“Did you scope out the front door?” Rafael said.
“Of course, bro. That’s just it. No one came in, or we would have seen them,” said Emilio.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“We know,” said Emilio, wide-eyed.
“Jackass—come in,” Rafael called down on the Motorola. “Nate, you there? Hey, jackass!”
He unkeyed the radio and listened. The rasp of static. No Nate. No nothing.
What the hell is this? he thought.
“What are you guys doing just standing there?” Rafael cried up at the towering Lopez brothers. “I sent you to that training course why? For exercise? Shit is going down now! Get out the vests and choppers now.”
“You think it’s the Romolos, maybe?” said Emilio. “Over that thing with that girl who got killed? Or is it the cops?”
That’s when it happened.
In a silent instant around them came darkness.
The lights, the monitor, all the juice—all of it was suddenly gone.
Three
Rafael felt panic arrive, a cold petrifying pulse of it that began in his stomach and radiated out. To his balls and knees, to his chest and brain.
“Holy shit! What is this?” cried Pete in the dark.
Rafael bashed down the welling panic and finally, with a shaking thumb, got the flashlight going on his phone. He went out of the count room to the apartment door and cracked it.
No. F me. Not good.
The hall was dark. The entire building was out. Someone had shut their whole shit down!
He almost wet himself as the gunfire suddenly started up. Thundering up the dirty worn marble staircase came the sudden deafening blasts of a Glock 18 going off in a long magazine-emptying, full-auto burst. A faint flicker of muzzle flash accompanied the sudden jackhammering, the pulsing glow of it against the cracked stairwell plaster like firelight on the upper reaches of a cave wall.
Think, Rafael thought as he quickly closed and bolted the door.
Do not panic. You are intelligent. You have a plan. Do the plan.
“Who is it? Cops?” said Emilio as Rafael came back into the count room.
“You hear any bullhorns? It ain’t the cops!” said Rafael, opening the gun closet and reaching for the second shelf. His hands passed over the tube of a flashlight until he found what he was looking for.
The night-vision goggles.
He had all kinds of shit in there. Dried food, a portable propane generator, enough ammo to outlast Judgment Day.
Now, apparently, it was here, he thought as he pulled the strap of the goggles over his head.
“You want to play blindman’s bluff in my house?” he said as he clicked on the goggles and everything was suddenly illuminated with a pale-green light. He unclipped the Kalashnikov from the wall rack.
“Then you got it, bro. Let’s do it. Come out, come out, wherever you are, you son of a bitch.”
Four
Rafael sent Pete and Emilio up and over the roof to come down the west wing while he went down the east wing stairs.