The Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris [120]
Randall had spent a lot of time in airplane aisles, and kept his balance easily in the bumpy descent.
“Gentlemen, our ground transportation's courtesy of DEA undercover. They've got a florist's truck and a plumbing van. So Vernon, Eddie, into your long han?dles and your civvies. If we go in behind stun grenades, remember you've got no flash protection on your faces.”
Vernon muttered to Eddie, “Make sure you cover up your cheeks.”
“Did he say don't moon? I thought he said don't flash,” Eddie murmured back.
Vernon and Eddie, who would make the initial ap?proach to the door, had to wear thin ballistic armor beneath civilian clothes. The rest could go in hardshell armor, proof against rifle fire.
“Bobby, make sure and put one of your handsets in each van for the driver, so we don't get fucked up talking to those DEA guys,” Randall said.
The Drug Enforcement Administration uses UHF ra?dios in raids, while the FBI has VHF. There had been problems in the past.
They were equipped for most eventualities, day or night: for walls they had basic rappelling equipment, to listen they had Wolf's Ears and a VanSleek Farfoon, to see they had nightvision devices. The weapons with night scopes looked like band instruments in their bulging cases.
This was to be a precise surgical operation and the weapons reflected it--- there was nothing that fired from an open bolt.
The team shrugged into their web gear as the flaps went down.
Randall got news from Calumet on his headset. He covered the microphone and spoke to the team again. “Guys, they got it down to two addresses. We take the best one and Chicago SWAT's on the other.”
The field was Lansing Municipal, the closest to Calu?met on the southeast side of Chicago. The plane was cleared straight in. The pilot brought it to a stop in a stink of brakes beside two vehicles idling at the end of the field farthest from the terminal.
There were quick greetings beside the florist's truck. The DEA commander handed Randall what looked like a tall flower arrangement. It was a twelvepound doorbuster sledgehammer, the head wrapped in colored foil like a flowerpot, foliage attached to the handle.
“You might want to deliver this,”, he said. “Welcome to Chicago.”
The Silence of the Lambsr
CHAPTER 56
Mr. Gumb went ahead with it in the late afternoon.
With dangerous steady tears standing in his eyes, he'd watched his video again and again and again. On the small screen, Mom climbed the waterslide and whee down into the pool, whee down into the pool. Tears blurred Jame Gumb's vision as though he were in the pool himself.
On his middle a hotwater bottle gurgled, as the little dog's stomach had gurgled when she lay on him.
He couldn't stand it any longer--- what he had in the basement holding Precious prisoner, threatening her. Precious was in pain, he knew she was. He wasn't sure he could kill it before it fatally injured Precious, but he had to try. Right now.
He took off his clothes and put on the robe--- he always finished a harvest naked and bloody as a new?born.
From his vast medicine cabinet he took the salve he had used on Precious when the cat scratched her. He got out some little BandAids and Qtips and the plas?tic “Elizabethan collar” the vet gave him to keep her from worrying a sore place with her teeth. He had tongue depressors in the basement to use for splints on her little broken leg, and a tube of StingEez to take the hurt away if the stupid thing scratched her thrashing around before it died.
A careful head shot, and he'd just sacrifice the hair. Precious was worth more to him than the hair. The hair was a sacrifice, an offering for her safety.
Quietly down the stairs now, to the kitchen. Out of his slippers and down the dark basement stairs, staying