The Collective

by Jack Rogan

  After she hung up, she sat back in the chair and smiled. As bizarre as the last twelve hours or so had been, Cait felt like she had people looking out for her. It was a nice feeling. She wasn’t happy with the idea of being interviewed for the newscast, but she allowed herself to believe that the fallout might not be as bad as she feared.

  A little instant celebrity, she thought. Fifteen seconds of fame. What harm could it do?

  The first thing that alerted Voss to the fact that something had gone wrong was the helicopter. A chopper buzzed overhead as they drove toward the Sarasota police station, headed in the same direction. A glance upward revealed police tags on the tail, but she told herself that it could be anything. Maybe the chief of police had been at a conference and Sarasota taxpayers were content to fund transportation by helicopter. Or perhaps there had been a chase out on the highway and the chopper crew was returning from their job.

  But then Voss spotted a news helicopter in the distance, moving toward the city’s gleaming new police station, and she ran out of ways to pretend that this wasn’t a bad sign.

  “Are you getting the idea that this isn’t going to go smoothly?” she asked, glancing at Ed Turcotte, whose grip had tightened on the steering wheel.

  Turcotte swore under his breath and blew through a red light, banging a hard left that made the tires skid and squeak. Voss braced herself on the dashboard and said nothing more for several long seconds as they raced ahead.

  The city had built a new police headquarters in the past few years—a contemporary structure of blue and silver, all clean lines. It looked more like the corporate headquarters of a TV network than a police station, but as Turcotte accelerated toward it, Voss had to admit the building was, at the very least, shiny. At the moment, however, no one would be paying attention to its architecture or the gleam of Florida sunshine off the windows. Sarasota police cars were arranged in a pattern all along the front of the building. Others had blocked off the street on either side. Still more vehicles—state police, Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office, emergency personnel—were parked at the edges of the cordoned area.

  Whatever crisis they’d happened upon, it was unfolding even as Turcotte pulled to the curb near the roadblock. Cops crouched behind their car, guns drawn, radios in hand. Tactical officers had been deployed on the roof. Voss glanced up and saw them hustling into position, the tips of their weapons visible, but she didn’t know what they hoped to accomplish. Something was going on inside, and they weren’t going to be able to do much from the roof, unless they had the equipment to rappel down and crash through the glass.

  As she climbed out of the car she looked up at the roof again, wondering if that was, indeed, what they planned. If they had been in the building when it started, they couldn’t easily get snipers into place on the roofs of nearby structures. They had to work with the hand they were dealt.

  “Let’s find out what this is,” Turcotte said as he slammed his door, keys jangling in his hand.

  Voss fell in beside him and they walked toward the cops manning the vehicles comprising the roadblock. She dug out her ID and Turcotte did the same.

  “FBI,” Turcotte told the young uniformed officer who stared at them as they approached.

  “Damn, you guys are fast,” the uniform said, wide-eyed.

  Voss thought the kid was in shock, that when Sarasota P.D. built their glittery new station house, he’d figured it was some kind of impregnable fortress. So much for that.

  “What the hell’s going on in there?” Turcotte asked.

  The young cop shook his head and gave a little laugh of disbelief. “Some guy we had in custody attacked one of our people and got his hands on a gun. From what I’m hearing, he killed at least three so far, including Detective Birnbaum, and now he’s got hostages.”

  Voss ran a hand over her face. “Shit,” she said, glancing at Turcotte. The second she had seen the chaos spread out in front of the building, she had known. “This is our suspect, isn’t it?”

  Turcotte nodded. “Most likely.”

  Voss scowled and led the way around the roadblock vehicles. She crouched low and ran toward a group of police officers who were behind a box truck with SARASOTA POLICE DEPARTMENT emblazoned on the side. She knew a situational command center when she saw one.

  Turcotte joined her when she was maybe twenty yards from the truck.

  “Wetherell’s with them,” he said.

  A quick glance confirmed it. Wetherell was the Florida State Police captain who’d been working the Greenlaw case with them. When the report had come in that Karim al-Jubouri had been arrested in a traffic stop and brought here, they’d had word that Captain Wetherell would meet them. But obviously the circumstances had changed.

  A couple of the cops surrounding the command center got twitchy when she and Turcotte approached. Voss held her ID in front of her like a talisman and they cleared her a path. Wetherell spotted her, then saw Turcotte hustling behind her, and Voss saw him tap the shoulder of an aging black man in a uniform that identified him as a lot higher up the ladder than a street cop.

  Through the open doors of the truck, she saw cops wearing heavy headphones and watching screens and monitors. They’d have remote access to the security cameras inside the building, and probably to the phone and Internet service inside as well. As Voss and Turcotte reached the truck, Wetherell and the man in charge came to meet them.

  “Agent Turcotte,” Captain Wetherell said. “This is Ron Lewis, deputy commissioner of the Sarasota P.D. Ron, meet Ed Turcotte, FBI, and Rachael Voss, Homeland Security ICD.”

  Deputy Commissioner Lewis had a firm handshake, but he was only half paying attention. Beads of sweat glistened on his forehead, and Voss didn’t think it was just from the warmth of the day. He glanced toward the police station.

  “Sorry the commissioner can’t be here himself,” he said. “He’s otherwise engaged.”

  The grim tone had the air of gallows humor. Voss knew it well. Three of the officers under Lewis’s command were already dead, and others might still die before the day was out. The man wiped a big coffee-brown hand across his face and then looked at them.

  “I’d ask what I can do for you,” he said, glancing from Voss to Turcotte, “but I’m more interested in what you can do for me.”

  “We’ll do whatever we can, Commissioner,” Turcotte said. Voss glanced at Wetherell. “Are we assuming this is our guy?”

  Wetherell’s expression darkened. “We know it is. Security cameras caught it all. Street cops stopped al-Jubouri because the sticker on his license plate was out-of-date.”

  Details, Voss thought. Always the little details.

  “The officers ran his license and registration,” Lewis explained. “They got a hit—the BOLO you-all put out for him—and took him into custody on the spot. But while they were escorting him to an interview room, he went after one of the officers, managed to get hold of his weapon … and now he’s got a lot of weapons and a lot of hostages.”

  “What does he want?” Turcotte asked.

  Voss glanced at the building, then at the cops doing their job in the command center in the back of the truck. The tactical squad would be getting their orders from there, as would the rest of the officers gathered around. She and Turcotte might be talking to the men in charge, but while this conversation was going on, the situation was still unfolding.

  “So far he’s made only one demand,” Wetherell said. “He wants a computer with Internet access and a camera.”

  Voss felt her heart sink. She looked at Turcotte and saw that he understood.

  “There aren’t going to be any more demands,” Voss said.

  “What do you mean?” Lewis asked. “He’ll want a car or a helicopter. Safe passage out of here. He’ll take at least one hostage with him. One of the detectives has already offered to be that hostage.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Turcotte said. “With this guy’s history and training, you’ve got to consider him a terrorist. He k
nows he’s not getting out of there unless it’s to prison or the morgue. If he wants a camera and ’net access, I’m guessing it’s so he can go live, make some kind of statement. Whatever cause he represents, he wants to make sure he’s a martyr for it. Publicly.”

  “That’s not going to happen,” Wetherell said, turning to Lewis. “You can’t give it to him.”

  “What other option do I have? Send in the tactical It’ll be a bloodbath.”

  Voss stepped in a little closer. These men were all physically imposing, while she was petite and blond. Men who didn’t know her tended to flirt, and sometimes she flirted back, just to fulfill their expectations. But these men reacted to her now because of her intensity. She might not be able to loom over them, but she could be formidable when she wanted to be.

  “You’re not thinking clearly, Commissioner,” she said. “No offense. Under the circumstances, it’s understandable. But right now I want you to listen to me.”

  She had their attention.

  “This thing can only lead to more people dead. There’s no way for it to go any other way. You said there are three dead already. If we’re lucky, al-Jubouri will be the only new name added to that list. But odds are that he won’t be. This guy is ready to die, and ready to pull the trigger. At some point, he’s going to start killing people. The question you’ve got to ask yourself is, how good is your tactical unit? And can they save lives by going in now?”

  The deputy commissioner’s dark-coffee skin had turned café au lait. “I don’t know.”

  Turcotte shook his head. “The answer’s no. At least for now. Have your negotiators keep him talking. Promise him ’net access and tell him we’re working on finding him a laptop with a camera. Buy us some time.”

  “Time for what?” Captain Wetherell said. “This situation is not going to improve.”

  Voss shot him a hard look. “Captain, SSA Turcotte here used to run one of the FBI’s best counterterrorism units. He’s going to get his own people in here.”

  Turcotte looked at Lewis. “Commissioner, all decisions from this point are going to have to come from the FBI. The Hostage Rescue Team at Quantico has been notified—”

  “There’s no time for anyone at Quantico to get here before this thing goes south,” Wetherell said.

  “I have an FBI SWAT team on the way from the field office,” Turcotte said. “When they arrive, they will decide how to proceed in a manner that involves the least possible risk for the hostages. Meanwhile, your people are to maintain their current positions unless al-Jubouri surrenders or puts himself in the line of fire, in which case they are to shoot him.”

  “To wound, not to kill,” Voss added.

  “What?” Wetherell asked, incredulous.

  Voss turned to Turcotte. “If at all possible, we’ve got to keep this guy alive.”

  “Not if it means giving him extra time to harm his hostages,” Turcotte replied.

  “Right now he’s the only link we have to the Greenlaw murders, never mind whatever terrorist activities his cell is involved with,” Voss argued. “And he may well be our only hope of finding that missing baby up in Maine.”

  Turcotte exhaled, then turned to stare at the police station in furious silence. The sun glinted off its glass and steel.

  “Shit,” he whispered. “There’s no way this ends well.”

  Sometimes Voss hated being right.

  The shopping cart had a squeaky wheel. Jane felt sure it had not been squealing when she’d first plopped Leyla into the baby seat and strapped her in, tucking her chubby legs through the openings in the mesh. The squeaking had begun about halfway through their sojourn amongst the aisles of Super Stop & Shop, and by then there had been too many things in the cart to switch it for another.

  Not that Jane had been tempted to switch at that point. A little squeak was not so irritating, especially when she had Leyla there, blowing little bubbles and smiling, not to mention reaching out to grab something if Jane parked the cart too close to a shelf. Leyla made her happy enough that at first she had managed to ignore the squeak. The baby girl had that effect on a lot of people, drawing smiles wherever she went.

  Now, though, with the cart full and the groceries paid for, the squeak had finally started to fray her nerves.

  “Okay, you ready to go home?” she asked Leyla.

  The baby gurgled adorably, which helped take the edge off. Jane sighed in amusement at her own agitation and pushed the cart along the front of the store. Having Leyla around had added a little to her weekly grocery bill, though she would never mention it to Cait. Her niece always brought diapers and baby food over, but it never seemed enough, so Jane supplemented that with purchases of her own. Tommy showed no signs of giving her a grandchild anytime soon, so if she spoiled Leyla a little bit—with the occasional toy or new outfit—she just considered it “grandma practice.”

  A couple of teenagers were coming into the store, bumping each other and snickering in the shared-secret way girls that age always seemed to have. When they saw Leyla, though, their eyes lit up.

  “Oh, my God, she is so freakin’ cute,” one of the girls said, as her friend crouched to make faces at the baby.

  “She is pretty adorable,” Jane agreed.

  “Except when she cries, right?” the girl said.

  But then the crouching girl gave Jane an odd look—one she recognized. She had seen it many times before. “So, are you, like, the nanny or something?”

  “She’s my niece’s baby, actually,” Jane explained. “Her father is from Iraq.”

  “Oh,” the girl said, obviously not quite sure what to make of that. But Jane saw a new curiosity in the girl’s eyes.

  Jane waited for them to move along and then she pushed the cart outside, strapped Leyla into her car seat, and then loaded the groceries into the trunk. The change in temperature rippled across her skin. She hadn’t realized how chilly it had been inside the Super Stop & Shop with the air conditioner going full blast, but the August sun quickly warmed her. She thought that anyone who complained about the heat on such a splendid day ought to shut up come January, when the snow was hip-deep and the wind chill below zero.

  At the moment, though, winter was very far away. She wore a blue cotton spaghetti-strap top, blue jeans, and sandals. In the supermarket, she had bought Popsicles and ice-cream sandwiches—George loved those, and had since childhood—but now she’d started thinking perhaps they ought to leave the snacks in the freezer and go out and get a decent ice-cream cone this afternoon.

  Better yet, we should go visit Karen.

  As she fired up her Accord and pulled out of the parking lot, turning toward home, she wondered how Caitlin would feel about a trip down to the Cape tomorrow. They could visit George’s sister, Karen, spend the day at the beach in Chatham, and if they stayed late enough they might well miss most of the traffic. Even if George didn’t want to make the drive, they could still go. Girls’ day out.

  She mulled it over while driving, but as she turned from Winthrop Street onto Badger Road, a chill went through her. While she and Leyla had been shopping, she hadn’t thought about the strangeness last night and this morning with those cars across the street. Now she tensed, wondering if they might have returned. But as she drove up Badger Road, she saw no sign of the mysterious observers and she exhaled with relief, her smile returning.

  “What do you think, Leyla?” Jane said, as she pulled into her driveway. “Do you want to go to the beach tomorrow?”

  The car seat was rear-facing, but Jane could hear Leyla burbling to herself.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” she said as she killed the engine. “Just give me a second, babycakes,” Jane added as she got out of the car.

  She opened the back door to keep the heat from accumulating in the car. Leyla shook a ring of plastic keys at her. Jane grinned, then popped the trunk and surveyed her groceries. There were several plastic sacks, but most of the groceries were in reusable fabric bags with the Super Stop & Shop logo on the
side. Some of Jane’s friends teased her about being a twenty-first-century hippie; she tried to tell them that doing her part for the environment didn’t make anyone a hippie these days, just practical.

  She’d gather up a few bags, then take Leyla into the house with the first load, she decided. That way, the baby would be cool in the house while she collected the rest of the groceries.

  Without the car’s motion and the noise of the engine to lull her, Leyla had started to fuss. In another minute, the baby would start to cry.

  “I’m coming, sweetie,” Jane called as she juggled the bags into a more stable position in her arms. But when she went around to the backseat to collect Leyla, she let out a little yelp as she discovered a man standing just three feet away.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, smiling. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just … you’ve got your baby there, and I thought I’d see if you needed help.”

  Jane laughed, embarrassed that she’d been so startled. But then she hesitated. Where the hell had he come from? Thirtyish and blue-eyed, he was handsome in a scruffy sort of way, but she didn’t recognize him; he didn’t live on Badger Road.

  “Oh, she’s not mine. I’m a little too old for babies,” she said, studying him warily. “And I’ve got it. But thanks for—”

  An engine roared, a gleaming black sedan skidded to a halt at the curb, and Jane turned, panicking as realization struck her.

  Her blue-eyed helper punched her so hard that she staggered backward and banged her head on the open trunk lid, the bags dropping from her hands. Dazed, her mind whirling with questions amidst the pain and anger, still Jane reacted. She caught the bumper and forced herself up, even as her attacker gripped her throat with one hand and shoved with the other, trying to force her back toward the trunk.

  “No, you won’t, you son of a bitch,” she grunted, fighting back.

  As she tried to break the grip on her throat, she kicked out with one foot and felt sick satisfaction at the solid connection. The heel of her sandal struck his knee and the bastard swore, loosening his grip.