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  At the end of the block, the support officers were pulling into position. They would be the ones to enter the building after it was secured.

  This was one of the most dangerous activities for any SWAT team. When noncombatants or victims are inside a house with the suspects, tactics change. Like most cops, I don’t know how I could live with myself if I accidentally hurt an innocent, like a child, while executing a search warrant.

  I felt nervous for the team about to enter the apartment building. You never know; the next entry might be your last. Marie listened on a radio. I couldn’t understand any of the Dutch being spoken, but I recognized the tone. They were getting ready to breach the main door. I’d bet there was another team that would make entry from some other point.

  An older apartment building like this would have several doors. Most would crumple under a strike from a battering ram.

  Marie Meijer said something into the radio, then turned to me and said, “If someone runs from the building in this direction, we’re the ones designated to stop them. Is that okay with you?”

  I smiled. This was a lot more action than I’d expected. I no longer felt tired.

  Then the SWAT team swung into action. Even from our position, I could hear the pounding on the door and the officer yelling in Dutch. I suspected he was saying something along the lines of “Search warrant. Open the door.”

  A team member came up from the back of the line with a one-person battering ram. He swung and hit the solid wood door twice, and the booming thumps echoed in the ancient street like explosions. On the second strike, the lock gave way. The door flew open wide, with only the lower hinge keeping it attached to the frame. The team was inside in an instant.

  My heart raced as I watched the raid commence. I was worried about the cops, worried about the victims, and bothered that I had no role in it.

  I could hear a woman’s wailing scream like a fire alarm, then two flash-bangs—distraction devices that we also used in Miami to shock and blind. The loud boom, boom echoed through the apartment complex like thunder. Even at this distance, standing just outside Marie’s car, I could feel the vibration.

  Chapter 31

  THE NEXT SOUNDS I heard were not flash-bangs but gunshots. Holy shit. I could see the muzzle flashes in the windows. Frozen to the spot, I couldn’t think about anything but the poor captives, running in fear.

  I heard return fire from the automatic MP5s. It was controlled and disciplined, short bursts of two or three shots. I just hoped it was disciplined enough.

  Suddenly, people started spilling out of the apartment building, a few tripping and piling up right in the doorway. Once they were cleared, more people poured out onto the street. A lot of people. I realized that the people waiting to be smuggled didn’t want to deal with the police either.

  Most of them just stopped in the street. But two men tried a different tactic to escape: blending into the shadows. Unknowingly, they ran directly toward us.

  Both were young men and ran with an easy gait. The man closest to me was small and muscular, like a gymnast. I squinted in the dark, trying to see if they had anything in their hands.

  Next to the car, Marie never flinched. “Let them get closer. And stay on your side of the car unless I call for you.” She was calm and quiet. That’s how any good cop talked in the face of a disastrous raid. You didn’t want to get others excited or distracted.

  The men continued to race up the street toward us, no one following them. They must have imagined they were in the clear.

  Marie stepped in front of the car with something in her right hand. The men started to slow, looking over their shoulders at the apartment building. Marie called out, “Politie, stoppen.”

  Both men skidded to a halt about six feet in front of her. I’m not sure they even noticed me standing on the other side of the car. I fought the urge to race out and help her, a cop’s natural instinct for backup.

  One man said something to Marie in Dutch while the other tried to slip between her and the car.

  Marie gave them another command; I assumed she was telling them to stand still and raise their hands. The man closest to her laughed and then lunged toward her.

  That’s when I realized what she was holding in her right hand. It was an expandable baton. We usually called it an ASP, the name of one of the baton’s manufacturers.

  Marie swung up so swiftly that the baton extended during the motion. She caught the man hard under his extended arm. She spun in a complete circle with the ASP still in her hand. This time, she caught the man on the opposite arm.

  I winced at the motion and the sickening sound the ASP made when it struck the man’s flesh. I’d been in too many training sessions and seen too many people hit with an ASP not to know that the pain was always excruciating.

  The man froze as he tried to decide which arm hurt more. Finally, cradling both arms, he crumpled to the ground.

  The man who had been trying to slip past Marie turned to see if he could help his partner.

  Marie didn’t hesitate. This time, needing a little more reach, she took a quick step and lifted her foot off the ground as she swung the baton. It caught the man across his chin and sent him into the side of the car.

  He was smaller and in better shape than the other suspect. Apparently, he was also smarter. When he staggered to his feet, he knew he wanted nothing to do with Marie. He turned and broke into an all-out sprint.

  I heard Marie mutter, “Damn.” She couldn’t leave the suspect she’d brought down.

  Now it was my turn.

  Chapter 32

  I RAN AFTER the smaller man as fast as I could. Growing up, I was never the quickest kid on the playground; God had decided to make me too big for that. Way too big. So my whole life, I had compensated by thinking races—or chases—through to the end.

  I paced myself. I watched as the man darted down an alley to the left. I took that turn, and I saw him slow considerably as he went around another corner. I tried to fix my position in my mind so I wouldn’t get lost. It wouldn’t be a good look for American law enforcement if I had to call out for help on an empty street with no idea where anyone else was.

  When I turned the next corner, the suspect was down to a fast walk. He approached a section of the block under construction. The sidewalk was roped off, and lightweight scaffolding rose along the side of the building.

  I kept my easy pace, trying not to make any noise. Even with all my chases in Miami, I’d never gotten used to running in long pants.

  Maybe the man heard me coming, or maybe it was chance, but just as I was about to pounce on the suspect, he looked over his shoulder. He immediately sprang up into the air.

  The move took me completely by surprise. Then I realized he had grasped a low bar on the scaffolding and pulled himself up like a monkey. The whole structure shook. It wasn’t secured to the building yet.

  I called for him to come down.

  Shockingly, he ignored me.

  I watched as he climbed higher, hoping he’d come to his senses. The scaffolding wobbled more and more.

  Then it happened—he lost his grip and slipped off the scaffolding. I wanted to say, I told you so, but I didn’t have the language skills. Oh, shit, I thought, that fall could kill him.

  I watched him drop the twenty or so feet through the cool night air. Some instinct kicked in and I moved to stand underneath him with my hands outstretched.

  He landed in them like a toddler.

  His left elbow hit me in my right eye, but the sound he made as he landed told me the blow was unintentional. He was more shocked than I was.

  I stood there with a grown man in my arms. After a moment, he said something in Dutch. I let his feet touch the ground gently. He spoke again. I said, “I’m sorry, I don’t speak Dutch.”

  The man nodded and said, “English, good. I wish to thank you. You saved me from falling.”

  “Actually, I saved you from hitting the ground. You were falling no matter what.”

&n
bsp; “I am in your debt.”

  “And now we’re going to calmly walk back to where your friend is under arrest. And you’re not gonna do something stupid like try to get away again.”

  The man was in his late twenties, I could see now. He looked me up and down, then said, “If I had realized how big you were, I probably would not have run.”

  I turned him in the direction I wanted to walk and draped my arm across his narrow shoulders like we were friends. “Let’s enjoy this stroll back.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Everyone’s got a choice. But your other options in this situation would have you limping for at least a year.”

  I returned to Marie with the man still at my side. I was impressed that she already had her suspect handcuffed and in the back of her car.

  She turned and smiled as soon as she saw me. “I was starting to get worried.”

  “You told me not to let anyone get away.” As I stepped from the shadows into the street, she noticed my eye, which I could feel was swelling shut.

  Marie said, “Now we have matching eyes.”

  Chapter 33

  A FEW MINUTES later, Marie and I led our two prisoners back toward the apartment building. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. I stepped past the battered door, still hanging at an angle, and got my first good look at an apartment that held large groups of people. Human smuggling made real.

  These dazed and scared people, some of them near starving, stared up at us with no hope in their eyes. One young woman looked too exhausted to cry. Her blond hair was a tangled mess and her ribs were showing under a translucent nightgown.

  Inside, it got worse. The stench of urine and unwashed bodies assaulted my senses. Add the sharp smell of gunpowder from the flash-bangs and gunfire, and it was brutal. The odor seemed to have a life of its own. It made my eyes water.

  No one should ever have to live like this. I was angry at myself for not acting fast enough. It was frustrating that something as terrible as human smuggling was so widespread. I was also angry at my bosses for not taking it seriously enough. Most of all, I was angry at the smugglers.

  Three teenage girls in oversize T-shirts wept on a couch. A young female police officer tried to comfort them. I felt like I was invading their privacy just by glimpsing them in this condition.

  Marie was clearly respected among the cops. SWAT team members stepped out of her way immediately. One young uniformed officer who had taken part in the raid escorted both of us upstairs.

  Marie looked over her shoulder as we walked. “You can see that this was a relatively big operation. There were twenty-six people housed here and five men running the place. The two we caught are known drug runners from the Rotterdam area. But there were two fatalities in the raid.”

  We stopped on the third floor. Several uniformed officers stood around the corpse of a pudgy, middle-aged man. He had four bullet holes in his chest and one in his right cheek. A World War II Walther P38 with the slide locked back sat on a table next to him.

  The blood from his chest wounds had pooled to a sticky puddle on the hardwood floor. His brown eyes were still wide open. His Nirvana T-shirt looked to be original; it had faded lettering and a few tears in it.

  It was hard for me to muster much sympathy for a modern-day slaver.

  Marie said, “He fired six rounds. They fired sixteen.” Then she led me farther into the room. I felt a wave of sorrow looking down at the next body.

  It was a young woman sprawled across a velvet couch. Someone had placed a blanket over her body, but her face was exposed. She was young, nineteen or so. Blood still trickled from the corner of her mouth.

  Marie said, “For some reason, the man shot her in the chest before he opened fire on the arrest team. They think she might have run for the door to get away just as he started shooting. In any case, it’s a tragedy.”

  None of the cops could even look at the dead girl. I knew what they were thinking—that they had failed her.

  I felt the same way. I’d seen my share of bodies in Miami, but most of them were criminals involved in the drug trade or in gangs. Somehow, those deaths didn’t affect me nearly as much as seeing this one, a young woman whose only crime was wanting to get out of Europe.

  In the United States, the media doesn’t care much about gang violence in places like Chicago and Miami until a bystander is killed. But the subsequent outrage rarely lasts long enough to galvanize the public into helping the police.

  I thought of all the things this young woman might have done with her life. She might have had children eventually. A death like this can ripple through eternity.

  After a minute, I stepped over to the edge of the room and sat on a folding chair. My legs felt shaky. Marie pulled another chair close to me and sat down too. “Now you see why I am so obsessed with the smuggling rings. With your help, we can really hurt them.”

  I looked at her and said, “Hurt them? I want to crush them.”

  Chapter 34

  HANNA GREETE SAT with her brother at Mata Hari, a little restaurant on Oudezijds Achterburgwal, right on the canal. She liked the food, but even more, she liked how quiet it was.

  Albert bitched about it being too fancy. She knew his real complaint was that they didn’t sell pot, although he had already smoked a joint with a pretty Canadian tourist earlier. The three beers he’d downed here had only made him mellower. This was the best time to talk to Albert.

  He put a hand on Hanna’s and said, “We only lost two girls from our load. Some groups lost as many as ten. We should feel lucky they hit that place instead of the one Gregor runs. Not only would we have lost most of our load, but you know that fat little turd wouldn’t have hesitated to flip on us to the police.”

  It took Hanna a moment to realize her brother was actually making sense. He was a loose cannon and a hothead, but no one had ever accused Albert of being stupid. In fact, if he hadn’t been thrown out of school for sleeping with his teacher, he might have had a fine academic career.

  Hanna sighed and shook her head. She still couldn’t speak.

  Albert said, “She’s getting to you. That policewoman, Marie Meijer. Are you bothered that she has made it her business to cripple our business?”

  Hanna slapped the flat of her hand on the table, startling her brother, and said, “Yes, that’s exactly what’s bothering me. It’s what’s been bothering me for months. That smug detective. All we hear from our contacts is that she’s leading the charge against our industry.”

  She looked at Albert. She noticed for the first time a gray streak running through his goatee.

  Albert said, “It’s easy to focus on Marie Meijer, but we have plenty of other problems to address.”

  Hanna glared at her brother. “Not until we deal with her. I don’t even want to hear her name again. If you need to refer to her, call her Funky-Eyed Bitch or Snake Plissken.”

  A broad smile spread across Albert’s face.

  Hanna said, “What is it?”

  “First, I like the fact that you can see a little humor in this. Second, you know Escape from New York is my favorite movie, and now, every time I see Kurt Russell, I’ll smile, thinking about the one night when I was the reasonable sibling.”

  Hanna said, “It just starts to be overwhelming. You try to make a better life for your family, but there’s always someone looking to stop you—the Russians, the police, or someone on your own payroll.”

  Albert said, “Then let’s deal with the detective.” He paused, then said, “No, let’s deal with Funky-Eyed Bitch first. That should be relatively easy.”

  “When do you want to do it?”

  “We can do a little surveillance tonight. Let’s see what happens. But I promise, by the time you’re ready to ship those people to Miami, she won’t be a problem anymore.”

  Chapter 35

  TWO HOURS LATER, Hanna and Albert stood on a street corner in Haarlem, about twenty kilometers outside of Amsterdam.

  Albert glanced down the sl
owly sloping hill to a redbrick road that led to a pleasant-looking three-story apartment complex.

  Albert turned to Hanna and said, “How on earth did you find exactly where she lived?”

  “Heinrich got the information for me. And he’s still quite upset that you threatened him with a knife. I had to pay him more than double what I normally do.”

  Albert grinned. “Usually the knife gives me a discount. Maybe next time I can make my point more clearly.”

  Hanna said, “He even found out that she lives with two cats. It sounds like he knows someone at the national police headquarters. Say what you want about Heinrich, he can be subtle and inconspicuous.”

  Albert pulled his survival knife from under his sports coat. In the lamplight, his eyes seemed to glow. He said, “I can go down there and finish this right this minute.”

  Hanna shook her head. “We need to wait. We can’t do it anywhere around this apartment complex. The cops would be all over us. And I don’t want to risk anyone finding out that I have ears everywhere. If we did something like this, there’s no way Heinrich would ever give us information again. And there’s no guarantee he’d keep his mouth shut.”

  She turned and looked down at the building. The apartment was on the second floor, and several lights burned. The Funky-Eyed Bitch was home.

  “We need to do this in the street somewhere,” Hanna said. “That way it won’t be traced back to us. With any luck, it could be written off as some kind of random act of violence. Maybe they’ll believe some refugee went crazy and stabbed her. I’m just not sure how we might find her later.”