The Plus One Rule

[Demonmit1]

The scrapyard was an unlikely throne room for an enterprise that called itself The Empire. From his unmarked sedan, Investigator Sutton watched the slow, deliberate movements of men in black suits with subtle purple accents—the signature of the Knight crime family. A black sports car, its purple underglow muted in the daylight, was parked near the hollowed-out carcass of a 747. For hours, Sutton had been documenting their movements, building a case against the narcotics lab he knew was humming away inside that metal giant.

The plan was patience. The plan was precision.

Then the plan was shattered by a sound that didn't belong. It wasn’t the low rumble of a Toro arriving, but a different sound entirely—the chaotic, undisciplined bark of street-gang ak-47s answered by the measured hammering of Heavy rifles.

Through his binoculars, Sutton saw them—a different crew, OTF, "Only The Family," all raw aggression and blurs of red colors, swarming the plane. It was a hostile takeover. The suits of the Empire were suddenly locked in a desperate firefight.

The battle was short and brutal. Just as OTF seemed to be gaining the upper hand, a figure pointed, not at the plane, but directly at Sutton's sedan. A ripple of recognition went through the attackers. They had spotted the law. In seconds, they were gone, melting away into the labyrinth of scrap, leaving the scrapyard to the victors and their adrenaline.

Sutton’s blood ran cold. The Empire was still standing, but they were wounded, paranoid, and high on the violence of having just defended their territory. And he knew they wouldn't differentiate between the gang that had just attacked them and the wave of law enforcement he was about to call down on their heads. This was the perfect recipe for a massacre. He keyed his mic, his voice tight but level.

“Active automatic gunfire at the airplane scrapyard.”

The response was immediate. “Okay, we're going to divert. Gunship's going to move to clear.”

Sutton was already out of his car, grabbing his rifle. As sirens screamed closer, he took command on the ground. “Go loud. They already know we're here. Get in there, guys! Get in there, get in there!”

The air filled with the thump-thump-thump of the gunship’s rotors. The predatory helicopter banked hard, its operator harnessed to the open side, LMG at the ready.

“I see him!” Sutton shouted into his radio, spotting a figure in a black suit in the plane door. “I see guns! I see guns!”

The gunship’s roar answered him. A torrent of fire tore through the air, shredding the fuselage doorframe. The figure was violently thrown back into the darkness.

With the immediate threat neutralized, the ground teams surged forward. The SEB tactical operators linked up with Sutton. Their objective was the main ramp leading to the upper deck.

As they stacked up, Sutton caught a glimpse of the Sheriff and another investigator moving purposefully toward a smaller service entrance near the plane’s belly. A lower perimeter, he thought, a standard tactic. A flicker of unease went through him—a break from the main effort—but it was the Sheriff. You don't question the Sheriff in the middle of a breach. Sutton pushed the thought down and turned his focus back to the ramp. His team was the main effort; their job was the upper deck.

They went in hard and fast, a whirlwind of coordinated violence. They swept through the upper cargo bay and dropped a final suspect.

“Upper deck is clear!” an operator announced.

The adrenaline faded, replaced by the ringing in Sutton’s ears. He keyed his mic for a status check. The roll call was clean, except for two voices.

“Sheriff, status?” Sutton asked.

Silence. A cold dread washed over Sutton. He looked at the SEB team leader, who was already signaling his men toward the lower level.

They moved down the narrow internal stairs into a cramped, metallic tomb. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and blood.

And there they were. The Sheriff and the investigator lay dead on the floor. On either side of them, slumped against the walls, were two more members of the Empire, gasping their last breaths, riddled with holes from the furious, point-blank firefight they had stumbled into. They had walked into a kill box, caught between two corners of a desperate crew that had been fighting for their lives all afternoon.

 

---

The fluorescent lights of the briefing room were sterile and mocking. Sutton stared at a coffee ring on the table in front of him, its brown circle a stark, simple shape against the complexity of their failure. He could still smell the metallic scent of blood from the lower deck.

The Tactical Supervisor stepped forward, his eyes sweeping over the assembled deputies.

“From now on,” his voice was hard as stone, “everyone here will operate by the Plus One Rule. If you are confirmed to have five suspects, you will assume that there is a sixth. You will always be on the lookout for an additional suspect.”

Sutton closed his eyes. The Plus One Rule. A simple, brutal piece of math. It would be drilled into every trainee from this day forward.

The debriefing concluded. Sutton felt no pride in the commendations, only the crushing weight of a victory that felt like the most profound kind of loss. He thought of the two empty chairs that would be at the next briefing.

Procedure and tactics are written in blood. Today, they had added another chapter to the book, paid for with the lives of two of their own.