Face of Fear. Блейк Пирс

arm. “Better off calling the local PD,” she said, gesturing with her head back toward the car before setting off in that direction. Behind them, across the twenty-four steps back to the car, the old man’s laughter still pealed out, following them like a bad smell.

      Zoe sank into the driver’s seat and slammed her door, perhaps harder than necessary.

      “What’s the plan?” Shelley asked breathlessly. There was pink in her cheeks. This whole encounter had been out of her depth.

      “I am going to call the station,” Zoe said. “We get some backup, and the location. The locals will know what it means. And then we go in.”

      She dialed the number on her phone, already weighing up the amount of force they were going to need to ask for—and whether it was going to be prudent to ask for bulletproof vests, too.

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      Zoe adjusted the straps on her vest one more time, feeling the reassuring grip of the Velcro against its counterpart and how tightly they held together.

      The back of the police van was cramped. Shelley sat opposite her, and then eight men and women from the SWAT team, all of them outfitted in full assault gear. Zoe was unused to the feeling of the helmet on her head, the way the padded sides pushed at her cheeks. Still, it was better than going in as an exposed target.

      They were idling on a dead-end road a short distance from their target, the hangout that the gang members called home. The Pit. It turned out to be a bar, or at least a front of one, the kind of place where outsiders were very much unwelcome. Going in was going to be a full-out raid situation. The local captain had made it clear to them that there was no other option with men like this. Go in unarmed, unprotected, and as a cop, you’d come out dead.

      They had a map stretched out between them, a printed plan of the venue. It amounted to little more than black square outlines, approximations based on what had been observed on previous raids in combination with city blueprints.

      “There are three exits—here, here, and here.” The unit commander was pointing them out, one in all compass directions but south. “This one is the main entrance, where we will enter, off the road. The other two will both be used. From experience, the gang will split roughly half in each direction, trying to divide our forces as well.”

      “What is this structure here?” Zoe asked, pointing to a rectangle within the building itself.

      “That’s the bar area. Normally we will expect to see the highest concentration of bodies around there, with tables and chairs scattered around this area here. Back there, behind double doors, is the more private clubhouse. Senior members spend their time in there.”