I’m so excited to share this short excerpt from my latest novel with you! Diablo’s Dust is book five in the exciting Chuck McCain Series. Here is the Amazon blurb with the excerpt following:
Phoenix, Arizona, Thursday, 0950 hours
Phoenix Police Officer Lilly Garza had already enjoyed a busy shift since coming on-duty at 0700 hours. She had worked a car crash on I-17, responded to three false alarms in which employees had inadvertently set off their security system, and took a report from a citizen who was stupid enough to leave his computer bag laying on the passenger seat of his car parked in front of his residence. Sometime during the night a perpetrator had smashed out the side window of the victim’s Toyota Camry, grabbed the bag and disappeared.
The police officer steered her Chevrolet Impala into the Dunkin’ off of North Central Avenue to grab a coffee and a bagel. Like so many police departments around the country, Phoenix PD was experiencing a severe manpower shortage and Garza knew it was only a matter of minutes before the dispatcher would call her number again.
The twenty-six-year-old glanced inside the business to ensure that everything appeared normal as she exited her marked patrol car. This wasn’t the best part of town and she had personally handled two armed robberies at the doughnut shop during her three years on the force. Kumar Basha was smiling broadly at her from behind the register as she pulled the door open.
“Good morning, Officer Lilly! How are you?”
“Hi, Kumar,” she answered, returning the smile. “I’m fine. How are Ambily and the kids?”
“Everyone is doing well. Thank you for asking,” he replied, nodding his head side-to-side. “Would you like your usual?”
“That would be great, thanks.”
This location and two others were owned by Kumar’s uncle. The younger man and his family had only been in the United States for a few years, but his uncle was already grooming him to manage this store. As Kumar moved to prepare the medium coffee and an Everything bagel with egg and cheese, Garza pulled out her phone to see if she had missed any messages during her busy morning.
Suddenly, the dispatcher’s voice came through the officer’s earpiece. “912 Alpha.”
“912 Alpha,” she answered.
“912, respond to a signal 647 at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School on 22nd Street. A tall Hispanic male wearing jeans and a gray t-shirt is attempting to force entry into the school. The suspect appears to be intoxicated and is armed with a hammer. Also, be advised, we’re receiving a report of a signal 245 from a construction site behind the school. The lookout is the same as the one you’re responding to. The suspect attacked another construction worker with the hammer and an ambulance is enroute to that location.”
Lilly was already out the door, waving to Kumar and pointing at her ear. The Indian returned the wave, a concerned look on his face. He hadn’t heard the nature of the call but he knew that being a police officer in America was much more dangerous than it was in his home country.
As Garza threw her car into gear and pointed it towards the school, she activated her blue lights and siren. Even running Code Three, it was going to take her almost ten minutes to get there, she realized, feeling the adrenaline pumping through her system. Garza heard Sergeant Wilson clear on the call and let dispatch know that he was responding with Lilly. A signal 647 was a “suspicious person,” while a signal 245 was an “aggravated assault.” What was going on? A construction worker gets into a fight with a fellow employee and hits him with a hammer and then starts trying to break into an elementary school? That doesn’t really add up. And “intoxicated” this early in the morning?
Officer Chip Haywood had been working a traffic accident in the next beat over. After clearing that call, he advised he was responding as additional backup to the school. Garza heard the radio traffic and sighed. Chip was a nice guy but was in his mid-forties and retired-on-duty. In her mind, he was lazy, but she couldn’t be choosy with the Central Precinct so understaffed. At least Sergeant Wilson was coming. He was always cool, calm and collected, as well as good-looking.
Garza pushed her Impala as fast as she could in the city traffic, slowing at red light after red light, making sure she didn’t get t-boned as she hurried to the call. She cut her lights and siren two blocks before the school and pressed transmit on her radio.
“912 Alpha to dispatch, do you have an update?”
“10-4, 912, the principal is still on the phone with us. The school has been locked down but she’s advising that the suspect is smashing on the front door with the hammer. The glass is reinforced but it’s starting to give way. She’s asking for an ETA.”
“I’ll be there in less than two, dispatch.”
“10-4, I’ll let her know. Principal LaShay Conner is your contact.”
“91 Alpha to 912 Alpha,” Sergeant Randy Wilson’s voice came over the radio, “I’m just a couple of minutes behind you.”
“10-4, 91,” Lilly acknowledged, steering into the bus lane in front of the building.
“912 Alpha, I’m 10-23,” she said, letting everyone know that she had arrived.
Garza saw the suspect at the front door sixty feet away with his back to her. She could hear him yelling in Spanish and slamming his hammer into the window over and over as she exited the cruiser, drawing her taser. The officer scanned her surroundings, not seeing anyone else with the man. The suspect had no idea that she was there and she used that to her advantage, cautiously closing the distance. There were several brick columns lining the walkway in front of the school and the officer used them to hide her approach.
Lilly didn’t anticipate gunfire, but if it came to that, she did not want to be shooting towards the school. Hopefully, he’s just having a really bad day and we can get this deescalated quickly. The glass on the door finally gave way and the suspect thrust his left hand through the opening, slashing his forearm open on the remaining shards of broken reinforced glass. Before he could pull the door open, Garza stepped out from the behind a column thirty feet from the man, placing the red aiming dot of the taser on his back, and challenging him in Spanish.
“Police! Stop right there! Drop the hammer and put your hands up.”
Without hesitation, the suspect pulled out his arm, over the broken glass, slicing it open even more. He turned around with a leering grin on his face, still clutching the large roofing hammer in his right hand as blood dripped and pooled onto the pavement from his left. The suspect gave no indication that he was feeling any pain. He was tall with a construction worker’s physique: his muscles were long and lean. A scraggly beard covered his face but his eyes let Officer Garza know that something was seriously wrong. They appraised her quickly but there was a wildness there that sent a chill up her spine.
The man suddenly laughed and started towards her, his eyes never leaving Lilly’s.
“Oh, a bitch police officer wants to arrest me?” he slurred in Mexican Spanish.
“Stop! Drop the hammer,” she ordered again, the red dot of the non-lethal weapon now dancing on his chest.
Still laughing, the suspect reached under his shirt with his bloody left hand and withdrew a long knife. Lilly knew that the hammer and the blade constituted a deadly force situation, but the perp was still between her and the front entrance of the school. The Mexican suddenly charged the police officer, raising both weapons.
Lilly heard the screech of tires behind her and the two backup officers advising they were onscene. She fired the taser, both prongs striking the suspect center-mass, 50,000 volts of electricity stopping him in his tracks. Instead of locking up and falling down, however, the perp swung his mangled left arm down across the thin wires, ripping the small prongs out of his flesh. He lunged towards Garza, covering the remaining distance in a second.
Lilly still held the taser in her left hand, but in that second managed to draw her 9mm Glock 17 pistol with her right just as the attacker got within striking range. She managed to get off one shot, striking him in the abdomen as he swung the heavy roofing hammer at her head. The woman instinctively pulled her head back as she started to take a step backwards. The slight head movement was probably the only thing that saved her life. Instead of the hammer caving in the side of the officer’s skull it struck her on the side of the face shattering her cheekbones and sending Lilly to her back on the sidewalk. She fired a second time as she fell, this 9mm hollow point hitting her assailant in the left hip before she slipped into unconsciousness.
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