by Jack Quaid
They pushed through the doors and cut across the marble floor of the lobby. Sullivan smiled to himself. There would be some heat on the other side of those doors and a lot of bad noise, but then it would be over and Jones’s family safe.
Sullivan saw something out of the corner of his eye.
Then everything went to shit.
Deacon pulled up his shotgun.
Aimed.
Across the hotel lobby and through the glass door that led into State Street, three patrols had pulled up hard and fast. Lights flashing, tires screeching, the whole heroic entrance.
Deacon pulled the trigger. It sounded like thunder. The forty-foot floor-to-ceiling window fell like glass rain.
Early-morning checkouts pancaked the floor.
Somewhere, a woman screamed.
Deacon racked. Fired off another shot randomly and hit nothing. The uniforms took cover behind the prowlers, their weapons up and over the vehicles’ hoods and boots.
Deacon racked the shotgun again and took a step toward the street, and when Sullivan grabbed his arm, he turned back as if he were going to have a crack at him next. He was in war mode, and it was only when his eyes locked with Sullivan’s that the stiffness in his gaze softened.
‘We need to move now!’ Sullivan said.
Chapter Twelve
The VPD had the Westin surrounded.
Three SWAT teams converged on the area. They were under the command of Todd Fisher, who controlled them from a communications van disguised as a delivery truck, parked one block away on Cass Avenue. A veteran of the first Iraq war and then the DPD, Fisher had spent his entire adult career with a weapon strapped to his side. He sipped from a cup of warm water and listened to the wall of audio chatter that only an experienced ear could decipher.
Echo team blocked off the back alley and had both of the service entries covered. There were charges on the hinges of the doors for when they needed to be breached. His X-ray team were in the adjacent building, making their way to the roof, so they could cross over and descend on the Westin. And the all go to hell team, Bravo, were camped out by the main entrance, just in case they had to go in the hard way.
Ten men in each unit. Some of the highest-trained badges in the DPD. Tough bastards who weren’t afraid to walk into a shitstorm of bullets and wouldn’t bitch about overtime. Fisher leaned forward, smoothed the sides of his moustache, and turned up the volume.
Uniforms shut down Michigan Avenue from Cadillac Square to First. They waved commuters aside and told them it was a training exercise. The story wasn’t believed, and a mob had formed at either end. A blue Ford, unmarked, pulled up to the police line and was waved through. It crawled a couple of hundred feet until it couldn’t roll any farther. Jim Jones climbed out and took in the scene.
‘Jesus Christ,’ he muttered.
Mackler tapped him on the shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s find the command center.’
Chapter Thirteen
Sarah Jones hurried around the hotel room, stuffing armfuls of clothes into her overnight bag.
‘What is this all about?’ she asked.
Campbell had heard the shots from the lobby. From the seventh floor, they were only dull thumps. To the untrained ear, the sound was nothing to fear. To Campbell, it meant hell was coming. He shifted the blind, looked out the window, and saw uniforms setting up a perimeter.
He swore under his breath and gave Hogan a slight shake of his head but stayed in character as he turned back to Sarah. ‘Your husband has asked us to take you and Monique to a safe house.’
‘Why?’
‘Frankly, Mrs. Jones, my rank’s not high enough for me to be privy to that information.’
Sarah banged on the bathroom door. ‘Monique, hurry up!’
‘I’m coming!’
‘Not quickly enough.’ Sarah tried to shift around Hogan; they did an awkward dance before she let out a sigh and finally moved past him. ‘Monique!’
‘I said I’m coming!’
‘We need to leave very soon, ma’am,’ Campbell said.
Sarah stopped and put a manicured hand on her hip. ‘And what do you think I’m doing?’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Who is it?’ Campbell yelled.
Deacon called back.
Hogan slid up to the door, looked through the peephole and nodded back confirmation to Campbell.
When the door opened, Deacon crossed the room. ‘We’re in deep shit. It’s bad, real bad; we need to move now.’
‘What happened?’ Campbell asked.
‘We had to open fire.’
Campbell cocked an eyebrow. ‘Had?’
Deacon stared him down. ‘You weren’t there, man.’
Sarah watched the conversation bounce from one side of the room to the other. She knew something wasn’t right, and when she saw Sullivan, she knew it must be a hell of a lot worse than she had thought.
‘Hello, Sarah,’ he said.
‘What’s going on here, Angus?’ He kept his mouth shut. She turned to Campbell. ‘What’s going on?’
‘As I said, your husband wants us to take you and Monique someplace safe.’
‘Bullshit!’ she yelled and pointed at Sullivan. ‘This man is a criminal. Last I heard he was in jail.’
Campbell sighed. The ruse was up.
Without any warning, he slapped the back of his hand across her cheek. Sarah’s head snapped to the side. Hair fell across her face. The room went quiet.
He rubbed his knuckles. ‘I don’t care what you pack, or how much of an inconvenience you may think this is. You’re coming with us.’
Sarah looked at him through strands of hair. ‘I don’t think so.’
He gave her a half smile. ‘Do you really think you have a choice?’
The bathroom door opened, and Monique Jones stood there. Thirteen years old. Braces. Moody and wearing clothes years too old for her.
‘Mom?’ she said.
A bruise was already forming on Sarah’s cheek. ‘Everything is going to be all right.’
Monique clearly didn’t believe her. She panicked and ran for the door. Hogan grabbed her by the hair and knocked her to the ground. She kicked and screamed. Sarah rushed to her daughter, fell to her knees, and wrapped her arms tightly around her.
Campbell looked at Hogan. ‘What’s wrong with you? She’s a kid.’
Hogan shrugged, and Monique wailed.
‘Jesus Christ. Everybody just bloody relax.’ Campbell moved forward, and with each step, Monique’s howls grew more violent.
‘You stay away from her,’ Sarah said.
Campbell backed off. ‘Is she going to be like this the whole time?’
‘Who the hell do you think you are?’
Campbell looked at his watch. ‘You come with us, or I knock you both out and carry you out in your own luggage.’
‘Wait,’ Sullivan said and unbuttoned his shirt.
‘What are you bloody doing?’ Deacon said.
Sullivan removed the Kevlar vest he was wearing, and everybody in the room held their breath at the sight of his brutalized body. It was a mess of distorted tattoos and scars from the eight bullets he had taken in his life.
He crouched and handed Monique the vest. ‘Put this on.’ He shifted his gaze to Sarah. ‘Do you know me?’
She nodded.
‘Do you know the things I’ve done?’
‘Yes.’
‘I won’t let anyone hurt your daughter.’ Then he spoke almost in a whisper. ‘Please, for now, just do as they say.’
Sarah took the vest, slipped it over her daughter’s head and, for the first time since she saw Sullivan, allowed herself to think that she would escape from this mess.
Chapter Fourteen
Fisher turned the audio chatter down and shifted his gaze to Jones and Mackler. ‘We go in now, or we go in a hell of a lot harder later.’
Jones leaned into the van. ‘It’s my family in there—we wait.’
�
��Chief,’ Fisher said. ‘It’s your call.’
Mackler stepped back and wiped the sweat from the back of her neck.
‘We need an answer, Chief,’ Fisher said.
From the footpath, one of Mackler’s Brat Pack, Larsen, held up her iPad. ‘It’s already on the news.’
There was an aerial shot of the Westin. They looked beyond it, into the sky at the helicopter that was capturing the footage live.
‘If we don’t go now,’ Mackler said, ‘we lose control of this situation.’ She turned to Fisher. ‘Send them in.’
Fisher pulled the radio and barked orders into it. Jones stepped back, his head spinning.
Mackler led him away from the van and tried to assure him everything would be all right. He listened to her words and nodded, but Jones wasn’t convinced.
Chapter Fifteen
Echo team chewed No-Doze pills to stay alert. They had the rear alley covered, and when Fisher gave the go-ahead, they blew the service-entry doors and breached the building. Hotel staff cowered in corners and flattened against walls as Echo rushed past them with their MP5s set to rock and roll.
Chapter Sixteen
The news chopper buzzed the top of the building. X-ray team waved it off, but the pilot didn’t budge. The team leader couldn’t hear the order through the sound of the blades. He squashed the earpiece into the side of his head; heard Fisher yell the order again.
It took three blast rounds to breach the door. One through each of the hinges and another through the lock. X-Ray team were inside.
Chapter Seventeen
Bravo stormed the building with lumps in their throats. They had been camped in State Street, at the main entrance of the hotel. It was too dark inside the lobby to see what they would be running into headfirst. They approached slowly and carefully, their steps short and cautions. Their fingers were wrapped around the triggers, and their eyes scanned everything. They breached the lobby, over the broken glass, and fanned out into the formation they spent most of their days practicing—weapons swinging left to right, left to right.
The lobby was clear.
Chapter Eighteen
Jones’s phone rang.
Number: BLOCKED.
He heard footsteps.
He heard voices.
Chapter Nineteen
They ran down the hall. Campbell and Deacon led the way, weapons at the ready. Hogan and God brought up the rear, with Sullivan, Sarah, and Monique in the middle. Sullivan held the phone low and kept it buried in the palm of his hand.
‘What are we looking at?’ Campbell called over his shoulder to God.
‘Three teams. Fisher would want in fast. If he’s got his way, they’re already in the building.’
Campbell took a corner, stopped. He clocked each end of the long hall lined with hotel rooms on either side. It was quiet in both directions. Hogan and Deacon stood guard while Campbell pulled a tablet from his pocket and scanned the blueprints of the building.
‘Show me where they’ll come from?’
God pointed as he spoke. ‘Fisher doesn’t think big. He’ll go traditional on this. One team in through the service entrance in the rear. Another through the front doors and the third from the roof.’
‘What’s our best way out?’
God studied the map. His face was blank. ‘I don’t know. There seems to be no way around.’
‘What!’ Campbell yelled under his breath, as much he could. ‘There has to be a way around them.’
God stared at the map. None of them had any ideas.
‘Forget about going around them,’ Sullivan said, and he hoped he’d said it loudly enough for the phone in his hand to pick it up. ‘Go through them.’
‘Shit,’ Campbell said. ‘We’re looking at ten men.’
‘If we hide out in the open, that’s not a problem.’
The closest thing to a smile God could muster up appeared at the corner of his mouth. ‘It could work.’
‘Do you have a plan?’ Campbell asked.
Sullivan always had a plan.
Chapter Twenty
It took five minutes of fast-talking for Sullivan to sell Campbell on the plan. It wasn’t the best plan, it wasn’t even the most thought-out plan, but it was all they had.
Hidden behind another door marked private was the service elevator. They piled in, and when the doors closed, nobody said a word. Sarah held Monique tight, looked at Sullivan as though her trust were wearing thin. Judging by the situation, he couldn’t blame her. The elevator was slow and crawled its way down to the ground floor.
Campbell tapped on the scuffed stainless-steel doors. ‘You know, if these open and there’s SWAT on the other side, this thing could get ugly.’
Deacon and Hogan swapped glances and raised their weapons to the door.
‘Well,’ Sullivan said, ‘we wouldn’t want things to get ugly.’
They reached the ground floor. The elevator doors took their time opening. Everybody held their breath. Sullivan stood in front of Sarah, shielding her.
When the doors opened, they all took a breath and relaxed. There was nothing but an empty service hall ahead of them. A few doors down, they found housekeeping. The hotel had its own laundry and dry-cleaning service, and staff uniforms were cleaned and pressed on-site. Suits and shirts hung from mechanical tracks in the roof.
Sullivan pointed a crooked finger toward the uniforms that hung up against the rear wall; clean, pressed, and wrapped in plastic. ‘Everyone get into character.’
He slid into a black suit, to masquerade as a hotel manager. Campbell dressed as a chef, and a couple of minutes later, the rest of their unruly crew were disguised as diligent, but fearful, Westin Hotel staff.
Sullivan cracked the door an inch, poked his eye through, and looked down the long hall. He counted out a number of beats and listened for echoes of footsteps, mumblings, and grumblings coming from anywhere. He closed his eyes and focused. All he could hear was the thumping of blood through his body. After he looked over his shoulder and gave the nod to Campbell, they all stepped out into the hall.
God checked the map, pointed. ‘This way.’
Chapter Twenty One
Jones listened to everything and, when the line went dead, ran to the command center. He pushed his head into the back of the van. ‘They’re trying to slip out the rear.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got a source on the inside.’
Fisher shook his head. ‘Sounds like bullshit or misinformation to me.’ He put his headphones back on.
Ten years in IA hadn’t left Jones with much support from the rank and file.
He leaned in and tried a different line of questioning. ‘Fisher, please, they’re my family—’
Fisher yanked his headphones off. ‘I take my orders from the chief. You want something changed, talk to her.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Jones mumbled as he pulled out his phone and dialed.
The line rang out.
Chapter Twenty Two
They had ditched the heavy hardware in the laundry. Sidearms only, buried in pockets and slipped into waistbands. Campbell walked behind Monique, his Glock in the base of her spine, so that Sarah didn’t need a weapon on her. They took the corners blind and slow. Their footsteps were light, and any words they spoke were hushed. As they rounded a corner, a blast of light hit them from the emergency doorway in the alley SWAT had used to breach the building.
Campbell pulled out his phone, dialed. ‘Pick us up on the corner of State and Griswold,’ he said into it.
They neared the door. Deacon looked over his shoulder at the rest of the unit and smiled. Then his eyes drifted farther back down the hall, and the smile fell from his face.
‘HALT!’ a short-tempered voice snapped.
Everybody froze.
Sullivan looked out of the corner of his eye: SWAT member. Clad in black head to toe. Helmet. Earpiece. MP5.
Alone.
Sullivan took a small sidestep to shield Monique and Sarah; p
reparation for when the shit hit the fan.
Hogan stepped forward. ‘Oh, thank God,’ he sighed. ‘The police, finally.’
Over the past few hours, Sullivan had wondered why Hogan was even a part of Campbell’s team. His skill set seemed irrelevant, and judging by the shape he was in, he was probably not very useful in a fight. But as he spoke, it became clear that Hogan was a great actor.
‘We heard shooting. What’s going on?’
The SOG member inched forward. His palm gripped the weapon. He craned his neck to look at Sullivan, Campbell and the rest of the unit.
Sarah drew a breath and looked about to speak. Campbell pushed his Glock deeper into Monique’s back, and Sarah pushed the words back down.
‘Please. We’re scared,’ Hogan pleaded. ‘Where should we go?’
The SWAT member lowered his weapon and pointed a gloved hand toward the blown emergency doors. ‘Head out those doors, down the alley, and flag the first police officer you see.’
‘Thank you, thank you,’ Hogan said, with a theatrically worried smile that faded into a frown as the SWAT member walked off.
‘Nice work,’ Campbell said. ‘Now, let’s get the hell out of here.’
A hot breeze cut down the alley. The sky above was clear blue, but the buildings on either side left it in constant shadow. Campbell held the palm of his hand out to the rest of the group, and everyone came to a stop at the mouth of the alley.