Chapter 3-THURSDAY
I got the call that there might be a hostage situation at my desk on Monday morning. Of course, they just gave me an address and I had no idea that it was Katie's company. When I got there, there was already a police cordon set up at the outside of the parking lot and between the other buildings in the technology park. The Special Response team wasn't there yet, and neither was the negotiator's truck. We hadn't heard any sort of demands. We hadn't heard anything from inside the building, and that scared me more than anything. That's usually one of the first things that happens in a hostage situation: the hostage takers reach out to try and build a rapport, make it easier to get what they want as the scenario goes on. But all morning we heard nothing.
Right before lunch I got a call from the head negotiator back at the station. He said that I was on my own because they couldn't get anyone out to me until the evening. I pressed him for why but he just apologized, gave me a couple of bullshit reasons, and hung up. So I was going to have to negotiate with whomever it was that had taken my sister's company hostage. Why he tapped me for the job, I don't know. There were other officers more experienced than me there, but I said fuck it, I'll do it. Not like I had a choice. So that meant I was without the negotiator's van with all its communications gear and everything. I've never done a hostage situation before, Naomi. I normally don't go to active scenes. I investigate afterwards and question people, but the call had gone out to everyone for this. So I took one of the phones out of a Special Response truck to use and I called the general number we had for the building. It was just after lunch, I guess.
It rang four times and I was beginning to think that no one would answer, then I heard the line click. Who am I speaking to? I told him that I was the negotiator he would be speaking with, but I didn't give my name. I have four things to tell you and listen carefully because I will not repeat myself: (I grabbed a pen and paper quickly so that I could write down what he said)
1) The police will come no closer than 100 meters to the building in any direction. If they do, I will detonate one explosive device somewhere in the building for each officer that violates this restriction.
2) I will call you if the workers here need any food or other services. You will not give them without being asked, nor will you call offering them. Delivering these goods will be the only time you may send people closer than 100 meters to the building. I will initiate any future negotiations. If you call me again, I will detonate one explosive device somewhere in the building.
3) Before the 10 pm news this evening, Strategic Security Initiatives will issue a statement detailing all financial transactions for the past 10 years. Once this press release has been read on the news, SSI will transfer £500 million to an account number I will give you at a later time. If they do not comply with both requirements by 10 pm, I will shoot one employee in this building every hour until they comply.
4) By 10 am tomorrow you will have arranged for three buses to be brought to the front door of the building and a police escort to take these buses to Bristol International Airport where a plane will be idling on the runway for us. If the buses are not provided promptly at 10 as requested, then I will continue to shoot one employee every half hour until we receive them.
The man hung up and I found my hand was shaking around the phone. I stepped out of the van and took several deep breaths. Then I called the station and relayed his requests. I was told flat out that we did not negotiate with terrorists and that they were going to bring in a specialist from London to negotiate with them; he never came. I started trying to work with some of the Special Response officers to come up with a way to get surveillance inside the building, but with people pulling back to 100 meters, it didn't seem feasible. We had some guys on top of the vans and on top of other buildings that could see into the outer offices, but they had closed all the blinds, and in the rooms without them had put up opaque tarps. The only way we'd get something inside was if they asked for food and we could sneak a camera or something inside.
"So how did you end up inside the building?"
I'm getting there, Naomi. I need to tell the whole story, alright?
"'Kay, kay, just wondering. Keep going."
Where was I? Right, so it was getting on in the afternoon when the phone rang in the van; I had barely moved ten meters from it all day. In two hours, you will bring sandwiches for 150 people to the front door. They will be individually wrapped in clear plastic wrap and placed in a large cardboard box, 50 sandwiches to a box. Three police officers and yourself will walk them to the front door, unarmed. You will open the door and the three boxes will be placed inside. The four of you will then walk straight away from the front door across the parking lot until you reach the 100 meter standoff distance.
I told him that the only way I would do that is if he let me speak with him when I dropped the boxes off. Why? I have given you very clear instructions. There is nothing to negotiate. He hung up. I slammed the phone down and stalked out of the van. One of the guys that had worked with me before tried to take me aside and calm me down, but it wasn't helpful at all. Whoever the guy on the phone was, he held all the cards, Naoms. So I started putting together the food request, calling a place down the road and talking to the head of Special Response to get three officers to go with me across no-man's land with the food. The sun was setting behind the building, casting our area of the perimeter in a deep shadow—they started setting up these big flood lights on the top of vans or the light poles in the parking lot.
And then the news crews finally showed up. I'm not sure how word didn't get out earlier in the day, but it was probably a half hour before we had to take the food to the building. There were two vans that showed up initially, and the cars blocking the road up to the tech park stopped them, but then more started arriving, and then there was a news helicopter overhead—all in the span of twenty minutes or so. I started getting that weird feeling in my gut, like there was something else going on around me and I had no idea what was actually happening. Then a reporter somehow got through the cordon and was standing outside the van, trying to yell questions in, asking who was communicating with the hostage takers. I walked out and told him to fuck off, not noticing that the red light was lit on his recorder. He started accusing us of covering up what was really going on and just as I was starting to get flustered denying him, the phone rang.
I scrambled back into the van as the reporter tried to fight in with me; two officers grabbed him and bodily escorted him away from the van. I picked up the phone and waited for the guy to speak, but it wasn't the same voice. It was a new one, and it seemed distorted. Still, there was something familiar about it, but I was too nervous and I didn't give it much thought.
In ten minutes I expect there to be three boxes of sandwiches dropped off on my doorstep like it's Christmas. I told him that there would be and he didn't have to worry, that we were working on his other requests as well but might need more time. You're stalling. You've got four more hours until the news. That should be more than enough, miss…He waited for me to give him my name, but I didn't bite. He hung up and I turned to find the head of Special Response standing just outside the van. The sandwiches had arrived, only someone had decided that it was going to be easier to sneak listening devices in if we used pizza boxes instead. So they had three boxes filled with a few pizzas and maybe half the requested sandwiches.
I followed up to where they were staging the boxes and discussing how to best cover us while we walked in. They handed me a Kevlar vest that was way too big, but insisted I wear it anyway. You should have seen me, I was fucking drowning in it...Anyway, I had been armed with my issued handgun when I arrived, so I handed it over to the head of Special Response before putting on a helmet as well as an earpiece so I could talk to the head of Special Response—I think his name was Smith. I looked absolutely ridiculous. Twice as ridiculous as when I'm riding my moped. Before the SRO let me leave, he ordered me not to make any sort of additional requests when we were up there. I retorted that maybe he should have listened to simple directions before trying to give me orders and I walked out.
The four of us—the three of them carrying the boxes of sandwiches and me last in line—began the long walk across no-man's land. I swear that's the longest walk I've ever made in my life. My palms were sweating, I was breathing like I had been running a 5k. My heart was pounding, Nai; I was scared for my life. And Katie's. I had no idea whether she was alive or even there or...I couldn't take the not-knowing. It was pretty dark now, and there was a spotlight on us the whole way, which made it even hotter under that vest and the stupid helmet. Problem was, we couldn't really see anything out in the darkness beyond the spotlight, which made it that much more nerve-wracking.
We came up onto the sidewalk that led to the front door and the spotlight moved to illuminate the door itself, so we were temporarily plunged into that awkward half-darkness just outside a lighted area. I peeked around the officers in front of me and saw there were two men standing just inside the door waiting for us. They had these stocky little machine guns and were wearing masks that covered all of their face below their eyes and they had on sunglasses, even though it was night. As we came up to the door, one of them pushed it open from the inside and ordered us to set down the boxes.
I pushed to the front and told him if they wanted the sandwiches that they'd have to show me that all the hostages were ok. They paused and then one of them walked away to a side of the lobby and started talking into a handheld radio. In my ear, I could hear the chief of Special Response demanding to know why we weren't heading back yet. I couldn't answer because the guy on the radio was walking back over to us. They will wait here. You come with us. He started off quickly towards the back of the lobby where the elevators were and I followed wariy. We waited briefly as it descended down to our floor and then four other techs—that was the word Katie used—came out and went to get the boxes. My escort and I rode the elevator up before they returned. He took me up to the third floor and we walked forward into the cubicle farm, only they had rearranged it so that they could defend against an attack from the elevator and the two emergency stairwells at either end of the building. I asked him where the hostages were, but he ignored me and went back to the elevator.
Two other techs appeared from the cubicles and waved for me to follow them. They took me into what seemed to be an office along the outside wall of the floor. In it there were probably ten or so workers sitting on the floor facing the walls with a rag tied around their head gagging them so they couldn't speak and their hands bound behind their backs with flexicuffs. When we entered, they tried to turn around and see who had entered. Several realized I was on their side and tried futilely to call out. Quickly, one of the techs grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me out of that office and into a second one to show me more of the same: workers that looked unharmed except for the gags and flexicuffs. This continued for maybe six offices and then we walked directly past the break room and they started to lead me back to the elevator. I stopped and asked about it, but they just shook their heads and tried to get me to follow them to the elevator. I jerked away from the one holding onto my elbow and opened the door to the break room.
Inside were two techs sitting at a table watching a bank of small monitors linked to the surveillance cameras all around the building; they stood up, surprised, when I opened the door. But I wasn't paying attention to them or to the computers they had set up in there as well. In the corner, back by the vending machine, were two people bound on the floor. One was a man who looked like he could be important or an executive; the other was Katie. Before I could stop myself, I gasped her name. She looked up and I saw that she had been crying and she had a swollen lip and there was a small lump on the side of her head where they must have struck her as well. Then the two techs from the cubicle farm grabbed me and pulled me out of the break room and dragged me to the elevator.
There was a ringing in my ears and I couldn't focus clearly. One of the techs was telling me that the tour was over and I had made a mistake. His voice sounded vaguely like one I had heard on the phone, but I wasn't concentrating on it. All I could think about was Katie isolated in there, hurt, those eyes, Naomi. I'll never forget that look she gave me. It was worse than the one in the interrogation room today. And what's worse, she doesn't remember it, Naomi. She's blocked it out; the first thing she told me tonight was how they had been split up in different offices, as if she didn't think I knew.
I stumbled out of the elevator and walked in a daze through the lobby and followed the three Special Response officers across no-man's land. It hadn't even occurred to me that she could be in more danger since I had said her name and obviously knew her. Before going inside, I had hoped that she hadn't done anything to stand out and they wouldn't be able to link us together, but if I had been thinking clearly, I would have recognized that was impossible now. In contrast to the first walk across the lot, this one flashed by and before I knew it, I was standing outside the van and already the secure phone was ringing.
You should not have pressed your luck like that, Detective, with the pizzas and the tour. That sort of thing can have serious repercussions. The amount of money I want transferred has just doubled.
The phone clicked dead and I threw my helmet out of the van. I was angry and frustrated, Naomi. I felt like I wasn't doing anything productive, that my big chance to see what we were up against and if Katie was okay had backfired and put us in a worse place than before. Rashly, I dialed the number back. It wasn't until the phone clicked that I remember what he had said earlier. I do not repeat myself. You know the consequence of calling me. I tried to protest and tell him to wait and not do something stupid, but he hung up.
I don't remember screaming, but I must have as I jumped out of the van because people started turning around to look at me. I tripped and crawled behind a squad car and there was a deafening roar and the night briefly turned to day. Glass and paper and little pieces of metal started raining down all over the parking lot. I glanced over the hood of the car and saw a large pane of glass on the second floor totally gone and small tongues of flame flickering along the frame and in the room. It seemed like there was confetti falling all over the place, but the little pricks from glass and metal on my arms told me otherwise. And all I could think, Naomi, was that I had possibly just killed my sister.
Emily awoke the next morning as the little spoon with Naomi still holding her tightly as she slept. Emily had broken down telling Naomi about Monday's events and sobbed openly for a half hour before the two of them had made their way back upstairs and fallen asleep. She knew she'd need to finish her story for Naomi at some point, but she just hadn't had the strength the night before. It had been pushing two in the morning when they had fallen asleep. Emily reached for her phone and saw that it was only four-and-a-half hours later.
Emily slipped out of Naomi's grasp as carefully as she could, lightly kissed the blonde woman's cheek, and tried to wash away the now constant feelings of guilt and helplessness with a hot shower. Feeling sorry for yourself won't fix things, girl. It's a new day.
