I lift my binoculars to my eyes and the car leaps into magnified view. A gray Chrysler. The same one that was parked at the Waffle House. My stomach clenches like a fist. I can’t see the driver clearly—there’s glare off the windshield from the streetlight—but he has a clear view of the cul-de-sac like I do, although I’m higher up and can see more. If he has binoculars like I do, he’ll see the SWAT teams. He’ll warn the Sureños.

I pull my cell phone out and speed-dial Frankie. When he answers, I talk over him. “Call Panko and have him tell the SWAT guys to stop advancing on the house. The Sureños will know they’re coming.”

“What do you—”

“Just do it!” I hang up and look through my binoculars at the Chrysler. It is still sitting at the curb. I pan to the cul-de-sac. The SWAT teams have almost reached the house. They aren’t stopping. Even if Frankie gets Panko, it’ll take Panko time to call the cops, even more to convince them to stop. Shit.

I let the binoculars hang from a strap around my neck and draw my CZ, the silencer now off. I aim at a large oak tree at the edge of the Home Depot parking lot below me. Nobody is around the tree or in the section of the parking lot between me and the tree. I take a deep breath, then unload an entire clip, sixteen rounds, at the tree. The shots are loud, detonative, unmistakable for what they are. Even from this distance, I can see chips of bark flying off the tree trunk as if it’s being attacked by invisible axes.

By the eighth shot, the cops at the entrance to the cul-de-sac, who are a good fifty yards farther away from the tree I’m using for target practice, are already responding. There are shouts and people running for cover. Spotlights stab out into the darkness, seeking the source of the gunshots. My hope is that the SWAT teams heard the shots, too. Surely someone has radioed them. Maybe they—

The split-level at the end of the cul-de-sac explodes, the flare of the fireball and the percussive sound hitting me simultaneously. The roof cracks like an egg and erupts. Bricks hurtle through the night like shrapnel. Bodies are blown back by the blast. The front door flies outward as if kicked by a giant, twisting through the air until it smashes onto the pavement of the cul-de-sac. Firelight turns the treetops golden. Fragments of the house rain down onto the street and other yards. Flames lick the night sky, thick dark smoke roiling above the roofs of nearby houses. A tiny figure, now illuminated as if by hellish stage lights, is crawling across the front lawn.

“Oh my God,” I breathe.