by Dane Hartman
He looked to Connelly for moral support. Connelly shrugged, saying, “The only thing we can do now is wait on the assumption that sooner or later they will make their demands known. Once they’ve done that, we can open negotiations for the release of the hostages. Until then . . .” He left the sentence hanging.
Choppers meantime were hovering over the ten-story building while police snipers took up positions on neighboring rooftops. There was an air of great expectancy throughout the sweltering summer afternoon, but to the frustration of all those waiting outside, nothing happened. On the T.V. monitors, the screen was still proclaiming the same monotonous message: Technical Difficulties/Please Stand By.
Towards five-thirty the picture changed. A man in a ski mask appeared on the screen sitting at the news desk. He appeared nervous, and his eyes kept wandering as though he wasn’t exactly sure where the cameras were. Then he faced forward and addressed his unseen audience: “We members of the Alpha Group, have expropriated Station KCVO to make an important announcement to the people of San Francisco and all the USA. But as we lack experience in broadcasting, the six o’clock news will go on as usual. Only we shall be the authors of the news tonight. Please stay tuned.”
Although the camera remained focused on the news desk, the man in the ski mask faded from sight.
It was then that Harry had an inspiration. He went back to the blueprints and studied them on his own. But they didn’t tell him what he wanted to know: where the power hookup was located.
He got on the phone and, acting on his own authority, contacted an executive on duty with Pacific Gas & Electric. The executive was aware of the situation and was agreeable to helping out in any way he could. He would have to know precisely where the cables and circuitry were situated, naturally, but he believed that it was possible to cut the power without going inside the building itself.
“You see if you can get on it immediately, will you?”
The executive assured him that he would. And true to his promise, a utility van appeared within fifteen minutes.
There was one other thing to check out. He returned to Joe Lewiston who was trying to suppress a hacking cough which he was exacerbating with his cigarettes. “Is there any emergency generator on the premises that you know of?”
The station manager said that while one had been planned, none had yet been installed because of budgetary cutbacks. Which was all that Harry wanted to hear.
The blueprints clearly showed that there was an entrance through the rooftop down into the station’s executive suite. Three floors further down, one would come to the newsroom. Harry believed that if it was done right, the police could storm the occupied station at the exact same moment the electricity was cut off. In the confusion, the terrorists would lose control over the situation and, maybe, be overwhelmed, without loss of innocent lives.
Of couse, Harry wasn’t thinking so much of the twenty-five innocent lives which were at stake, although he did not dismiss their importance. In truth, his mind was on only one innocent life, Ellie Winston’s.
Bressler and Connelly were dubious about his scheme. While they didn’t object to electricians going down into manholes to determine how the electricity was being delivered to KCVO, they were not convinced that severing the power would give the police the advantage they were seeking.
Harry reminded them that the people who held KCVO and its staff had not hesitated to fire on patrolmen without provocation nor to demolish an airport terminal when it was crowded with mid-morning travellers. There was no reason to believe that they would spare their hostages now, even if all their demands were met.
“Look,” he said desperately, “let me go up there. I’ll have a two-way radio with me. If I can get in, and it seems possible, I’ll let you know. If it doesn’t seem possible, or I get killed, which amounts to the same thing, you’ll know about that too. And if it’s a go we’ll coordinate it with the electricians and you can have your men ready just as soon as the power’s cut.”
Connelly grudgingly conceded that there was some possibility of success. Not much, but some.
Bressler obviously would rather not have this responsibility thrust on him. He checked with the Commissioner who, however, was unavailable, having left that morning for a vacation in Hawaii. Evidently, the absence of terrorist incidents during the past couple of weeks had convinced him that he could afford to take some time off without fear of missing another crisis.
Well, he was missing another crisis.
“Why wasn’t I told he was going on vacation, the son of a bitch,” Bressler said dolefully. Then he regarded Connelly. “You think it’s worth a try?”
“It’s your show, but it could be my ass. Yeah, I think it’s worth a try.”
“All right. Check with the electricians, find out the soonest they can shut off the juice,” he instructed one of his men. Then to Harry he said, “You don’t get air sick, do you?”
“Not that I know of.”
“OK, I’ll radio one of the choppers to come down and pick you up. We should have you up on the roof by the time they go on the air. Then it’ll be up to you.”
C H A P T E R
F i f t e e n
The Small Man stood over her, casually pointing a Mark 1 handfiring device, a terrifying-looking instrument with its long smooth barrel and noise suppressor attachment. Having removed his mask because he found it too hot and uncomfortable, the Small Man seemed to be an oddly vulnerable and earnest young man of the sort that Ellie would have been attracted to when she was a student at Berkeley. He had a vaguely exotic appearance that promised evenings of romantic stories and passionate lovemaking. She wondered how he had turned into a terrorist who was prepared to kill without thinking twice. His voice was familiar to her and she was almost sure she had heard him over the phone: one of the voices claiming responsibility for blowing up the terminal at San Francisco Airport. And his face, too, was familiar. She had the feeling she had seen him somewhere before—but where?
The document that the Small Man had given her to read was loony and impossible. She was to go on the air in ten minutes’ time and deliver this manifesto, or whatever it was, word for word to the city and probably the country since this dramatic event was likely to be picked up by all three networks and public broadcasting. If she survived this she might be so well-known that she could walk into NBC or CBS Monday morning and have her choice of jobs.
But the contents of this manifesto did not give her much hope of surviving. The Alpha Group was demanding a total of five million dollars in order “to carry on the liberation effort on a global basis.” Of this money, more than two-thirds was to be provided to “oppressed peoples and freedom-fighting movements,” which would, of course, be chosen by the directors of Alpha. Predictably, it also called for the U.S. Government to free certain so-called political prisoners from prisons around the country and to guarantee safe passage for the terrorists to a “socialist republic to be designated upon the completion of negotiations.” Hostages would be released at various stages of these negotiations, concluded the document, “or else executed as an example.” It did not say as an example of what, but Ellie got the idea. She did not know whether she could summon the courage to go through with this, pronouncing what might be her own death sentence.
Yet what choice did she have? Moreover, the lives of her friends and colleagues, nearly thirty of them in all, depended on her.
As far as she could judge, there were six men and one woman involved in the takeover: most of them had taken up positions at the exits and stairwells, one held the hostages at bay with two automatics—evidently he was ambidexterous—while the Small Man concentrated on rehearsing her for the upcoming news broadcast. Although the staff members of the station way outnumbered the terrorists, resistance would have been foolhardy. These were newspeople, editors, secretaries, cameramen, and soundmen, not trained urban guerrillas. And here she had thought after her adventures in Beirut and El Salvador that once back in San Francisco at her new
s desk she would finally be safe. At that moment, she remembered Harry. What, she wondered, was he doing now?
Harry was making his way torturously down a cable dangling over the roof of the KCVO building. The chopper hovered right overhead, making a tremendous dip and causing the air to churn about its bulbous body.
The cable didn’t extend all the way down to the surface of the roof, obliging Harry to jump. It wasn’t much of a drop but he landed clumsily. For several moments, he lay on the asphalt, until he ascertained that his limbs were all in working order.
By the monstrous air conditioning unit and water cooler that rose on stilts from the roof, Harry located the trapdoor that would lead him down into the building’s interior. It was right where it was supposed to be. And it was locked.
Prepared for this eventuality, Harry attached a small timing device to it and waited until the second hand on his watch had completed two revolutions. The detonation was muffled. Unless one were a few feet away from it, one would have heard nothing.
The trap door opened with no problem. Harry signaled to the command post on Kearny that he was about to go in. The radio he gripped in his hand diminished Bressler’s voice, and made it sound tinny and unreal.
“Harry, the electricians have everything set up. Our men are in position. So we’re ready to go when you are. They should be on the air in three minutes.”
“OK, going in now.”
Lifting the trapdoor, he peered into the gloom. The entire building had been evacuated after the takeover. Those fortunate enough to escape had had no wish to linger about for the excitement.
An aluminum ladder brought him down into a corridor. At the far end a flourescent light had been left on. In its buzzing glare Harry could see a succession of offices, all with their doors closed.
Because there were lights over the elevators indicating at which floor the elevator currently was, Harry was compelled to use the stairwell to move from floor to floor. Otherwise, he was sure to alert the terrorists to his presence.
It all depended on how many terrorists there were. If they were limited to about six, as was thought, then there was no way they could keep an eye on the hostages and cover all the exits and the stairwells too. Harry just hoped that the reports were correct; should any fighting break out before he reached the sixth floor and the newsroom, his plan would be ruined.
In a whisper, he informed the command post that he was now on the seventh floor, that he had encountered no opposition. Although he didn’t say it, what really disturbed him was just how silent it was, as if the hostages and their captors had managed to pull off a disappearing act. But he recalled that since it was a television station, it had been designed to muffle extraneous noises.
“They’ve started broadcasting, Harry,” Bressler said. “We’ve got the Winston woman on our screens now. She’s reading their proclamation.”
“How does she seem?”
“Holding her own, I’d guess.”
“I’ll let you know when I get to the door.”
He began to advance down the final set of stairs, but it took him a while to do this as he was intent on maintaining silence. He had to be scrupulous about the sound every one of his footsteps made.
He leaned over the railing, just for a second, then slipped back into the shadows. A man was stationed on the door, a Chinese Type 66 automatic cradled in his arms. Harry waited, hardly daring to breathe, hoping he had not been spotted. But upon looking down again, he realized that he was still secure; the terrorist was undisturbed, even a little bored.
Harry drew out a four-inch “Moray” blade from his inside jacket pocket, which was where most of his small, but ingenious, arsenal was contained. Then he tossed down one of the timing devices. It made a sudden sharp noise, landing a few feet in front of the terrorist.
He raised his eyes, searching for the source of this strange object, but Harry had removed himself from sight. Then, warily, he approached the device, stooping down to inspect it. Until he had it in his hand, he might have thought it a chunk of plaster that had fallen from the ceiling.
By the time he comprehended what it was, Harry had crept down the stairs and come up behind him. He turned, ready to cry out, but with one hand Harry sealed his lips, with the other he slit his throat. The terrorist retched, then as his eyes filmed over, Harry allowed him to collapse.
He now affixed the timing device he’d used as a distraction, and a second one for good measure, to the door of the newsroom.
Softly into his radio he communicated to Bressler: “All right, I’m on six, one man eliminated, no problem here. Ready to go in two minutes, repeat two minutes, at signal, if you are ready down there.”
Several tense moments went by without a response. Harry presumed they were deliberating; this was not an easy decision to make.
Finally Bressler said, “We read you, Harry. That’s two minutes on go. You are clear for go. Repeat: You are clear for go. Signal is Zero-Alpha. Repeat: Signal is Zero-Alpha. I will give you a count of five, followed by the signal. That will begin the two minute count. Is everything understood?”
“Understood. Just tell me, how is Ellie doing?”
“She’s still reading. You wouldn’t believe how long this goddamn proclamation goes on for. We’ve initiated a phone conversation with one of the terrorists, but we’re getting nowhere with him. You ready?”
“Ready.”
“Five-four-three-two-one . . . Zero-Alpha.”
“Zero-Alpha.” Harry started the timers going and stepped away.
He took out his .44, steeling himself for the confrontation that was now less than two minutes away. Above him, a rectangular white fixture bathed the stairwell in a ghostly light. These electricians better have their act together, he thought, because if the timers went and the light remained on, he would be in a whole lot of trouble.
“You have forty-five seconds?” Bressler inquired over the radio.
“That’s right,” Harry confirmed.
“You got a vacation coming after this,” he said, maybe to buoy his spirits.
“Damn right I do. Thirty.”
“Mark thirty.”
He felt like an astronaut ready to be shot into space. Well, he might be shot, but not; necessarily into space.
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen,” said Harry. “Ten.” He stepped further back from the door and raised his .44 slightly higher in his hand. “Five, three, two, one.”
The detonations were not much louder than they’d been on top of the roof, but here in the stairwell, they seemed deafening. Harry was so conscious of the noise that for a second he failed to notice that the light above his head had gone out. The juice had been cut, and precisely on time.
He hurtled his body against the door which swept open for him.
A burst of gunfire greeted him in the darkness. Everywhere there was shouting and the rattle of automatics though it was impossible to say from where it was coming.
Harry was a shadow, a ghost, and the man doing the firing managed only to hit the door. Harry responded in kind, aiming in the direction of the fire. He heard a scream and saw a figure fall with a final, useless spasm of gunfire as his coda.
He got down immediately. The terrorists were shooting wildly, but as the police came streaming through other access points, they were hardpressed to know where to sight their weapons. Glass began to shatter as rounds impacted, inadvertently, against T.V. monitors and computer screens that were now as black as slate. The hostages were screaming and diving for cover, taking refuge under desks and editing machines.
Harry crawled between the legs of a table and beheld a man firing at random, apparently venting his frustration by firing on anyone he could see, caring little whether his victim was an officer or a hostage. In the darkness, he might hit one of his own.
Harry ended his spree abruptly by putting a .44 round in his chest. He pitched back and attempted in his last moments of life to return the fire, but hadn’t the strength. He collapsed
and died.
Almost from the start, the Small Man comprehended what was happening, and cursed the fate that had taken such a deadly turn. As soon as the lights went and the monitors died, he realized that he would not survive; certainly he did not care to spend the rest of his days incarcerated. His only recourse, he believed, was to take out as many of the hostages and as many police officers as he could, and die in a truly revolutionary manner. In a way, he had always longed for such a destiny.
His first victim was right in front of him. Or at least she was until the lights were extinguished. When he next looked, he saw she’d fled into the darkness. There was no opportunity at the outset of the invasion to search for her. He had to turn his attention to the invaders. Doors were opening throughout the floor as the police came barreling in.
Concentrating on just one of these entrances, he kept discharging his Mark 1, bringing down two officers, then a third. His advantage lay in the silence of his weapon. In the darkness, they couldn’t be sure where their opponent was, and the Small Man was quick and agile enough to keep switching his position just in case.
Next to him, he caught sight of Machito. Machito was half-concealed behind a computer terminal and his face contained a vast smile, for the truth was he was enjoying this last stand.
“We are showing them, aren’t we?” he called to the Small Man. “We are showing them all right!”
His voice must have given his location away. There was a spurt of automatic fire from his left, and then from his rear. He looked vastly surprised, though no less exultant, and when he opened his mouth to tell the Small Man that he’d been shot, blood frothed out. There was another shot and the left side of his ugly face vanished in blood and he toppled back to the floor.
It was then that the Small Man glanced around and spied Ellie. She was running toward a man, calling out his name. “Harry! Harry!” he heard her shouting.
They were within a foot or two of each other when the Small Man sacrificed his cover, stood up, and fired his Mark 1 three times in rapid succession.