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Chapter 32
Captain Alvin Yan stood in the SWAT van and went over the plan with his team. He did not like SWAT. He thought the use of the team usually meant a breakdown in police procedure. He thought about the huge investment in resources for their toys and training and payroll. He did not like the SWAT commander, whom he thought of as a fascist and a thug. He knew the SWAT commander did not like him. He knew the man was a little afraid of him and very afraid of Sergeant Washington. Yan knew his SWAT commander had his priorities wrong on this and many other things.
Alvin did not bother to correct the man’s incorrect assumptions. He was using the SWAT team to reinforce the appearance that he had fallen for this charade. And, to show any observer that he had bowed to political pressure and was personally overseeing the case.
“Ladies and Gentlemen. I do not need to go over any of the tactics of this operation. I am very certain your leaders have done a wonderful job planning this action. I am here to simply ask you to be very careful and follow the rules. This is action is connected to a case that is very important to the commissioner and so very important to me and, because of this, important to your Captain and important to you. I want you to be very careful with physical evidence. We would like to put this case to bed very quickly.” Here he paused and looked around the converted bread truck.
“What I am going to say next is the most important thing that you will hear from me. As important as the physical evidence is in a case like this, it is nothing compared to endangering any one of you. If the choice is to preserve physical evidence versus a one-half of one percent chance that one of you might be in injured, much less killed, fuck the physical evidence.”
The men looked at each other. Surprise was a mild word to describe their reaction to Yan’s F bomb. There was a legend from early in Yan’s career, when he broke up a fight in a biker bar with just his partner to help. He’d pulled a broken pool cue out of his thigh and said, “Darn it! That hurts!”
“Do I make myself clear, ladies and gentlemen?”
All of the toughest of the tough, former Rangers and Force Recon, multiple black belted cage fighters and a few want-to-be types all nodded, smiling, knowing their leader cared about them more than he cared about politics. As his stature grew in their eyes, that of the political weasel who was their Captain shrank.
“Go make me proud, ladies and gentlemen. Please, please let’s be extra careful today.”