I, Michael Bennett (Michael Bennett 5)

CHAPTER 91

TWO MORNINGS LATER, around 4:00 a.m., Newburgh detectives Moss, Boyanoski, and I rolled up on an imposing old castle-like brick building on South William Street.

As we parked and crossed the darkened lot of the old National Guard armory, I thought I was hearing things. Even before we got to the steps, you could hear voices coming from inside the thick stone walls. It was an amazingly loud rumble of voices, as if maybe a midnight session of the New York Stock Exchange were under way.

When Ed opened the front door, I just stood there for a moment, as if nailed to the floor of the brightly lit, cavernous space. In the indoor drill shed of the old building, where the state National Guard had once trained their horses, stood the largest gathering of law enforcement personnel I’d ever seen. There had to be nearly five hundred federal, state, and local cops. Wearing raid jackets and faded, drab SWAT fatigues, they stood in clumps before whiteboards or in semicircles around warrant folders laid open on the hoods of black SUVs.

I knew Tara had said that this was going to be a mass operation, but holy moly. There were folding tables everywhere, laptops, phones going off. It looked like some kind of strange college open house. But instead of young Republicans and glee club representatives, the tables were manned by people standing behind placards that said things like MUG SHOTS and FINGERPRINTING and EVIDENCE CONTROL.

“Newburgh hasn’t seen anything this big since Washington’s Continental Army was here,” Ed said in amazement.

“And wouldn’t you know it? The bad guys are still wearing red,” Bill Moss said.

We came across Tara behind one of the folding tables. In her official blue Windbreaker, with her dark hair pulled back in a ponytail, she was busily collating one of the nearly eighty arrest packages that were being put together.

“Bill, Ed, Mike,” she said with a nod. “Glad you could make it. You wanted some action from the feds, right? Well, how’m I doing so far?”

“Well, if this is all the guys you could get,” I said with a shrug, “then I guess we’ll just have to make do.”

Ed Boyanoski started laughing. It didn’t look like he was going to stop. No wonder he was so mirthful. He had worked so hard for so long to try to effect some change in his hometown, and it finally looked like it was going to happen. Both he and Bill were practically speechless, not to mention unbelievably pleased.

“I’ve been waiting on this for a long time, Ms. McLellan,” Bill Moss said, looking out on the army of law enforcement. “Longer than you know.”

“Let’s not count our chickens before they’re hatched, gentlemen. You still have a teeny-weeny bit of work to do,” Tara said, handing us each a folder. “You bag ’em, we tag ’em. You’ll find your fellow team members on the assignment sheet two tables down. Happy hunting.”

CHAPTER 92

HAPPY HUNTING IT was!

Two hours later, just before dawn, I was kneeling in my hunting blind, which in this case was a gutter on Benkard Avenue in southeast Newburgh.

I peeled away the shirt where it was clinging to the back of my sweaty neck and looked through the night-vision scope. Across Benkard, under a streetlight the color of a chain-smoker’s grin, was our target, the end unit in a decrepit row of dust-gray town houses.

I panned my scope up the unstable stack of bricks that held up its stoop—an arrangement that looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book—and checked the door and windows. Nothing. No movement in the house. No movement in the street, which we had just blocked off with two unmarked black SUVs.

If the task force had come up with a deck of cards showing the faces of the most-wanted criminals, Ed, Bill, and I would be holding the ace of spades. The town house we were about to raid belonged to Miguel Puentes, the city’s most ruthless dealer and chief Latin Kings enforcer, who ran the drug trade on the southeast end of town. His brother, Ramon, had already been picked up at the strip club they owned out by the airport.

Talk about getting ready to rumble. I really couldn’t have been more psyched as I crouched, squeezing t

he gummy rubber grips of my drawn Glock. Things were just where I liked them. God was in his heaven, the happy, amphetamine-like buzz of caffeine and adrenaline was in my bloodstream, and a bad guy was snoozing behind a poorly locked door.

I felt a hand on my shoulder.

“Alley and rear are clear. What do you think?” Bill Moss said in my ear.

“I think,” I said, lowering the scope, “it’s time for a Puentes family reunion.”

A moment later, it was showtime. The word “go” came crisply over the tactical mike, and we went.

The next seconds were a delicious blur of sounds and sights. The sharp crack of a police battering ram against a lock, and then the sound of wood splintering. We poured inside, flashlights raking the doorways of the darkened house.

I was actually the one who found Miguel in a back bedroom, off the kitchen. I saw him immediately as I came through the doorway, a muscular, bug-eyed tough with the word “magic” tattooed on his neck. He was in his skivvies, scrambling up off a sheetless king-size bed that barely fit the room.

“Hands! Let me see your hands!” I screamed.

“No hablo inglés!” he screamed back, leaping for the closet to the right of the huge bed.

I jumped up on the bed, took a step on the mattress, and tackled him. We both whammed into the cheap closet door almost hard enough to crack it. Miguel continued to struggle a little, but then stopped as I stabbed the barrel of my gun as hard as I could against his tattoo.