X-Ops Exposed Read online

  Well, today she was going to talk to the elusive SWAT commander even if she had to take the man hostage.

  Okay, maybe not. But she was going to talk to him, damn it.

  Even though Zak drove like a madman, they couldn’t keep up with the SWAT vehicles, so the scene was already well established by the time they pulled up to the industrial district on Belmont. There was crime tape going up everywhere, but fortunately Zak found a space near the curb only two blocks down the street from the SWAT tactical operations vehicle. It was usually impossible to get this close to an active shooter situation. That probably meant there weren’t enough uniformed officers available to both set the perimeter and evacuate the surrounding buildings. No doubt the cops would remedy that soon. Until then, she might be lucky enough to get a few action shots and gain a bit of insight into how the mysterious SWAT team worked.

  Zak leaned forward to get a better look, making a face when a pair of EMTs ran across the street half carrying, half dragging a man covered in blood.

  “You think maybe we should move a little farther back?” he asked as the EMTs put the man in the ambulance and jumped in after him. The ambulance peeled away from the curb.

  “I don’t think so. It looks like all the action out here is over with. We’ll be fine.” Mac held a pair of binoculars to her eyes and scanned the area in front of the building. “So, what’s our situation?”

  Zak pulled out the buds he’d stuck back in his ears so he could listen to the scanner on the drive over. Thank God he was good at figuring out all those silly-ass codes and cop acronyms because it was like a foreign language to her even after ten years as a journalist.

  “Sun Community Bank over on First and Devon got hit by a crew about an hour ago.” He fished his camera out of the back and swapped out his normal lens for something bigger. “Someone got to the silent alarm and the cops were waiting for the bank robbers the second they walked out. That’s when all hell broke loose.” Zak stopped as he fiddled with one of the option settings on the top of the camera. “The cops ID’d at least seven bad guys armed with automatic weapons, some of whom were set up outside the bank while the rest went inside.”

  Mac set down the binoculars and climbed in the back to grab her own gear. “That doesn’t sound like your ordinary bank robbers to me.” She took a binder out of her bag and started flipping pages. “More like a gang with military training.”

  She’d spent enough time investigating gangs on both sides of the border to recognize their handiwork. Some of them could rival the U.S. military when it came to weapons and tactics.

  “You could be right,” Zak agreed. “Regardless, the responding officers got hit hard. There were multiple injuries, including some innocent bystanders. Cops took down at least two of the robbers, but the rest got to their vehicles and turned it into a car chase.” He pointed at the industrial building in front of them. “They’re holed up in there.”

  Mac didn’t recognize the name of the place, and sure didn’t know what kind of product E-Brand produced, but the bad guys had decided the three-floor brick building made a good defensive position. Probably because it didn’t have any windows.

  “They already shot four people and are currently holding thirty employees hostage,” Zak continued.

  “What do they want?” she asked as she scanned the pages of the SWAT personnel folder she’d put together. It wasn’t much more than fluffy Dallas PD public affairs crap at this point, but it was a start.

  “That’s anyone’s guess,” Zak told her as he started snapping pictures of the scene. “But I think we can assume it’s not world peace since SWAT was called in.”

  As if hearing the introduction, the door of the tactical operations vehicle opened and three big men stepped out. Dressed head to foot in black with heavy tactical vests, helmets, and automatic weapons, Mac would have known they were SWAT even if she didn’t have their pictures. She had to admit their public affairs headshots didn’t do them justice.

  Maybe it was just that a simple two-by-three-inch photo couldn’t capture how big the three men were—at least six-three or six-four with broad shoulders and biceps she wouldn’t be able to get her hands around. Or maybe it was that all guys simply looked hotter dressed up in tight-fitting tactical gear.

  She dragged her gaze away—a little reluctantly—to scan each cop’s bio.

  Officer Diego Miguel Martinez, ten years on the force, the last four with SWAT. More commendations than fingers.

  Officer Hale Delaney, eight years on the force, the last three with SWAT. Taught martial arts to underprivileged children in his free time.

  Senior Corporal Michael Lavare Taylor, eleven years on the force, the last five with SWAT. His records had a big gap missing, indicating he’d probably been an undercover officer before he joined SWAT.

  Mac studied the three men as they stood talking. No doubt going over last-minute details before entering the building. They didn’t look like they were on drugs. They were too relaxed and sure of themselves. If they were juicing, their hands would be shaking or something, wouldn’t they? For the first time since talking to Marvin, she began to think he’d been full of crap.

  “If these guys are up to no good, they’re the hunkiest dirty cops I’ve ever seen,” she said.

  Zak shrugged. “I guess some women might consider them attractive.”

  She raised a brow. “Some?”

  He went back to snapping pictures, this time getting close-ups of each SWAT member. “The ones who’re only interested in muscular men who kick in doors and shoot things.”

  Her lips twitched. “Versus men who do what? Take pictures and eavesdrop on police scanners?”

  “And program their own phone apps,” he told her. “Trust me. That skill is in high demand these days.”

  Mac shook her head. Zak had nothing to feel inferior about, but they’d been ragging on each other since college, so she couldn’t resist teasing him.

  She was about to remind him he’d been talking about hitting the gym more often when the door on the operations vehicle opened again and an even bigger man stepped out. She pointed at him. “I want pictures of him. Lots of pictures.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Zak groused, thumbing a button on his camera and taking rapid-fire shots of the primary focus of her investigation.

  It was possible the SWAT commander wasn’t even aware someone on the team was using drugs to improve his performance, but instinct told her if there was something going on, Sergeant Gage Dixon knew about it. Which was why Mac had put his name at the top of her list.

  Three other men followed the SWAT commander out of the vehicle, but it was almost impossible to do anything but ignore them—Dixon was that mesmerizing.

  Dixon was the type of man who made it hard to notice anyone around him, even the other members of the SWAT team, who looked as if they should each have their own month in the Hot Cops of the Dallas Police Department calendar right along with him. It wasn’t simply that Dixon was tall, muscular, and sinfully gorgeous. It wasn’t even that he was a charismatic leader. It was that he had a presence, which made every head turn his way—male and female.

  Sergeant Gage Dixon, fifteen years on the force, the last ten with SWAT. Previous military experience as a U.S. Army Ranger, two years in the narcotics division, and commendations out the wazoo. She didn’t have to refer to her personnel record to remember those facts. She’d learned everything about him she could, including the fact that he’d replaced every single member on the tactical team with his own handpicked people after taking charge when he was promoted to sergeant eight years ago.

  That by itself gave her reason to think something was fishy. Organizational trends being what they were, it was highly unusual there’d be a one-hundred-percent turnover in such a peach assignment in such a short period of time—unless someone pushed to make that happen. And that someone was Gage Dixon.

  S
he finally forced her attention to the other men who’d come out of the operations vehicle behind Dixon, trying to figure out who they were. The one wearing a uniform was obviously a cop—a lieutenant she guessed—probably the on-scene commander who’d called in the SWAT team. The shorter guy next to him was also easy to ID. The white shirt, hard hat, big radio on his belt, and a familiar logo above the pocket on his shirt indicated he worked for the local power company. The last guy had her stumped, though. He had unkempt hair and wore a cheap herringbone sports coat, but he didn’t have a sidearm or radio that she could see. Whoever he was, he got along well with Dixon. They shook hands, then did one of those weird shoulder-squeeze things men did when they were giving an enthusiastic hug.

  Zak was snapping photos of the man-fest, so Mac asked him, “Any idea who that man is in the sports coat? I don’t recognize him.”

  “Not surprising. He doesn’t get a lot of press. He’s one of the department’s new civilian crisis negotiators.”

  “But SWAT has its own negotiators.”

  Three of them, to be precise—Diego Martinez, Trevor McCall, and Zane Kendrick.

  Zak shrugged. “Maybe the department brought him in to soften up SWAT’s image.”

  And he was on good terms with the commander of the unit? What was next—dogs and cats sleeping together?

  Dixon finished up his conversation with the lieutenant and two civilians, who disappeared back into the operations vehicle. The SWAT commander then turned and said something to Taylor, who nodded. Damn, she wished she could hear what they were saying. A few moments later, Taylor and the other two SWAT officers headed for the brick building, reaching under their helmets to pull knit caps down to cover their faces as they went. Before they got there, the three men split up, each disappearing around a different part of the building.

  “You’d think they would go in with more people than that,” she said.

  “Maybe some of them entered the building before we got here,” Zak suggested. “You know, like an advance recon team.”

  Mac blinked. Where the hell had that come from? “An advance recon team?”

  He stopped taking pictures to give her a superior look. “Hey, I play video games. I know the lingo.”

  She shook her head. Men.

  Mac turned back to see what Dixon was up to and saw him looking over at their undercover van. Crap. She started to duck down in the seat but caught herself. What the heck was she worrying about? The windows were too tinted for him to see anything at this distance.

  His gaze lingered on them for a moment longer before he said something to the two patrol officers nearby, then climbed into the operations vehicle.

  Mac grabbed the door handle.

  “Where are you going?” Zak asked in a voice that said he knew exactly where she was going, and that he also knew he couldn’t stop her. He’d given up trying a long time ago.

  “I’m going to look around, see if there’s anything interesting happening. Maybe get a few pictures.”

  Zak frowned but held his tongue. Another thing he’d learned over time. “I’ll go with you.”

  She reached into her bag for the digital camera she carried on little sneak-and-peek missions like this. It was small, simple to operate, and took higher-quality pictures than her cell phone. She tucked it in her back pocket.

  “Nah, I’m good. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

  She slipped out the door and closed it before Zak could insist. And he would, on principle. But she didn’t like him getting involved in this kind of stuff. She was willing to be stupid with her own neck, but she sure wasn’t going to let him risk his. Zak was good at a lot of things, but he sucked at the sneaky, Danger Mouse stuff. Fortunately, he knew it and never tried to force her to take him along.

  “Be careful,” he called out.

  She nodded and hurried down the block, away from the scene. As soon as she reached the end of the block, she started jogging. Cop cars zipped past her, lights flashing and sirens wailing, but nobody paid attention to a woman who seemed to be doing the sane thing—running in the opposite direction of trouble.

  The moment she was out of sight, she turned down an alley and worked her way back toward the rear of the building where all the crap was going down. If she could sneak inside and find a place to hide, she’d be able to observe the SWAT team in action and see how messy things really got.

  And she had no doubt things were going to get messy. Why? Because she was here now, and things always seemed to get messy when she showed up. Zak said it was because she had a nose for finding trouble. Maybe he was right. That used to scare her parents to death when she was a kid—it probably still did—but it proved to be an invaluable talent for a journalist.

  She looked left, then right, then darted across the street. She couldn’t believe the SWAT team didn’t have anyone covering the back door of the building, but there wasn’t a cop in sight. Maybe they weren’t the hotshots everyone made them out to be.

  She was just about to grab the handle when the door burst open.

  Mac barely had time to gasp before a man with a baseball cap on backward and a chest full of tattoos lifted a big rifle and aimed it at her. Her heart stopped. Instinct told her to run—or at least scream for help—but before she could do either, a SWAT officer in tactical gear dropped from above and knocked the thug to the ground with some kind of martial arts chop to the back of his tattooed neck.

  She stared at the man lying unconscious on the ground, then at the cop before looking up to see a rappelling rope swaying back and forth against the side of the three-story building. How the heck had he dropped down fast enough to do that?

  Mac opened her mouth to identify herself, but the SWAT officer closed the space between them in the blink of an eye and slapped a gloved hand over her mouth. She automatically reached up to grab his hand, but then froze as she locked eyes with his. He was wearing his ski mask, so all she could see were those eyes and a small amount of smooth brown skin around them. It had to be Mike Taylor or Jayden Brooks, the only two African American members of the team. Since she hadn’t seen Brooks go in, it had to be Taylor. But for the life of her, she didn’t remember his eyes being a shocking shade of gold in his personnel file photo.

  Movement caught her attention and Mac darted a quick look to her right to see two uniformed officers appear out of nowhere. When had her SWAT savior called them?

  “Get them out of here,” the golden-eyed man said softly. “And keep her quiet.”

  And just like that, one of the uniformed cops wrapped his arm around her waist from behind and picked her up, putting his hand over her mouth when Taylor pulled his away. She watched helplessly as the other cop grabbed the unconscious gunman and heaved him over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry, then ran toward the front of the building. When she looked back, the SWAT officer was nowhere to be seen. Where the heck had he gone? If all the guys in the tactical unit were this fast and powerful, she could imagine why Marvin thought they were on something. Nobody should be able to move that fast.

  Her captor followed his partner, running down the alley with her like she was an unruly kid in a movie theater. She was so shocked she didn’t even struggle, and by the time she thought about it, they were at the SWAT operations vehicle. The minute he planted her firmly on her feet and took his hand away from her mouth, she whirled around to chew him out for manhandling her and was amazed to discover he was the same uniformed cop Dixon had spoken to earlier. Had the SWAT commander seen the news van and told the cop to keep an eye on her? But that was impossible. No one had eyesight that good.

  The officer reached around her and opened the door of the operations vehicle, then motioned her in.

  She’d about had enough with the caveman crap for today. “I’m not going in there.”

  “In here, or in the backseat of a cruiser until this is done,” a deep voice said from inside. “Yo
ur call, Ms. Stone, but make it quickly.”

  The cop raised an eyebrow, gesturing with one hand toward the open door and the other across the street where his cruiser was parked. Well, she’d wanted to get an inside look at how the SWAT team operated.

  Mac ignored the hand the cop put out to help her and tried not to stamp her foot as she stepped into the vehicle.

  “Please close the door, Officer Danner,” said that same deep voice.

  The door slammed shut, making her jump.

  Mac pushed her sunglasses up on her head and surveyed the inside of the huge vehicle. The three men she’d seen earlier were eyeing her curiously. Gage Dixon, on the other hand, wasn’t paying attention to her at all. He stood with his back to her, his focus locked on the computer monitors attached to the far wall of the vehicle. All six screens were on, but the images on four of them were moving and changing so fast it made her dizzy to look at them. It took her a moment to realize she was seeing live feeds from cameras mounted on his men’s helmets. Funny, she hadn’t seen one mounted on Taylor’s.

  Who the hell was she kidding? She hadn’t noticed much of anything besides his big muscles and seriously mesmerizing eyes. He might have been naked for all she knew. Nah, she would have noticed that. She never missed a naked man.

  But the four moving cameras meant Zak had been right—there were more than three SWAT officers in there. There were four. Not that four seemed like enough to her, either. She’d want like fifty or so to do the job.

  The other two screens were stable, showing the inside of the building from two different angles. Mac took a step closer to get a better look and saw people lying facedown on the floor. At first she thought they were dead, but then she picked up movement.

  She surveyed the inside of the operations vehicle and was disappointed to see it was nothing more than an RV without all the good stuff that came with it. That wasn’t to say it was empty. There were racks for equipment, racks for weapons, and racks for radios, computers, and cameras. There were even two whiteboards and a corkboard. A rather detailed drawing of the exterior of the building had been drawn on the whiteboard. Double red lines marked what looked like entry points.