Dan put his hand to his face. There was a long string of angry mumbles. The only words Jack caught clearly were fuck and rednecks.
Someone cut the alarm. Dan stood up, fully exposing himself to anyone standing at the windows. "The tax offices are on the other fucking side of town!" he shouted in the fresh silence.
Jack yanked him back down behind a car.
"It's always fucking taxes with yahoos like that! And they're all bible thumpers. Mark 12:17 Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Even Jesus knew to shut up and just pay his damn taxes like the rest of us!"
"You better believe it." Gonzales had been gifted the first name of Jesús, giving him nearly never ending opportunities for weird comebacks and random comments. "They're probably wearing polycotton blends as well."
There was the sound of another window being broken and Jack didn't feel like getting cut open twice in twelve hours. "Let's get people out of here and figure out who's in charge.
♦ ♦ ♦
They had taken the Coroners' Office off lockdown once it was determined there was no direct threat. Isaac found morbid lookie loos trying to sneak past the police barriers, while others complained about the fact that they couldn't get to their cars, and wherever it was they needed to be was far more important than everything else going on. News helicopters circled above trying to get a shot of what was now considered a hostage situation, only to be pushed back by choppers from various departments and agencies. Isaac leaned against the outer wall of a deli, already reopened, he looked up the street then back down at the message on his phone.
'Lydia had court today,' was what Amalie had sent him. He had messaged her to say he was fine before everything got all over the news. He heard the slap of flat shoes on cement as someone sprinted in his direction. He looked up to see Amalie making a mad dash for the police barricade, her face set in determined lines. He stepped out and wrapped his arms around her as tight as he could before she crashed right into the cops. She beat at his back with her fists but didn't try to pull away.
"It'll be okay. I'm sure she's fine, there are a lot of people—"
"She messaged me." Amalie’s voice was rough as if she'd been screaming. She held Isaac as tight as he was holding her. "She's pinned down in a courtroom, hiding under some benches, while a bunch of armed fuckers are roaming the halls rounding people up." She shook and he could hear the anger in her voice.
"She'll be okay," Isaac said because that was what he was supposed to say. He was amazed the words came out. His throat had tightened and he could feel his own heart pounding in his chest. "She has glared worse men than those into submission."
Amalie nodded, her chin bumping into his shoulder.
"I didn't say I love you the last time we talked. It was just bye, talk to you later." Isaac's heart clenched. He tried to remember what the last thing he said to Lydia was. It was probably just a wave and I'll see you later as she walked out the door.
"Hey, this is Lydia Vega we are talking about. She's going to walk out the front door of that courthouse without a hair out of place and some asshole's head on a pike. And when she does you're going to tell her you love her and give her a kiss that'll melt down the internet."
Amalie laughed but it sounded more like a sob. Isaac grit his teeth together wanting to cry at the unfairness and waste and full on stupidity of it all.
He stood there holding Amalie, his mind running through best and worst case scenarios, trying to plan for disaster he didn't even want to contemplate. After long minutes, she pulled away and wiped at her eyes.
"Do you know how Jack is?"
Isaac shook his head. He knew, most likely, Jack was fine and if Jack hadn't wanted to hear from him on a day to day basis, then having your ex sort of boyfriend text in the middle of a crisis situation was a distraction he didn't need. That was what the rational part of his mind had been pointing out for the last hour.
"You should text him. Just 'are you okay'."
Isaac took out his phone. It was permission, or at least support.
Are you okay?
"He's probably in the middle of a briefing and there are probably rules about communication blackouts during crisis." His phone buzzed. There was a one word reply.
Yes.
♦ ♦ ♦
For most of the year Jack hated that the SWAT gear was black, but the evenings were becoming cooler, verging on crisp. He leaned against the outside of one of the vans and closed his eyes letting a few last rays of the sunset fall on his face. Someone leaned against the van next to him. He cracked open one eye, saw it was Dan, and closed it again.
"And now we hurry up and wait," he mumbled.
"I'd be surprised if anything happens before morning," Dan replied. "You should find a corner, get some sleep."
Jack shook his head. "I'm fine."
"Yeah, that's a lie. You are running on adrenalin, coffee, more adrenalin, and stubbornness. Mostly stubbornness and when you crash from that it's going to be ugly."
Crashing was not something Jack wanted to think about. There were a lot of things he didn't want to think about, like the hazy state he'd been in before the alarm had gone off, or the three word message that was sitting on his phone, answered and not deleted like all the ones before. He didn't reply to Dan. Just focused on the last of the warm light and compartmentalizing the shit out of his brain. The pressure of the Kevlar vest and the weight of the weapons strapped to his body all helped anchor him to the moment and the job.
Dan allowed for the quiet until the sun finished dipping below a distant set of office buildings. "So, Kinky Married Complicated?"
"I don't particularly want to discuss it. Especially here and now." Jack was proud at how steady his voice was.
"Good for you, but there are good odds you are going to be within five feet of me in a live fire situation soon so I am going to talk about it." Jack pushed himself away from the van. "And if you walk away from me, I will follow and keep talking and my voice can carry."
He froze. He wasn't sure if Dan would follow through on a threat like that but he wasn't sure if he wanted to risk it.
"Good. Now whatever you had going on with Kinky Married Complicated was good for you, and exactly what you needed. I don't know what went wrong but you either need to try to fix that, or you need to start looking for someone else. I can give you a little help there, but I know it's a Goldilocks thing and I'm betting whatever you had was just right."
Jack sighed. He didn't want to think about it. He was tired. More tired than he should be. Over the past few months it had sunk into his bones and every hit of adrenaline made it worse. "When I was a teenager I was a barista at a coffee shop run by a coven of pagan lesbians."
Dan blinked at him. "What does that have to do with anything?"
"They were really pissed when I became a cop. Got an hour long lecture on militarization and the oppression by the patriarchy, and at the end of it Clare gave me a kiss on the head and told me I could always come back because they still liked me, and the gluten intolerant customers really liked my scones. They just texted me offering to pay for my plane ticket back to Boston."
Dan nodded. "Your head is scrambled right now but frankly you'd have to get a fuck load worse before you’re not doing the job better than most."
Jack shrugged. He was tired.
Gonzales came over with three cups of coffee. "I got a joke for you." He started passing around the cups. "A white guy, a black guy, and a Mexican who are all SWAT commanders go into a court house filled with heavily armed rednecks."
"I like the set up." Dan sipped his coffee. "What's the punch line?"
"I don't know but I think we're going to find out. I just overheard some of the negotiations. Aside from the fact that these yahoos need a major refresher on constitutional law, there is no way they are coming out without us going in."
"Yippy." Jack let the warmth of the coffee slip into his hands but couldn't bring himself to drink it, even for the caffeine hit.
"A
nd the feds want to take point on domestic terrorism grounds."
"'Cause that always works out great." Dan's sarcasm was thick. "Any idea when we might be moving?"
"If I had to guess, not until morning but who the fuck knows."
Jack sighed and chugged the coffee trying not to taste it. It was going to be a long night.
♦ ♦ ♦
The bright blue case of Amalie’s phone was strangely hypnotic as she spun it over and over on Isaac’s desktop. Isaac had only suggested she try to sleep or go home once. He'd done that mostly for show then they'd moved to his office. The night shift hadn't commented and one of his assistants even brought some Oreos from the vending machine. Most everyone knew someone who was either stuck in the courthouse or was camped outside of it waiting for the next move. And those were the lucky ones.
It was after midnight. The last message they had gotten from Lydia was that the battery on her phone was going, and that she loved them. Amalie cried for twenty minutes, cussing the whole time, while Isaac kept up the platitudes. He stared at his own phone, not expecting a message but quietly hoping for one. It hadn't taken long for the world to know what was going on. People had flooded social media with reports almost as soon as the first shots were fired. There were people stuck in offices and closets still posting updates. He'd sent quick messages to his parents and siblings that he was fine. His sister sent him a link to a video 'manifesto' declaring the evils of the federal government and how everything was all one big conspiracy. Isaac didn't watch, only wondered if someone had pointed out that the idiots had stormed a bunch of county offices not federal ones.
"Do you think they'll need to send someone in?" Amalie's voice was flat and she didn't look up from spinning her phone around and around.
"I don't know. But they're trained to do stuff like that." Isaac had little doubt that he'd be signing more death certificates by the end. It wasn't like these were some yahoos on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and could be waited out. No one in any organization or branch of government could afford to let this one drag. Every piece of evidence left in the building now had a tainted chain of custody. Every jury was now compromised. And if any one of those nuts had any computer skills they could access huge amounts of private data.
He stared at his own phone. He hadn't been expecting that one word reply from Jack and until it had arrived he didn't realize how grateful he was for it. If Jack was stuck inside or worse, with the ends between them still ragged, Isaac wasn't sure how he'd be coping.
The clock on his desk flipped over to one.
"You should try to sleep," he said.
"I know."
♦ ♦ ♦
"Did you sleep at all?" Dan asked.
The early morning sun was pushing its way through the white plastic walls of one of the staging area tents, painting it slightly pink. Jack had sat down in one of the folding chairs in the middle of the night. He was pretty sure he hadn't slept but he didn't think he'd been properly awake either.
"Did you?" he asked in return.
"Grabbed a couple of hours on a stretcher. I think I feel worse for it."
He pushed himself to his feet and nearly fell as the muscles in his back and legs protested the extended lack of movement without accompanying rest. "Fuck."
"Think anyone tried just saying please? Maybe they'll come out nicely."
He bent back and felt something in his lower back pop. "I can do this," Jack said mostly to himself. "Another cup of coffee, a little adrenalin."
"That how you got through combat? Coffee and adrenalin?"
Jack froze mid-stretch. "What?"
"You never talk about it but rumor is you were special forces or something badass."
Jack didn't move. He wanted to laugh. He knew that rumor was going around but there was an unwritten rule that you don't bring up the military with the ex-military guys, unless they bring it up first. Some of them had better runs than others and you didn't want an offhand question to turn into an hour-long story about mass graves that you had no polite way of extracting yourself from.
The tent flap was pulled aside, the heavy plastic slapping against itself. "Hey, everyone to the briefing tent," some guy in an FBI windbreaker said.
Dan looked at him. "Coffee and adrenalin."
♦ ♦ ♦
Proving that only cops on TV got cool toys, the briefing tent was lined with blueprints and hand drawn maps instead of some 3D projector system. The FBI counter terrorism agent who had taken over was pointing to one of the large hand drawn maps. It was covered with driver’s license photos. "We lost contact with most of these people during the night as their phone batteries ran out, but before that we were able to gain a pretty clear image as to patterns of movement, numbers, and armaments. And they are heavily armed. They are also unwilling to engage in any reasonable negotiation. Due to the heroic work of one of the IT support staff we now have access to the interior security cameras."
For a brief second Jack felt the occupants of the tent relax.
"Unfortunately, many of the cameras have been blacked out or destroyed. Not all, but at least by knowing where they aren't we can get a better idea of where they are. What we do know for sure is that hostages are being kept in the 2nd floor cafeteria. Everyone else in the building has spent the night hiding. They are tired, hungry, and probably have to pee so we're going to go in and get them out."
Jack was sure that was supposed to be some sort of rallying speech but frankly he was tired, hungry, and had to pee. The rest of the briefing became a list of who was going where. Some borrowed special ops teams were going to drop in from helicopters onto the roof. A dozen or so snipers were going to do their thing. The feds were going to go through the front and side doors, which would look great on the news. And county SWAT got to sneak in through maintenance doors in the underground parking lot.
Go County.
"Okay everyone, suit up."
Jack turned to his team. "You heard the man. Let's go be heroes." There were no cheers, but everyone headed to the equipment vans to get dressed and armed. Dan fell into step beside him.
"How are you feeling about this plan?" Jack asked quietly.
"Do your pagan lesbian coffee shop friends need a waiter, busboy maybe?"
"Yeah, that's about how I'm feeling."
♦ ♦ ♦
The buzz of his phone on the metal desk jolted Isaac awake. He'd managed to fall asleep in his office chair at some point. He fumbled it around in his hands squinting at the screen that seemed far too bright. There was one text message.
You have nothing to apologize for. You did nothing wrong. All on me. I'm sorry. Thank you.
"What is it?" Amalie asked from her place in the office guest chair, her voice anxious.
"It's from Jack. I think somethings going to happen."
♦ ♦ ♦
Jack was pressed shoulder to shoulder with Dan and Gonzales as they crept through a small maintenance hall originally designed for utility access. In theory, they would get to the end of the hall then the teams would split up and start going room by room clearing everyone out. Even with them, and the feds, it was a six-story building with numerous little offices and closets to rummage through. Before going in Jack had sent one simple text and felt lighter for it.
The adrenaline had been slow dripping into his system, just enough to keep him standing, but he'd been waiting for the big hit. He wondered if this is what junkies felt like the second before the drugs hit their brain. Fear, hope, hate, bracing for the inevitable. But like drugs, the more you took the less it worked. Jack took a breath. One more solid hit to get through this. His hands tightened around his weapon. If the take down of Detective Jones had been a cluster fuck, this was going to be a complete disaster. There was no way everyone in the building was getting out alive. His team and the civilians he encountered had to be his priority. Anyone after that was a bonus.
The Go signal came over the radio and one more flash of chemicals hit his overtired brain,
and once again he was clear and focused. The briefing told him these lower halls were probably currently clear. They didn't have enough people to patrol so large a building but that didn't mean they hadn't been down there earlier and left some presents. There was an urge to move fast, to simply run through the building like a video game level but that was a good way to get blown to bits. Quietly they crept into the wide basement hall. His team went left. Dan's went right. Gonzales spread out their goal to provide a human chain to lead civilians out of the building to safety.
There were booms from flash bangs and smoke bombs, and the rattle of automatic weapons fire but it was muffled and distant coming from above. They crept on carefully opening closets and storage rooms.
They found their first civilian in a storage closet. An older man in maintenance overalls. He tossed them a key ring and an all access swipe card before being gladly shown the way out.
They found their first body around the corner from that. A bailiff with his weapon drawn. The wall behind him was pockmarked in a dozen places. He cast a quick glance to a few of the younger members of his team. SWAT didn't actually deal with many dead bodies. Everyone had solid masks of calm and focus and that was as much as Jack could ask for in the moment.
They cleared out the floor with no more encounters, but there were still bursts of weapons fire in the distance.
"Sub-basement clear," he radioed in.
"Copy. Proceed up."
"Copy."
There was another body in the stairwell. No blood, but twisted around. Jack radioed in the location and pushed on.
From there it did start looking like a video game level. There were half built barricades of tables and chairs. An office where a few bailiffs had put up a fight and failed. Reports were coming over the radio that the suspects had scattered into the rabbit warren of 80's government architecture. They were finding more survivors though. Ones who hid through the night, texting in their locations and messages of love to their families.
Someone back at the staging area was checking them off a list of missing and unaccounted for.
Tactical Submission: A Windsor Club Story Page 24
