryan, who stared back, eyes wide. Oh my God. She had totally lost tactical awareness after the M16 shots were fired. Demming just came up from her left, which meant …
"Rick." She breathed.