Lockdown rl-1

by Sean Black

  *

  ‘It’s that dumb bitch from NBC,’ said Stafford, holding up the phone for his father, who was already deep into his third Scotch on the rocks.

  ‘What does she want?’

  ‘Something about a breach of security at the naval yard site.’

  Van Straten snatched the handset from his son’s grasp. ‘This is Nicholas Van Straten.’

  ‘Mr Van Straten, where are you?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Have the FBI spoken to you?’

  ‘No, why would they have?’

  ‘Because wherever you are, you have to leave there, immediately. There’s a grave threat to your life and that of your son.’

  ‘Ms Delaney, I can assure you that we’re quite safe where we are.’

  ‘Mr Van Straten, do you have a television in the room?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then switch it on to NBC.’

  Nicholas clicked his fingers towards the remote on the bed. Stafford picked it up and tossed it to his father, who caught it and thumbed down to the channel. The screen was split. On the right side was a mass of emergency response vehicles shot from a distance but recognizably parked near to the Meditech facility. On the left side of the screen was a static shot of the front gate of their house.

  ‘Mr Van Straten?’

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘And Ryan Lock will be joining you shortly. I received a call from him an hour ago to say that he was on his way to speak with you. He sounded pretty angry-’

  Carrie didn’t get to finish the sentence before Nicholas Van Straten hung up. Satisfied that she hadn’t told a single lie, she turned back to her cameraman. ‘OK, let’s get back to the naval yard.’

  ‘He won’t do an interview?’ asked her cameraman.

  ‘He’s not even there,’ she lied.

  The guy shrugged and began hastily packing up his gear as Angel trotted back to them, covered in dirt and wagging her tail.

  ‘Slut,’ said Carrie, reaching over to open the rear door of the truck for her.

  Ty tensed as the side door into the garage opened. A pair of boots made their way across to the Hummer. They stopped at the driver’s door, right next to where Ty’s head was. Ty could have reached out and touched them.

  He waited for the boots to walk round to the other side and start the vehicle inspection. Or for the driver’s face to appear at his eye level so he could shove a gun in his face. Or for the mounted mirror to appear so he could grab it, drag the guy under and choke him out with the rag tucked into his shirt.

  But none of this happened. Things had gotten sloppy real fast since he and Lock had been relieved of their duty. Or the driver was in one holy hell of a rush. Maybe both.

  The Hummer chirped as the driver hit the clicker, disabling the alarm and unlocking all four doors. Ty watched as a boot lifted on to the running board, the door opened and the other boot followed. The driver’s door thunked shut.

  Ty pushed back with his hands, crawling backwards, emerging just to the right of the Hummer’s tailgate. He unholstered the Glock, ready to go, and hunkered down, duck-walking the few steps round to the right rear passenger door. His next action called for one solid component: speed.

  He reached up and gripped the handle, opened the door and flung himself inside. The interior of the Hummer was big enough that he could extend his arm without the driver being able to reach it.

  He held the gun to the driver’s head. ‘You even breathe wrong, asshole, and you’re history.’

  Seventy-four

  Croft reached slowly under his shoulder and came up with his weapon, a Sig 226. He handed it, butt first, to Ty. Ty switched it with the Glock, jamming that into his holster as back-up.

  ‘Leave the keys in the ignition and step out of the vehicle.’ Once Croft had done that, Ty threw him a rag. ‘Put that in the big hole in the middle of your face and turn round.’

  Croft caught the rag and stuffed it into his mouth. Then he turned round. Ty dug around in Croft’s pockets for the keys to the Mercedes, using them to open the trunk. He shoved Croft towards it. Croft got in, still at gunpoint.

  ‘Soon as I get some distance I’ll call the local PD and send someone to get you out.’

  Ty slammed the trunk shut and got into the driver’s seat of the Hummer. He took the Glock back out of the holster and stowed it in the compartment between the front seats; the Sig he left on his lap. He then reached up, hit the button on the garage opener and drove out, closing the door again as soon as the Hummer was clear.

  He swung the monster vehicle around in front of the house. The door opened and a guard appeared. That made sense. He’d been expecting a three-man team: one to drive, one to act as BG, and one to stay behind and act as residential security in case they had to come back in a hurry.

  The guard was followed by Nicholas Van Straten. Then came Stafford. In the darkness and through tinted glass, Ty knew that none of them would be able to see him.

  As per standard procedure, the guard opened the door and stepped back. Van Straten and Stafford were too busy talking to look in Ty’s direction. Plus the interior dome light had long since been disabled — standard procedure to mitigate against sniper attack. Nothing a shooter liked better than a nice big shaft of light to spotlight their target.

  The Van Stratens took their seats. Stafford was yakking away like he was on speed. In the rear-view Ty could see his father doing his best to tune him out. Still neither man had looked at him. Staff were like so much background scenery to guys like them.

  The guard closed the door and started round the vehicle to get into the front passenger seat. Ty clicked the button on the console to his left which locked all the doors and accelerated away, leaving the guard standing where the Hummer had been.

  The gates were open, and he sped through. ‘Where to, gentlemen?’ he asked, swivelling round, and savouring their expression of shock. ‘Or I could stop somewhere quiet, pull the two of you out, make you kneel over a ditch and shoot you in the back of the head.’

  Stafford spoke up. ‘Listen, Tyrone, if this is about my terminating your contract-’

  ‘Oh yeah, cos this is how I usually respond to being laid off.’

  ‘Turn this vehicle around immediately!’ said Stafford, his voice shrill and unconvincing.

  One eye on the road, Ty took his right hand off the wheel and pointed the 226 at him. ‘Shut the hell up.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Nicholas Van Straten. ‘Shut the hell up, Stafford.’

  Ty noticed Stafford’s hand sliding down to the door handle, about as casually as a fourteen-year-old trying to cop a handful in a darkened movie theatre. ‘It’s locked. But if you want to take your chances, at least wait until I hit the freeway.’

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Nicholas asked.

  ‘Don’t worry, you’ll recognize it when we get there.’

  Seventy-five

  Josh stirred in his father’s arms as Mareta made the guard kneel on the floor with his face to the wall. In her right hand she held a Glock; in her left, two pieces of metal linked to the detonator, contact guaranteeing everyone’s death. Lock wanted the kid out of there, and here was his chance.

  ‘Hasn’t he seen enough killing?’ Lock asked her.

  ‘Then take him outside.’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ said Richard.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Mareta said, as if the desire to spare a child from seeing cold-blooded murder was a clear sign of weakness.

  Lock watched as Khalid escorted them both out. ‘Thank you.’

  The guard facing the wall began to break down. ‘Please, don’t let her do this. I have a wife and kids.’

  Mareta swiped at the back of his head with the Glock, leaving a gash across the top of his skull. ‘Then why do you take this job?’

  ‘Five minutes. Give him another five minutes, Mareta,’ said Lock.

  ‘Then at the end of those five minutes, you ask for another five. I know these games.’

  That was som
ething Lock hoped Frisk and the rest of the JTTF were also factoring in. Most terrorists didn’t survive their first siege; Mareta attended them with about the same frequency that newly married women out on Long Island attended baby showers. By now she must know the hostage negotiator’s playbook better than they did.

  ‘How’s your leg?’ Lock asked, hoping to distract her.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  She checked the screens. More vehicles massing outside the perimeter. Most of them clustered either side of the gate.

  ‘No sign of your friend,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll be here.’

  Mareta lowered the gun. ‘OK, have your five minutes. But after that, it’s half an hour until I kill the next one.’

  ‘You said every hour.’

  Mareta sighed. ‘We negotiate. I give you something, you give me something back in return. That’s how it works, no?’

  Seventy-six

  Twenty miles short of the naval yard, the empty tank light on the Hummer’s console pinged on. Ty groaned. The fuel consumption on a Hummer wasn’t great at the best of times, but throw on close to a ton of B-7 armour and it practically required its own oil field.

  ‘Problem?’ asked Stafford from the back seat.

  ‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Ty responded with a grimace.

  Three miles down the road, he found a gas station. His plan was simple. Threaten the living shit out of his cargo. Get fifty bucks of gas. Throw a Lincoln through the slot and get back on the road.

  Ty pulled in and swivelled round. ‘I’ll be gone less than two minutes. You’ll be in my sight the whole time. If I see you move in any way, shape or form that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll kill you faster than David Duke at a Nation of Islam cookout.’

  He turned off the ignition, took the keys with him, got out and locked up. He then grabbed the nozzle and jammed it into the gas tank. His eyes flitted between the dollars and cents ticking over on the display and the doors of the Hummer. He stared at the point where Stafford and Van Straten would be. He couldn’t see a damn through the tint, but he didn’t want them to think that.

  These days when he bought gas, the numbers flicked past like a slot machine, but this pump seemed near glacial. Fifty dollars up, he placed the nozzle back in the pump, closed the flap and went to pay, looking back at the Hummer every few yards.

  He pushed the money through the tray in the bandit screen and jogged back.

  As he went to open the driver’s door, he remembered. Damn. The Glock. He’d left it in the front compartment.

  He glanced back. The gas attendant, a young Hispanic kid in his early twenties, was perched on a stool watching whatever crap they threw on TV at this hour.

  Ty drew his own weapon, yanked open the door and stepped back behind it, bracing himself for the first flash of movement.

  Nothing.

  From the angle he was at he could see only Nicholas Van Straten’s shoulder. But Pops wasn’t the one he was worried about.

  ‘Step out of the car. One at a time. You first, Stafford.’

  ‘Stay in the car. Get out of the car. Which one is it?’

  ‘Be quiet, Stafford,’ Ty heard Van Straten mumble.

  ‘Could you at least open the door, then?’ Stafford asked, tetchily.

  Ty slammed shut the driver’s door, moved up the side of the vehicle, reached over and opened the passenger door, making sure to keep the armoured plate between him and Stafford. Stafford stepped out, hands held high in the air.

  Ty glanced over his shoulder to see the gas attendant staring at them, no doubt trying to work out what kind of special-needs criminal brings his victims to a gas station to rob them.

  Nothing else for Ty to do now but get on with it. He patted Stafford down. Clean.

  ‘OK, now you.’

  Nicholas Van Straten stepped out and Ty repeated the procedure. Nothing on him either.

  ‘Stay there,’ he told them.

  Clambering into the front seat, he opened the compartment. The gun was gone. He stepped back to see Stafford waving frantically to the attendant, miming someone making a phone call.

  ‘OK, where is it?’ he asked Stafford.

  ‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  Stafford was doing exactly what Ty would have done in this situation. Stall. The gas attendant was already on the phone, one eye on what was unfolding outside, spitting his words out as fast as he could into the handset.

  Stafford must have known that Ty had some purpose for them. Otherwise he would have killed them both at the house. Or pulled off the road back in Shinnecock Bay and done it.

  ‘I don’t need both of you,’ Ty said. ‘So who’s it to be?’

  ‘I think if you took a vote, it would end in stalemate,’ Nicholas Van Straten said drily.

  ‘Hmm,’ Ty said, mulling it over. ‘Guess that leaves me the casting vote then.’

  He levelled the gun at Nicholas Van Straten’s head.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Stafford.

  ‘It’s tucked into the back seat,’ Nicholas said.

  ‘So much for family unity,’ Ty said, reaching back into the vehicle and securing the weapon.

  He hustled them back inside the Hummer, just as the police cruiser pulled in.

  A single-officer patrol. More units presumably on the way. Judging from the rapid gesticulations of the attendant, who’d been busy on the phone trying to explain a robbery when he wasn’t being robbed, Ty guessed that the call had been put down as a roll by and report. Still, if he let the situation develop it could go only one way.

  He waited for the cop to step out of the cruiser, then he shifted the Hummer into reverse and hit the gas. The rear of the hulking SUV concertinaed the engine block of the Chrysler.

  Smiling for the first time since he’d turned into the gas station, Ty took off, leaving behind a very pissed-off cop scrambling for his radio.

  Seventy-seven

  The Hummer inched between a Nomad Command Post trailer and an up-armoured NYPD Bomb Squad forklift. Van Straten and Stafford could only stare out in bewilderment as more than a hundred men and women, many of them heavily armed, moved carefully between the perimeter and the vehicles.

  ‘Here we are, boys,’ Ty offered. ‘All ashore that’s going ashore.’

  He slowed the Hummer. Over to his left, two regular NYPD cops were taking a good look at him. One of them was on the radio, the other talking out of the side of his mouth to his partner. As they started towards the Hummer, Ty eased down the window to hear what they were saying.

  ‘Hey. Stop that vehicle.’

  Yup, that’s what he thought they were saying.

  He closed the window, shifted the transmission into low and aimed straight at the gate. The trick was to hit it at ramming speed, approximately twenty miles an hour, then push on through the very centre. The mistake most people made when ramming, say, a roadblock was to get up as much speed as possible and go straight for it. In close protection circles that was known as ‘crashing’. Very different to what he was about to do.

  Ty didn’t look back as he got to the gate. He didn’t have to because he was pretty certain no one would be following him in. The perimeter was more psychological now than physical.

  The fence shook on the initial impact. That was followed by the grinding of metal on metal.

  By now Stafford, at least, realized what was going on. They were ransom payment, in human form. Next to him, his father sat ramrod straight, tapping into some long-lost patrician fortitude.

  As the Hummer breached the fence, the couple of cops who’d been running alongside, banging on the doors like demented groupies chasing a limo, fell away.

  The Hummer forged ahead, straight for the building holding the control room. A couple of rounds zinged off the roof, the first metal raindrops of a fast gathering storm.

  Ty pulled the Hummer up to the entrance of the main building, got out and opened the rear passenger door on the driver’s side as cover. ‘OK, ladies, end of the line
. Better get inside before some over-eager ATF boy scout uses your bony white asses for target practice.’

  Van Straten and Stafford scuttled out and inside the building, followed by Ty, all three men met by Mareta’s honour guard. One of them reached for Ty’s gun but he pushed him off. Stafford and Van Straten were led down the long corridor towards the control room.

  The door clicked open, and Ty ushered them inside.

  Mareta looked the Van Stratens up and down with all the professional detachment of a hangman shaking a man’s hand to calculate his weight.

  ‘OK, so we’ve delivered what you asked for, the boy and the doctor come with me now,’ Lock said.

  Ty stayed by the door, his hand on the butt of his gun. The Glock was tucked uncomfortably into the small of his back.

  ‘This isn’t all I asked for,’ said Mareta after an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Listen, if it’s money. .’ Nicholas Van Straten spluttered.

  Mareta ignored him. ‘The boy can go, but the doctor I need.’

  Josh rushed to his father and snaked his arms around his waist.

  ‘Why is he here, anyway?’ asked Nicholas.

  ‘Ask your son,’ said Lock, gesturing towards Stafford. He then bent down so he was eye level with Josh. ‘How about if I drop you off and then I come back to look after your dad? Would that make you feel better?’

  Josh’s head whipped a ‘no’ back and forth.

  It was Richard’s turn. ‘Please, Josh. I’ll be fine — really.’

  Lock prised Josh from his father, finger by tiny finger.

  ‘OK?’ he said, finally.

  Josh rushed back to give his dad a hug.

  ‘Ready?’ Lock asked, one hand on the boy’s shoulder.

  Josh swallowed hard. Nodded. His hand slipped into Lock’s and they started out of the control room.

  Nicholas Van Straten rounded on Stafford. ‘You’re a disgrace!’

  ‘I did what I had to do. Mother would have understood.’