Terminal Rage (8 page)

As if she had read his mind, Monica steered the briefing in that direction. “I guess we should tell Alex a little bit more on the fabulous Price brothers.”

This is why Monica had risen through the ranks of the Bureau. The ability to invade people
’
s minds and predict their thoughts and behavior was not a bad trick to bring to the FBI Christmas party. But it also made her a first-rate manipulator.

Nishimura got up to take this one and spoke with the same nonchalance that seemed to characterize him. It wasn
’
t indifference, but a subtle form of disassociation that Blackwell was all too familiar with. To protect themselves, many agents develop a thick exterior to help them mine through the worst aspects of the job. The parts that over time eroded your humanity.

“Both Navy boys, like their dad. Wealthy Ivy Leaguers. Mark worked the weapons industry until he hung out his own shingle. Senator William Price, on the other hand, followed the campaign trail like his old man. And he
’
s been squeaky clean all his life until last year.”

“What happened?”

“WikiLeaks released a cable from the US mission in Iraq. It suggested William Price was trying to pull strings for his kid brother.”

“For more business?”

“Nah—to cover up for him. Three years ago, a convoy carrying American and European democracy activists was ambushed in Baghdad. Twenty people obliterated with a nasty little improvised explosive.”

Blackwell traveled back to 2008. Even if the incident had resonated globally, he had missed it. He didn
’
t have a radio or a television back then, let alone a desire to read newspapers.

Nishimura explained how Exertify had been hired by a group called GDI—the Global Democracy Institute—to protect their staff in the green zone. According to the leaked cable, Iraqi intelligence revealed that a few months before the attack, Exertify
decided to terminate the contract of the thoroughly vetted Scottish driver assigned to GDI. They replaced him with a cheaper local hire, who was eventually infiltrated by Al Qaeda. The cable implied the Americans and the Iraqis colluded to protect Exertify from negligence, and to write off the attack as just another day in Baghdad.

“I don
’
t get why this implicates William Price.”

“Listen to this. The US ambassador to Iraq, speaking at the meeting in 2008 from which the cable was drafted.” Nishimura played an audio recording of a male voice with a Texan accent.

“
Senator Bill will be grateful if you don
’
t hang his brother and Exertify out to dry. Do him this favor and he
’
ll play his part in the Senate to push hard for the Iraq stimulus package that
’
s up for renewal
.”

It didn
’
t take a genius to figure out who “Senator Bill” was.

But Blackwell was still skeptical.

“It
’
s hearsay. Diplomatic rambling. Or even WikiLeaks inventing shit. Who
’
s to say? I
’
m assuming this recording is still classified and it
’
s just the leaked cable that
’
s in the public domain?”

Nishimura put his remote on the table, sat down and flashed a naughty smile to Robert slant. “That
’
s right. The audio is courtesy of our friends at Langley.”

Slant raised his hand once again to interject, but this time didn
’
t wait for Monica
’
s approval before he started to speak.

“It
’
s beside the point, Alex. For a guy like Price who
’
s not shy about his ambitions to grab the Republican VP nomination in 2012, hearsay
’
s just as harmful”

“Harmful?”

“As harmful as a red-hot vote to expel him from the Senate, some would argue.”

EIGHT

Saturday, November 5, 2011—8:01 p.m.
Manhattan, NY

W
ith his Clupster headset wrapped around his ears, Blackwell rotated his neck, raised and lowered his shoulders, and willed his body to relax in his chair. He closed his eyes and attempted to negotiate a truce with his nerves. But he failed. His heart was all over the place and a familiar anxiety took hold of him. Sweat was escaping from every pore in his body, in defiance of his brain
’
s feeble attempts to keep the rest of his machinery at ease. He
’
d never been this edgy ahead of a hostage negotiation.

The last time he was anywhere near this apprehensive was in a doctor
’
s office in Boston with his mother, years before he joined the FBI. He had tried to be cheerful to keep her spirits up, but he knew right away from the oncologist
’
s eyes when he came out to get them that the news was bad. The cancer had returned.

But his mother was determined to beat the damn thing. And she fought hard and won honorably. In the end, it wasn
’
t the cancer that took her life. She died on her own terms. His mother was the source of his strength. Through her Blackwell was able to see the best in humanity w
hen his job only exposed him to the worst of it. He missed her.

Monica must have sensed his plummeting confidence. She stood behind him and caressed his arms gently. An unexpected gesture. But it snapped him out of his downward spiral. She whispered in his ears the same thing his mother used to tell him ahead of any prickly obstacle, “You can do this, Alex.”

Thoughts of the death toll from Hermosa Beach were replaced by all the lives he had saved during the rest of his otherwise illustrious career as a hostage negotiator. And by doing so, he found the tiniest speck of strength and determination in his soul, and latched on to it with all his might. He took a deep breath and tried to visualize the oxygen molecules as they penetrated his red blood cells to provide the energy required to feed his confidence. The tension in his body melted and a warm wave of inner strength penetrated through him like a ray of light.

A ring tone in his ears was followed by a clicking sound.

It
’
s show time.

“This is Alexander Blackwell. You asked to speak to me.”

There was a short silence.

“You made it.” A cold voice vibrated in his ears and in the loudspeaker in the room. The accent was Arabic, and the voice unsettling. Blackwell glanced quickly at Nishimura who had first spoken to the abductor earlier in the day. The young agent bit his lips as if to confirm the voice had also sent a shiver down his spine when he had first heard it.

“You didn
’
t give me much choice. I had resigned.”

“Resigned or hiding?”

“It doesn
’
t matter. Do you know me?”

Another silence and then a deep breath.
Come on. Keep talking.

“The Lord said to Cain,
Where is your brother Abel? I do not know, he replied. Am I my brother
’
s keeper?
”

Blackwell jotted down his impressions of the accent on a piece of paper.
Egyptian? Iraqi? Syrian? Jordanian?
He had heard them all before. But there was something spent and decidedly ruthless about this particular voice. Blackwell said nothing.

“How I know you is not important. But we have one thing in common. We both seek justice, Mr. Blackwell.”

“You
’
ve abducted innocent people, sir. Now how do you go about calling that justice?”

“It
’
s a step towards it.”

“And do you have a name?”

“You can call me Seth.”

“May I ask why you entered that building a few hours ago calling yourself Prince Omar Al Seraj?”

“He served a purpose. But I
’
m glad to be out of his repulsive skin.”

Blackwell wanted to unearth anything useful. The first minutes of a negotiation could provide the most telling clues about the suspect
’
s motives and identity. Lose those, and you
’
ve scant little to go on.

“How many people do you have there, Seth? Is everyone doing okay? And do you need food, water, or medical attention?”

“Twenty-five people. There is enough greed and contempt concentrated in this room to destroy a small nation over the weekend. If I end up blowing their heads off, it should earn me a medal.”

“Seth—heads getting blown off is not on my agenda for today
.
Including your head, if I can help it. You
do
want to be alive at the end of this, I assume?”

“Mr. Blackwell?”

“Yeah?”

“Do me a favor and stop asking stupid questions or lying to me.” A slow fire was spreading through his voice.

What?
“How have I lied to you?”

“There
’
s a tactical response team positioned on top of my building—which wouldn
’
t be there if you really cared about my head staying whole.”

Blackwell turned and looked at the others, questions in his eyes.

Nishimura shrugged, then zoomed in on the camera feed from the top of the building on center screen. “He
’
s got eyes on the rooftop?”

Monica was all over the place, and her background voice was distracting.

“If he did, it was before we evacuated midtown. Right now there
’
s no way in hell there
’
s anyone out there close enough to have a line of sight on the rooftop.”

Seth
’
s voice came back. “I am estimating it would take them no more than two minutes to fast-rope down and take me out on your command. I want the SWAT team off my building.”

“A tactical response team on standby is an FBI operational standard. Surely you knew that. The unit will
only
engage if you give us reason to—and you and I are still talking, aren
’
t we?”

Seth did not respond.

“Have you ever been to a weekend childcare center, Blackwell?”

Blackwell felt a spasm tighten in his belly. The thing he feared most was coming, any second now.

“They
’
re miserable human dumping stations. Right in the middle of the poorest shitholes. Struggling parents deposit their children there while they work forty-eight hours nonstop to make ends meet. Working-class America getting it right up the ass is how I see it.”

“Some people work hard so they don
’
t have to beg or steal, Seth.”

“There
’
s no pride in those shitholes, Mr. Blackwell—all you smell there is shame and despair.”

Blackwell
’
s stomach churned harder as he waited for Seth to elaborate on some sort of diabolical threat to harm innocent children. It was the reason he had accepted this assignment in the first place.

“Mr. Blackwell, we
’
ve wired four such daycares across the country with explosives that can be detonated remotely. Evacuate your men off my building within thirty
minutes or one of these centers will go BANG. Monica Vlasic is there, isn
’
t she? I can smell it. Both of you have a track record of getting innocent children killed and I am only too happy to help you maintain that tradition.” Seth hung up.

Blackwell hadn
’
t even realized he had snapped the pencil in his hand into two, a sharp splinter of wood burrowed in his skin.
Motherfucker.

“There
’
s no way in hell we
’
re doing this.” Monica had already made up her mind about what happens next.

Blackwell wasn
’
t ready this early in the night for a showdown with her. “Let
’
s just think this through, Monica. We don
’
t even know his demands—”

She all but snarled at him. “What
’
s the first rule, Alex?”

The words travelled out of his mouth before he even checked to see if he remembered them. “
Never give a hostage-taker anything before you get something in return
.”

He focused straight at her and snarled back. “But what
’
s the second rule, Monica?”

Her eyes avoided him, but Nishimura answered for her.

“
There are times when playing it by the book can only make things worse
. Both of you—listen, I may have a way out.”

Nishimura stood up and came between them like a ref in a boxing match.

“Monica
’
s right—after the evacuation, there
’
s no way he could still be monitoring the building. The best he could muster is to have someone outside the evac zone keep an eye on the skies for incoming aircraft. And the hostage rescue unit has swept for cameras on the rooftop and found nothing.”

“I
’
m listening,” Monica said.

“What if we flew in a chopper and performed a partial extraction? He doesn
’
t know how many men are on top of the building, right? And if we remove most of them and make it visible, he
’
d never know who we left behind.”

Robert Slant jumped up and gave the plan his provisional seal of approval. “That would work. Leave behind a small covert unit that mixes with the concrete.”

Monica paced back and forth like a caged lioness. They were off to a terrible start. Blackwell hadn
’
t been able to extract anything useful from the abductor except his alias, and now they were looking at losing their firepower. No wonder she was furious.

“Get me Al on the line,” she snapped at Nishimura, who complied and patched her in to Albert Voss, the lead operator of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team unit on the rooftop of the tower.

His voice crackled through the loud speaker.

“This is Voss.”

“Al, Monica here. Perp
’
s got eyes on you and your men. He
’
s made some pretty shitty threats if we don
’
t evacuate you.”

“Bad idea, Monica. Very fucking bad idea. How the hell
’
s he tracking us?”

“Probably someone on the outside scanned your incoming chopper before we evacuated mid-town. Liam Nishimura suggested a partial extraction as a decoy—would that fly?”

“It depends.”

“On?”

“How many guys I get to keep. It would have to be me and three others. I can
’
t work with a unit of less than four. It
’
s not ideal, but four beats zero, right?”

“Let
’
s do it. Call the chopper in and make it loud and visible.” Monica hung up and strode back to the conference table.

“We
’
ve got twenty minutes before the HRT guys are evacuated and we
’
re back online. What do we know about his origins?”

All eyes turned to Natasha Shaker, the language expert on the team. She was a tough woman with wide shoulders, short-cropped platinum hair, and a pierced tongue. Blackwell remembered what the other agents used to call her behind her back, but he had nothing but respect for her. Shaker
’
s mastery of Semitic languages had served her career well at the Bureau in the aftermath of 9/11. She
’
d put some terrible people behind bars for good, just by listening to how they spoke.

Blackwell skimmed through his notes. “I
’
m guessing Egyptian, Syrian or Jordanian. What
’
s your take, Natasha?”

“I can
’
t trace it exactly, Alex.” Her voice was deep and velvety as he remembered it. “But by his enunciation and his grasp of our cultural nuances, I
’
m pretty sure he has either studied or lived in America. We
’
re probably looking at an Arab expat family background—someone who has moved around in many circles. Privileged. Wealthy. Highly educated. Late thirties to early forties, I would say.”

Monica turned to Eddie Grove, the psych expert. “Motives?

“He
’
s pissed—that
’
s for sure.”

Grove had come to the FBI from academia. He had been embedded in Guantanamo Bay assisting the government in unlocking tenacious terrorist minds, when the FBI decided he was indispensable and plucked him out. He was about fifty, with long flowing black hair and a salt and pepper goatee. Blackwell conjured a mental image of Grove riding to work on a Harley Bobcat and not giving a shit what anyone else at the Bureau thought.