“It’s time.”

Those words shook me to the core. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to jump out of the window, start shooting, or both.

Sergeant Lanning was a light-skinned Black man with pale green eyes and a scatter of freckles across his cheeks and nose. Reddish hair. The beginnings of a chin-strap beard. If he had whiskers, he would have looked like a feline humanoid from Cats. Instead, he wore the latest battle armament the taxpaying citizens of New Orleans could afford.

“One minute out,” the freckle-faced sergeant said, calm as if we were pulling into a grocery store parking lot.

I sat there contemplating my future, and his. Two Black men. Descendants of slaves, who were themselves descendants of kings and denizens from another continent, now riding together to make war on other Black men. Men whose only crime, as far as I could tell, was espousing rhetoric this country refused to deem proper or legal, despite all the blood we shared to secure its right to free speech.

No matter how this ended, regret would be the only thing we all carried away.

We rolled up to the curb in a Ford Econoline van built like a tank. All-terrain bulletproof wheels. Shatterproof glass rated to withstand .50-caliber fire. A rotating turret on the roof. A mechanized battering ram bolted near the engine block. A machine designed for enemy destruction in some war-torn third-world country.

Instead, it was deployed in a neighborhood paid for by the same poor folks whose money built it, now prescribed as the instrument of their own containment.

The men and women I worked for would protest City Hall if too many of my kind congregated in a white park, yet here I was, sweating inside a costume meant to keep those same people pulling the lever that kept me employed.

The call had come in earlier. Four Black men in black battle fatigues, red and green berets, entered the Pelican State Savings and Loan on Opelousas Avenue in Algiers Point at 0905. Based on dress alone, command assumed they were members of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers that had engaged my department in armed conflict in the Desire projects thirteen years earlier.

Most of that group had been dismantled by FBI counterintelligence. Hoover was dead, but his work lived on. The spirit hadn’t gone anywhere. It had just learned to wait.

Apparently armed robbery wasn’t part of their published six-point plan toward Black economic power, but here they were, doing a fine job of alienating what sympathy they might have had left.

The reports coming from inside didn’t match the response we were mounting.

One report said an argument broke out between the security guard, the bank manager, and one of the perps. Somewhere in the exchange, the guard tried to draw his weapon on the men, unarmed as far as anyone could tell. In his haste to exercise authority, he failed to unbutton the holster.

That mistake cost him the weapon.

One of the perps, clearly trained in self-defense, subdued him easily. He thumbed the release, dumped the rounds into his left hand, pocketed them, and slid the gun under a green couch in the lobby.

Four men dressed for war. Acts of restraint.

A sentry hired to protect the bank undone by his own prejudice, unaware that the same institution would fire him for dereliction of duty once this was over.

“Our goal,” Lanning said, “is to hit them hard and fast. The bank is surrounded. They aren’t going anywhere. We neutralize the threat before these perps change their minds and start hurting people.”

“But El,” I said, “reports say they aren’t armed. What threat are we neutralizing?”

“I said what I said,” he replied. “Captain White says the mayor wants this done before his lunchtime press conference.”

“But Sarge, we don’t need to go in guns blazing. The hostage team says this is a misunderstanding. It sounds like these brothas want to talk.”

I had never called perps brothas before. But here I was, arguing restraint for men who might already have blood on their hands.

“Later for that,” he snapped. “All eyes are on us, and we ain't got time. They don’t give officers like us this gear without expecting results. Now get your shit together.”

There was no persuading him. Sergeant Aloysius Lanning, the first Black man in the department to lead his own SERT unit, wasn’t about to let his first major assignment slip. Not for me. Not for them.

“This is simple,” he continued. “Front doors aren’t locked. We breach low. Avoid silhouetting. We’re going in blind on insider intel that these nigga/ers are unarmed. Could be bullshit.”

The way he said niggas stopped me. The er sat heavy on his tongue, pronounced in a way it never was on the street. It carried something older. Something borrowed. Field-master weight.

A Black man deputized to hunt other Black men who dared to stand or flee.

I felt heat climb my neck.

Truth was, Lanning and I had once been friends. Academy together. Divorced. Products of men who never learned how to leave the street at the door. Love didn’t live in our line of work. We were serious men. Hard.

His chip came from being biracial in Cajun country. Mine from learning that no amount of proximity to whiteness would scrub all the nigga out of me.

“Listen, motherfucker,” I said, the words escaping before I checked them. “I don’t give a fuck what these honkies expect. I’m not shooting an unarmed man.”

The van went quiet.

Officer Hodges shifted into a crouch. “We don’t need to fight each other. You’re both amped. Lanning’s in charge. Cain, nobody’s asking you to do anything illegal. Just do your job.”

Hodges was a good cop. As good as any white cop in 1980s New Orleans could be. But when he said illegal, it felt like a hand twisting a dial inside my skull.

“Me and El go back,” I said. “I don’t mince words. If we’re going in, we’re doing it right.”

That shut him up.

For a moment, I felt something close to victory. Like I’d stood in front of a magistrate and won someone their freedom.

Ron Isley floated through my head. Summer breeze…

“Let’s go,” Lanning said, cutting it off.

We deployed two by two. Lanning and Hodges up front. Me and White in the rear.

This wasn’t a movie incursion. No flashbangs. No vents. Just bodies and shields and breath.

We stacked on the door. Five feet from the sidewalk. Dark tint, translucent enough to catch movement.

I saw a figure approach on the left. He didn’t fire through the glass.

“Say blood, we surrender,” he said.

Tall. Black fatigues. Green beret. Dreadlocks spilling like branches. Beautiful and sad, like a lone norway spruce or weeping willow tree by the river choked by brambles.

“Drop to the ground,” I said. “Or we drop you.”

He did. Asked permission to retrieve the bullets.

“Don’t move!” Lanning barked. “Back away and get on the ground.”

The door closed. Tint swallowed the view.

I stepped forward.

“What the fuck are you doing, Sergeant?” Lanning yelled.

“Going in.”

“You’re gonna get us killed!”

“They won’t shoot with their man down,” I said. “You’re covered.”

He hated losing control, but he let me move.

Inside, the patrons stood calmly. Some sat in chairs like they were waiting on loan officers.

Three more brothas lay on the floor, hands behind their backs.

“Cuff them,” I said.

“They’re innocent!” someone shouted. “They didn’t do nothing!”

Then Lanning started screaming at the fallen tree again.

I didn’t see resistance. I saw volatility from Lanning.

“Put your hands behind your back!”

“They already are.”

“I’ll blow your fucking head off!”

That’s when Lanning pressed the muzzle into the man’s hair.

I drew my weapon.

“Sergeant! Drop your weapon and place your hands on your head!”

Hodges yelled my name.

Lanning turned and extended his gun in my direction.

I fired.

The impact hit my chest like a hammer. I went down.

I woke chained to a hospital bed. My ex-wife stood crying. My sons ran to me.

Lanning was dead.

Hodges was a hero.

The perps were charged.

On the television, the mayor spoke.

“Officer Abel Cain unlawfully discharged his weapon, resulting in the death of decorated Sergeant Aloysius Lanning. It is believed Mr. Cain conspired with the perpetrators and will be tried to the fullest extent of the law.”

I closed my eyes.

My family was still there.