The Siege

by Stephen White

  “That’s it? I’ve been briefed already.”

  “That’s not it. The building they’re in is a fortress. It has two-foot-thick stone walls. No windows. Two doorways—one on the main level, one to the basement. We have no knowledge where inside that structure he has the hostages, or how he is maintaining control of them.

  “The subject is sophisticated with explosives and comfortable with electronics. He is likely armed. If we interfere with his communications, he has already demonstrated he will retaliate lethally. We must assume that he is prepared to kill all the remaining hostages if he suspects an attempted breach.”

  “I said I’ve been briefed.”

  Christine ignores his impudence. “I do not expect your witness to talk. I suspect that Michael Smith is convinced that the consequences of talking to us are much worse than the consequences of maintaining his silence.”

  The agent sneers. “You were out there. Why did he run at the end?”

  Christine wants to slap him. “He ran at the end because he was told to run at the end. My guess is that the hostage taker was probing SWAT, and clearing the area in front of the building so the other three could exit without incident.

  “I also suspect that Michael Smith the third, and all the others, witnessed the execution of the girl whose body was just left outside the door. They have already seen the very real consequences of not doing what they are told. They aren’t going to talk until this ends. Maybe not even then.”

  Christine is thinking this may be her last chance to say her piece. She fills her lungs and continues, “The hostage taker killed Jonathan Simmons, the first hostage out the door, so we would know that he was capable of that. He has now released four other kids, and sent out one more dead body. We have to recognize those are messages as well. He is making it crystal clear that he is capable of those things, too.”

  “Of releasing his hostages?”

  “Yes. He is capable of releasing his hostages. And he is capable of executing his hostages. The girl with the slit throat reminds us that he is not done killing.”

  The agent’s face is impassive. “I should get back to the debriefing.”

  Christine no longer wants to slap him. She wants to kick him.

  As he turns away she says, “One observation from our uniformed officers may be of interest. It could be coincidence, but all four kids who were released were wearing blue shirts. Michael’s shirt is blue stripes. The two kids who were killed were both wearing an item of orange clothing. I just confirmed it on the video.”

  The special agent is staring back over his shoulder at Carmody as though she just broke into a tap routine.

  She goes on, “Let me explain. You’re from out of town. Blue is a Yale color. A lot of kids wear it here. Orange isn’t. It’s the color of a rival. Princeton.”

  The agent asks, “Why would he be letting us know in advance which kids he is letting go, and which he plans to kill? That doesn’t make any sense.”

  Another special agent marches up to the interrogator. Carmody waits.

  The agent says, “Two things. One, the girl with the slit throat . . . We have a tentative ID. She is Emily Lanthrop, a junior. She’s a co-coordinator of something called Dwight Hall. Her family is from suburban Chicago.

  “Second, an AP guy got a shot of her body with a long lens before the area was draped. The photo is out, the media’s running with it. A couple of possible names are circulating, including the one we think is correct. Some people who are afraid they are the victim’s parents just called the Chicago Field Office. Apparently they got some kind of note. After that, a phone call. We have an agent on the way to interview them.”

  “Do we have the note?”

  “Within minutes.”

  “Keep me posted. What else?”

  “Whiskey, X-ray, Yankee, and Zulu sniper teams are now in place. We have secured the perimeter and have full-time surveillance of the target.”

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  Po e

  Poe wasn’t in a good position to watch the three hostages emerge from the door of the tomb. High Street, like Grove, was blocked off by barricades. The crescent park near the cemetery was packed with gawkers. He’d had to circle around the law school, cross Grove, and climb up on a sign that identified the campus power facility.

  He was too far away from the action. Tree limbs intruded into his line of sight. Once he recognized there was some new activity outside the tomb, he thought he was able to make out three kids—he pegged it as two guys and a girl—finishing their climb down the stone steps. They filed one by one through a gate. Each in turn dropped out of his line of sight. A solitary cop in plainclothes approached them before she, too, dropped out of sight.

  A few minutes later, the same cop continued up the stairs, before again disappearing from Poe’s view. Poe could tell she was not HRT, not FBI. He didn’t know what it meant that HRT was on-site but not in command of hostage negotiations.

  The three released hostages were led individually toward Commons. Poe knew the protocol. The trio was about to be debriefed. The FBI intel squad attached to HRT would do the interviews.

  Poe had to find a better vantage. The release of the kids didn’t make sense to him.

  He texted Dee: Whererud?

  PHL

  Dee was at the airport, about to get on a plane to go back home to Jerry.

  At a tv?

  Near one.

  What do you see?

  Three more kids came out. One dead body.

  Body?

  The three kids left it outside the door.

  Is it another kid?

  Bad angle. Can’t tell yet.

  Definitely dead?

  I can’t confirm that. No TV sound where I’m standing.

  Thanks for helping me.

  Dee said, For you, anything. You solo?

  It’s my nature. HRT is here. I’m keeping my distance. Any intel from Langley?

  No, but one hostage is son of one of us.

  Company?

  No, DIA.

  Poe thumbed, These kids aren’t hostages.

  What are they?

  Poe had to think before he came up with the right word. When he hit on it, he knew that it fit.

  He thumbed, Ammunition.

  He waited almost a minute for a reply. It was a solitary word: Holy.

  Poe typed, God I miss you.

  Dee replied, Ditto.

  Poe read the text and smiled. He typed, God I miss you more, but he didn’t hit SEND.

  He hopped down from his perch and backtracked along his original route. When he got all the way to Wall Street, he saw that a sedge of five mobile cranes was staging on the other side of the law school, out of sight of Book & Snake.

  What HRT was doing was prudent—they were getting assets deployed and ready. Any assault on the Book & Snake tomb had to include the roof. Since the building had no windows, HRT could safely bring the cranes up from behind without being spotted from inside. A risky helicopter drop wouldn’t be necessary.

  Wall Street remained open to traffic, but the section of sidewalk closest to Beinecke Library was blockaded off. Poe crossed the street to get past the library.

  His BlackBerry vibrated as he stepped off the curb.

  Dee. What am I doing, Poe?

  He thought of five ways to interpret her question. He picked the one that caused his gut to seize, figuring that was the most likely.

  He thought, but didn’t type You’re going back to Virginia, Dee. To Jerry.

  He allowed himself to splurge on some memories the way an alcoholic might sneak a few extra sips from the last bottle in his stash. He remembered how soft the skin felt on the back of her neck just above her spine and what her hair smelled like after a couple of hours in the bar. That she had a rough spot on her left heel and a quarter moon-shaped scar on her right knee. How her armpits felt right after she shaved. That the nail on the pinky on her right foot was missing just a tiny fleck of polish.

&nbs
p; That she ate the crust of her toast first.

  That she always moaned when he put pressure on a certain spot on her hip.

  He knew right then that he didn’t have a prayer of titrating the memories of their few days together so that the ration would last him an entire year. At his current consumption, the inventory of memories of Deirdre might not even last Poe a month.

  What am I doing, Poe?

  He typed, Don’t know, baby, don’t know.

  He stared at his screen for a full minute awaiting her reply. But nothing more came back from Dee. He resumed his walk, his BlackBerry in his palm. He stopped abruptly when he was halfway across Wall Street.

  He pretended he had changed his mind and spun on his heels, retreating to the sidewalk. He continued in the direction of College Street. He crossed at the corner and walked another ten yards before he looked back.

  The BlackBerry buzzed. Another text from Dee.

  Torn torn torn.

  Poe had suddenly changed his plans because he had spotted a man standing in the precise spot that was his destination—the narrow strip of sidewalk on Wall Street that afforded a view past Woodbridge Hall toward the rear wall of Book & Snake.

  The man hogging Poe’s desired spot was a white, forty-plus guy with a big head and a body that was solidly in the no-man’s-land between husky and overweight. He was dressed like a tourist—chinos and a polo shirt—but early forties or so made him almost too young to be a Yale parent or even a prospective Yale parent. He had no kid in tow. An alum, maybe? Poe’s gut said not. Instinct said that the man he was watching hadn’t attended Yale. Tourist? Possible but not likely. Local? Not a chance.

  Poe’s BlackBerry vibrated one more time. Dee’s text read, Ammunition??? Holy.

  The arms and shoulders of the man Poe was watching were strong. They didn’t quite lie flat against his sides when he was at rest. His eyes were vigilant. Although he was focused on the narrow sliver of view he had across Beinecke Plaza, he also checked every few seconds to see what was on his periphery.

  Poe was close to reaching a conclusion about the man but wasn’t completely sure until the guy squeezed his left triceps against the big muscle below his left armpit. Poe thought the muscles that wrapped around the sides from the back were the lats, but he was a cardio guy, not a lifting guy. Poe liked long solitary runs. And he worked his abs. Crunches. Hundreds each week.

  His mind wandered to Dee. When the light hit him just so and he held his breath and focused all his energy on tightening his abdominal muscles, Poe could convince Dee he had a six-pack. He couldn’t hold the definition for more than a few seconds—which was usually just long enough to make her laugh. He would do a thousand crunches a day to hear that.

  Poe shook off the memory. He refocused on the man who was fixated on Book & Snake.

  The squeeze Poe had just observed—that quick compression of the triceps against the lats—told Poe that the man across the street was unconsciously checking his weapon. When the man was on the job, he was a shoulder-holster guy. The squeeze was a force of habit, something he likely did all day when he was on shift. Second nature.

  Cop, military, or private security? Poe added some information to the “very likely” category: The man’s not private—if he had a carry permit he’d be wearing his weapon. He didn’t look military. And the man wasn’t a local cop. If he were local, the gun he had just felt for would not be imaginary; it would be in place tucked below his shoulder, disguised by a light jacket or a sport coat.

  Poe’s own service weapon was on his belt at the small of his back. A one-size-too-big Chicago Cubs sweatshirt nicely covered the bulk.

  Poe thought, This guy’s an out-of-town cop. The other information Poe added to the “very likely” category was that the man was a detective. A patrol cop would brush his hip to find his gun. But detectives have carry options—if a detective is wearing a shoulder holster, the easiest way for him to check his weapon is to press his arm against his side. It’s a totally different tell from that of a patrol cop.

  He’s an out-of-town detective with a reason not to be carrying. He is standing precisely where I want to be standing—in the best vantage left available to the public to view any activity on the rear side of Book & Snake.

  Why? What the hell are you doing here, guy? What do you know?

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY AFTERNOON

  NEW HAVEN

  The HRT special agent in charge finishes watching some video on a laptop in the Tactical Operations Center. He turns to Haden Moody and says, “Lieutenant? I think you might want to see this. It’s clear we’re dealing with someone familiar with how we work.”

  Moody jumps from his chair. He says, “Sure. Absolutely. What do you got?”

  Moody’s not an idiot. He knows he’s appearing too eager.

  The SAC says, “A few minutes ago we snaked a flexible camera under the blue tarp in back—the one that’s covering the stairs that lead to the basement door at the rear of the building. This is the video. It’s short. A little more than a minute.”

  Moody says, “I’m with you.”

  The SAC briefly turns to the information technology officer. “Put it on the big monitor, please, Adam,” he says. “I’ll give you the voice-over version. What you’re seeing right now is a continuous loop of a couple of hundred feet of coiled, ultrasharp concertina wire spread out so that it completely fills that little stairwell. The razor wire extends a good two feet above the door. The wire is attached to the staircase, to the stairs, and to the stone walls in at least a dozen locations with fasteners shot into the concrete. Simple, but effective. Apparently, the unsub doesn’t want us in that stairwell.

  “At the bottom of the stairs—there—are two paired wires, purple and green. See them? The wires appear to be connected directly to each end of the concertina cable before they disappear below the basement door. With me?”

  Moody doesn’t know what it all means. He says, “Yes.”

  “Our camera is now focused on the exterior of the door—it’s a steel door, by the way—that leads into the basement, where we find this photograph conveniently posted for our inspection.” He turns to the IT officer. “Pause please. We think this photograph is a rear view of a hooded hostage bound in a large chair. Below the chair you can see a package almost identical to the one that exploded on the waist of the first hostage. We assume this package, like that one, contains a detonator as well as an explosive. You can also see another paired purple and green wire entering the package after leaving a twelve-volt battery on the floor to the left of the chair.”

  Moody says, “How do you add it up?”

  “It could mean that the razor wire in the stairwell is charged so that our agents will suffer shocks during a breach. But our explosives people don’t think so. They think that if we attempt to cut the concertina wire to gain access to the door, the detonator will be triggered, the bomb will explode, and the hostage in the chair will die.”

  Moody spreads his feet, lifts his chin twice in quick succession. He feels a need to add something. For some reason he decides to go all Pollyanna-ish. “So we know this kid’s in the basement? That’s something, right? We didn’t have that before.”

  The SAC says, “Actually, no. We don’t know that. The backdrop to the photo is a white sheet. This hostage could be anyplace in the building. Basement? Top floor? We don’t know. Advance the video, please. Okay . . . Now we’re looking at the corner of the outside stairwell, near the concrete floor. That . . . there . . . is a remotely operated video camera. To keep an eye on us, I guess. Stop it again at the second photo.”

  The video advances. Pauses.

  “Finally, here is a second photograph that the unsub left for us. This one is attached to the wall opposite the door in the stairwell. We are told by a former member of Book & Snake that this picture is an inside view of the basement door, which is hinged to swing in. Note a few salient details. The edges of the door, all four sides, have been reinforced with three-inch-wide, quarter-in
ch-thick steel bars that are set in a thick construction adhesive of some kind. Liquid Nails or something like it. We think he did that to keep us from trying to insert . . . anything through gaps around the door. Next, if you look carefully you will see extremely small-gauge copper filament strung through tiny eye fasteners that are screwed to the casing. See it? The filament runs in a continuous loop, back and forth across the door every few inches. It zigzags all the way from the top of the frame to the threshold.”

  Moody says, “I do.”

  “Each end of the filament is connected to a separate lead on the purple and green paired wire right . . . there, at the bottom of the door. What does it mean? We think the entire doorway is wired to be a trigger for the explosives. If we open that door, we break the filament. If we breach that door with force, we break the filament. If we break that filament, the detonator below that chair gets juice.”

  The video ends.

  “With enough time we’re confident we could get past all of it. Could we do it without being seen? No. Our conclusion is that if we breach at this location, we have a high probability of being detected. In fact, it’s possible that our camera was already detected by the unsub’s camera. Any attempt at forceful breach through this door will most likely result in the sacrifice of at least one hostage, possibly more. We will have to account for that as we go forward.”

  Moody says, “Jesus.”

  The SAC says, “What we’re gaming right now is an alternative breach. If we get orders to send in our assault teams, our primary ingress will be the front door right after he opens it to release a hostage. We’ll probably simultaneously pierce the roof and drop in from above. If we extrapolate from the defenses he installed in the exterior stairwell, we can expect to find razor wire blocking the interior staircases and some doorways wired to act as triggers. We are staging heavy equipment to help us with the roof drop. We will rehearse the assault inside Scroll & Key.”

  Moody nods, relieved he at least knows what Scroll & Key is—it’s another tomb diagonally across Beinecke Plaza. He says, “Good choice.”

  “We’re not there yet—ready to breach—but I wanted you to know what we’re up against.”