by Gulvin, Jeff
Something in his voice disturbed her, stirred up a sense of fear deep inside her. She knew little about fear, but this voice seemed to drag it up from the depths. She took the phone with her, crossed the Persian rug and switched on the TV set.
‘OK,’ she said hoarsely. ‘What channel?’
‘CNN.’
She flicked the button on the remote control handset and stepped back. The Mississippi River came into view, a tanker with a man hanging by his neck over the side. She gasped audibly.
‘See him?’ His voice again. ‘Pity. He was quite pleasant really. But they had to know which boat, didn’t they.’
‘Who the hell are you? What’re you calling me for?’
‘Have you ever looked in the sky and mistaken a turkey vulture for a big black crow?’ She could hear his breathing. ‘Some people have. You see they look alike from the ground.’ He paused again. ‘I’m calling you because I need an attorney and under the circumstances you’re the best option.’
The phone went dead then, and she stood for a moment, before she realized she was shaking. Goosebumps had broken out on her flesh and she had the urge to urinate. She dialled her husband’s cellphone.
Byrne took the call, standing at the back of the Suburban, while the intelligence analysts punched information through to the SIOC. Swann watched his face whiten, his eyes widen and a droplet of sweat form on his brow as he listened.
‘OK, honey,’ Byrne said. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll get someone over to the house right away. Just stay where you are.’
He hung up and stared at Swann, face very red. ‘Sonofabitch,’ he said. ‘That bastard just called my wife.’ He phoned through to the SIOC and requested a technical team to get a wire tap on his phone line right away. If Boese was going to call his wife, they needed to hear what was said. He spoke to Fitzpatrick then, who requested that the line be patched through to the command post.
Suddenly, the phone rang on the computer console and the intelligence analyst flicked a switch. ‘That’s the SIOC,’ she said. ‘He’s on line to D.C.’
Fitzpatrick shifted where he sat, Byrne crouched beside him, Swann and Logan stood in the breeze by the door. ‘You got that, boss?’ Fitzpatrick spoke to Mayer back in New Orleans.
‘I got it.’
Fitzpatrick nodded to the analyst. ‘Put him on conference.’ He looked from Byrne to Swann to Logan, and then at the negotiator. Fitzpatrick spoke first. ‘This is Special Agent Kirk Fitzpatrick,’ he said calmly. ‘Who am I speaking to, please?’
No reply.
‘This is Fitzpatrick. Who am I speaking to, please?’
They heard a hiss, like sudden air from a tyre, then a soft, ice-clad voice. ‘You’re speaking to your “unknown subject”.’
‘Boese,’ Byrne said, and Fitzpatrick glared at him.
‘Oh dear. A conference line.’ Boese hung up.
‘Nice one, Louis.’ Fitzpatrick threw his hands up. ‘Fuck. You of all people ought to know better than that.’
Byrne’s neck burned red. ‘He just phoned my fucking wife.’
‘Yeah? Well get a handle on it or get outta here.’
The phone rang again. Again Fitzpatrick spoke. ‘Is this Ismael Boese?’ he asked.
‘Let me speak to Byrne.’
Byrne glowered at Fitzpatrick, clasped his hands together and leaned forward. ‘What do you want?’ he said.
‘I just spoke to your wife, Byrne. But no doubt, you know that already. I expect by now you’ve arranged for one of your Title 3s to be set up on your own home phone. That’s ironic, isn’t it. You’re used to listening to other people’s conversations.’
A helicopter made a high pass above the tanker, a Blackhawk from Montgomery National Guard base, south of Meridian, Mississippi. It was bringing in the Jackson field office SWAT team. They all heard the sudden rattle of gunfire, and then Boese hissed at them over the airwaves. ‘Get that helicopter away from this tanker, or I’ll start killing hostages.’
‘You got it,’ Fitzpatrick said. ‘Sorry. Listen, Ismael, speak to us on the ship-to-shore. It’ll be easier.’
‘I don’t think so. I prefer it this way. I’ll just call when I want you.’
‘What is it exactly that you want?’ Byrne asked him.
‘What do I want? I want a lawyer, you fool.’ He hung up.
Byrne ran the tips of his fingers across his scalp. Swann stood at the door and frowned. Harrison and Penny had been in position for an hour now. One more hour and they would be rotated, assuming backup snipers from the other regions were on hand to replace them. Penny still lay prostrate, talking without looking round to Harrison behind him.
‘I got movement on these windows, JB, but I can’t fucking see anything.’
‘Windows are small, Matty. Small and dark. You ain’t gonna see anything.’
‘Bridge is the crisis site. I figure he’s up there, though he don’t show himself.’
Harrison wanted a cigarette. He could not have one, but he peeled off his respirator and placed a plug of chewing tobacco in his cheek instead, like a baseball player. He sucked and spat and shifted the body bunker slightly. ‘We’ll go in by air,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s gonna swim in that.’ He pointed with his MP5 to the grimy, swirling water. ‘Gotta be by chopper. Up and drop and go.’
‘Hope we make the team,’ Penny said. ‘We’ve been here an hour already.’
‘I’m too old to make the team.’
‘Bullshit. You passed the fitness test, though God only knows how, with the amount you smoke. Your lungs gotta be made of iron. Besides, you’re the last guy in the office to actually shoot anybody.’ He spoke into his radio again. ‘Penny to CP. I got lights again. Window, five/four, on green.’ He cradled himself into his gun Excalibur.
Louis Byrne spoke to his wife. She was still wrapped in the towel in her bedroom in old town Alexandria. The shutters were open now and early morning sunlight breathed through the frost on the window. She sat on the edge of their bed, with the drapes pulled back, her knees close together.
‘Listen, honey, if he calls again, just stay calm. OK?’
‘Louis, don’t patronize me. I’m one of the best goddamn attorneys in this city. I can handle the odd conversation.’
‘OK. OK. I’m just looking out for you. Everything that he says to you, we’ll be able to hear. If he wants to talk, let him do so. While he’s talking, we can maybe figure out what he’s trying to do here. But listen, honey, hostage negotiation is tough, and it might be that he wants to negotiate with you. I’ve got back-up guys from Pennsylvania Avenue on their way over now, so make sure you let them in.’
‘OK.’ She hung up and rubbed a hand through damp hair. She would have to wash it all over again after this. The phone rang. Her stomach tightened into a knot and then she picked it up. ‘Hello?’
‘I want you to be my attorney.’
‘Get somebody else.’
‘No. I want you.’ He laughed then. ‘Are they listening now? No, it’s still too soon, isn’t it. Next conversation, I guess. That’s if you allow them. Client confidence is everything, Angela. You know that.’
Angie switched hands with the phone. ‘Fuck client confidence. You’re not my client. What d’you want? Why have you taken hostages?’ She was calmer now, her sense of professionalism beginning to return. He did not reply and she thought hard for a moment. ‘Let me speak to one of the hostages, the captain. I want to know they’re all right.’
‘And then you’ll represent me?’
‘Represent you how, exactly? You’re on the run, wanted for trial in the UK. How can I represent you? I can’t work in the UK.’
‘Nobody asked you to, Angela. You see I have other endeavours.’
She bit her lip. ‘We can talk about it maybe. But you got to let me speak to the captain.’
The doorbell rang and she jumped. Getting off the bed, she put on her dressing gown and carried the phone downstairs. A breathless-sounding man with a European accent came on the line. ‘Hello
,’ he said. ‘This is Captain Thyssen. He’s got hostages, seventeen crew, six women.’
‘Women?’
‘He’ll kill us. Do what he says.’
‘Captain …’
Boese’s voice came back on the line. ‘Think about this,’ he whispered. ‘When the prey is down, does the jackal or the crow eat first?’ He hung up.
Angie opened the door to three special agents from her husband’s technical department. ‘Wait here,’ she said. ‘I need to get dressed.’
In the mobile command post on the banks of the Mississippi, the on-scene team regarded one another. The SWAT supervisor stood between the two Suburbans and considered his position. He now had three full teams, with agents arriving from Mobile and Jackson. The Memphis and Little Rock guys were on their way, as were the team from Texas. The HRT were one hour out from Andrews air force base in Virginia. Angie Byrne had phoned through Boese’s message. Anything he said now, they would hear directly, with the technical team set up in Byrne’s house.
Byrne looked at Swann. Of all of those gathered, between them they knew most about Boese. ‘What d’you think, Jack?’
‘I don’t know. The jackal and the crow. Prey down. Turkey vultures.’ Swann hunched his shoulders into his neck. ‘I don’t know, Louis.’
Byrne scratched his lip. The Director was patched through to them then from the SIOC. ‘Seems he’s picked his own hostage negotiator,’ he said. ‘Is your wife gonna be able to handle this, Louis?’
‘Sure she is, sir. She’s tougher than I am.’
‘OK. The D.C. crisis negotiation team have arrived. They’re on-site at your house, as we speak.’
‘Good,’ Byrne said.
Swann stepped away from the Suburban and rubbed his eyes. He lit a cigarette, pondering hard. A flashgun went off from the line of reporters above his head and he blinked. Gunfire rattled from the ship.
The phone rang in the TOC, and everybody tensed again. Boese’s voice came at them over the airwaves. ‘I heard another helicopter. You send any more and I’ll shoot them down. Do you understand?’
Swann listened intently.
‘What do you want, Ismael?’ Fitzpatrick asked him. ‘Why have you hijacked the tanker?’
Boese was quiet for a moment. ‘It’s close to Waterford 3, isn’t it.’
Swann felt the sweat break out on the nape of his neck.
Fitzpatrick was concentrating. ‘Is that your intention—Waterford 3?’
Boese did not reply.
‘Ismael, is Waterford 3 your intended target?’
But he had gone. The phone clicked dead and then silence.
Swann moved to the SWAT tactical operations center. Something was wrong, but he didn’t know what. He stared at the river, the tanker, the hanged man, and screwed up his eyes. He remembered a house in London, a year and a half ago, when an SO19 firearms team was held down by gunfire for a full six hours before storming the building. He looked at the SWAT supervisor, dressed like a ninja in black, earpiece in, listening to the reports coming in from his sniper observer teams. The siege had been going on for an hour and a half now.
‘I’m Jack Swann,’ Swann said to him. ‘British Antiterrorist Branch. What’ve you got, exactly?’
‘Got?’ The supervisor squinted at him, toothpick set in the corner of his mouth. ‘Movement at windows. Light. You heard the gunfire. That’s semi-automatic.’
‘What kind of movement?’
‘Windows are out on various levels of the superstructure. We got drapes blowing or being moved on the green, the same thing on the red.’
‘What about the white?’
‘Nothing so far. I’ve got nobody deployed directly on the white. That’d mean getting on board that tanker yonder, and I can’t do that right now.’
‘Thanks,’ Swann said and moved away again. He stood, letting cigarette smoke drift from his nose. He looked at the sky and then at the line of TV reporters and pressmen. He could see the FBI media representative trying to answer their barrage of questions. The sky was blue and clear and the sun was fully up, the day was indeed bright enough for sunglasses. Suddenly, he thought of the flashgun going off. Who would need a flashgun on a day like this? And then he went cold. He stared at the line of pressmen, but could not identify anyone using a gun. Lots of cameras had them mounted, but he could not see them going off. He moved up the hill, closer to the perimeter line, and stared. Hundreds of people, fifty, sixty vans maybe, with scaffold platforms on top of them. TV cameras. There were helicopters outside the no-fly zone with long-mounted lenses, no doubt picking up every inch of the tanker. The body on the side would be identifiable to someone. He went back down to the TOCs. Boese had not called again, neither directly to them, nor to Byrne’s wife in Washington. He could almost taste the tension.
He stood at the back of the van, close to Logan, who was biting the knuckles of her right hand. Swann looked at Louis Byrne, then at Fitzpatrick. He was talking to Mayer back in New Orleans.
‘Boese’s not on the ship,’ Swann said quietly.
They all stared at him. Fitzpatrick stopped talking.
‘What was that?’ Swann heard Mayer’s voice over the conference line. He climbed into the back of the truck.
‘This is Swann,’ he said. ‘I don’t think Boese is on the tanker. I don’t think anyone is except maybe a group of dead hostages.’
Silence.
‘What d’you mean, Swann? We heard the captain just now.’
‘Did we?’ Swann hunched forward, his face intent upon Byrne’s. ‘We heard his voice, yes.’
‘What’re you saying, Jack?’ Fitzpatrick asked him. ‘That what we heard was a recording?’
‘It could’ve been. Listen,’ Swann went on, ‘there’s somebody out here using a flashgun, yet the sun’s high and the day is bright and clear. In 1997, we had Boese pinned down in a house in West London. He fired on SO19 as they tried to breach the door. Six hours went by, we had listening probes in the walls and had sound and movement, doors closing, muttering, coughing, lights going on, the toilet being flushed. But when we went in, there was nothing there but movement sensors, tape recorders on timers and remote-controlled switches.’ He broke off. ‘Boese’s made no demands. He’s toying with us, with Louis Byrne’s wife. Why? Why hijack an empty tanker and surround yourself with Feds and cops and the world’s media, if there’s no way off the boat. There is no way off that boat and Boese doesn’t deal in zero options.’ He paused and bit his lip. ‘Like I said just now, somebody amongst the press corps is using a flashgun in bright sunlight. The IRA have set off remote devices up to six hundred yards away, using a radio signal built into a flashgun and slave flash unit. That same signal can turn the cam in the trigger guard of any weapon you choose.’
Harrison and Penny were relieved by a sniper observer team from Mobile, their badged insignia clearly showing on their sleeves. They made their way back down to the sniper TOC where they were fully debriefed. The supervisor handed them coffee, and Harrison lit a cigarette and saw Swann talking at one of the other Suburbans. The sun was hot now, and Harrison could feel sweat crawling the length of his body under the fire-resistant suit. The body armour was heavy and he unstrapped it and laid it at his feet. This side of the levee, two Blackhawks squatted with their rotors whirring on idle.
The supervisor told them that the two helicopters from Little Rock and Memphis were also set and waiting with full teams on the western bank. When the word came to go in, they would attack from the air. Four choppers would drop the SWAT teams on to the deck using fast ropes. They would clear in field office teams, New Orleans and Jackson taking the superstructure, top down, half the clock face each. The other SWAT teams would work the rest of the ship.
Penny chewed on a sandwich, hungry and not hungry. Perspiration blackened his face. The adrenalin would not let up. Every minute that passed brought them closer to the point of contact.
The supervisor pointed to the first Blackhawk, the white one provided by the US Coastgu
ard. ‘When you’re through with the coffee,’ he said, ‘take your place in the stack.’
In the mobile command post, the FBI team were considering what Swann was telling them. Fitzpatrick scratched his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I guess you could be right. But right now, we’ve got to believe he is on board. There’s a crew up there and, by the sounds of it, a few coke whores somebody shipped in.’ He broke off. The word came through that Boese was on the phone to Angie Byrne again. The call was patched through and they listened to the cruel cold voice.
‘Have you thought about it, Angela,’ he said, ‘does the jackal or the crow eat first?’
‘I don’t understand what you’re saying.’
‘You will, eventually. After all, you are my attorney.’
‘I’m not your attorney. I will never be your attorney.’
‘You know something, Angela. This is getting tiresome.’ They could hear him suck breath, then he spoke directly to them. ‘Gentlemen, I’m bored. I think it’s time we moved on.’
Then they heard another man’s voice; begging, pleading. Swann’s eyes widened. A well-spoken British voice. ‘Please,’ he said. ‘Just let me go. Please. I have a family …They need me …Please.’ The voice rose in pitch, almost screaming now. Then a single gunshot and silence.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Mayer’s voice on the conference line. ‘Send the teams in. Now. Compromise authority granted. Send them in now.’
16
HARRISON FELT THE TENSION like a knot at the base of his spine. The rotors were screaming now, the chopper about to lift off the ground. He stared at Penny through the eyeholes of his respirator, as the team leader’s voice called the attack in his earpiece.
‘Phase line yellow.’ The final covered position. Harrison tightened his grip on the MP5. He had fully automatic firepower if he needed it. The voice sounded again in his ear.
‘Phase line green.’ Attack. The helicopter lifted above the levee and swung across the water, coming at the tanker from the stern.
Thirty seconds later, two helicopters were hovering above the deck in unison, the New Orleans team closest to the superstructure. Harrison fast-roped to the deck, brought up his carbine and crouched, as they formed a hasty perimeter to guard both the chopper and the men still coming down. Further back along the tanker’s deck, the other field office teams were dropping, contact with one another and the SWAT TOC maintained through their radios.
