The Warning

by Michelle E Lowe

  “Have you questioned any of the police yet?” she asked hastily. “She thinks she’s so damn wonderful being an anchor.”

  Sakura had been a reporter for five years. It was her dream to become an anchor herself and stop running all over the place, covering stories. Every morning, she told herself she was paying her dues, but the debt seemed too high to pay off.

  “I got a witness,” she justified. “The cops aren’t talking to any other reporter out here.”

  “Relax. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure someone will talk soon.”

  She slipped her foot back into her shoe and wedged it in. With a sigh, she scanned the chaotic scene. Every news van in the city had parked just outside the circle of police cars, which had set up a perimeter around the bank. Surrounding the news vans were onlookers, waiting to see what would happen next. The standoff had gone on for so long without anything to report that the stations were regurgitating the same information.

  “This is pathetic,” she grumbled. “We have to get a better story than these guys.”

  On the second floor of the building, three gunmen were inside the bank president’s office. One of them was an African-American man wearing a hooded jacket. He rummaged through the drawer of a metal cabinet, searching through hardcopy documents, trying to ignore the exploding booms from downstairs. The police had already cut the power, forcing them to utilize their flashlights. After a half hour of fruitless searching, one of his crew finally spoke.

  “Are ya sure it’s in here? Maybe it’s stored on one of Lloyd’s discs.”

  “Dammit, Kip, for the last time, it isn’t electronically recorded,” Marko said, frustrated with the search and noise. The thick straps of his bulletproof vest weighed heavily on his old aching shoulders. To lighten the load, he slipped his backpack off. “She said the information is in a hard file kept in this room. Now, stop bothering me and text Ari to find out how things look.”

  Kip brought out his sidekick and typed in a question. The cops had tapped into their communication frequencies to listen in on their conversations, but the sidekick was guarded by a scrambling device.

  BOOM!

  The bank phone rang again.

  “Kip,” Marko exclaimed, “answer that damn phone. I can’t take it anymore!”

  “What do you want me to do? Text or phone?”

  BOOM!

  “Phone, and put it on speaker again.” He continued searching the files. “Give Mockingbird the sidekick.” Addressing the other person in the room, Marko said, “Tell them to hold off down there.”

  A young woman holding a lightweight XMB assault rifle took the sidekick and texted Marko’s orders. When she received a reply, she gave Kip a thumbs up. Moments later, the explosions stopped. Kip pressed the button on the desk phone and said sarcastically, “Thank ya for calling la banque. How can I help you?”

  “This is Captain Grant,” the voice on the other end said.

  “Oh, yes, the captain. We spoke earlier. How are you?”

  “It’s been two hours and there hasn’t been any word from anyone. I want to know if everyone is all right in there.”

  Kip lay back on the desk, resting his assault rifle across his chest. He crossed his legs and said, “Yes, yes, everything is just fine, Cap.”

  Marko waved Mockingbird over to him. She approached and kneeled down so he could whisper without the captain hearing. “Ask Ari how things are going in the custodian’s closet and if Quill is about done.”

  “No, we ain’t gonna let any more hostages go.” Kip said.

  “You have to work with me here,” Grant pleaded. “What is it that you want?”

  When the chime of Mockingbird’s sidekick went off, he turned to read her body language. It wasn’t good. As she reviewed the incoming message, her eyes widened and her mouth dropped.

  Damn it. What are those cops trying to pull out there?

  Without a word, she held the sidekick over Kip’s face. He read the text and released a breath of frustration.

  “What?” Grant asked.

  “Say, Cap,” Kip said, lifting himself off the desk, “why don’t you call off your people at the garage door?”

  There was a long pause. Marko had sweat dampening his skin. Kip casually placed his rifle across his lap.

  “How do you know about that?” Grant asked.

  “Well, I do declare,” Kip hiked his voice to impersonate Scarlett O’Hara, “have I forgotten to mention that we’ve hacked into the cameras?” Then he let his tone drop back to normal. “Yeah, we can see everything you’re doing out there, numb-nuts, so why don’t you call ’em off before someone gets hurt?”

  “It’s out of my hands,” Grant said. “If you release the hostages, maybe we can work something out.”

  Marko thought fast and turned to the corner of the room where a woman in her early twenties sat in a chair. When he motioned for her to go to Kip, she obeyed.

  “Release the hostages, huh?” Kip said. “Would ya like to speak to one?”

  The young woman approached the desk and leaned toward the speaker.

  “Daddy?” she said. “Is that you?”

  No answer came from the other end for a long moment. The captain’s silence unnerved Marko. He snapped his fingers at Kip to get him talking to the captain and bring him back into focus before it was too late.

  “Daddy?” Kip said into the line. “Are you there? Your daughter wants to talk to you.”

  “Je … Jeri?” Grant stuttered. “What are you doing in there?”

  “I came to open a checking account like you told me to do. You told me to grow up and start acting like an adult. I came here to make you proud. Then these people with guns came in.” She spoke rapidly, fearfully. “Daddy, I’m scared. Don’t let them hurt me.”

  Kip raised a finger to his mouth to shush her.

  “It’s all right, Jeri,” Grant consoled. “Everything’s going to be—”

  “Is it still outta your hands?” Kip asked.

  “I swear to God, if you hurt her, I’ll …”

  “Call off your people, or I’ll use your little girl as my own personal shield when the shit hits the fan.”

  “All right!” Grant exclaimed.

  There was only background noise from outside before Grant’s voice returned. Only this time, he spoke to someone else. “Abort! Abort now!”

  “But, sir,” came a crackly voice, “we’re almost inside. Just a few more seconds and we’re—”

  “Goddamn it, I said stand down. Now!”

  “Yes, sir. Standing down.”

  Marko released a pent-up breath of relief. He moved his eyes to Mockingbird, waiting for word from their eyes downstairs.

  The sidekick chimed, and she, too, sighed, giving another thumps up.

  “Satisfied?” Grant asked.

  “Thank you,” Kip said. “We’re done here.”

  “No, wait! Let’s talk about my daughter—”

  Kip slammed the phone down. “Shit, that was close.”

  Marko went back to his search.

  The loud chopping noise of helicopters faded from Grant’s hearing. The constant movement of officers dimmed from his sight. The situation had done a 180 on him, leaving him numb all over.

  “Fucking hell, Grant!” Police Chief Howard Osborn shouted as he stormed toward him. “I just got word that you stopped the raid!”

  Grant looked wide-eyed at him. “My daughter is in there. She’s one of the hostages.”

  Osborn stood stunned. “Are you sure?”

  “I just spoke to her.”

  “How the hell would they know she’s your daughter?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Jesus. What do you suggest we do now?”

  “Wait,” he said calmly. “Wait and see what they’ll do next.”

  Kip became edgy as Marko searched one drawer after another. He didn’t want to show it, but dealing with Grant had left him shaken. “Have ya found it yet?”

  “Not
yet,” Marko said. “All of you go downstairs and get everyone ready to go.”

  Kip jumped off the desk as Mockingbird took a hold of Jeri’s arm and lifted her from the chair. They raced down the stairs, into a cloud of thick smoke hovering in the lobby. Kip entered one of the offices, where a middle-aged woman and a beefy man kept watch on two laptop monitors.

  “Hey, Ari,” he said, viewing the monitors for himself. They had hacked into the cameras around 94th Street, giving them a clear view of the outside from four different angles, including the inside of the garage. No one could come near the building without being spotted; and so far, everything looked clear.

  “How’s Quill doing, Dog?” Kip asked the man.

  Dog raised his eyes from his computer monitor and said petulantly, “Looks like she’s still working on it.”

  “Sooorry, Miss Grumpy Pants,” Kip sniped. “What about the closet?”

  A nearby sound caused him to look through the glass wall. A pair of hostages emerged from a short hallway, carrying a plastic bag with something heavy inside. They held both ends, which sagged between them. The other hostages lay face down on the lobby floor.

  “All of them?” Kip asked both Ari and Dog.

  “All of them,” Dog answered.

  Osborn left Grant without the captain even noticing. He raced around to the side of the building, where the SWAT team came around the corner. “Get back in there.”

  “We were told to stand down,” the team leader said.

  “I’m the boss, and I say get your asses in there and flush those rats out!”

  The man shrugged. “All right.” He motioned for his people to follow him back around to the garage.

  Osborn’s phone rang inside his coat pocket. “Osborn … Hey, Shaw. You got ’im? … All right. Has he confessed? … What? Get ’im to my office now.” He hung up before Shaw could reply.

  As Quill pressed buttons on the assembled machine inside the storage container, Dog and Ari remained fixated on their monitors.

  “Shit!” Ari blurted.

  Kip shot his gaze over to a team of well-armed SWAT personnel rushing to the garage door. Sparks flew from a ball of bright light as one of them used a blowtorch to cut their way in. Once through the door, they would have a clear passage into the garage, where they could break down the inside door and swarm the bank. This tactic, approved by the More Aggressive Law, was highly dangerous for both suspects and their hostages.

  “Damn it, they’re busting in again!”

  “It won’t be long before they get inside,” Ari said.

  * * * * * * *

  Grant came to his senses. Acting brain dead wasn’t going to save his daughter. He got on the radio to speak to the SWAT team leader. “Derrick, come in,”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Where are you?”

  “At the garage.”

  “What the hell are you still doing there?”

  “We got orders from the chief to proceed with the raid.”

  Grant’s heart stopped cold. “Abort! Abort!”

  “But the chief …”

  “The subjects know you’re there,” Grant shouted. “They can see you from inside!”

  Marko was about to give up. He’d been through every file in every cabinet drawer with no luck. Frustrated, he shoved a cabinet onto its side and kicked it when it landed.

  “Marko,” Kip’s voice came over the radio. “We’re about to get hit!”

  Marko slung his backpack onto his shoulder to leave when something caught his eye. The outside light coming in through the blinds showed a line scored into the wall. He shined his light on it and noticed more thin lines, outlining the shape of a sixteen-inch square. Climbing onto the fallen cabinet, he slid his fingers over one line until he felt a door hinge.

  A safe disguised to look like part of the wall. It didn’t even have a combination lock or keypad. Only two other ways it could be opened. One option was by a remote, which was most likely with Mr. Lloyd. The second was simply blowing the door open.

  “Classic,” he muttered, slinging his backpack off and searching through it. “All that’s missing is some crappy painting.”

  He brought out a sticky bomb, pressed it against the hinges of the vault, and set the timer on the detonator. As soon as the detonators beeped, he jumped back and hid behind the desk. The sticky bomb exploded, blowing bits of metal around the room. He hurried to the safe, waving the smoke away, and reached into the gouges where the hinges used to be. He heaved the door out of the wall. Inside, his fingers slid over a slick surface. He gripped the object and brought out a red cover hardcopy file filled with white and pink pages. He put on his reading glasses, opened the file, and scanned the information inside.

  It was there; everything he needed to know was now in his hands. He wanted to read on, but there wasn’t time. He closed the file and ran out the door.

  “I got it!” he proclaimed happily as he trotted down the spiral staircase. “Is everything done? Is it set?”

  “Ready to go, boss,” Quill replied, standing up from the container.

  Marko looked at the hostages on the floor before checking his watch. 7:40 p.m.

  “They’re inside, Marko!” Ari called. “They’re coming at us from the garage!”

  “Okay, we’re on in three … two …” Kenny said, holding the camera on his shoulder.

  When the light came on, Sakura threw on her game face and said, “Good evening, New York. I’m Sakura Yoko, reporting to you live at the First National Bank of Manhattan on 94th Street, where over a dozen hostages are being held by six armed gunmen. Although we don’t have much detail in this developing story, we have learned that …”

  An explosion rocked the inside of the bank, shattering the glass of the front doors behind her. The powerful blast blew the roof off the building and a ball of fire flamed into the sky. Shockwaves shattered windows of nearby cars and buildings. Everyone dropped to the cold concrete.

  “Did you get that!” Sakura shouted to Kenny. “Did you get the explosion?”

  The man nodded while filming. The camera shook in his hands caused by his electric jolts of excitement. He captured a beautiful shot.

  Nelson Grant stood aghast. The heat was so intense it felt like the skin had melted off his face. The fire tore into the evening sky. If he screamed for his daughter, he didn’t hear, but he could taste smoke in his mouth. Tears in his eyes dried before they even had a chance to fall.

  Chapter 4

  The officers handcuffed Nikolai and placed him in the back seat of a police car. As they drove down 96th Street, Nikolai remained silent. His stomach ached where Mason had struck him with the nightstick, and the pulsating pain in his back kept him from sitting still. His shifting caught Cooper’s attention.

  “Stop moving around back there.”

  “I would if my back hadn’t been bashed in,” he remarked.

  “I don’t care about your back,” Cooper retorted. “Just stop moving or we’ll take it as you resisting.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be working the crime scene?”

  “It’s already been taken care of,” Geiger replied from the driver’s side.

  “Already been taken care of? I don’t understand?”

  “Hey,” Cooper barked. “Ever heard the phrase ‘the right to remain silent’? Start taking advantage of it.”

  “I wasn’t given that speech,” he fired back. “You ought to know, since you were there.”

  Cooper shot him a hateful look through the dividing screen. “Do you want what happened to you at the station to happen again?”

  Nikolai turned away with a deep sigh. He fell silent. He’d had run-ins with cops like these before. When the More Aggressive Law had passed, it gave officers permission to do anything necessary to get an investigation closed. Some officers took advantage of the bill. Others didn’t go so far and were referred to as old-fashioned or lazy. Even so, there were those who basked in it and used their newfound freedom wherever they saw fit.
He sat handcuffed in the backseat with two of those officers.

  He thought back to when Mason had led him out from underneath the bridge. We have a body, he’d said to the officers arriving on the scene. But he’d never examined the body to make sure it was actually dead. Not to mention his overly dramatic performance after learning the body’s identity. Mason had seemed about ready to kill him when he’d denied any involvement in the murder.

  “Damn it.” Whatever had happened, Mason had had some hand in it. Perhaps even the cops in the front seat.

  “What’s the matter?” Cooper asked. He smirked mischievously at his partner. “Looks like you’re suspicious of something.”

  Geiger shook his head. “Shush.”

  He realized he’d been set up from the moment he’d seen the video. Now he knew a few people that were involved. “I want to call my lawyer, and my sister.”

  “Don’t worry,” Geiger said. “You’ll be taken care of as soon as we’re there.”

  In his head, you’ll be taken care of sounded too much like a threat. Maybe his final destination would be to the police station where another cover-up would take place; his murder. He was obviously a loose end that needed tying up. The only thing keeping him alive was that he hadn’t given them a written confession, but that wouldn’t keep him alive for long.

  Traffic thickened. Geiger took a shortcut over a closed-off, one-way street where heavy construction was being done. At the moment, the street was deserted. A loud blast sounded the moment Geiger accelerated over the straightaway. He lost control of the car and swerved across the vacant street and around traffic cones.

  Flames shot into the sky, peering over the buildings down the road. A ball of fire plumed upward as a mushroom cloud. Vibrations radiated through Nikolai’s entire body.

  “Jesus!” Cooper cried. “What the hell was that?”

  Geiger clicked a button on his headset. “Unit 335. We just saw an explosion on Lexington.”