Page 4 of Hero

Outside the wall there was an engine noise and more lights. Justine returned her attention to the gate. The Mercedes arrived and pulled forward, and the first man was already out and running. He stuck his leg into the space in front of the moving gate in time to interrupt the beam of light to the electric eye. The gate stopped instantly and then began to roll back in the other direction.

The three passenger doors of the Mercedes swung open and men sprang out and ran to join the point man in the driveway.

Everything felt unsettled, almost unreal. She thought,Act now or miss the chance to save this.She stayed low, drew her pistol, aimed at the first man and shouted, “Hold it! Stay where you are or I’ll shoot!” She held the tactical flashlight as far from her body as possible and pushed the switch, bathing the men in its wide, blinding glare. They all looked young and large, all wearing black masks and dark clothes.

The point man and one of his companions raised pistols she hadn’t seen in the dark, and fired at her light.

She fired back, the shot hitting the point man in the chest, and as he collapsed backward toward the ground, she shifted her aim to the second gunman and fired. He had been the driver, last out of the car, so he was closest to her. He fell too, dropping his pistol on the pavement. A third man fired at her and she felt the bullet cut the air a foot above her ear. She fired in response and he went down, but she was sure shehad missed him and he was just ducking. She turned off her light and sprinted for the gate with the vague idea of using their own Mercedes as a shield. Even though it was probably stolen, they might hesitate before damaging their means of escape.

As she ran, a volley of wild shots ricocheted off the inner side of the wall where she had been, and when she dashed behind the Mercedes, she heard the front door of the house slam shut. She inhaled and felt her lungs swell in elation. The distraction must have done it. The Pinskys were inside. She kept running past the rear of the Mercedes, made it to the gate stanchion and twenty feet past it along the outer wall, pivoted, dropped to her belly, and aimed her pistol at the mouth of the driveway.

She used her left hand to take out her phone and thumb-dial 911, then returned her eyes to the open gateway.

“Nine-one-one, what is the location of your emergency?”

“Five-oh-seven Mirabella in Beverly Hills,” she said. “Five men with masks and guns are trying to pull a follow-home robbery of Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Pinsky, the residents. Two of the men fired shots at me so I had to defend myself. We’ll need two ambulances.”

“Your name, please?”

“Justine Poole, with Spengler-Nash Security. I have to hang up now.” She did and saw Ben Spengler’s car appear around the last curve in the road and then stop in the street blocking the Mercedes in the driveway. As he got out and crouched behind his car, Justine popped up, aimed her flashlight at the ground so he could see her, and waved. He waved back, so she advanced along the wall to within a few feet of him.

Spengler advanced to the other side of the open gateway and pulled out his pistol. He said, “I’m sorry, Justine. They looked like they weregoing to try to drive the Pinskys off the road for a carjacking, so I had to stay close, and then I got scraped from the side by another car trying to pull into my lane. What’s going on?”

“There are five of them. They kept the gate from closing, I yelled at them to stop or I’d shoot, but two of them fired and I had to shoot them. There are three more of them inside the gate. They fired too, but didn’t hit anything.”

“Did the Pinskys make it into the house?”

“I’m pretty sure. And I called the cops.”

“Good,” he said. “All good.” He edged up against the concrete-and-stucco wall and leaned out to get a view up the driveway where the two men she had shot were lying. “I see the two casualties. I don’t see the three who are still lively.”

They heard the scream of sirens in the distance. As the sound grew louder and more high-pitched, he said, “That sounds like good news. But this is where it might get hairy, so make sure they can see who the good guys are right away. Do nothing that might look like resistance.”

The sirens trailed off, and the street was awash in light—blue and red lights spinning to splash bands of alternating colors over everything, glaring white headlights, flashlights sweeping from place to place. Several spotlights found Justine and Ben and stayed on them. A voice shouted, “Put your weapons on the ground, step back from them, and lie down!” Four police officers emerged from the glare and ran to them with pistols drawn. One yelled, “Face down on the ground! Now!”

Ben and Justine both lay on the ground with their arms out from their bodies as two of the officers dragged their wrists behind their backs and handcuffed them. As soon as she felt the cuffs click Justine said, “I’m Justine Poole. I made the 911 call.”

Neither cop answered, which she supposed was an answer.

The cops frisked them and then helped them up. “All right, come with us. You’ll have to sit in a car while we clear the scene.” They took them to two different police cars and locked them into the caged rear seats.

Justine could see at least a dozen police officers gathered on both sides of the open gate where the Mercedes and Spengler’s car were stopped. She said to the officer who was with her, “There are five of them. Two opened fire on me, so they’re on the ground, wounded. I’m almost sure the Pinskys made it into the house while that was happening. They’re clients of Spengler-Nash, and we were here to protect them.”

The cop spoke into the radio microphone on his shoulder. “The female says there are five armed suspects inside the gate, and two are down. She thinks the intended victims are in the house.” That sounded accurate to Justine, so she remained silent.

There was radio chatter, which sounded to Justine like acknowledgments, and then an older male voice said, “We’re standing by for SWAT.”

The cop who was with her got out and walked to join the others at the wall. Now that she was sitting alone in the back of the police car, she began to feel the letdown after the adrenaline rush of the confrontation and gunfight. She felt exhausted, almost sleepy, but tears had formed in her eyes. She had no way to wipe them, so she had to endure the feeling and wasted no more time thinking about it. She leaned back in the seat and tried to turn in a way that would not increase the tension on her arms and handcuffed wrists. She could see into the side window of the other car where Ben Spengler was, and he seemed to have decided on a similar position. He had been in the bodyguard business since before she was born, so she supposed this was another of the thousands of tiny bits of knowledge he’d accumulated the hard way.

The SWAT truck looked a lot like a UPS delivery vehicle, but bigger and darker. The cops in battle dress and body armor streamed out ofthe back doors. They all carried M4 rifles except one, who had a marine sniper rifle with a big scope. They milled around behind their truck for a few minutes while their commander conferred with a couple of high-ranking cops in black uniforms who had been among the last on the scene. Then the SWAT team formed themselves into a single big cartoon creature with twenty-four legs, twelve heads, and rifle barrels pointing outward in all directions and shuffle-footed through the gate, up the driveway, and to the house.

Justine listened for gunshots but didn’t hear any, and she allowed herself to feel tentatively optimistic: the cops hadn’t been under fire, so maybe the Pinskys were safe. She waited, but she was at the wrong angle to see the front door open, if it did, and there was no noise. Silence could mean the Pinskys were dead, so she tried to prepare herself for that kind of outcome, but she couldn’t find a way of getting ready. They were a nice old couple who seemed to treat everybody kindly. Jerry had always called her “Kid,” and Estelle seemed to call everybody under seventy “Honey.” Maybe the closed doors of the police car had just kept her from hearing what was going on, and everything would all be okay.

The cops outside the gate began to move around, they holstered their pistols and spread into the street. Two SWAT team members, a man and a woman, came out of the driveway, each of them guiding one of the Pinskys to a waiting car, and then it pulled out and they were gone. Justine smiled, closed her eyes and whispered, “Thank you.”

2

“…With live, late-breaking news. Tonight, television and film producer Jerry Pinsky and his wife were the latest victims of an attempted follow-home robbery in Beverly Hills. Police say the attempt was foiled by a member of the security company Spengler-Nash. The female agent fought off the alleged robbers in a gunfight while the couple took shelter in their house. Two of the suspects were hit by the agent’s bullets, and three others tried to escape on foot but were captured by police.”

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