Page 136 of The Midnight Lock (Lincoln Rhyme 14)

A woman in an ugly knit hat and stained coat chants:“Free her now! Free her now! We’ve said our prayers and we’re prepared!”

If I were truly God, and could moderate the content of humankind, I would delete this crone with a single keystroke.

The newscast ends with the comment that the police do not yet have any leads as to the identity of the Locksmith.

Back to work. Sadly I’m not going to get the full half million, but that’s all right. The 200K plus my substantial savings and my inheritance is enough for a fresh start. A nice workshop/apartment—decked out with that new chair I’ve been looking forward to. We content moderators know a lot about the dark web. I can create a new identity for myself in a week.

And get down to doing what I was born to do.

72

The setup was this:

One sniper and her spotter, across the street from the Locksmith’s suspected workshop, the old Sebastiano Bakery Supply building.

One surveillance team in a battered florist delivery van with eyes and ears on the place.

One four-person dynamic entry team south, one north, each a half block from the front door. They were inside, respectively, a plumbing repair truck and an unmarked but highly battered white van, not unlike the one that played a two-ton prop in Sachs’s dramatic film debut earlier, directed by undercover cop Aaron Douglass.

And out of sight, ambulances and a squadron of uniforms. A fire truck too, given the Locksmith’s attempt at destroying the evidence in the Sandleman Building.

Sachs spoke into her cell phone. “We’re on location, Rhyme.”

“Any sign of him?”

“Nothing. Windows’re shuttered. Only one functioning door in and out, the front. The delivery entrance, in the back. It’s been bolted shut. There’ll be a small cellar with a coal chute. That door’s been sealed too.” She was looking over a photo from the Department of Buildings that showed the layout of the place. New York City records were very much as old as New York City. “Thinking if he spots us he could rabbit through adjoining basements, but he’d have to break through the walls—no adjoining doors. They’re brick and sandstone. Anyway, we have eyes on the neighboring structures too.”

Rhyme would normally have been on the radio, the frequency that was used for operations like this. But, of course, he was in NYPD purgatory. He’d have to find out about the operation after it was completed.

“You going in?”

“Yep. The north team.”

He would know that that crew was going in first, and that Sachs, among the four, would be in the lead.

He wouldn’t ask if she didn’t want to leave the cowboy stuff to ESU, younger and most with military training. It would be like asking Rhyme if he was sure he wanted to spend another hour or two or three analyzing a smidgeon of trace that, somehow, might hold the key to identifying a perp.

“K. Let me know.”

They disconnected.

Then Sachs, in helmet and full body armor, was out of the van, and with the three members of her team was moving low along the sidewalk to the front door of the baking supply company. The south team approached too and would go through the door after the north.

Using hand signals only, Sachs directed the fourth member of her team—the breacher—to the door, while the others covered him.Unlike at the Whittaker apartment, they would here be using full-on C4 charges, on the hinges and on the three locks. They were formidable and new, certainly not the make and model that deterred burglars one hundred years ago.

The breacher approached silently and placed the sticky-backed charges beside each hinge and a larger one on the locks, then he backed away ten feet and hefted a battering ram in case the explosions did not completely knock down the door. Sachs nodded to the woman beside her—Sanchezstenciled on her tac vest—and they both front slung their Heckler & Koch MP5 assault rifles and pulled flash-bangs from their belts.

Speaking softly—the mikes were in low-volume-pickup mode—Sachs said, “Sniper?” She looked across the street and up, noting that the woman and her spotter were well hidden and the barrel of the Remington 700P .308 was not visible.

“In position, covering. No sign of movement.”

“Roger. South team?”

They were only thirty feet away and rather than respond verbally, that team leader lifted a thumb.

Sachs felt her heart thud and she was filled with exhilaration. Two things brought her unlimited joy: driving on the edge, engine wailing, and the instant before a dynamic entry.

She gave the hand signal to all the troops to hunker down for the bang, then held up three fingers of her left hand. She tucked them away one by one. As the last curled into a fist, the breacher whispered, “Fire in the hole,” and sent the signal to the plastic charges. Five simultaneous explosions shook the ground beneath them, as the door splintered and crashed inside. No ram would be necessary.