Whirlwind

by Hilary Norman

  ‘Yes,’ Reaper said.

  ‘And what is it you’re hoping to get for our release?’ She was still shaking, fighting to stay clearheaded because this exchange might be crucial to getting out of here.

  ‘There’s no ransom,’ Reaper said. ‘We just want the truth to be seen and heard.’

  ‘About this alleged miscarriage of justice.’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘I don’t buy it. There has to be more at stake for you.’

  ‘See? You’re perfect for the job,’ Reaper said. ‘Looking for what lies beneath.’

  ‘And you’re a walking cliché,’ Liza said. ‘This is insane.’

  ‘You’re more likely to find that out for sure if you accept the assignment.’

  ‘I’d be grateful if you’d take over the reporting,’ Nemesis said.

  ‘I don’t want your gratitude,’ Liza snapped. ‘What are you getting out of this?’

  ‘Nemesis has solid reasons for joining Whirlwind,’ Reaper said.

  ‘Maybe you could explain them to Liza?’ Michael said. ‘If you want her to help us.’

  ‘I am not going to help you,’ Liza said flatly.

  ‘I don’t want Nemesis to tell Ms Plain anything,’ Reaper answered Michael, ‘because it might affect her impartiality.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be impartial,’ Liza said. ‘I would be one hundred per cent partial.’

  ‘Good,’ Reaper said. ‘Report to the outside world what’s happening here as you see it – true breaking news.’ He paused again. ‘I don’t want to be too crass, Ms Plain, but consider the aftermath. Features, interviews, maybe a book deal, even a movie.’

  ‘That’s not crass,’ she said. ‘It’s obscene.’

  Except despite that, she was recognizing – God help her – a buzz of something too like excitement. Because her situation was extraordinary. Standing here speaking to hostage takers: people probably prepared to go to deadly extremes to achieve their goals. Yet at this instant she was not feeling as afraid as she ought to be, could even picture herself in some kind of fantasy bubble becoming caught up in this news story.

  What did that make her?

  A journalist.

  Scum, as her grandfather said.

  ‘So, have you ever used anything like this?’ Nemesis touched the backpack.

  ‘I’ve never even seen one,’ Liza said.

  ‘It’s remarkably straightforward. I can take you through it.’

  ‘Did you hear me say yes?’ Liza asked.

  ‘Consider this, Ms Plain,’ Reaper said. ‘The longer you take to decide, the longer the ordeal of all those people up in the nave. Your grandfather included.’

  ‘If you’re so concerned about their ordeal, go ahead without me,’ she said. ‘Better yet, let them go.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ Reaper told her. ‘And there’s something else to consider. As you realize, not every resident of Shiloh has come to church tonight. We’ve done our best to ensure that no one inside or outside Saint Matthew’s comes to harm, and the blizzard’s helping to keep people away, but if someone does show up and try to open a door, I can’t guarantee anyone’s safety.’

  Liza’s skin prickled. ‘So those are real explosives?’

  ‘Very real.’ Reaper paused. ‘Won’t you agree to do this, Ms Plain?’

  She was wavering and he knew it.

  ‘You have to know that the first thing I’ll do is ask people to call the cops?’

  ‘You’re being held prisoner in church during the Christmas Eve service,’ Reaper said. ‘Calling the cops sounds perfectly reasonable to me.’

  ‘You can’t seriously be considering doing this,’ Stephen Plain said after Liza had been allowed to return to their pew to consider her dilemma.

  The service was still continuing as ordered, the captive congregation having latched on to it as something halfway normal, if illusory, to distract them, their prayers less about the birth of Jesus now than for their safe deliverance from this nightmare.

  Liza was conscious again of people watching her, and everyone had seen her returning from the undercroft, coming back from wherever she’d been with them, still safe and unharmed and, therefore, a person of suspicion.

  ‘I suppose I’m wasting my breath,’ Stephen said, ‘this being any journalist’s dream.’

  ‘At least I’d be letting people know what’s happening to us,’ Liza whispered. ‘I’ll be doing everything I can to make sure we get help.’

  ‘They won’t let you do that,’ Stephen said.

  ‘They say they will.’

  ‘Who’s said that? Your friend?’

  ‘I hardly know him, Granddad,’ she said. ‘And he’s one of them.’

  ‘You could be putting yourself in terrible danger.’

  ‘This “Reaper” claims they don’t want to harm anyone,’ Liza tried to reassure him. ‘But he says the explosives are real, and I believe him, so no one should take any chances.’

  ‘Delightful company you keep,’ Stephen said.

  ‘You’re not wrong there,’ Liza said.

  FIFTY-TWO

  ‘You’re almost up and running,’ Nemesis said to Liza, less than forty minutes later back down in the undercroft.

  It was already Christmas Day.

  Running late, Nemesis had said when Michael had brought Liza back, her decision made. Punctuality vital for the scheduled event, formal booking necessary to ensure guaranteed live streaming.

  The event’s title: Christmas Eve Midnight Service from St Matthew’s Episcopal Church, Shiloh, Rhode Island.

  That was a mistake by them, Liza had registered, because the service was never held at midnight, and if any of this was genuine, if they were really going to broadcast what was going to happen, then surely locals would be the only people remotely interested in viewing, and someone might realize right away that something was amiss.

  She’d kept the vain hope to herself, had asked instead why anyone should want to watch an insignificant church service.

  ‘You’d be surprised. And for our purposes, it may only take one person to turn it into news,’ Nemesis had said. ‘They see what’s happening, call it in to their local news station or the cops or maybe CNN, and bingo.’

  ‘So that’s really what you want? To publicize this crime?’

  ‘That’s what Reaper wants,’ Michael had said.

  ‘What if no one sees it or calls it in?’ Liza asked.

  ‘Reaper says they will,’ Nemesis said.

  Was that blind belief in her leader, Liza wondered, or did they have viewers out there, part of the gang, ready and waiting to set the publicity ball rolling?

  Surreal not a strong enough word for this.

  Just her and Nemesis down here now. And a small fortune’s worth of equipment set up and ready for her to use. 4G LTE courtesy of Verizon Wireless; hard-wired connection courtesy of the apparently technically-minded vicar; a professional camcorder plus a tripod plus a fluid video head to facilitate wide shots and panning, said the other woman—

  Terrorist, Liza corrected herself, remembered the FBI’s definition of terrorism, and this was ticking enough boxes to make her grandfather’s assessment correct. And it ought to have set her screaming, she thought, but her brain was swimming with details about multi-cellular cards and battery hot-swapping and embedded video and audio media compression processors …

  ‘Though pretty much all you really have to know,’ Nemesis said, ‘is how to start and stop recording, and which microphone to use.’

  One when Liza was speaking, the other for picking up what was going on around her, though if that became too confusing, Nemesis said, she could just cancel out her own voice and still pick up both her subject and herself. And she didn’t have to concern herself with bandwidth issues because they were going to be storing and forwarding, so everything Liza recorded would be saved.

  ‘This is mad,’ Liza said. ‘Clearly you should be doing this.’

  ‘You’re the reporter,’ Nemes
is said.

  ‘So how come you know so much about it?’

  ‘I’m a quick study.’

  Not giving anything more away, though Reaper had at least given her the codenames which the Whirlwind team would use for the duration, and Nemesis had shown her a page on the MacBook Pro with photographs and names.

  Isaiah. Amos. Jeremiah. Luke. Joel. Nemesis.

  ‘You want me to use those names in the broadcast?’ Liza had asked.

  ‘I do,’ Reaper had answered. ‘So remember them, please.’

  Afraid to argue, she had stared at the screen, wanting to ingrain the faces on her memory, not in order to do this man’s bidding, but to be able to identify them later to the cops, and it seemed vital for her to believe that would happen.

  Vital to her sanity.

  ‘I need some kind of script,’ Liza said now, to Nemesis.

  ‘Just tell them what’s going on. Be yourself and let the events speak for themselves.’

  ‘Live events,’ Liza said, bitterly, ‘are generally very well-planned by broadcasters.’

  ‘This is living news,’ Nemesis said. ‘It’s different.’

  She rechecked settings, connected cable, then loaded the backpack and held it out. ‘I’ll help you put this on.’

  ‘I’ve changed my mind,’ Liza said.

  ‘It’s amazingly light.’ Nemesis ignored her panic, slipped a strap over her right arm and Liza reacted automatically, numbly held out her left arm, allowed the pack to be securely placed, felt it against her back.

  ‘God,’ she said, quietly.

  ‘I’m pulling a small cable out of the top of the backpack, and routing it over your shoulder.’ Nemesis did so, plugging it into the camera, which she handed to Liza.

  ‘I’ll take the tripod and the rest.’

  She picked them up.

  ‘All set,’ she said.

  FIFTY-THREE

  It felt as if she’d been beamed down into an insane nightmare.

  One minute, a lousy, all-but failed journalist scrabbling for stories. The next, the exclusive on-the-spot reporter of a major terrorist crime, armed with a totally unfamiliar set of equipment which seemed, so far as she could tell, to be real. And she still had no idea who Nemesis was, who any of them were?

  Except Michael Rider.

  Panic set in again. She couldn’t do this.

  But if she changed her mind and refused, what might Reaper do to her?

  She had been taken to a position less than halfway along the aisle, just ahead of her grandfather’s row, thankful not to be able to see his disapproval.

  She could see herself now though, earphones on her head, in the viewfinder.

  Could hear the storm howling outside.

  People all around were staring at her again.

  All too obvious what they had to be thinking.

  One of them.

  The service had ended. The vicar was back beside his wife in the front pew, the organist back with the choir in the eighth row. The big man – Amos – was patrolling, ensuring that the hostages stayed put. The man with buzz-cut brown hair – Jeremiah – was up on the chancel to the right of the altar. The scarred gunman – Luke – stood between the front pew and the north-east door; and Joel, the older one with silver hair, paced near the south-east exit. Nemesis had positioned herself on the aisle two rows back – close enough, she’d told Liza, to help with equipment glitches.

  Reaper was at the pulpit. Michael – Isaiah – standing to his right.

  ‘Are you ready, Ms Plain?’

  Last chance to back out, to return to being clearly defined again as a hostage.

  Yet this still had to be her best chance of helping to end this.

  And her ‘big break’, she reminded herself wryly.

  All trussed up and loaded with equipment and massively, horribly confused.

  And, oh Lord, she would be grateful for ever just to get back to Boston and the mundane January updates for her websites.

  Something was happening.

  Some of the gang members were pulling on black balaclavas – and that, at least, made sense, if this live stream was for real.

  No balaclavas for Reaper or Michael. Or for Luke, over near the Stars and Stripes.

  ‘Are you ready?’ Reaper repeated the question.

  Ready or not.

  ‘Ready,’ she said.

  Pressed the red button on the camera.

  Go.

  She took a breath.

  ‘To whoever is watching and listening to this live stream broadcast, this is Liza Plain in the village of Shiloh, Rhode Island, reporting on a major breaking news story and calling for urgent help.’

  Liza paused, felt panic surge, summoned up the courage to continue.

  ‘I’m in Saint Matthew’s Episcopal Church in Shiloh where, almost three hours ago, the Christmas Eve service, one of the most sacred services of the year, was hijacked by gunmen.’

  She’d been taught to get it out there. Start with a bang – hit the key words, hit the point, especially when you weren’t sure how long you might have.

  ‘So please, if you’re watching, this is no prank, this is very real, and there are approximately’ – oh, Lord, she hadn’t done a headcount – ‘approximately fifty to sixty innocent people here – hostages now – who need you to call the Rhode Island State Police or the FBI.’

  She took another breath, remembered Nemesis’s brief tutorial and panned around the church, hands shaking, glad of the tripod and fluid video head, and found the focal point she was after: the chancel, the altar, the crucifix up behind it.

  When you have their attention, flesh it out.

  ‘Just before ten o’clock tonight, Eastern Standard Time, this old church was filled with people who’d braved the Blizzard-to-End-All-Blizzards, all anticipating a traditional, inspiring night, when, moments after Reverend Simon Keenan had begun his first Christmas Eve service at Saint Matthew’s, an armed gang of six males and one female – collectively naming themselves “Whirlwind” and led by a man calling himself “Reaper” – entered the church, wired up all the exits with explosives and declared us their prisoners.’

  Liza panned unsteadily around, paused at the north-east fire exit, zoomed in on the wires and explosives, then on Luke, his shotgun clearly identifying him as a gang member, then zoomed out again, moving on slowly around the nave.

  ‘I came here with family as a member of this congregation – now a fellow hostage – and then, apparently because of my background in journalism, I was asked to do this job, and I can report to you now that just after one a.m. this Christmas morning, we’ve been told very little about why we find ourselves victims in an armed siege.’

  She brought the lens back to herself.

  ‘For the record, my name is Liza Plain, and though I was born in Shiloh, I live in Boston, and I am neither an experienced journalist nor a reporter, though that still seems to be why our captors have given me the job of reporting these events to the outside world.’

  She heard murmurs. Damning her, probably.

  Concentrate.

  ‘As you’ve seen, they have shotguns, so I didn’t feel I had much choice, and I felt it better that one of us did the reporting, not one of the gang.’

  She gulped a breath and told them what they had been told about a connection with a forty-year-old child murder and subsequent events.

  ‘They claim that there was a miscarriage of justice back then, and that justice is what they’re here for, and that’s all we know for now, but it’s clear that something big is about to happen. Meanwhile, the great blizzard is pounding us …’

  Liza panned to one of the stained-glass windows, zoomed in on the whiteout beyond it then came around slowly, back to the chancel.

  ‘… so I’m guessing it won’t be easy for help to reach us here in Shiloh Village, Rhode Island.’ Her pace grew more urgent. ‘But believe me when I say we need help, and we need it fast. We are being held by an armed gang of six males and one female, al
l using aliases.’

  You know Michael’s name.

  ‘Four of the Whirlwind gang – they call themselves a “team”, but I’m sticking with “gang”, or maybe they’re hostage takers—’

  ‘Terrorists!’ Denny Fosse called out.

  ‘Or terrorists.’ Liza wasn’t arguing. ‘Whichever, four of them pulled on balaclavas to cover their faces just before this broadcast began.’

  She panned around, and held the camera tight on each of them in turn.

  ‘I believe that’s the man they name “Jeremiah” up near the altar.’ She moved over to the south-east fire door, also wired. ‘That’s Joel.’ She found the big man near the back. ‘That’s Amos.’ The panning made her dizzy. ‘And sitting by the aisle there is a female named Nemesis, the one who helped set up this equipment and who claimed it was on loan.’

  Her voice grew husky, and she cleared her throat, went on.

  ‘And then there are three men who’ve chosen, for whatever reasons, not to disguise themselves. That’s the man named “Luke”.’

  She panned away from the scarred man up to the pulpit.

  Focused on Michael.

  ‘This man has been called “Isaiah” but he’s the only gang member who’s actually told us his real name – and here’s the thing, which clearly I have to mention: I knew this man before tonight. I do not know him well, but I met him briefly thirteen years ago and again only last night, believing it to be a coincidental meeting. He has openly stated that his name is Michael Rider, and that it was his grandfather, Donald Cromwell, who was accused of murdering Alice Millicent four decades ago.’

  Michael was standing, shotgun gripped in his right hand, barrel resting on his left forearm. Unblinking as Liza focused on him.

  ‘Finally’ – she swiveled to the man holding center stage – ‘we come to the leader of “Whirlwind”. The man who calls himself “Reaper”.’

  She zoomed in on him.

  ‘He doesn’t look dangerous, and he’s holding a cane rather than a shotgun. But he’s the mind behind what’s happening here tonight, which may make him the most dangerous criminal here. So please, whoever’s watching this, take a good look at “Reaper”. Whether or not you recognize him, please call the Rhode Island State Police or the FBI, because there are children here, and we need your help now. It may be the middle of the night on Christmas morning and the blizzard must be creating havoc outside, but there are about fifty innocent people in here all relying on you to get here.’