Blue Knight

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  He saw a man hoist a very professional-looking outside TV camera onto his shoulder and put his eye to the viewfinder to test it. Another was testing the light on the top of it. A third was setting up a mobile microphone and boom rig hanging off his shoulder.

  A fourth was threading a microphone into Ibarra’s shirt.

  Ibarra was talking to a man in a suit and tie. The man was standing in profile to Daniel, but even so, he looked familiar.

  “Shit,” Daniel said and sat forward. He put his hands flat on the table. “Don’t move, anyone.”

  His heart was racing. Thoughts tumbling, but not in the same way they had just been chasing their tail about Olivia. This was cold, hard, professional data.

  It was here. The time was really here.

  Everyone was looking at him.

  “What is wrong, Daniel?” Jenny asked.

  Olivia took off her glasses. “It’s happened, hasn’t it?” she said. “The shit is about to hit the fan.”

  Daniel nodded, moving his head just a little.

  Hans looked at Olivia sharply. “You ‘ave a better grasp of this situation than I, then.”

  Daniel pressed his palms together. “Do you have the gun with you?” he asked Olivia hopefully.

  She shook her head ruefully. “I hid it just as you did.”

  “Gun?” Hans squeaked.

  “I knew it,” Jenny said, looking from Daniel to Olivia. There was a sparkle of tears in her eyes. “I knew you two had something going on.”

  The murmuring from the foyer was coming closer. Daniel leaned back enough to sight around Hans’ ample back. The film crew and Ibarra and his guards were moving down the long foyer now. His time to develop a plan of action was running out.

  Hans tapped Daniel’s shoulder. “What zhit will it be, when it ‘its?” he asked. He was calm now he’d had time to absorb the shock. As one of the more senior diplomats here, he was trying to rally himself and figure out how to manage the situation.

  “There’s nothing you can do about this, Hans,” Daniel assured him. “I don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what Ernesto told them. He could have given them just one American. He could have spent all night selling us all out. We just have to strap in and hang on, because it’s going to be very ugly indeed.”

  “Daniel…” Olivia breathed.

  He let himself look at her. One glance. The glance lingered as the guards marched into the bar and their tramping shook the glasses in their overhead brass runners, while everyone else in the bar who hadn’t got the warning Daniel had given his table sat up with shocked gasps. When they saw the film crew and Ibarra’s dress uniform, the gasps turned to fear, for they sensed that everything was about to change.

  Olivia kept her wonderful eyes on him, instead. He saw her fear there. Her sadness.

  It tore at him. He wanted to climb over the table and pull her into his arms and promise her that nothing would ever touch her again and then spend the rest of his life working to make sure that nothing ever would.

  She shook her head. “No,” she said softly, just loud enough for him to hear. “Don’t do anything, Daniel. Please.”

  It was only then he realized that he was coiled and tensed. Ready to spring. Ready to take action.

  Hans glanced at him. “They will kill you, boy. Keep your seat.”

  Daniel made himself relax.

  The interviewer was circling the room, his eyes widening as he checked off names on a list on his clipboards. “Lars Nass, Hans Oberstz, Olivia Davenport, Jennifer Egstrom. Jesus, Mary mother of Christ, they’re all here. Daniel Castle, Erin Johnston—”

  The list went on.

  Everyone. They had everyone. Ernesto had a phenomenal memory for names and faces, being a diplomat, which they must have hooked up to the landing papers and diplomatic red tape to cross-match IDs. It would have taken them all night and most of the day.

  All it needed was one confirmed American among them.

  Fear was a huge lump sitting like an anvil on his chest. Daniel watched the reporter move around the room, followed by the camera crew, who were filming everything. Then he noticed the big radio pack attached to the camera and his heart hit the bottom of his stomach. This was going out live.

  He focused on the reporter and realized where he had seen him before. It was Ciro Solos, the Mexican investigative reporter who had won international awards for his news coverage. He worked for MNTV, the Mexican national media network.

  A live broadcast, with only Ibarra present, meant that something very bad was going to happen and Serrano wanted to be far enough away from it that if it went wrong, later he could wash his hands of it and pretend he had nothing to do with it. Ibarra would get to wear the blame for all of it.

  Daniel pushed his chair out a little farther from the table, giving himself room to move if he needed it. The sick feeling wasn’t going away, though. He had no gun and no allies in the room. There were five officers with Sig Sauer pistols and thirty-two guards carrying HK21 machine guns. There were twenty-five civilians and one of them—god help him—one of them was Olivia.

  What the hell was he going to do?

  * * * * *

  Minnie burst into the potting shed, slamming the door up against the back of Nick’s wooden chair with an impact that made everyone in the room except Nick wince.

  Nick reached around the chair to steady Minnie, who was hanging onto the door, catching her breath.

  “You. Better. Come. See.”

  “Minnie, we’re conducting a meeting—” Duardo began.

  Nick dropped his pen and stood up. “She’s gone gray!” he said, picking Minnie up around the waist as she sagged tiredly over.

  “Waste bin!” one of the officers called helpfully.

  Duardo, stuck behind the cramped table, reached out with his long leg and kicked the metal garbage tin toward Nick, who propped Minnie’s head over it.

  She retched desperately into it.

  Duardo rolled his eyes up toward the ceiling, sitting ramrod straight and stiff, while the officers chuckled.

  There was another set of pounding footsteps along the covered breezeway. Then Calli burst into the room, her face pink from running. “Now! Come now!” She looked around the room. “Ibarra has the UN diplomats as hostages on live television right now and it doesn’t look good.” She glared at them as they stared at her. “Move your asses, gentlemen!”

  They moved. There was a scramble for the door and they slid past Calli, murmuring apologies and pleasantries as they did so.

  Duardo came last, after plucking a limp Minnie from Nick’s hands and hoisting her into his arms. Minnie lay with her head against Duardo’s shoulder, white and drained. “I hate being fucking pregnant,” she groaned. “What about the garbage can?”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Duardo assured her and kissed her forehead. “We’ll clean up later. This is more important.”

  Nick closed the door of the room and locked it, pocketing the key. “We’ll get back to this. You’re right, we need to see what Serrano is up to. This doesn’t sound good.”

  “It doesn’t look good at all. Those people look terrified, Nick.”

  “If they have been there for nearly five weeks, then they are most certainly terrified,” Duardo said over his shoulder as they turned in to the house proper. “They can be nothing else. Serrano knows human psychology too well to let them linger there and not play games with them. If this is going out live and he is not there himself, it is not going to be pleasant.”

  “Plausible deniability?” Calli asked.

  Nick nodded. “We should be ready, Duardo, just in case.” They moved through the front foyer, heading for the formal lounge room where there was a big screen television from where they could watch the broadcast.

  “Just in case of what?” Calli asked reasonably. “You have no idea what’s going to happen.”

  “That is the problem with Serrano,” Duardo said.
“His mind doesn’t work under the same mental laws us ours, which makes him unpredictable.”

  “Doesn’t that also make him dangerous and difficult to kill?” Calli asked in an undertone as they stepped into the room where everyone else was assembled.

  Nick sighed. “Unfortunately, yes.”

  * * * * *

  Solos and Ibarra stood in the middle of the bar and the big light fell on the pair of them. Daniel moved a few inches to the left so that Hans’ shadow fell on his face. That would keep his features obscured in any shots the camera caught him in.

  Solos was counted down by his network director and cut in. He gave a polished introduction and said that he was standing in some undisclosed location and that he had been invited here by the current Vistarian governing body.

  That tightened Daniel’s gut. The delicate phrasing, given the people sitting around him, meant that Solos was just as aware of the political ramifications and potential crisis happening in this room as they all were. It seemed that Ibarra and Serrano were the only ignorant ones.

  Or were they? Were they trying to commit some complicated form of political suicide and go out in a blaze of historical glory?

  Daniel discounted that immediately. Serrano simply didn’t have that sort of panache. He was a third-rate thug. The only reason he had got this far was because he had been able to lean on the minds of brilliant strategists like Torres, Zalaya and even Ibarra for a while.

  But Ibarra was crumbling fast. If he was about to do what Daniel thought he was going to do, Ibarra had lost what little original thought he’d once been capable of.

  Solos finished his preamble and introduced Ibarra, who stepped up in front of the camera. Alone.

  Daniel clenched his hands together. Solos had stepped aside. He wasn’t even going to interview him. Ibarra had full control of the camera.

  This was very bad.

  “I am speaking to you on behalf of the glorious nation of Vistaria and the government that leads it.”

  Daniel blinked. Ibarra was speaking formal Spanish, but he had named the country informally, Vistaria. The full name of Vistaria was La Vistaria de Escobedo. Daniel hid his smile. The insurrectos, it seemed, would do a complete whitewash if they ever came to full power. Every trace of the previous power-holders would be wiped from existence, including their name.

  Ibarra didn’t take long to get to his grievance. The next breath, in fact. He held up a long, slender finger toward the camera. “The refusal of the United Nations to extend full diplomatic status to my beloved country is causing hardships and difficulties for our wives. Our children. Our loved ones. We cannot let this insult pass. Third world nations that have less stable governments than ours can sit at your political tables and pass laws. Why can we not?”

  Ibarra spread his hands wide, palms up. The reasonable man. “We tried simple negotiations. You would not listen.”

  Daniel looked over at Solos. The man looked worried. He was glancing down at his clipboard. This clearly wasn’t what they had promised him would go down. They had lured him and his team here under false promises. Of course they had—Solos would not be here for this sort of circus, otherwise.

  The journalist reached into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. The alarm was going up now. Would they cut the feed? Daniel surely hoped so. It was one way to prevent this disaster from going ahead and Solos would know that. Take away the feed and you took away Ibarra’s microphone, too.

  Ibarra shrugged, a Latinate expression that no one else in the world seemed to be able to pull off. “We tried a more rugged form of persuasion and still you would not deal with us.”

  He means blackmail. Holding us hostage didn’t work, Daniel thought. But that also wasn’t something that Ibarra wanted to say on national television. Or was it international television? MNTV had contra deals with US and Canadian networks, internet stations and some Asian Pacific-rim nations including China and Europe. Just how far was this broadcast being sent?

  Daniel felt sweat pop on his temples as he realized that it didn’t matter. The studio would be taping it anyway. If it was dramatic enough—and Ibarra was building up to something big, so that was pretty much in the bag—then even if the international networks weren’t interrupting their regular broadcasts, they’d find time to run this later, sure as sheep frolic in the meadow.

  Solos had to cut that feed. Now. It would be playing into Ibarra’s hands if the cameras kept rolling.

  Solos was turning away, tapping on his phone with his thumb, bringing it up to his ear slowly, so he wouldn’t alarm Ibarra.

  Ibarra lifted up his hands toward the camera, once again the reasonable man. “What are we to do?” he asked. “We have run out of options.”

  Daniel didn’t like that phrasing. But then, this was always going to be the no-win scenario.

  Ibarra must have given that phrase to the guards beforehand as a cue, because Daniel didn’t see him give any physical signal. Two guards stepped around their table and picked up Jenny’s arms and hoisted her out of her seat and almost off her feet. Her eyes widened and her mouth opened.

  Olivia’s hand fell away from Jenny’s.

  Jenny screamed.

  So did others in the room as the girl was brought struggling over to where Ibarra stood in front of the camera. There was a ratcheting sound of submachine guns being cocked, all around the room.

  One of the guards pulled out his sidearm and put it against Jenny’s temple.

  Olivia moaned, clutching the back of her chair. She looked like she wanted to surge out of the chair and go rescue her friend, but was holding herself back. Her knuckles were white.

  Jenny stood very still between the guards. Her face was paper-white under the camera light, but her chin was up.

  Solos was talking fast and softly into his cell phone now.

  Hurry, Daniel begged silently. He hoped Solos’ director understood the vast difference between politics and ratings.

  “Tell them your name,” Ibarra said, pointing to the camera.

  “Jenny,” she said softly.

  “Speak louder,” Ibarra said. “Your full name, please. We know it all now. There is no longer any need to hide anything.”

  “Jenny Egstrom,” she said, more firmly, but her voice shook.

  “And your nationality?”

  Her face crumpled. Tears welled in her eyes. Jenny had spent five weeks carefully preserving this secret.

  “Your nationality!” Ibarra demanded, his voice strident.

  “A…American,” she stuttered and began to sob.

  Olivia closed her eyes and bowed her head.

  “You work with the World Health Organization, yes?” Ibarra said.

  Jenny nodded, tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “You came here as part of the diplomatic task force to determine if the Vistarian government was stable enough to be granted diplomatic status with the United Nations and the revolution that had been raging here could be officially called over, yes? Then all the aid and justice and trade could flow back to this wonderful nation once more. That was your role, yes?”

  She nodded again.

  Daniel glanced at Solos again. The man was talking hard, frowning. He looked up at the roof, rolling his eyes. Then he threw up his hands. “Just cut the fucking feed off!” he screamed into the phone.

  Everyone jumped, except Ibarra, who was sweating. His hand was lifting, the finger up.

  Daniel clenched his chair. His heart was pounding with the tension. It was coming. He could feel it coming and he couldn’t let it happen.

  Then he saw Olivia looking at him again. There were tears in her eyes and running down her cheeks. She shook her head at him. Her lips formed silent word. “No.”

  The gun fired.

  * * * * *

  “Oh my dear sweet Christ,” Calli breathed.

  Minnie went staggering for the door, clutching her stomach.

  “Everyone, just sit down and
shut up!” Nick shouted as the room broke out in shouts and screams. “We have to see whatever else they broadcast, so shut up and watch.”

  “Please tell me someone is recording this?” Duardo murmured.

  “Yes.” Calli clutched at Nick’s arm. “He’s mad. He’s quite mad.”

  “Yes,” Duardo said simply. He was staring at the screen, frowning. Absorbing it.

  * * * * *

  Olivia found herself on her feet, almost there in time to catch Jenny as she fell. She already knew it was too late. But that didn’t stop her body, her feet, from moving her forward to try to stop this awful thing from happening anyway.

  She was brought to a halt by steel against her temple, a hand on her arm yanking her back with cruel fingers digging in almost to the bone.

  Ibarra was watching her. Ibarra, whom she had always thought had held a small pocket of humanity inside him, protected from Serrano’s excesses. Somewhere in the last few days he had lost it. She looked into Ibarra’s eyes now and saw nothing but the same blank monster eyes that Serrano reflected back when she looked into his.

  The corner of Ibarra’s mouth lifted. He looked into the camera. “If Vistaria is not given full diplomatic status and a seat at the United Nations in twenty-four hours, we will repeat this exercise again with another American citizen—perhaps Ms. Davenport here. That is all.”

  He ripped the clip-in microphone out of his dress uniform shirt and threw it at Solos. Solos made no move to catch it and it fell to the floor. The battery pack Ibarra unclipped from the back of his jacket and tossed onto the table in front of Daniel and Hans.

  Then he strode away.

  Whoever had a grip on Olivia’s arm let go. The gun was removed. Olivia fell forward onto her knees next to Jenny. The girl was lying huddled on the floor. A pool of dark blood was forming around her head, but she seemed so very peaceful.

  Olivia wasn’t sure if she wanted to cry, throw up, or lock herself in a padded room for a month. But none of those things would help Jenny right now or anyone around her. There was enough screaming, enough hysterics. It was making what guards were left far too edgy and jumpy. They’d had to watch this happen, too.