by Sophie Lark
Black
A Romantic Revenge Thriller
Sophie Lark
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
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Meet Sophie
Prologue
Byron Black
London
October 10th, 2003
The greatest enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.
John F. Kennedy
At 10:28 in the morning, on Friday, October 10th, the Metropolitan Police Service received a bulletin that the National Surveillance Center had been taken hostage.
For Police Constable Byron Black, sitting in his cubicle, the first he heard of it was a general flurry of noise and commotion. It was an agitation that began at the top, with the commissioner and deputy commissioner, and only slowly spread down to the commanders, and finally to the lowly police constables like himself.
There was no central announcement. Teams were being organized and sent out before Black had even heard what, exactly, was going on.
“Come on!” Black’s partner Emerson shouted at him. “Get on the bus! We’ve got to join the cordon crew.”
Black grabbed his bulletproof vest and his gun, still strapping it all on as he boarded the armored bus. He had only been with the police service for two years, spending most of that on traffic control. He was twenty-two years old, broad in the shoulder and a head taller than the other officers, with the face and voice of a grown man. But he had only gotten his first apartment six months earlier. He still felt woefully inexperienced, in all areas of life.
On the bus ride over, the other constables shared what they’d heard: the whole building was on lock-down, taken hostage by a domestic terrorist calling himself Citizen One.
Black had heard of the Citizens. They’d been credited with five bombings in the city of London and surrounding boroughs over the last two years. Because he was barely more than a rookie, Black hadn’t been assigned to the counter-terrorism task force. He’d followed the case on his own, fascinated and repulsed by the group and their ideology.
He’d read each of their manifestos as they’d been released online. The manifestos were long, intricate documents, railing against technology in the modern world. That was the thesis of the group: that technology was destroying the rights of humans within their own society.
So it hardly surprised Black that they’d taken over the National Surveillance Center. The center had just signed a ten-year deal with the British government to take control of the country’s 1.3 million CCTV cameras.
For a cop like Black, the cameras represented a valuable tool in maintaining law and order. The police used the footage in nearly a third of their cases, not to mention its repressive effect on crimes like car theft and vandalism.
However, he understood the antagonism toward a system continually gathering information on every person in the country. When the NSC took over the cameras, they pledged to add audio surveillance by the end of the year, and to begin recording the license plate numbers of every car that drove through the city streets. There was a dystopian, “Big Brother is watching” aspect to the program.
Black’s bus arrived at the NSC headquarters ten minutes later. The London City Police had already begun cordoning off the streets surrounding the tall glass high-rise. It was a brand-new building, sleek and modern, jabbing into the sky like a pointing finger.
Black joined the crowd-control unit, erecting barricades to keep bystanders back at least fifty meters.
It was barely controlled chaos, under the leadership of emergency services, the NHS, the London City Police, and the Metropolitan Police. Technically, the building was within downtown London and thus under the purview of the city police, but since the Met police ran the counter-terrorism unit, they were taking point on the situation.
Emerson cozied up to their sergeant, trying to get some more information. The sergeant looked harried, only speaking briefly to Emerson before sending him back to the line.
“What’s the deal?” Black muttered as they erected yet another plastic barrier.
“He says the guy has a bomb strapped to his chest. He’s got most of the employees holed up on the second floor. He’s demanding fifty million euros or he’ll blow them all up.”
“How many employees?” Black asked.
“At least thirty. And they think it was ‘Take Your Child to Work Day,’ so there’s a bunch of kids in there too.”
“Oh, fuck,” Black said.
“Yup.”
The employees who had managed to get out were being debriefed at a mobile command center. A few minutes later, Black heard that there were at least five other hijackers inside.
“Bunch of nutters,” Emerson said, shaking his head. “Want to send us all back to the Stone Age.”
“He’s not crazy, though,” Black said. “Citizen One. Have you read his stuff? He’s intelligent, articulate. Convincing, even.”
“You want to be a farmer?” Emerson scoffed. “Give up cable TV?”
“No,” Black said. “But you can’t deny that we make the technology first and consider the effects later. It’s not all good, with no bad mixed in. That’s his point.”
Emerson shook his head. “Ah, that’s paranoia. I like my little conveniences.”
Black squinted up toward the building.
“It is weird, though,” he said.
“What’s weird?”
“That he’s taken all these hostages. For money.”
“What’s weird about that?”
“It doesn’t seem to fit his profile. When did he ever care about money before?”
“Everybody wants money. How’s he going to fund his little club of crazies without cash?”
“Think about the other bombings,” Black ticked them off on his fingers. “First they hit six cell towers across London. Then they sent three different package bombs to The Telegraph. Then they tried to hit the stock exchange in Paternoster Square.”
“What’s your point?” Emerson said. “They showed everybody they meant business. Now they’re threatening to do the same thing here, if they don’t get the money.”
“I guess,” Black said.
The news crews had all arrived, and Black had to push them back behind the line with the rest of the rubberneckers. The reporters kept shoving their boom mics in his face, shouting questions at him. Black remained stone faced, ignoring them. He knew better than to say a single word that could be twisted into a “statement.”
About ten minutes later, a dozen more employees streamed out a side door of the building, stumbling, running, and looking terrified.
The sergeant hustled them off to the command center for debriefing. Since one woman had come running directly at Black, he intercepted her, and led her over to the tent hastily erected amongst the huddle of SCO19 vans.
The woman was petite, red-headed, shivering like a leaf.
As he half-carried her over to the vans, Black couldn’t help asking, “Where did you come from?”
“I was down on the lower level with the servers,” the woman said,
her voice coming out in a sob. “Three men came in and ordered us out. I think they expected us to go upstairs with everybody else, since they had the main doors locked down. But from the basement, you can go out through the utility corridors.”
“Could someone get into the building the same way?” Black asked quickly.
“I—I think so,” the woman said.
Black pulled her into the command center. He could see the sergeant speaking with the head of the counter-terrorism task force, and the commander of the SCO19 Specialist Firearms unit.
“He says we have an hour to get the money,” the commander was saying, “and he wants the news crews allowed inside the barricades.”
They broke off and turned toward Black as he led the shaking woman right up to the two scowling men.
“This is…what was your name?” he asked the woman.
“Imogen Lane,” she said.
“Imogen was down in the server room. She said the technicians came out through a utility door. She thinks we could go back in the same way.”
“Yes, we heard that,” the commander said brusquely. “We’re already getting a team together, with a negotiator.”
The commander turned back toward the sergeant, but Black interrupted them again.
“Sir,” he said, “I don’t think he wants the money.”
“What?” the commander said, turning back toward Black once more, looking irritated.
“I don’t think Citizen One actually wants the fifty million.”
“I’m sorry, who are you?” the commander demanded.
“That’s Constable Black,” the sergeant said, shooting Black a repressive look.
“And what, exactly, makes you an expert on this terrorist group, Constable Black?”
“I’m not an expert,” Black said. “But I have read everything that Citizen One has released. And I’ve been following the group for some time. They’re idealists, sir. I find it strange that they’re asking for a ransom. Then, they sent half their team away from the hostages, down to the server room. What do you think they’re doing down there?”
The commander looked at Black with his steel gray eyes.
“I don’t know,” he said at last.
“I think they’re trying to wipe the new license plate and audio systems,” Black said. “And I’m afraid they want you to move the news crews closer, so they’ll have a better view.”
“A better view of what?” the Sergeant said.
“Of the building going down,” Black said. “I think the money is a diversion. They’re buying time to clear the servers. Then they’re going to blow it all up, no matter what we do.”
There was silence in the tent while the two older men considered what Black was saying. Imogen had been standing silent the whole time, tears rolling down her face.
At last, the commander said, “I want you to join the team going inside. You’ll be with the counter-terrorism group, under O’Brien. Have you had combat training?”
“Yes,” Black said.
“What were your scores?”
“One hundred percent,” Black said.
“Good. Suit up.”
Black took off his light-weight bulletproof vest and put on a full body-armor jacket and helmet. He was well aware that, if he was right, he was walking into a building that was about to explode, and this gear would do little to save him.
However, he remembered what Emerson had said: there were kids inside. Not to mention dozens of adult hostages.
Seven men made up the team, including Black: the team-lead O’Brien, a bomb specialist named Oyemi, the negotiator Wilcox, and three other officers named Sparks, Bhatia, and Shiff. They all looked grizzled and competent to Black’s eyes. He could see them eyeing him skeptically.
“At least he’s big,” he heard Shiff mutter to Bhatia.
“Here’s how it’s going down,” O’Brien said to the team. He had a schematic of the building rolled out on the table in front of him, and he traced their route with one calloused finger. “We’re entering through the side door, here. We follow the utility corridor this way. When it splits, Sparks, Bhatia, and Shiff are heading to the server room. If the three gunmen are still there, they’ll take them out. The rest of us will go up to the second floor. As far as we can tell, Citizen One is holed up there, possibly alone, possibly with one to three other guards. Here’s the tricky part: we will not be breaking down the door. We can’t risk triggering the bomb. We will request entrance via Wilcox, our negotiator. If he shuts us down, we leave.”
The team nodded to show they understood.
“Good.” O’Brien knocked sharply on the table, and the rest of the team followed suit, except Black, who hadn’t anticipated the little show of solidarity.
He followed everybody out, last in line behind Wilcox.
Wilcox was the shortest member of the team: a brown-eyed, bearded man who looked more like a high-school math teacher than a negotiator. Black supposed his calm and unassuming demeanor was what made him effective.
“How are you doing?” Wilcox asked him.
“Fine,” Black said, shortly.
“O’Brien said you might have some insight into Citizen One.”
“I don’t know if I do or not,” Black said. “I just think he plans to blow the building up, no matter what. He hates this place. It represents everything he’s against. He’s not going to let it stand just because he got some money.”
“You think he’s suicidal?” Wilcox asked, his gentle brown eyes looking at Black inquisitively.
“Well…” Black hesitated. He didn’t feel qualified in the slightest to speculate on this man he’d never even seen.
“Just your guess,” Wilcox encouraged him.
“No,” Black said at last. “He’s charismatic, intelligent. He has a following. I think he wants to make a statement, but I don’t think he wants to be inside when it all comes down.”
“Interesting,” Wilcox said.
They crossed the barrier and approached the building cautiously. They all wore earpieces, so the commander could warn them if Citizen One spotted them and called the police line to threaten them off.
However, they slipped inside the building without incident.
They walked down the utility corridors, using their headlamps since the hijackers had shut down most of the power systems in the building, including the overhead lights. The jittery circles of light added to the nervous tension in the group. They moved silently, only the swish of their nylon tactical gear giving them away.
When they reached the fork in the corridor, O’Brien gestured for Sparks, Bhatia, and Shiff to carry on, while O’Brien, Oyemi, Wilcox, and Black headed to the right, then climbed the stairs to the second floor.
O’Brien and Oyemi cleared each corner before they moved, their ARs on their shoulders. Black carried the same type of weapon, but he kept it pointed at the floor, not having the same level of experience as the other men.
When they reached the second-floor offices where the hostages were being held, they could see an armed guard standing ready inside the transparent glass doors.
They lowered their guns and approached slowly.
Wilcox took the lead.
“We’re here to negotiate,” he called to the guard, through the door. “Can we come in?”
The guard conversed with someone inside. They could hear the murmur of voices, but not what was being said. The guard turned back to them.
“Drop your guns outside,” he said.
They dropped their rifles in the hallway outside the door. Black knew they each had at least one handgun on their person as well. Black had two: one in his jacket, and one on a leg holster. Since nobody else was giving those up, Black kept his as well.
They walked through the doors, hands raised.
It was a large, open-plan office space, with desk arranged all around in small clusters. It had all the usual accessories of a corporate space, including a water cooler in the corner, a few modest houseplants, motivat
ional posters on the walls, and family photos and bobble-heads on a few of the desks.
The normality of the setting, contrasted to the armed men, and the terrified hostages, gave Black a disjointed feeling, like a funhouse mirror.
The hostages lay face-down on the floor, on the left side of the room. It looked like an equal proportion of men and women, dressed in office clothing, as well as at least a dozen children of varying ages, from four years old up to teens.
Black could smell the sharp odor of urine—from frightened children, and possibly from the adults as well. Many of the parents were laying on top of their children, trying to shield them with their bodies. Some of the hostages were sobbing quietly, while others lay deathly silent.
The two guards stood on opposite sides of the room, both wearing bulletproof vests, with bandannas covering half their faces. The bandanas had the jawbone of a skull printed across the bottom, giving the gunmen a gruesome, inhuman appearance. Their eyes peered out over the top, bright and manic.
Black thought, from the way they held their guns, they weren’t ex-police or military. These were zealots, not tactical personnel. Still, it didn’t take much skill to shoot an automatic rifle.
In the center of the room stood the man Black had been morbidly curious to see. Citizen One.
He was the only person present who seemed completely relaxed, despite the large bomb strapped to his chest. He was average height, slim, and quite good-looking. He had a clean-shaven face, slightly overgrown brown hair, and pale blue eyes. When he smiled, his teeth were straight and white, and a dimple showed on one cheek.
“Welcome,” he said.
Wilcox stepped forward.
“Are you Citizen One?” he asked, in his calm, pleasant voice.