Spinning the wheel, Pittsburgh police Officer Philip Mercurio Jr. guided his unmarked car onto Ferris Court, a hilltop cul-de-sac in Homewood and recent hotspot for problems. Beside him sat his partner, Robert Kavals.

KDKA-TV Keith Carter Map: Homewood shootout

They were hunting for a shooting suspect. Senses alert, believing that an armed man might be out there in the darkness, the undercover officers braced for trouble as they had countless times before.

This time, though, trouble got the drop on them.

It was 3:45 a.m. June 4. Thirty minutes earlier, Mercurio and Kavals had responded to a call for a man named William Ford, who had been shot in the legs. Now they were looking for his attacker. Their instincts and a lead had taken them to Ferris Court.

Not a soul was out in the Ferris Court area of the Homewood North public housing complex -- except for one man. Mercurio and Kavals spotted him immediately in the well-lighted court. It was Keith Carter, someone they thought might have been involved. Then they spotted his gun.

Both had tangled with Carter, 19, of Wilkinsburg, many times. They had arrested him two months earlier for a New Year's Day incident in which Carter was accused of firing a machine gun at Mercurio and four other officers. And they had chased or stopped him roughly a dozen times over the past year while on patrol.

Carter had been freed on $5,000 bond. Now he was here on Ferris Court, the officers said, holding what looked like a submachine gun. He was walking toward their car, casually smacking the gun against his leg.

No strangers to danger, Mercurio and Kavals were about to have the closest call of their careers. They would be embroiled in a shootout so wild that the city's deputy chief could not recall a similar incident in more than a quarter-century.

Pinned down, forced to rely only on guts, training and each other, they endured a barrage of gunfire from a suspect whom they are positive knew they were police officers. In the aftermath, their colleagues were astonished that they survived without a scratch.

"God was definitely on our side," Kavals would later say.

Right away, the partners said, Carter figured out who they were.

"My first instinct was he was going to turn and run up the hill. I didn't think he would start shooting," Kavals said.

But Carter surprised them. Instead of running, he raised the weapon, Mercurio and Kavals said.

"I guess for a second I couldn't believe what I was seeing. When I confirmed it was what I thought it was, I guess I took a half a second to decide that we were sitting ducks," Mercurio said. "I opened the driver's door. By that time, the gunshots were already going off."

Pop!

The first shot ripped through the windshield.

A good night to take off

From time to time, feuds among groups from different neighborhoods in the city turn violent. The disagreements could be about drugs, turf, retaliation or disrespect. And when things become serious enough, problems are resolved with guns.

Over the past two months, such a feud has gripped groups from the Homewood North housing complex on Brushton Hilltop and the Race Street area. Police became aware of problems after a jump in 911 calls for "shots fired" in those areas.

Next came calls for people being shot. Victims, however, would not show up at hospitals. When police tracked them down, the victims were close-mouthed. They were often shot at close range but professed to have no idea who shot them.

Investigators believe that there are five to seven active troublemakers in each group, ranging in age from 15 to 23.

"These are younger kids who are feuding with high-powered weapons," said Cmdr. RaShall Brackney of the East Liberty station.

Brackney described Carter and Ford, the shooting victim, as "prominent players" in their respective areas.

It was into this environment that Mercurio, 37, and Kavals, 36, rolled from the East Liberty station for the start of their shift at 11 p.m. on June 3.

Along with a frequent third partner, Robert Pires, Mercurio and Kavals are considered to be among the city's most aggressive officers. They spend the graveyard shift patrolling the 9.2 square miles covered by the East Liberty station. They have witnessed homicides, been shot at and had fights with suspects.

Pires was not riding with them that night. Usually, the 21-year veteran sits directly behind Mercurio, talking quietly into a cellphone as he works informants into the wee hours.

Pires had been given a night off for winning an award two days earlier. He, Mercurio and Kavals all were recognized for gun seizures in 2004.

At 10 p.m., Pires said, he thought about changing his plans and going in after all. But he settled down to watch the TV news and became tired enough to stay home.

Nearly six hours later, when a bullet pierced his partners' windshield, passed through the bottom of Mercurio's headrest and angled into Pires' seat, Pires was safe at home.

"From what everybody's telling me," Pires said, "that bullet would have gone right through my chest."

Homing in on the sound of guns

The night crawled in Zone 5. Mercurio and Kavals cruised throughout the precinct, looking for trouble. For hours, they didn't find any. They hit Garfield, Homewood, East Liberty, Lincoln-Lemington.

"We were talking about how dead it was," Kavals recalled.

They stopped for dinner about 12:30 a.m. and then went back to work. Around 3:15 a.m., they were on foot patrol in Larimer outside the Travelers Social Club -- known as "The Trav" -- an after-hours joint on Hamilton Avenue that has been the site of homicides. Music pulsed from the building, but as cranked up as it was, it could not mask the sound of gunfire in the distance.

The partners are experts at discerning the nuances of gunfire. They can tell the direction of shots, differentiate between types of guns and even make a rough estimate on distance.

They hustled to their car and took off in the direction of Homewood. Mercurio guessed that the shots came from Lang Street. Halfway there, the dispatch came over the radio for the 7200 block of Race Street. Mercurio was only a few blocks off.

Their first thought was of the ongoing feud. Race v. Brushton Hilltop.

"We said we know it was those Brushton guys," Kavals recalled.

At the scene, Ford, 26, of Homewood came out of a house and limped toward the officers. He said he did not know who shot him. Kavals found casings on the ground -- 33 in all.

A short time later, Mercurio was approached by someone who had seen a car speed away down Monticello Street. The car turned onto Brushton and then bore right onto Mohler Street -- toward Ferris Court. The car's description matched that of one associated with Carter. Things were coming together.

Mercurio and Kavals got back in their car. They asked marked units to stay out of the area so they could enter covertly. As they turned onto Mohler and the sign that said, "Homewood North," a police wagon headed in the opposite direction.

Their closest backup had just left.

Hail of bullets

Ferris Court, ringed by two-story beige rowhouses, is tucked in an out-of-the-way part of Homewood.

Little more than a parking lot, the court is one of a string of distinct complexes that makes up the Homewood North community of the city's housing authority.

The officers' gold Oldsmobile had just cleared the trash bins when Mercurio banged the gearshift into park. There was no time for discussion. All they knew, they said, was that Keith Carter was standing in front of them with a gun.When the gun came up, Mercurio and Kavals had time only to utter a profanity before yanking their door handles and spilling from the vehicle.

Mercurio, who is short and stocky, dove to the ground and crawled to the back of the car. Kavals, at 6-foot-6, ducked and ran alongside the car in the same direction.

They made it to the trunk and hunkered down. All the while, the semiautomatic gun spat out 9-mm rounds. One hit Kavals' open door. Another hit a tire. The rest sprayed around the car.

"Once he started, he never slowed down," Mercurio said, He estimated the hail of gunfire remained steady for 10 to 15 seconds.

One one thousand.

Two one thousand ...

When they could, Mercurio and Kavals fired back, aiming at the muzzle flashes.

It was loud, the noise of three guns exploding in the night. Glass shattered. Casings clinked on the ground. Back at the Race Street shooting scene, officers heard the distant gun battle.

"I was absolutely aware of the danger we were in," Mercurio said. "I just wanted to start shooting back as soon as a I could."

Mecurio and Kavals said Carter eventually retreated and disappeared around the corner of 1290 Ferris Court.

At some point, Mercurio raced from his position and took cover behind a parked car, changing the magazine of his handgun on the fly. He yelled for Kavals to retrieve a shotgun from the car, but Kavals had already run up a set of stairs to circle behind the building, hoping to confront Carter.

"I was just planning for the worst," Kavals said. "The only thing I could hear was my breathing. I don't think I'll ever forget that."

When Kavals rounded the corner, no one was there. Mercurio had to yell for his partner, because Kavals had lost his radio in the chaos. Sure his partner was safe, Mercurio began broadcasting information, asking for the Special Emergency Response Unit, of which he is a member, to be activated. And then he started donning his own SERT gear.

Calling in the reserves

By dawn, police had flooded Ferris Court. Narcotics officers, SERT members, patrolmen from suburban departments and a state police helicopter had arrived. Top brass were awakened in the middle of the night. Casings littered the court -- 70 in all.

Shortly after 7 a.m., police surrounded 1290 Ferris Court and persuaded the occupants of the house to come out. Keith Carter walked out holding a baby. On the hillside behind the house, police found an Intratec AB-10. It resembles a submachine gun when the long magazine is inserted.

Carter was jailed, his bond revoked after intervention by the district attorney's office. The officers could not be happier that he's in jail, but they could not be madder about their ordeal.

"It was a lot of anger," Kavals said, "and a lot of satisfaction that we got him right then and there."

Sidney Sokolsky, an attorney representing Carter, declined to comment on any specifics of the case, other than to say, "There was no intent to shoot at anybody just because they were police officers."

Zero tolerance in Zone 5

There have been changes in Zone 5 since the shooting. Brackney does not want officers to ride alone on the afternoon and night shifts for the time being. She has ordered all of the zone's long guns to be signed out to officers on patrol. And she is enforcing a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the feuding territories. Officers will crack down on every infraction, from minor traffic violations to tossing litter.

Brackney plans to employ techniques used last fall to end a string of shootings around Formosa Way in Homewood involving rival drug dealers. She will bring in federal law enforcement, building inspectors, health inspectors and any other tool at her disposal.

"We're going to make the list of people we're interested in and take them off one at a time," Brackney said. "You're not going to run us out of one particular area."

Brackney, who refers to Mercurio, Kavals and Pires as "my guys," shares her officers' sense of outrage at being victimized.

"How dare you? How dare you when we're out there trying to help, and you pull a gun on someone?"

There is no hard evidence that assaults on Pittsburgh police officers are on the rise. There were 55 incidents last year, up from 43 in 2003, but down from 72 in 2002.

Nevertheless, police officials are concerned. Manpower is down, weapons continue to flood the streets, and the hot weather has arrived. Through the first four months of the year, serious crime was down 9 percent over 2004, but April showed a 1 percent jump, the first in 2005.

Deputy Chief William Mullen praised Mercurio and Kavals for their coolness under fire and called them "two of the best cops in the city." He expressed concern, however, that Pittsburgh police were involved in two intense back-to-back shootings.

"I'm kind of hoping it's just a coincidence, but these types of things run in patterns," Mullen said. "I hope it's not the beginning of a trend, but only time will tell."

If a trend is here, Mercurio and Kavals are ready. They have been cleared to return to duty. On Wednesday, his first night back, Mercurio headed right to a shooting in East Liberty.

"We've been talking about it all year," Kavals said, "how bad the summer's going to be."