Midway down the street in front of Lori’s little house were a half-dozen vehicles. They were gray unmarked cop cars, and they were parked sideways out in the street, completely blocking it.
Alongside them stood half a dozen figures in blue raid jackets.
Ruby gasped when one of them turned and she spotted the three impossible-to-miss frightening Day-Glo yellow letters scrawled across the back.
FBI? Ruby thought.
There was a roar of a diesel engine and then from the other end of the street came some kind of armored van. It was a giant gunmetal gray SWAT truck and from its running board hung a team of tactical officers. They had shaved military jarheads and khaki-colored ballistic armor and military rifles that looked like something out of a middle schooler’s video game.
Then it happened. As the heavy armored FBI SWAT van mounted the sidewalk in front of Lori’s house, the reality of what she was in the middle of finally slammed into Ruby like a wrecking ball to the chest.
She suddenly remembered the reporter’s words.
They are real, Ruby. There really is a They.
“Ruby, what should I do? Someone’s knocking hard now. What the hell is this?” Lori said in her ear.
Ruby stood there speechless. She stared mutely at the agents, at the houses around her. There was no one around. No one to notice the world going nuts.
Move, dammit! she thought. Snap out of it! Do something!
Ruby ripped her eyes from the cars and mayhem down the block and took a deep breath and quietly crossed the intersection. When she made the other side, she looked at her phone and saw that Lori’s call had dropped off.
She ran at top speed into the dead end at the end of the side street. She hopped over someone’s short back fence, darted across the yard, came around the house back into another cul-de-sac and made a right down McNeil, the street that ran parallel to Norton.
When she was about halfway down across from Lori’s house, she quietly hopped another fence and went into someone else’s side yard and crouched by some ornamental grass.
Over the house’s backyard fence, she could see onto Norton. There was one of the double-parked FBI cars there with two male agents and a female one.
She looked at the hard expressions on their faces. Their drawn guns down by their legs. Like they were coming after a hijacker. A terrorist holed up with a weapon of mass destruction.
Her fear suddenly flipped to pure anger. What bastards, she thought, looking beyond them at Sean’s Playskool scooter and kick balls under Lori’s modest brick bungalow’s carport.
They couldn’t see that there were kids in the house? People’s children. They didn’t care about that?
She was watching the agents consult solemnly with one another when somewhere off to the left someone yelled out in a football coach roar.
“Open up! FBI! We have a warrant!”
And then there was a crunching boom and a shatter of glass as the sons of bitches actually broke down Lori’s door.
Even from a block over, she heard Lori scream as a file of FBI agents ran in over her front lawn.
Ruby stood up breathing hard, a hand to her mouth. She was feeling nauseated now, helpless and numb, like she was coming out of herself.
The sound of little Sean’s screaming cries snapped her out of it and she lifted her phone.
“911. What’s your emergency?”
She was going to say “There are FBI agents entering my sister’s house,” then stopped herself.
“Help me! Someone just kicked in my door! A break-in, a break-in! Someone’s in my house! 334 Norton. 334 Norton. Help me, please. Send someone, please. They have guns. Help!”
She hung up and stood in the side yard of the house stock-still with her hands clasped in prayer as she waited. When she heard the sirens another long two minutes later, she hopped back out of the person’s side yard and headed back into the street.
As she ran out toward the corner, she saw them coming at her up 70th. Two radio cars, Pensacola’s finest, roaring up, lights flashing, as they made the left onto Norton.
She speed-walked down to the corner and saw the cops getting out, some of the agents rushing over showing credentials. Lori’s neighbors were now out on their porches and scrub grass front yards wondering what the hell was going on.
Then Ruby started running, booking for all she was worth, past Norton and down 70th before they figured out she wasn’t there.