by Jack Rogan
Voss fought the downdraft from the helicopter as she started toward it. Josh fell into step with her and, as they passed, Chang and a heavyset police official joined them. Over the roar of the chopper, Josh introduced her to Captain Koh, but she couldn’t do more than nod. The noise of the rotors set her teeth on edge.
At last the rotors slowed, and as they stopped twenty feet from the helicopter, the door opened and Norris emerged. He dropped to the ground, bent slightly, then ran over to them.
“Agent Voss!” Norris called amiably. “Excellent to see you still among the living.”
Voss wondered if Norris had personally given the order to take her out. If not, he must know she suspected it. Either way, his amiable greeting had to be intended as mockery. Josh, Chang, and Captain Koh all looked at her, awaiting her reply. Technically the case was still Josh’s, but she was the senior partner and he would defer to her now. The pain clawed at her shoulder. She could feel the scowl on her face and did not try to hide it.
“Where’s your friend Lieutenant Arsenault?”
“He has other duties to attend to,” Norris replied.
“More likely, his puppet-masters yanked him back since they’re trying to cover their asses in any way they can.”
“I don’t know what you’re implying, Agent Voss,” Norris said, with a scowl to match her own, “but I can tell you this much, I have been authorized to speak for Black Pine’s board of directors. You and your people are impeding our ability to do business. There is no reason for you to be here—”
“Other than the goddamn gunshots, you mean?” Captain Koh said.
Norris waved this away. “We have a practice range in the building. If you’d care to check, you’ll see that all of our permits are in place.”
“That wasn’t—” Chang began.
Voss cut her off. “You actually think we’re going to leave?”
Norris lifted his chin. “One way or another, yes. For now, you’re to draw back at least one block from our property. Shortly, your people will be called away. A court order could do the job, but I’m sure it won’t come to that. Already the media are arriving. I saw news vans and cameras and reporters as I flew in. The damage you are doing to the reputation of Black Pine Worldwide—the very idea that we cannot maintain our own security—”
“So this is fucking P.R.?” Josh scoffed.
Before Norris could reply, Voss stepped in so close to him that he backed up, head whipping back, to stare at her in astonishment. Voss reached out and tapped his forehead, hard, with her index finger.
“Listen to me, asshole.”
“Who do you think you—”
“Twenty minutes from now, I’m going to have forty Homeland Security agents on the ground. New Jersey State Police are a hell of a lot closer than that—I’m told we have nearly a hundred officers responding from various locations. But looking at your fucking jarheads over there on the sidewalk, I don’t even care if we wait for that backup. There are a lot of police and FBI right here already. And no matter who you think you are, or who you think is in charge of this situation … Right now, they answer to me.
“Just before I got here, I was on a conference call with the director of the ICD and her boss, the director of Homeland Security. I received my orders directly from them. I hope you’re following this.”
Voss turned to the others. “Captain Koh. Agent Chang. Pass the word along to your people. Ten minutes and we go in. And if Black Pine operatives attempt to bar entrance to the building, to interfere in a Homeland Security action in any way, you are authorized to treat them with extreme prejudice.”
She relished the horror on Norris’s face. “You can’t do that. You don’t understand the people you’re fucking with!”
Voss poked him in the chest, backing him up another step. “No, it’s you who doesn’t understand. Your powerful friends stay in power only as long as their secrets are safe. It’s over, Norris. The only thing you get to decide is how many people are going to die here today.”
“It’s going to be a bloodbath,” Norris said, still staring at her like she was the monster.
The standoff continued as Chang and Koh pulled out radios to pass along the orders.
“Mr. Norris,” Josh said, “there’s another option.”
“Yeah? What’s that, junior?”
“Cooperation,” Voss explained. “Stand down your men and let me send two people in to bring us up to speed on what’s really happening inside.”
Norris appeared to consider the suggestion, but she could practically read his mind. He would go along with it because he had no other viable option. What worried Voss was what would happen once Josh and Chang got inside. It could all go very badly very quickly. If Black Pine had a chance to wipe the slate, they would do it—even if that meant killing her partner.
One way or another, Black Pine needed Cait McCandless dead—but Rachael Voss needed her alive.
Cait leaned against the wall, gun still aimed at Shelby, who had wisely stopped smiling.
“Cait?” Monteforte ventured. “You said you had a plan. Please tell me there’s still a plan!”
“I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” Monteforte asked, voice rising.
“For bringing you into this. I needed help, and when Sarah put me on the phone with you … I’m sorry.”
Monteforte swore, shaking her head in dismay.
Shelby let the whole situation ride for a few seconds and then he seemed to settle back into his chair, more than comfortable. He stared at Cait’s gun and then at her face.
“You surprise me, Sergeant McCandless. Your service record indicates a highly capable soldier. But you come into something like this without an exit strategy?”
Cait laughed. “Sweet of you to worry about me, but I’m not concerned about an exit. Neither is Lynch. We’re here to put an end to you and your whole Collective and we never expected to get out alive.”
“Jesus, Cait,” Monteforte whispered.
“His name is Lynch,” Shelby said. “Good to know. What I wonder, however, is what you intend to do now. How are you planning to, as you say, end the Collective? If you were going to kill me, I imagine you’d have done so already. Maybe you’ve found you’re not much of an executioner. Killing an unarmed man in cold blood isn’t your style?”
Cait stiffened, finger tightening on the trigger. “Maybe. And maybe not.” She looked at Monteforte. “How’re you doing, Detective?”
“Terrified,” Monteforte said. “There are too many ways this could all end in bullets.”
“I know. And I’m sorry about that. But you’ve done your part, and very convincingly, too,” Cait said. “I liked how freaked out you seemed just now. Don’t worry, though. It’s time to lower the curtain on our little show. No one else is going to die today.”
Cait glanced at Shelby, saw the confusion in his eyes at the sudden change in her demeanor, and she relished it.
Shelby started to rise from his chair. “What are you talking about? You’re trapped in here, girl. You’re not walking out of this room alive.”
Cait smiled at him. “We’ll see.” She glanced at Monteforte. “I hope Sarah got this right.”
For once, Monteforte smiled. “Me, too.”
Cait went over beside Shelby’s desk and aimed her gun at his head. “Detective Monteforte, if you’d do the honors?”
Monteforte did not smile. With her left hand, gun still steady in her right, she pulled her badge off her belt and tossed it onto Shelby’s desk.
“Pick it up,” Monteforte said.
Shelby did, studying the badge.
“Cait works at Channel Seven News in Boston. Her friend Sarah Lin is a reporter there. The cameramen all love her. And those guys can rig a camera into anything,” Monteforte explained.
“Bullshit,” Shelby said, holding the badge up in front of him. “You expect me to believe you managed to get a camera through my security?”
“Actually,” Monteforte said, “it
wasn’t that hard. That pinhole camera’s one-thirty-second of an inch wide, less than half an inch thick. Sarah had a guy drill a hole in the badge. Your scanners couldn’t have picked it up.”
As she spoke, Shelby tore the badge off the leather clip Monteforte had used to affix it to her belt. He turned it over and stared at the chip on the back, maybe the size of a postage stamp. He could barely contain his fury, but Cait watched him tamp it down, stifling the tremor in his hands and the flare of his nostrils.
“You’d have to have a receiver for this,” he said, almost hopeful.
Cait nodded toward the window. “Right out there. My friend the reporter drove the detective down here in a borrowed Boston news van. It’s parked out there, set to receive the signal and transmit it live.”
Herc sat in his office with the door closed, tapping away at his keyboard. He kept refreshing his search, waiting for it to come up, knowing it would but still terrified that somehow it would not, that it hadn’t worked. Before he hit the final key, he had taken the time to consider how many laws he would be breaking and what prison would be like. Then he had thought about Sean, who wouldn’t even have hesitated.
“Come on, you bastards. Use it,” he whispered, hitting REFRESH again, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. He was aware of the personal risk he’d taken, but right now his main concern was what would happen to Cait if he’d screwed up.
The live feed from the news van Sarah had borrowed from her employers had been transmitted to the local TV tower, and Herc had ripped it from there into his own system. A few keys to execute his previously prepared program, and the video file had been filtered through all of the satellites he could access, down to cell phone towers, and then out to every single customer within range of those towers … probably eighty percent or more of the cellular phones in the United States and a percentage of the phones in Canada and Mexico as well.
Two minutes ago. Three. How long did it take for the file to transmit and then show up on those phones as a message? He wasn’t sure. Millions of phones, he thought. Tens of millions. More. There would be politicians and journalists receiving that video file, but more important, there would be all those ordinary people who had seized control of the national and international dialogue through the Internet.
He tapped the keys again, stared at the search results. A smile spread across his face.
“Yes!”
The blog was called Sleep All Day and the latest entry had been titled “Feds and Black Pine in Crazy Baby-Killing Conspiracy?” Holy shit, the blogger began his piece, can this delusional prick actually be for real? No question it’s Black Pine CEO Leonard Shelby, and we always knew his mercenary forces were evil, not to mention that the company shakes down the government for billions every year to provide “security” in places our military isn’t enough or shouldn’t be in the first place. But who the hell is Sergeant Kate McCandies, and are officials at the FBI and the army really involved in sending assassins after children? Really? WTF? This guy and his friends are monsters! Watch for yourself!
Herc did not bother watching the video. Instead, he went back to the search window and refreshed, and his smile broadened as he saw that the coverage had truly begun. Within half an hour, the video would be everywhere. The media would not be able to ignore it. Social networking sites would be talking about nothing else.
And there was the true power of the people.
Josh and Chang rode the elevator to the seventh floor surrounded by Black Pine personnel. Tension filled the silence. The guns remained pointed at the floor, but that was cold comfort. Josh had no doubt they were in enemy territory. Norris had consented to let them into the building only to give his people more time to fix the problem in their own way, which meant Josh and Chang would have to be extremely careful not to get “accidentally” caught in a firefight.
The doors slid open on the seventh floor. Two Black Pine guards stepped off and Josh and Chang followed. He pulled out his radio.
“We’re in. Seventh floor.”
“Go ’head and make contact,” Voss replied.
“Check.”
Josh turned to one of the guards and the man gestured down the corridor to the left with the barrel of his gun. Along the hall there were nine or ten other Black Pine employees—some women but mostly men—all dressed in the company uniform. Guards and standard ex-military security. The fact that they hadn’t already rushed in and killed everyone showed how much Black Pine valued its CEO. But from the way they huddled in conversation around various schematics and reports, that wouldn’t keep the situation calm forever.
“The door to the executive suite is just around the corner,” the lead guard said.
Josh nodded to Chang as they neared the end of the corridor. She drew her gun slowly, so as not to present herself as a threat. The idea amused Josh. How could dozens of mercenaries with the best guns money could buy see Nala, or even the two of them, as a threat? Still, he moved awfully carefully as he drew his own gun.
At the corner, they received suspicious glares from a number of Black Pine operatives, but after a moment the cluster of people in the corridor parted to let them pass, and a space cleared at the corner. Josh leaned against the wall there and took a quick look at the suite door. There were bullet holes in the wood. Exit holes.
A noise coming along the hall behind them drew his attention, and he glanced back to see four men carrying metal canisters with rubber hoses attached. Josh shot an inquisitive look at the man beside him.
“Gas?”
“You’ve got two minutes to try to talk them out of there,” he said, his tone perfunctory. “The gas is our next move.”
“What if she kills your man in there?” Chang asked, pushing her hair behind her ear.
“If she intends to kill him, he’s probably not getting out of that room alive anyway.”
Josh shook his head. He felt very exposed, as if he had painted a target on his skull. Dread crawled up his spine. He looked at Chang again and she gestured for him to hurry. They could have used a phone to call inside, but according to Norris, Cait had only picked up the phone once. And even from out here, Josh could hear ringing within. She was not going to answer.
Josh holstered his gun, feeling more vulnerable than ever, and went around the corner. Light shone in the gloomy corridor through the bullet holes in the door.
“Don’t knock,” Chang whispered behind him.
He almost smiled. Of course he wasn’t going to knock. Startling the people on the other side of the door would only get him shot. Kevlar vest or not, he had no interest in being shot. He’d lived through that once, and had no desire to repeat it.
“Sergeant McCandless, please don’t shoot!” he called.
“Don’t even try the door, jackass!” a gruff male voice shouted from the other side. It had to be Lynch, the man Brian Herskowitz had told them about.
“I won’t!” Josh said quickly. “I’m not touching the door. I just want to talk.”
Silence from within.
“I want to speak with Sergeant McCandless.” He waited ten long seconds and still no reply came. “Look, obviously you have some vested interest in keeping Cait and Leyla, not to mention yourself, alive. So do I.”
The gunshot made him jump aside and plaster himself to the wall. Every weapon in the corridor came up, ready to return fire. Chang and Josh both signaled for them to relax. There were no new holes in the door. The shot had been for effect only.
“Got your attention now?” said the man in the executive suite.
“You’ve always had it. But you don’t want to do that, sir. You’ve got a lot of grim bastards up here who’d like nothing better than to return the favor, but with better aim.”
“You want to keep anyone else from dying, you’d better back away from that door and keep them away, too,” Lynch shouted, and now Josh could hear the exhaustion in the man’s voice.
“Mr. Lynch, please just listen. Tell Cait it’s Josh Hart from the ICD.”
Josh glanced at Chang, then at the Black Pine men around him, who were already eyeing him suspiciously.
“The one Herc said would come?” Lynch called.
“That’s me. I’m with Agent Chang from the FBI. If you’ve accomplished what you set out to do, we’re here to place you in custody and make sure you get out of this building alive.”
“Son of a bitch,” said the Black Pine operative right next to Josh. The man raised his gun, and pointed it at Josh’s temple. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The man flinched as Chang put the barrel of her gun against the back of his head. Guns cocked up and down the corridor, but now they were aimed at Chang.
“Before you do anything stupid,” Chang said, “you should know that both of our radios are transmitting. Everything we’ve said, everything transpiring up here, is being heard by the cops and federal agents down on the street.”
The man swore and turned away, tapped the phone piece in his ear, and started whispering as he retreated a few steps, obviously trying to figure out what the hell to do next.
“Mr. Lynch, I think you can open the door now,” Josh called.
“Would you bet your life on it?” Lynch shouted back.
Josh glanced at Chang, throat dry. “I think I just did.”
When Voss’s phone beeped, she ignored it, focused on listening to what was transpiring up on the seventh floor. But then a cascade of beeps went up and down the street, nearly all of the officers and agents receiving a message within seconds of one another. Sunlight glinted off cell phones as seven or eight people nearby checked to see if the messages they were receiving were anything important.
Voss turned up her radio, trying to hear not only what Josh and Chang were saying, but the responses that this Lynch guy was shouting through the door. It was nearly impossible to make out, however. Lynch’s voice was muffled, and there was too much static.
