Exit Strategy

by Jen J. Danna

  “But I have a counteroffer,” he continued.

  Her head snapped up. “What’s that?” She was careful to keep any hope or excitement out of her voice.

  “You want the hostages released.”

  “We want them released, unharmed, yes.”

  “Fine, unharmed. I’ll agree to that proposal, but only on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Not so fast.”

  He’s taking his time with this. Enjoying being in charge, being the one to give the orders and seeing everyone, especially someone he’d see as a junior officer, jump to his command.

  “I want to work with you, John, but I can only do that if you meet me halfway. What is your one condition?”

  “This is my final offer, take it or leave it. I send out all the hostages, one at a time, but to do that, I need one thing delivered here first.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “A bsolutely not!”

  Gemma rubbed fingertips over the headache pounding behind her temples. She’d already gone around with Garcia on this, and now she was butting heads with Sanders.

  “It’s the only way.”

  “It’s not the only way.” Sanders slapped a hand over the butt of his carbine. “We’ll go in and get them out.”

  Gemma bunched her fists at her side to keep herself from shoving Sanders in frustration. “We’ve gone over this. You’re going to get them all killed. He wants me in exchange for all of them. It only makes sense. ‘The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one.’” Gemma felt like an idiot quoting Mr. Spock to Sanders, but she was pretty sure he’d never make the connection between that quote and a fictional character. Besides, it succinctly summed up exactly how she felt.

  She knew what it was to feel like her life was entirely out of her control and that help, if it ever arrived, would surely not come in time.

  Two men bursting through Dime Savings Bank’s doors just as she and her mother were next in line for the teller. Herding the customers and the employees at gunpoint into the center of the bank, to sit on the cold marble floor under the rotunda, towered over by a forest of tall, decorative columns.

  One man keeping them at gunpoint. The other forcing the bank manager to empty the tills and then open the vault and the lockboxes inside to remove all the cash and valuables. At first, both intruders were calm, and the man with the gun who watched them was careful to keep the barrel pointed at the floor.

  Until the police arrived.

  Then the arguing started. And the screaming that made her wince and shiver and curl into a ball against her mother to hide her eyes. Then the threats against the hostages to use them as leverage. The man who seemed to be in charge firing into the ceiling. The women screaming and crying and one of the men begging.

  Her mother’s stoic face as she set her daughter aside and stood, stepping forward to talk in that calm, rational tone of voice she used when her father got riled up about something at work. The man screaming in her face to stop, to sit down, and to shut up. Her calm and measured response.

  Until he’d made her stop. Permanently.

  How long had she sat frozen beside her mother’s motionless body clutching her limp hand in both her own? Half an hour? An hour? When her father had followed the first wave of officers inside, he’d had to peel her fingers away from her mother’s cooling hand. Only then could he wrap her in his arms and carry her to safety. Leaving the shell of the woman he loved behind forever.

  There was nothing he could do for his wife. As an officer, he knew he had to abandon her there, alone and quiet in the whirlwind of chaos around her, until her body was photographed and removed to the cold, sterile morgue. To be closed in darkness in a drawer, that special flame, that spark that was Maria Capello, extinguished forever.

  As a child, Gemma hadn’t understood much of what had happened that day. But later, as an adult and as an NYPD officer, she’d considered the scene differently. The two partners: one the aggressor, the driving force, willing to do violence to get what he wanted; the other, the submissive who was willing to do what was needed to win the approval of his partner, but who drew the line at actual violence. The bulletproof vests the men wore, a precaution taken because they expected the possibility of a firefight. The watch sewn onto the back of one of the two men’s black gloves, so they could mark the time from the moment they entered the bank to the time they’d estimated—seven minutes—for a police response. But when a passing cruiser had noticed the situation and called in backup early, their plan had gone to hell. That’s when the desperation had set in.

  And that’s when her mother had taken too much into her own hands.

  Gemma would have to be blind not to see the similarities between then and now. Her mother had stood up to protect the hostages. For years, Gemma had tried to guess at her motivation, just as her father must have. Was she trying to be the voice of reason? Was she trying to distract them from her daughter? Was she overconfident in her abilities because she was a cop’s wife and felt she had a view inside the world of law enforcement from his stories? Had she not ascribed enough value to her own worth? Had she not thought about the risk she was taking and what it would do to her family?

  Gemma had gone around and around on it, trying to discern what her mother had been thinking. And in the end, she knew no more than when she’d started.

  But today gave her extra insight. Her mother had put the lives of the hostages before her own. It had cost her everything. Had cost her family everything. Now it was Gemma’s turn. She had to hope her training, intuition, and strength as a strategist would help her survive. Because a second loss would damage her family in ways she couldn’t bear to contemplate.

  “Maybe we should get the chief down here,” Sanders snapped.

  “Chief Phillips?” Gemma knew this was an important operation, and Phillips had to be remotely monitoring it, but the police department would be better served by its chief handling the media end of this circus. And the mayor.

  “No, I think this situation calls for the Chief of Special Operations. This does fall under his purview, after all. Should I call for Chief Capello?”

  Anger rose up in Gemma to burn blisteringly hot. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Why not? It’s his department.”

  “Sanders is a goddamn cowboy.” Boyle’s words rang in Gemma’s head. Out of the corner of her eye, she noted McFarland and Taylor were now also on their feet and she held out a hand, palm out, to tell them to stand down. “You know why,” she bit out.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Sanders.” Garcia grabbed Sanders’s arm, twisting him around to partially face him. “You know he lost his wife to a situation not so different from this one. Don’t leverage that pain to make sure you get your own way.”

  “Thank you,” Gemma said quietly.

  Garcia whirled back to her. “I’m still not letting you go in there.”

  “In where?”

  As one, the officers turned to face the open doorway of the vault. A man stood there, dressed in a navy suit that screamed “public servant.” In a fog of temper, Gemma had trouble placing him immediately, but Garcia was already moving forward, his hand extended. “Public Advocate Blackwell. This is unexpected.”

  “Mayor Rowland asked me to come down to assist with the incident. He is...” He paused, glancing over his shoulder through the vault doorway. “Indisposed.”

  Puzzle pieces clicked into place in Gemma’s head. Rowland was so devastated by Willan’s death that he’d taken himself out of the picture, sending instead the man who was next in line to succeed him. Willan may have been his closest confidant and right-hand man as his first deputy mayor, but it was the elected public advocate who was the first in line of succession if the mayor became incapacitated. Blackwell’s statement was understated, but everyone in the room understood—for the time being, he was in charge of the city.

  “Where aren’t
you sending her?” Blackwell asked.

  Sizing up the situation quickly, Gemma saw a potential ally. She pasted on a smile and took a step toward Blackwell, holding out her hand. “Detective Gemma Capello, sir.” They shook. “The suspect holding the hostages, John Boyle, has made a request to end the standoff. He is willing to send out the remaining seven hostages in exchange for... me.”

  Blackwell looked from Gemma to Sanders to Garcia. “And you won’t send her in?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but this is a police matter, not a political one,” Garcia stated.

  “That may be, but you understand the mayor and I have a vested interest in this situation. We’ve already lost First Deputy Mayor Willan. We can’t afford to lose other staffers who were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time when this man...” He turned back to Gemma, a question in his eyes.

  “John Boyle, sir.”

  “When John Boyle took the hostages captive. If this all goes to hell, it’s going to be a media nightmare for the police department and the city. We need to do everything in our power to resolve this immediately. If this is the way to save all those people, and Detective Capello is willing to make the exchange, I don’t understand what the issue is.”

  “Because the most important rule of hostage negotiation is to not be in the same room as the hostage taker.” Garcia’s voice was sharp, like he was struggling to keep his temper tamped down in the face of someone who could pressure them to overrule their decision. “We do all our communications by phone if possible. The only hostage negotiators who have ever died on the job have done so by trying to deal with a suspect face-to-face. Every. Single. One. I’m not sending my negotiator in with a suspect who just shot the first deputy mayor in the head.”

  Blackwell winced at the brutality of both tone and image, but didn’t back down. “Don’t you anticipate that’s how he’ll deal with all the hostages if Detective Capello doesn’t go in?”

  “The plan is to not give him the chance,” Sanders interjected. “I have sharpshooters on roofs surrounding the building and a team ready to go in. We’ll get the hostages out and neutralize Boyle.”

  “In time to keep everyone safe?” Blackwell turned back to Gemma. “What’s the plan if you go in?”

  “Once I’m in, he said he’ll send out the remaining hostages, one at a time. We told him we’d bring in a chopper and land it at Broadway and Park.”

  A mixture of confusion and disbelief clouded Blackwell’s face. “Your plan is to let him... escape?”

  “No, sir. The helicopter is essentially a decoy to get him out of the building. Once he’s out, the A-Team will surround him and take him into custody.”

  “I’m not hearing a downside to this plan so far.” Blackwell pinned Garcia with a flat stare. “Your problem is that you just don’t want her in the building with him.”

  “My problem is that there are no guarantees. I could send in one of my best negotiators, one I handpicked to be on this team, and he could kill her as she walks through the door and then kill all the hostages and himself.”

  “He’s not going to do that,” Gemma countered.

  “And why is that?”

  “It’s about what we’ve set up for him. He’s not going to suggest that the best way for him to get away is to saunter two full city blocks to the chopper on his own. He’s going to have me with him.” She swung to face Sanders. “I’ll be his cover because he knows you won’t give the order to kill the suspect when he’s using another cop as cover. Especially when that cop is the daughter of the Chief of Special Operations.”

  Blackwell’s eyebrows arched at that detail. “You told him this?”

  “No, he recognized my last name. It’s one of the ways I figured out he’s a cop.”

  Blackwell drew back sharply. “The guy’s a cop?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why the hell is he doing this? What happened to ‘serve and protect’?”

  “His son was also a cop. He was killed on the job and he’s lashing out.” When Blackwell started to protest, she held up a hand to forestall him. “I’m not justifying what he’s done, I’m just explaining so you understand this isn’t a random event. I think now that he’s claimed his ‘life for a life,’ all he wants to do is get the hell out of Dodge. I don’t think he’s interested in killing the hostages.” She trained her stare on Sanders. “Unless we give him cause to, by going in there with guns blazing.” She swung back to Blackwell. “I don’t think he’ll harm me either, though I admit that’s just a gut feeling. It’s one of the reasons I think I should be going in there.”

  “When is he expecting you to contact him again?”

  “Anytime.”

  “How long will it take to bring in the chopper you mentioned? You are planning on doing that, right?”

  “We’d need to make it look like we expect him to get on board and fly away, so all the pieces have to be in place,” said Sanders. “He’s close enough that he’ll be waiting to hear it land.”

  Blackwell shot back his suit coat to reveal a jet-black wristwatch. “It’s five-thirty. How long will it take to arrange?”

  “About forty-five minutes to an hour to get someone in here and to get him safely landed in a tight spot.”

  Blackwell gave a curt nod. “Then get it arranged. What I’m hearing right now is that this is certainly not an operation without risk, but I don’t hear any other better suggestions. And if you come up with an alternate idea in the meantime, let’s discuss it.” When Garcia and Sanders didn’t move, his jaw tightened. “Or do you need me to call Doug to discuss it with him and to get the ball rolling?”

  Gemma could see the casual way Blackwell dropped Chief Phillips’s first name grated on both men, but they did an admirable job of covering it.

  “No, sir. I’ll start making arrangements.” Sanders picked up his tactical helmet from the table and marched out of the room.

  “I’ll give you room to get ready,” Blackwell said. “But I’ll be back in about an hour so I can report on the operation to Mayor Rowland. He very much wants to see this man taken into custody.”

  “We’ll do our best.” Garcia gave Blackwell a curt nod as Blackwell left the vault. Garcia waited, watching the man exit the building.

  Only then, did he turn back to his team with a vicious curse. “Okay, time to put our heads together. He may think he’s running the show, but I’m not sold on this. We need to find another option or I’m calling off this entire operation.”

  CHAPTER 16

  As a group, they came up with every idea they could think of, both the possible and the impossible. From using the helicopter to drop a couple of A-Team officers on the roof of City Hall before it moved on to land at Broadway and Park, to quietly picking the lock on the side door of the building out of sight of the prying eyes of any media cameras, to forcing a window in the east wing, to trying to gain entry through the sunken basement door.

  But they kept circling around to the fact that Boyle was holed up in an interior room with a high-powered assault weapon, likely with his back to the wall and the open doorway across from him. Possibly using the hostages in front of him as human shields. He’d kill anyone unexpected who tried to get through that doorway.

  It would be a suicide mission. Not to mention that if any of the hostages were caught in the middle, which was practically guaranteed, they’d be instantly slain as well.

  The idea of having an A-Team officer circle the building to come up to one of the windows in the mayor’s office to get a shot off down the hallway and into the conference room was similarly rejected. This was an ex-cop. He wouldn’t be so careless as to expose his position to any exterior vulnerability and certainly would not take up a perch with direct line of sight to a window. Any similar attempt would simply end in at least one hostage being killed in retribution. If not all of them, in fact.

  While they played for time, they communicated with Boyle as if the plan was green-lit and under way.

  “I want to know what ti
me you’re coming in,” Boyle demanded. “You want me to think you’re an unplanned infiltration and shoot you as you walk in the front door?”

  Garcia’s narrowed stare clearly communicated to Gemma that this was exactly why she was never going to set foot in the building.

  “John, you know an operation this complicated may not go like clockwork, but we’re doing our best to keep you updated on the details as we learn them. We expect the chopper to arrive at six forty-five. I’ll enter City Hall at the same time.”

  “No. That’s too late. Six-thirty.”

  “I don’t know if we can make it happen that fast.”

  “You tell Garcia to find a way to make it happen that fast if you want these hostages to survive. I’ll see you at six-thirty.” He hung up.

  “Jesus Christ.” Garcia’s fist came down on the desk, but from the look on his face, the aggressive action didn’t release any of his tension. “You see why I don’t want you in there?”

  “We need to call him back and tell him we agree to six-thirty,” Gemma said, keeping her tone level, knowing the situation had degraded to such an extent that she was now negotiating inside the vault, as well as over the phone line. “That will make him feel like he has some measure of control. Otherwise, at six thirty-one, he’s going to start thinking about executing a hostage.”

  “Fine. Call him back. Tell him what he wants to hear. But we still need to find another way.”

  Gemma called Boyle and informed him they agreed to his request. In a show of good faith, when Gemma asked for another quick proof-of-life conversation with the hostages, he agreed without arguing. Not knowing how much Boyle had communicated to the hostages, Gemma quickly told each one that a deal had been struck, and they would be freed later that evening. The relief and joy coming over the line was gratifying. This was the point of the HNT: to bring hope from despair, to resurrect life from the ashes of death.

  But that hope was entirely lacking inside the vault of the HNT headquarters as they came down to the final minutes before Boyle’s deadline.