by J. S. Carol
‘What other angles are you exploring?’
This question came from a raven-haired, brown-eyed CNN cutie-pie. Seth would have bet a month’s salary that she wasn’t half as dumb as she appeared. Walters paused and placed his hands on the lectern. His face turned serious, like he was considering this rather than giving answers that followed a carefully agreed-upon script. Tara zoomed in, capturing every gesture and tic.
‘At this stage, we cannot rule out the possibility that there may be another explanation. What that explanation might be, I wouldn’t like to say. The LAPD is in the business of dealing with facts, not idle speculation.’
‘Jim Grieg, Fox News. So, this could be someone with a bomb and a grudge?’
‘Your words, not mine, Mr Grieg.’
‘How many terrorists are there? The film taken inside Alfie’s shows one terrorist. Could he have accomplices with him in the restaurant?’
‘We believe there is just the one perpetrator.’
‘You said the FBI is involved. Does this mean that the LAPD is being edged out?’
The camera angle was all wrong, so Seth couldn’t see who had asked the question. It was a woman, though, someone with the throaty rasp of a heavy smoker.
‘Not at all. Like I said earlier, we are working in close co-operation with the FBI.’
‘Have you managed to talk to the bomber?’ Rob asked.
‘Not yet. Of course, it goes without saying that making contact is one of our main priorities.’
‘Has anyone been killed or injured?’ Jim Grieg asked.
‘Nobody has been killed. However, one of Alfie’s employees has been shot and injured. His injuries aren’t believed to be life-threatening.’
‘Can you give us a name?’
‘Not at this stage.’ Walters put both hands up. ‘Okay, that’s it for now. Thank you for your time, ladies and gentleman.’
Walters made a quick escape flanked by two of the LAPD’s largest officers. A barrage of yelled questions followed him towards the Mobile Command Unit.
‘And cut back to the studio in three,’ Seth said. ‘Three, two, one.’
Rob was on the phone seconds later.
‘Any luck getting hold of King’s cell phone number?’ he asked.
‘We’re working on it.’ Seth eyed the main monitor, where Caroline was telling the viewers that the injured employee was fifty-eight-year-old Victor Comaneci, a former marine who doubled as a valet and security guard. Two of the smaller monitors were tuned to Fox and CNN. Neither one had this information yet. Score another home run for the underdog.
‘I assume we’re still going with the terrorist angle,’ said Rob.
‘Of course we are. Walters is just playing it down because he doesn’t want a full-blown panic on his hands.’
‘And here we are fanning the flames.’
Seth laughed. ‘Don’t you go growing a conscience, now. Do you hear me?’
‘Loud and clear, boss.’
Seth killed the call. ‘Can someone tell me where the hell my terrorism expert’s got to?’
‘He’s in make-up,’ one of the assistants called back. ‘He’ll be ready in two minutes.’
‘Not good enough. I want him ready now. Come on people, let’s hustle. We’ve got news to make here.’
10
‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’
JJ felt warm breath on her ear and resisted the urge to turn around. The question had been delivered in a barely audible whisper that had come from behind her. She glanced over at the bomber. He was still absorbed by the news reports on the laptop. She had noted a pattern to his behaviour. Every minute or so, he’d look up from the screen, sweep his gaze across the hostages, then turn back to the laptop. He’d done this about twenty seconds ago, so there was a bit of time to play with.
She glanced over her shoulder and saw Dan Stone staring at her. Less than an hour had passed since they’d sat down for lunch, but the pressure had taken its toll. Stone’s eyes were wired and his hair was a mess from where he’d been running nervous hands through it. The ‘N’ on his forehead at the end of ‘DAN’ was smudged. He looked like he was teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown, and that was a real concern. If he panicked and did something stupid then he was going to end up as dead as Elizabeth Hayward. That was an absolute certainty. What JJ wasn’t so sure about was how many people would die with him. Those sitting closest to him would be in the firing line, and, right now, she was sitting directly in front of him.
‘We’re not going to die,’ she whispered.
A couple of people fired dirty looks at her, but she ignored them. Someone had to talk him back from the ledge. Stone glanced at the bomber, then scooted forward until his arm was touching hers.
‘We need to do something. If we all work together, we can overpower him.’
‘Like they did on Flight 93? Great idea, Dan. We all know how that one turned out.’
‘And we know what happened to the other three planes.’
JJ was watching the bomber’s every move. It wouldn’t be long until he checked on them again. ‘So we’re screwed if we do something, and we’re screwed if we don’t.’
‘We can’t just sit here and do nothing.’
‘Yes, we can. This is not the time to play hero. You can hear the news bulletins as well as I can. The police have the situation under control.’
Even as she said this, she heard how lame it sounded. Stone heard it too and shot her a disbelieving look. A movement from the bomber caught JJ’s eye and she froze. Her hand found Stone’s leg and she squeezed hard. Shut up. The bomber’s eyes swept across each hostage in turn, starting with Tony on the opposite side of the room.
He reached Stone, and JJ felt the agent tense. And then those eyes were on her, picking her apart and crawling under her skin. She knew it was just her imagination, but she could have sworn that he looked at her longer than anyone else in the room. The bomber finally moved on and she was able to breathe again. She waited for him to go back to his laptop, then glanced at Stone. The agent was looking as wired as ever.
‘Just promise me you won’t do anything stupid,’ she hissed.
11
‘We’re now joined by terrorism expert Professor Dorian Michaels, from the University of California.’
Up in Mission Control, Seth gave the order for the camera to pull back. Caroline Bradley turned her chair through a full ninety degrees and faced Michaels. She moved in time with the camera, like this had been carefully choreographed.
‘Glad you could join us, Professor Michaels.’
Michaels dipped his head, a gesture that had a patrician quality to it. The professor looked like an academic. He had a white mane of hair, a neat goatee, and his intelligent blue eyes were framed by a pair of spectacles. He was well into his sixties, but the years had been low-mileage ones. He was healthy, tanned and there wasn’t an ounce of excess fat on him.
‘Al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for this attack,’ Caroline said. ‘Do you think they’re behind it?’
‘Before I answer that, I’d like to make a couple of points that might help your viewers.’ Michaels’ voice was soft and lilting. There was a trace of Irish in there. Caroline nodded for him to continue, and Seth groaned again. What was it with academics? Was it really so hard to answer a simple question? TRN’s usual terrorism expert was attending a conference in Berlin. This was the first time Seth had used Michaels. The first and the last.
‘The big mistake people make is to imagine al-Qaeda as a large multinational conglomerate, like McDonald’s or Coca-Cola, say.’ Michaels paused for a moment and smiled a smile that lit up his whole face. ‘They imagine the person in charge is like the CEO, holding the reins, his orders filtering down to his underlings. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Al-Qaeda is an ideology, a belief system. We’re talking about the difference between Christianity in its pure form, which is a belief system, and the Roman Catholic church, which is a fully structured organisation
with a very clearly defined hierarchy.’
Another short pause, another smile. ‘In the same way that anyone can call themselves a Christian, any Islamic fundamentalist terrorist group can claim to be acting on behalf of al-Qaeda. The beauty of this set-up is that no one will contradict these claims, since every atrocity carried out in the name of al-Qaeda ultimately benefits the cause. Simply put, the more atrocities attributed to al-Qaeda, the more widely its doctrine of hatred is spread.’
‘Did he just compare al-Qaeda to Christianity?’ Seth shouted. ‘Please tell me he didn’t do that?’ He wrenched his microphone closer and told Caroline to get the professor back on track, otherwise they were cutting to Rob. It was the only threat that worked. The thought of someone at TRN getting more face-time killed her.
‘In your opinion, professor, are we dealing with an al-Qaeda attack here?’
‘The question is irrelevant,’ Michaels said. ‘It makes no difference if this is an actual al-Qaeda attack or not. What matters is whether people perceive it as being al-Qaeda.’
No it is not irrelevant. Seth was seething. It was the only question that mattered. The story they were angling for was so simple a three-year-old could get it. An al-Qaeda suicide bomber had attacked one of LA’s most exclusive restaurants and was holding a crowd of the entertainment industry’s most powerful people hostage. How difficult was that to grasp?
‘But you would agree that this attack was carried out by Islamic fundamentalists?’
‘It is possible,’ Michaels conceded.
Possible! Seth felt the vein in his temple throbbing. What did the dumb schmuck think this was? An intellectual debate? They were paying him five thousand bucks to come in here and say that this was the work of al-Qaeda. Nothing more, nothing less.
‘Enough!’ Seth screamed. He gripped the desk, knuckles shining white, and stared at the monitor. ‘Next time he pauses for breath, cut to Lovett’s video. Then call security and get that asshole escorted out of my studio. As for his fee, tell him we’re giving it to the Somalian orphans.’ He glared at his assistants. ‘I want someone to sit down there in that studio and categorically state that this is an al-Qaeda attack. I don’t care what their qualifications are. They could have bought their degree over the Internet for all I care. The point is, they tell the story I want told. Come on, people. Do I have to remind you who makes the news here?’
12
Alex King leant against the door and stared at his cell phone. No calls, no texts. Or rather, no texts from anyone he wanted to hear from. Even though it was never going to happen, he was still hoping for a response to his ‘love u’ text.
The break-up had not been his finest moment. In the end he’d taken the coward’s way out, which was ironic since most people thought he was a hero. They’d gone out for a meal and King had dropped the bombshell. He’d chosen a public place because he didn’t want a scene. He just wanted to finish things as quickly and cleanly as possible. The only thing going in his favour was that he hadn’t sunk so low as to break up by text.
It felt like hours since he last spoke to Brad Carter, but, in reality, it was only about ten minutes. And, man, how those minutes had crawled by. The lack of activity was really getting to him. He wanted to be doing something, he didn’t care what. Sitting around like this was torture. He wanted out of here now. What were the FBI up to? Were they planning a rescue mission? If they were, he wished they’d hurry up.
Dying wasn’t something he’d really thought about. Sure, there had been times back in Cincinnati when he’d wished he was dead, but that was different. He hadn’t really wanted to die, he’d just wanted the beatings to stop. He was thinking about it now, though. As much as he wanted to believe otherwise, the longer this went on, the more chance there was that his luck might finally run out.
Twenty-six was way too young to be thinking about this sort of shit. His death should be a long, long way into the future. Since his escape from Ohio, he’d been more concerned with the business of living, and that was as it should be. Life was one long party, and he was having the time of his life. And now there was every possibility that the party was about to come to a very abrupt end.
King sat on the tiled floor and wondered who’d be at his funeral. One thing was for sure, none of his family would be there. His grandparents had died before he was born, and his father had split when he was still in diapers. For all he knew, his father might even be dead. Not that he cared one way or the other. He’d never known the guy.
His mom had been dead for almost three years now. The drink and drugs had finally taken their toll. He hadn’t gone to the funeral. There had been no point. It would have just dredged up a whole load of memories that he wanted to keep buried. He had tried very hard to forget about that part of his life, to erase it from his memory and pretend it had never happened.
Occasionally, he’d wonder what his mom would have made of his success. Any other mom would have been proud, but not Martha King. No doubt she would have viewed him as her personal ATM. The thing was, he would have ended up feeling sorry for her and given her the money. And she would have just gone out and blown it all on drink and drugs.
King tried to conjure up a good memory from his childhood, but those were few and far between. There was a Christmas when he was about five or six and he’d gone on and on about getting a bike. The one he’d wanted was a bright red Schwinn. The one he’d got was a rusty thrift-store heap that had been painted with black emulsion. None of that had mattered, though, because he’d finally had his own wheels.
That was one of the few times when his mom had actually come through for him, when she’d actually done something right. Those occasions were so rare he could count them on one hand. The thought didn’t upset him anymore. He was beyond that. Any tears he’d ever cried for his mom had dried up long ago.
The fact he’d survived his childhood was nothing short of a miracle. Home had been a cockroach-infested hellhole on a trailer park on the outskirts of Cincinnati. There had been a steady stream of uncles, leather-jacketed bikers who were big on substance abuse. King had ended up being beaten almost as often as his mother.
There were two big pluses to having such a shitty childhood. First off, his mom had acted like he didn’t exist, so he’d been pretty much left to bring himself up. The only rule was that he didn’t get into trouble with the cops. Not for his sake, for hers. The last thing she’d wanted was for the cops to come sniffing around their trailer. That was the deal, and it was an arrangement that had suited him fine. The second plus was that it had made him absolutely determined to get out of Ohio as soon as he could.
He’d left just before his seventeenth birthday. He’d spent the previous two summers pumping gas, working twelve-hour shifts for peanuts. Those peanuts had added up to almost a thousand bucks. His mom would have sniffed the cash out quicker than a bottle of vodka, so he’d bought a cashbox and buried it in the woods bordering the trailer park.
His latest uncle had been six-foot-three with a handlebar moustache, a man who loved his chopper more than life itself. One night he came home drunk. After beating his mom unconscious, he started in on King. The last thing he remembered was curling into a ball with his arms squeezed up together to protect his face, and wishing he was dead.
He regained consciousness to the sound of snoring coming from his mom’s bedroom. Deep buzz-saw snores. The rising sun was scraping past the ragged curtains, its gentle orange glow touching his skin. He hurt all over but, miraculously, nothing was broken. He didn’t know how much time he had, so he moved fast. He threw some clothes into a bag, then went to the woods to get his money. Before he left, he took a screwdriver to the chopper’s tyres, then performed his own customisations to the customised paint job. After that, there was no going back.
He took the Greyhound from Cincinnati to Los Angeles, a journey that lasted more than two days. Within a month his money was gone and he was back pumping gas. He didn’t pump gas for long. When a stranger offered him a couple of h
undred bucks to do some modelling, he thought it was a joke. The man left his business card and told him to call if he changed his mind. Modelling was a damn sight better than pumping gas. One job led to another, and another. Acting was the natural next step. There had been a few lean years before he landed the audition for Killing Time, but even the leanest of those years had been a marked improvement on Ohio.
King gripped his cell phone and willed it to ring. What the hell was Carter doing out there? A gentle scratching sound broke into his thoughts. It was coming from somewhere near the urinal. He tried to ignore it. No doubt it was just a rat, or maybe a mouse. Except the noise was too regular and rhythmical to be an animal. Also, this was a solid wall, which meant there was no hollow crawlspace for a creature to move through.
He made his way over to the urinal, pressed his ear against the tiles, then moved his head around, trying to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. It seemed to be originating from lower down, near where the drainage pipe disappeared into the floor. He knelt so he could hear better. The noise was definitely getting louder. And closer. The sound reminded him of a pepper grinder.
A second later, his cell phone vibrated in his sweaty hand.
14:00-14:30
1
‘And the main story here at TRN at the top of the hour: Ed Richards and Oscar-winning film director Natasha Lovett are among those being held hostage by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber at Alfie’s, one of LA’s most exclusive restaurants.’
Seth had the camera zoom in on Caroline. She was oozing gravitas and he wanted to catch every last drop. The background picture showed a scene from the helicopter. Cops, firefighters, paramedics, and all their vehicles in the foreground, the bland L-shaped building that housed the restaurant behind.
