Chapter Forty-six: Everything but Mine
Unaware of the events taking place across the city at their boss's house Calleigh and Delko and Ryan were paired with members of SWAT. Everybody was briefed on how the take down would be done. The three crime scene investigators were told that they'd have to hang around in the back; direct orders from the lieutenant himself. Horatio, even when he wasn't there he still managed to keep an eye out for them. Delko gave Calleigh a nervous hug before following his group of SWAT members to the back of the house. Ryan was sent to the side while she stayed out front with the majority of the men. Usually it would have pissed her off to have them think her incapable of her job but in this situation against cop killers, it didn't bother her so much. She saw what they did to Speed, overheard him telling Horatio how the others looked while he was there. She hated being treated like a fragile piece of glass, one bump enough to shatter her; however, she wanted to make sure she could be there by Hagen's bedside when he awoke. She wasn't going to miss a thing.
The plan was to do things slow, go in under the cover of darkness with the first rays of dawn looming on the horizon. The heavily armored members of SWAT would use their stealth training to overtake most of the people in the building. At last count the snipers had reported at least ten people inside, most of them visibly unarmed, leaving the ground members on alert for hidden weapons.
But the plan didn't go off that way. Someone must have spotted something, a person dressed in black moving through the foliage; maybe they heard the crackle of a radio. Whatever it was it gave away the surprise attack. Calleigh flinched slightly as the sound of shooting filled the night. She could hear guns going off somewhere around the back of the house and her first thoughts were of Delko. She prayed that he'd make it out alive so that maybe things could finally happen between him and Speed. And of course, thinking of Speed made her wonder about the call that Horatio had gotten, the one that dragged him away from them with a fearful look in his eyes. Had something happened while he was out of the house? Was Speed okay? Slowly she began to realize that all of the stress from the last few days was starting to get to her. She couldn't focus on her work. All she could think about was Speed and his recovery; Delko and Ryan walking out of this situation alive; finding Hagen and Jesup.
One of the uniformed officers, someone that wasn't part of SWAT but held a high ranking, leaned over, said something to her. She wasn't sure exactly what he said but she recalled him easing the gun out of her hands. She let him. Then she turned and headed back to the safety of the vehicles. It wasn't a cowardly thing to do, she thought as she closed the door of the Hummer. Letting her head hang down she began to cry. Knowing when to walk away was the brave thing. She didn't have to prove herself as a tough street officer to the men outside, waiting, firearms pointed in the direction of the house. They all understood the pressure. Sometimes it just got to be too much. Horatio would understand. Delko, Ryan, Speed; they would all understand. And she knew that she was not alone. That hug from Delko, he gave so much of himself away with it. She had felt the slight tremble in his hands, felt the increase, almost panic-like beat of his heart. They all knew that at any moment one of them could be gunned down by a bunch of cop hating maniacs.
And all she could do was sit in the Hummer, tears marring her cheeks, and pray for her boys to come back safely.
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Delko wanted to go in with the SWAT members but was told to hang back. Five men had gone with him and one remained outside with him. Little did he know that Ryan had been put in the same spot. Neither one of the CSI's was going to be allowed into the building until the head of SWAT gave the all clear. When the shooting first started he felt the heat of bullets as they whizzed past him. He heard one make a direct hit in the tree no more than a foot behind him. And then SWAT was moving, breaching the house, returning fire. The noise was something else, deafening. He wanted to cover his ears but was afraid to let go of his weapon, afraid to let down his guard. He thought about Speed and realized that he was happy the man he loved was back at Horatio's, off duty because he was hurt. At least he wasn't here with them to witness the shoot out. That would have been too much for him.
He heard a branch snap, jostling him from his thoughts. The SWAT member swung his high-powered rifle in the direction of the sound. A second later a deranged man brandishing a machete came charging out of the bushes heading straight toward them. Delko raised his gun to fire off a round but the SWAT guy beat him to it, dropping the machete wielding maniac to the ground in the blink of an eye. Once he hit the ground the guy stopped moving, the bullet having played ping-pong in his skull.
He should have cared about the life taken right in front of his eyes but he didn't. For all he knew the dead man with the machete was the one who hurt Speed, the one who broke his ribs. The one who could have beat him to death.
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Things on Ryan's side were even worse. The gunfire was heavy; the SWAT guys couldn't even approach the house without getting shot at. If not for their head to toe protective clothing they would have been killed instantly. As it was Ryan found himself crouched over a SWAT guy who'd been shot in the chest. The Kevlar vest stopped the bullet but the man was stunned, the air forced out of his lungs. His team mates left him in Ryan's care. But when that man came out of the house with the Uzi, all hell broke loose. There was a lot of yelling, a cacophony of gunfire. The smell of gunpowder was thick in the air when it was all said and done, the man with the Uzi lying on the ground with four shots to the chest and the bullet in the brain that finally killed him, courtesy of one of the snipers.
Then the eerie silence settled in…