Black

by Sophie Lark

  “That’s right.”

  “I’d like to confirm your demands, if that’s alright with you.”

  “Please do.”

  “You requested that the media be allowed to come inside the barriers.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you look down to street level, you’ll see that we’ve accommodated that demand.”

  Citizen One nodded his head at the guard on the far side of the room. The man moved back toward the windows, keeping his gun pointed at Black’s team, and quickly glanced outside. He nodded back to Citizen One to show that Wilcox was telling the truth.

  “Good,” Citizen One said.

  “You want fifty million euros, wired to the account you specified,” Wilcox continued.

  “Yes.”

  “And then you want a military-grade helicopter landed on the roof of the building.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, we’re making progress on both of those demands. We hope to have the money within a few more hours.”

  “My friend,” Citizen One said, in his soft, hypnotic voice, “let’s not play games. I know you can get the money much faster than that, if you don’t have it already. I know it’s your protocol to stall.”

  “We don’t—” Wilcox began, but Citizen One interrupted him.

  “Do you know what this is?” he said, holding up his right hand. He was gripping a black, cylindrical device.

  “Yes,” Wilcox said.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a dead man’s switch.”

  “That’s right. I just wanted to make sure that all your men, and any snipers you might have stationed in the adjoining buildings, understand that if you shoot me, this bomb will detonate immediately.”

  He nodded toward the several pounds of plastic explosives strapped to his body. Off to his left, a woman tied to a chair gave a strangled yell.

  She was the only one of the hostages not laying on the ground. She had been tied to a plush leather high-backed chair, the kind you might see in a CEO’s office. But she didn’t look like a CEO herself. She was perhaps thirty years old, slim and pale, with dirty-blonde hair. Despite the fact that it was only October, she wore a heavy wool coat, too big for her.

  She had a strip of duct tape across her mouth and many more yards of tape wrapped round her to pin her down to the chair. Her makeup was running down her cheeks from sweat and tears.

  A boy of about ten crouched next to her chair, holding onto her arm. He had the same dirty blond hair, and the same tear-streaked face.

  “We don’t want to shoot you,” Wilcox said soothingly. “We don’t want anyone to get hurt. We want to accommodate you, so we can resolve this as peacefully as possible.”

  “Then you’d better get my money and my helicopter,” Citizen One said. “Because this bomb is going off in twenty minutes, whether you’re ready or not.”

  “Would you be willing to let some of the hostages go?” Wilcox asked. “As a show of good faith? What about the children?”

  “I know you’re a negotiator,” Citizen One said, “but I am not. I told you what I expect. Now get it done.”

  Wilcox made a show of taking out his walkie-talkie, though Black knew he could easily communicate through his earpiece. He called down to the commander, and said, “He says we have twenty minutes to get the money and the helicopter.”

  In his earpiece, Black heard the commander’s quiet voice telling them all, “Stall him. We’ve taken out the rest of the team in the server room. We’re sending in more men.”

  Black’s heart hammered in his chest. He was fairly certain that, despite what he’d said to Wilcox, if the police tried to storm the room, Citizen One would indeed blow the bomb, rather than risk being captured.

  Citizen One seemed to know they were receiving intel via the earpieces.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” he said softly, his fingers twitching on the dead man’s switch.

  At that moment, a helicopter roared toward the building. Black could see KUTV painted on the side of it—a news chopper that had ignored the prohibition against flying toward the NSC building.

  Citizen One glanced toward the window, just for a millisecond.

  Without thinking, without planning at all, Black charged him.

  Though Black was built like a linebacker, he was twenty-two years old, with the speed and reflexes of youth on his side. He was on top of Citizen One in less than a second. He took his two huge hands and clamped them around Citizen One’s right hand, closing his fist tight around the dead-man switch so the bomber couldn’t let go of it.

  The two guards swung their rifles towards Black. He yanked on Citizen One’s arm, spinning his body around to create a shield between Black and the first guard, so the man would have to shoot his boss in the back if he wanted to get at Black. But that left Black completely exposed on his opposite side.

  He heard three shots behind him. A bullet passed by his ear, so close he could almost feel the heat of it. The second guard fell to the ground, shot by O’Brien, who had yanked his handgun out of his jacket.

  The first guard swung his rifle around, spraying bullets at Oyemi and Wilcox. Wilcox took one in the leg, and Oyemi was hit in the shoulder. They were large caliber bullets. Both men went down. But Oyemi had gotten his gun out too, and he shot upward from the ground with his left hand, hitting the guard in the arm, leg, and face.

  Black saw none of this, because he was wrestling with Citizen One, who, despite his disadvantage in height and weight, was wildly strong. He was trying to rip his hand out of Black’s grip. Black held doggedly on with both hands, even when Citizen One smashed the top of his head into Black’s lower lip.

  His lip felt like it exploded, spraying blood everywhere, but he refused to let go.

  Citizen One used his free hand to pull a hunting knife from his belt. He sunk the blade all the way into Black’s side.

  It felt like a hot poker slamming into him. The pain and burning were horrific. Still, he hung on.

  Citizen One jerked the knife out of Black’s side. Somehow this hurt even more than the stab. He pulled back the knife, ready to jab it into Black again and again.

  Black heard another shot. Citizen One went limp, dragging Black down to the ground with him. Black heard a gurgling sound, and Citizen One coughed, spitting up blood. O’Brien had shot him in the neck.

  Black wrenched the dead man’s switch out of his hand. He stood up, holding the cylinder tight so it couldn’t release.

  O’Brien was already yelling at the hostages to get up and get out of the room. Some of them complied at once, but others still lay there, too frightened to even look up.

  Black saw that two of the hostages had been shot by the guard who had sprayed bullets everywhere. Luckily it was two of the adults, a man and a woman, and neither seemed critical.

  Black looked at the woman who was still tied to the chair. She was trying to scream through the duct tape. Black ran over to her. With his free hand, he pulled open the front of her heavy coat.

  There was another bomb strapped to her body, even larger than the one that Citizen One had worn. It bore a digital timer, directly over her breast. The glowing blue numbers counted down: two minutes and thirty-one seconds remaining.

  “Oyemi!” Black screamed.

  He ran to Oyemi and helped him up from the ground. Oyemi’s shoulder was a mess, his right arm hanging limp at his side.

  “There’s another bomb!” Black cried, dragging Oyemi towards the device.

  Oyemi took one look at it. He saw the timer counting down, one minute and fifty-eight seconds now. He looked back at Black, his face ashen with pain.

  “I don’t have time to do anything,” he said to Black. “Get the hostages out.”

  O’Brien had already pulled the rest of the employees up off the floor, forcing the most able-bodied to help carry the injured out of the room. O’Brien was helping Wilcox up himself.

  The second police team had made it upstairs. They were h
elping the hostages out of the room, down the stairs, carrying some of the smaller children who were too frightened to run on their own.

  “There’s a second bomb!” O’Brien bellowed at them. “Get them all away from the building!”

  Black was looking around frantically for something to cut the tape that bound the woman to the chair. If he could get her loose, get the cuffs off her wrists, he might be able to get the bomb off of her before it blew.

  He was dizzy, though, blood soaking his right pant-leg from the wound on his side. And he only had one hand, the other gripped tight around the dead-man switch.

  Someone was grabbing his shoulder, shaking him to get his attention.

  “There’s no time,” Oyemi said. “Get the kid.”

  Black looked at the ten-year-old boy, bawling and clinging to his mother’s arm. He saw the woman looking up at him, her terrified eyes staring out of her pale face. She had stopped crying.

  Black seized the boy around the waist with his free arm.

  The boy shrieked and kicked, trying to hold onto his mother’s arm.

  Black wrenched him away. He threw the boy over his shoulder and sprinted out of the room, Oyemi stumbling after him.

  Black pelted down the stairs, holding the switch and the wailing, kicking boy, who was still reaching back towards his mother.

  They ran out of the building, across the empty road that had been barricaded off.

  Black felt himself lifted and flung forward. The sense of heat and pressure against his back was enormous. He tried to cradle his body around the boy as he landed.

  He didn’t hear the actual explosion until afterward: a deafening boom so low and vast that he seemed to feel it in his body more than actually hear it.

  Glass and concrete rained down on the pavement. Black felt fragments of concrete pattering down on his back. A massive fireball puffed out of the side of the building.

  The air was filled with smoke and dust. He could taste it in his mouth, acrid and bitter. His ears were ringing.

  When he sat up at last, he saw that he and the boy looked as if they’d been dipped in dust. Only the boy’s tear-filled eyes looked out from his ashen face.

  Black could see the hole blown in the side of the building, as if some massive beast had swiped out a vast chunk with its paw. Twisted metal beams had been blown outward, with a single office chair dangling from a piece of rebar. As Black watched, the chair fell two stories to the ground, landing in a planter.

  He heard later that every hostage had been saved, except the one woman.

  1

  London

  September 5th, 2019

  Black walked up the steps to the cathedral in his tightly fitted suit. His sister had given the tailor the instructions for everything from the pick-stitching to the buttons, and it was all a little dandyish compared to what Black would have picked out for himself. However, he wanted Andrea to have everything just as she liked it, down to the tiniest detail, on her wedding day.

  He was the one paying for it all, and he’d be the one walking her down the aisle, since neither of their parents were alive anymore.

  He’d had his hair freshly cut, he’d shaved that morning—something he did only rarely these days—and he’d tucked a fresh calla lily bloom into his lapel. He thought he’d make his sister proud, or at least, he wouldn’t embarrass her.

  He was glad to see that the same could be said for their youngest sister, Violet. She was waiting for him at the top of the steps, wearing the blush-pink bridesmaid’s dress that Andrea had selected, with her blonde hair nicely waved, and her feet thrust into a pair of perfectly respectable pumps.

  It was the most conventional he’d ever seen her look. Violet, younger than Black by almost ten years, had always been a bit wild. He had been afraid she might show up with purple streaks in her hair, wearing combat boots. That would give Andrea a coronary.

  “You look beautiful,” he said, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

  “You mean I look boring,” Violet laughed.

  “Yes, nice and boring.”

  “I even took my nose ring out,” Violet said. “If that’s not sisterly love, I don’t know what is.”

  “You’re the best sister,” Black said, putting his arm around her shoulders and kissing the top of her head.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” Violet said, looking up at him with a serious expression. “It’s been too long.”

  “I know,” Black said. “I’m sorry.”

  It had been four years since he’d last lived in London, two since he’d even visited. It was still painful to him, driving down certain streets, visiting certain places. Too many memories.

  “You’re staying now, aren’t you?” Violet asked, her green eyes inquisitive and hopeful.

  “I think so,” Black said.

  They pushed through the doors of the dim, cool cathedral. It was a gray day, like so many in London. Precious little sunlight filtered down through the stained-glass windows. Still, the room looked ethereal and lovely. Andrea had placed flowers everywhere, in shades of dusty pink, cream, and mossy green: in garlands, in stands, and in bunches at the end of each dark wooden pew. Their fresh, clean scent filled the air.

  Gothic stone arches rose up on both sides, creating a tunnel toward the altar where Andrea would shortly stand across from Vincent Emerson, an old friend of Black’s from his policing days.

  Black had introduced them unintentionally. He would never have guessed that the irresponsible and jovial Emerson would have appealed to his straight-laced sister, but he supposed they were good for each other. Emerson brought a little humor to Andrea’s life, and helped her relax on certain topics, while Andrea helped Emerson remember to pay his bills on time and eat something besides take-away curry now and again.

  They were as odd a match in looks as in everything else: Emerson as short, dark, and untidy as Andrea was tall, blonde, and prim. Once Emerson’s family arrived, and the photographer arranged them all for pictures, the contrast only became more apparent.

  “What a handsome family!” the photographer said, arranging Black and his two sisters on the steps. Black knew they made an imposing group, none of them shorter than 180 cm, fair and Nordic-looking.

  By contrast, all the photographer could say to Emerson’s family was, “What a lot of you there are!”

  The Emerson clan was as numerous as the Blacks were scanty. They crowded the steps with uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and children, including several bawling babies. Most of them were short and plump, and all of them as noisy as Vincent Emerson.

  Black had never seen him looking happier. Emerson seized Andrea around the waist and tried to swing her around in her wedding dress, kissing her a dozen times, heedless of her lipstick, which ended up all over his face.

  “Vincent, stop it!” Andrea scolded him, but she was laughing.

  Vincent considered trying to pick Black up too, but there was no chance of that happening, so instead he just pounded him on the back.

  “So glad you could make it,” he said. “What are you doing now? You ever think about coming back to Scotland Yard? You know, they made me commander. I could hire you back.”

  “You? Commander?” Black said in mock surprise.

  “I know. What idiot allowed that to happen?” Emerson said gleefully.

  “I don’t think I could handle you being my boss,” Black said.

  “What’s the plan, then?” Emerson persisted.

  “I don’t really know,” Black said honestly.

  The truth was, he didn’t have to take any kind of job at the moment. The various rewards he’d received for recovering a cache of stolen art in Lyon two years earlier had set him up to the point that he could buy a flat in London, and not have to worry about work for a few years yet.

  But he didn’t like to be idle. He knew he’d take something sooner or later, when the right job came along.

  The photographer kept positioning and re-positioning them all, annoyed at the disobedi
ent children, and Emerson himself, who was too excited to pay the least bit of attention to his instructions.

  He kept imploring the Blacks to smile, and the Emerson family to stop talking. He took photographs of every possible configuration of people, while Black felt his face growing stiffer and stiffer.

  At last, the photographer released them all to get ready for the ceremony.

  The guests had begun to arrive, streaming up the church steps in their suits, dresses, and fanciful formal hats. The women far outnumbered the men. Andrea might not have much family, but she had a huge number of friends dating back to her college days, plus colleagues from her job at the Department of Education.

  It was a beautiful ceremony—calm and traditional, just the way Andrea wanted it. At one point, Violet pretended to fall asleep, where she stood at the head of the long row of bridesmaids. But she did it very subtly so that only Black would see. Black refused to show his amusement, knowing that Violet required no encouragement to misbehave.

  Emerson’s vows were cheerful and heart-felt, Andrea’s earnest and sincere. She had made sure to wear flats under her dress, so she didn’t have to crouch down for the kiss.

  Afterwards, the guests pelted the happy couple with flower petals while they ran down the aisle to their limo.

  There was a short break before the reception. Black and Violet took the opportunity to grab a pint at a pub close to the reception center.

  They sat at a high table in the dark, gloomy pub, way overdressed compared to the rest of the sullen afternoon drinkers.

  “So,” Black said to Violet, “where are you working now?”

  His youngest sister had held a series of temporary and part-time jobs, mostly bartending. She liked to keep her schedule flexible so she could follow her true passion, which was music.

  “I actually got a regular gig,” Violet said. “Once a week, singing in a lounge.”

  “That’s fantastic!” Black said. “Send me the address. I’ll come see you perform.”

  “I will. I’m really excited about it.”