Hawke's Prey

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  “You need help. Look around, Ethan. You’re outgunned both in here and out there, from what I’ve heard. They have our kids. If you don’t do something pretty soon, we’re going to have enough men to do the job ourselves.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind!” Armstrong’s voice was flat. “You’ll get yourselves and everybody else killed. You might have one child in there, but right now they’re all mine and I’m the one responsible.” He pointed his finger at one after another to make it personal. “Not you, not you, not you, and not you! This takes planning.”

  Hearing the authority in his voice, the line of men went wobbly. Indecisive. For the first time, Ethan took note of the crowd around them. Women filled in the voids among the taller males. The smell of fear and wet clothing was rank.

  They’re scared, and scared people can be dangerous.

  Ethan was surprised to feel sweat droplets the size of BBs roll down his cheeks.

  All tensed and bunched up in the lobby, the faces of friends, neighbors, and family members reflected the strain of the day. These were people Ethan grew up with, who knew one another, had been married-in relatives, then cut adrift to become parts of other families who sometimes argued, fought, and talked bad about one another. But in light of what was happening down the block, they moved and reacted as one to protect their own. He expected nothing different.

  “We have one thing in our favor. Sonny Hawke’s inside and giving us the information we need, but it’s coming out in bits and pieces.”

  Ernie ran his fingers up and down the rifle strap over his shoulder. “How’re they letting one hostage talk to you and not the others?”

  “He’s not a hostage. The last time I talked to him, he was in the attic.”

  “He’s hiding in an attic while somebody points a gun at my kid?” Ernie feigned surprise to incite those around him. “We got a lawman, a Texas Ranger hiding out instead of doing something?”

  Ethan’s face flushed. “Those are your words, not mine. Sonny will do what he has to, when he can.” His eyes narrowed. “How about I call him over when he gets out? Then you can call him a coward to his face.”

  Ernie seemed relieved when a dark-haired, athletic woman pushed to the front. Ethan remembered seeing her in BDUs several times on the street after she returned from a tour of duty overseas. This time she was dressed in jeans and a heavy coat.

  “Is there any way we can sneak anyone in there with him?” Her accent was soft, the kind most men like to hear from a woman of Spanish descent. Her sun-darkened skin was the color of oiled mahogany.

  “No. We believe they have people watching every side of the building.” He studied her. “You’ve been overseas.”

  “Yes.”

  “I can’t recall your name.”

  “Yolanda Rodriguez. I’d like to help.”

  Ethan waved toward the command center. “Go on back there if you want. We might can use you.”

  She plucked at the sleeve of a tough-looking man Ethan didn’t recognize. “Perry’s someone you want, too.”

  The stocky man who hadn’t shaved in several days oozed confidence. Like Yolanda, he moved with a military bearing. Both wore sidearms and carried AR carbines.

  Ethan flicked a hand. “Go on back.” He stopped sharp at still another idiotic comment.

  “I say we go in and make a citizen’s arrest.”

  Ethan raised his head to identify the voice. It came from another move-in who he recognized but didn’t know. “Citizen’s arrest?”

  The man found somewhere else to look, but it was too little, too late.

  “Citizen’s arrest?”

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and shrugged it off. Herman moved up and addressed the speaker. “Buddy, if I were you, I’d get myself shed of this place and let these men do their jobs. Ernie, you better go with him before you open your head again.”

  The men faded to the rear as Clay Burke leaned in, his voice full of emotion. “Ethan, Matt’s in there. You know how he needs his routine. I can’t imagine what he’s going through right now . . . hell, I don’t even know how he’d react to shootin’ and strangers with guns. I’m afraid he’s gonna do something to make those people mad, and they’ll hurt ’im.” His voice broke. “I couldn’t live with myself if someone hurt my sweet son while he was in there, calling for me while I stand here and do nothin’.”

  Ethan’s chest ached. “I know that, Clay. We’re all scared. Me too. Y’all, my daughter’s in there, and Gabe’s girl, and Phil’s boy, and Sonny’s twins and his wife.” His voice was hoarse and forced from his chest.

  “And my wife.” Carlita’s husband spoke up, his expression a combination of dread and immense sadness.

  “That’s right.” Ethan gathered himself. “There’s lots more. I have to do this slow and make decisions that might cost lives. I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong answer. There’s never been anything like this in the whole United States. Ever.”

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “If that phone rings and we get a conversation started with those people, I may say the wrong thing, so don’t think I don’t understand.”

  He didn’t want to tell them that the terrorists probably planned to kill the hostages if their demands weren’t met, if those came at all. For all he knew, this was a murder raid that had already proven successful.

  He swallowed. Good lord. That’s a phrase that should have died out at the end of the Indian wars.

  “Y’ all give me a little while longer to work on this. We’re putting something together right now, but it isn’t concrete.”

  The phone in his pocket vibrated with a text from Sonny.

  Chapter 46

  Texting is a young person’s way of communicating, but I did the best I could do. Keeping an eye on the door, I finished and pushed send. The skinny blue bar at the top of the screen grew longer.

  Perplexed held in missing Norge

  3 Ed fleur courts loo

  The instant before the message went I saw the misspellings and the damn autocorrection. I typed again.

  Hot Dogs.

  Dammit!

  Hostages

  I tried again and hit send.

  on 3

  Send.

  Dammit!

  The battery icon in the upper-right corner showed it had dropped below twenty percent. I hoped Ethan would figure the rest out, but there was no time to retype the whole thing. What I wanted was to call and talk to him in detail about what I’d found. I wasn’t sure, but I remembered one of the kids saying that texting took less juice.

  How the hell can it keep going down? I haven’t made any calls.

  I reached for the doorknob as the phone on the conference table blared with that annoying business ring that’s supposed to be less jangling. I was coiled as tight as a mainspring, and unwound the same way. I bet my feet lifted three inches off the floor. I yanked the cord from the wall, cutting off the next ring in the middle of the tone.

  Two steps back. I cocked my hat and put my ear against the door. Hearing nothing, I reached for the knob the exact second it twisted from the other side. The sight scared the pee-waddlin’ out of me. I stepped inside the swing with my back to the wall. Lady Luck was still with me because there was two feet of space behind the door with nothing back there but a hat tree wearing a dusty gimme cap.

  Whoever was on the other side didn’t enter the room like I would in the same situation. Any lawman is trained to first check between the jamb and door to see if anyone is hiding back there. Instead he pushed it open and followed his nasty little MP5 inside. I backed up until the door hit the wall, leaving me standing in that small triangle of space.

  The guy pulled up sharp at the sight of the ripped-out phone cord.

  I stepped out at the same time the ceiling collapsed. Something big and heavy landed on the conference table with a wallop in a cloud of dust and wood. The startled guy snapped an MP5 to his shoulder and froze, processing the sight of a fellow terrorist groaning and covered w
ith plaster, dirt, and insulation.

  He recognized his buddy and laughed loud and sharp while the swan diver groaned and thumped his heel against the table, struggling to suck air back into his lungs.

  “Que idiota! You fell through the techo!”

  I never did like a smartass.

  I took two steps, reached around under his chin with my right hand, and jerked his head up and to the right as hard as I could. At the same time I dropped my weight yanking downward. I wasn’t sure twisting his neck up and back down would do what I wanted, but it worked better than I imagined.

  His neck broke with a crack. Arms stiffened at his sides, the Mexican seized up and dropped like a poleaxed steer.

  The room was full of dust as more insulation trickled thought the opening. The dead guy’s friend on the table rolled onto his side to get up. I untangled from the first body and lunged forward, grabbing the Fall Guy from behind.

  He recovered faster than I expected and caught me by surprise when he shoved backward with both feet. We flew back from the table and slammed into the wall. I needed to get him off balance, and fast, but all the crap on the floor from the ceiling kept tripping me up.

  He grunted and did his best to twist in my arms. We spun halfway around, but I wrapped my right arm around his thick bull neck and squeezed as hard as I could with the sleep hold banned by police departments all across the country.

  I didn’t think anyone would care at this point, other than the guy who still had the gas to get both feet against the heavy table and push backward a second time.

  We hit the floor beside the corpse with the Fall Guy on top. Had he not still been out of breath and hurt, I couldn’t have taken him. The guy was made of spring steel and saddle leather and he damn-near got away from me. If he had, it would have all been over but the cryin’.

  I wrapped both legs around his and used my wrist against his throat to compress his carotid artery. Grunting, he elbowed me in the ribs. I couldn’t believe how tough he was after dropping ten feet and knocking the breath out of his lungs. His hands flailed at my arms and fluttered about, trying to find something, anything to use against me.

  Gagging and coughing, I squeezed harder like a boa constrictor, tightening my bizarre embrace every time I got the chance. It seemed like an hour before he weakened, and when he did, I increased the pressure on his carotids to finish him off.

  His legs twitched, feet drumming on the floor. I felt him quiver as he died, and it was one of the most personal things that had ever happened to me. My body went numb, and I gasped in horror at what I was doing, but I didn’t let go.

  I couldn’t.

  He trembled again and his arms fell limp. I kept up the pressure as long as I dared, all the while expecting someone to blow into the room with guns firing.

  Exhausted, I turned loose and lay there limp as a dishrag, thankful there hadn’t been more fight in the guy. He was a stud hoss. Throwing an arm across my nose and mouth, I laid on the floor coughing and gagging. When I could open my eyes, I saw Arturo staring down through the hole in the ceiling.

  I closed my eyes again, and rested for another second.

  Chapter 47

  DeVaca’s frustration grew in direct proportion to the information not coming into his ear. The faint voice of the Demon whispered louder, urging him to lose control and do what he did best to satisfy his hunger.

  Ignoring what his grandmother called El pequeño monstruo Lorenzo, the little Lorenzo monster, he leaned over the hole to see Tin Man staring upward. “You’re telling me you can’t find that tunnel out of there?”

  Tin Man shook his head. “No, señor.”

  “How can it be that hard? The damned basement can’t be any bigger than this building’s footprint.”

  “This place is packed solid with mierda stacked against the walls, including perdirdas cilindros llenos de muerte. We have to move them very carefully, then inspect the areas behind them. We’re tiptoeing on cascaras de huevos down here.”

  The corner of DeVaca’s mouth twitched at lost cylinders of death. He liked the sound of the phrase.

  Despite his frustration, DeVaca understood how the basement had been kept secret and almost forgotten. His research showed the plumbing was installed in the 1920s. The extensive renovation in the 1950s was most likely part of the government’s need to store chemical weapons with as little knowledge and fanfare as possible, funded out of a black budget.

  “Sir.”

  DeVaca tore his mind from the problems in the basement to find Dorothy beside him, still wearing the hijab. Her blue eyes, though, were expressive.

  The Demon made DeVaca wonder how those soft orbs would taste if he had the opportunity to roll them around in his mouth like peeled grapes. He thought they’d taste of blueberries. The Demon squirmed in hunger.

  “Go ahead.”

  She blinked, long lashes catching the harsh lights. “There’s a problem. We have no connection with Scarecrow or Lion.”

  “For how long?”

  “When we still hadn’t heard from Scarecrow on your last check, I sent Lion to check on him. He isn’t back yet.”

  “Well that means they’re probably together or with the hostages.” He scanned the rotunda overhead, then double-checked the four doors at the end of the short intersecting hallways on the ground floor. They were secure. “Go find them. Start with the communications and electrical panels.”

  She narrowed her eyes, and he remained fascinated by them. “They’ll be organizing a response soon. We need to be ready.”

  “They’re waiting for us. Oz will radio back in”—he checked his watch—“fifteen minutes. That’s when he will draw them into negotiations, and that will buy us more time.”

  She shot a cuff, checked her own watch, and wrote the time on her slim forearm with a ballpoint pen. “What do we do about the hostages when they send people in?” Dorothy jerked her head upward. “We’ll need everyone to repel, and it’s snowing so hard outside they’ll be on us before we see them.”

  “All right. Pull everyone down to this floor except those guarding the hostages. Leave one post on the second floor, just in case.”

  “Done.” She hefted her weapon. “Anything else?”

  He’d been chewing the inside of his lip until it bled, anything to keep his hands off the woman who was drawing him like a magnet. DeVaca savored the metallic flavor. “If an assault materializes and they get in before we’re ready, I want you to kill the hostages if our men up there are incapable of doing it. That will free them up to pull back here.” He pointed toward the southern door. “If we’re breached and can’t get out through that tunnel”—he leaned over and spoke into the hole—“and they better find the sonofabitch!”—he lowered his voice again—“then we’ll deploy gas in here and use the van, if we can get through the snow with it.”

  “It won’t hold everyone.”

  “It won’t need to.” He tapped the dusty cylinder with his shoe. “Alternate plan. That’s why the gas masks and bio suits are in the van.”

  She smiled with her eyes, and he tasted blueberries.

  Chapter 48

  It took me a while to recover from the fight. Struggling to my knees, I hoped no one else was coming, because I was worn out. I decided to just shoot the next guy because it’d take a whole lot less effort.

  I squinted up at Arturo straddling two rough-hewn joists. I held up a hand, telling him to be quiet and wait. “Are you all right?” My voice was soft, just loud enough for the youngster to hear.

  Instead of answering, Arturo gave a thumbs-up.

  “Good. Stay out of sight.” I swung the MP5 back into position and checked the weapon to be sure it was ready. I glanced back up, but Arturo was already gone.

  Even though I had a good idea no one was in the Grand Jury room, I was careful just the same. Hand on the grip and finger in line along the trigger guard, I opened the door and slipped inside, my sight line following the muzzle. The dark, cavernous room was almost empty, with not
hing but a backpack on a table that belonged to the guy with the broken neck.

  Chapter 49

  The text from Sonny was all boogered up.

  Ethan held the cell out. “What does this mean?”

  Despite the situation, Deputy Frank Malone grinned. “It’s autocorrect. He’s telling us where the hostages are, but it keeps changing the words on him. He says some of them are in the third-floor courtroom.” He used a marker to place an X on the floor plan. “Sonny says they’re right here.”

  The command center filled with people’s questions and comments. Silent and watchful, Yolanda Rodriguez and Perry Hale leaned in to see where he was pointing.

  “That’s the Grand Jury room.” Herman fiddled with his mustache, thinking. “The third floor is a long way up.”

  Sheriff Armstrong chewed his lip. “Yeah, and the only way to get up there is the stairs or elevator.”

  Charles Irwin jerked a thumb upward. “Can we get a helicopter over the roof?”

  Others chimed in with so many questions that they ran together.

  “I say we send somebody out to negotiate.”

  “Who’s in there with them?”

  “All y’all shut up and listen.” Ethan’s voice wasn’t loud, but it held the power to make them stop talking. “Let me think a little while.”

  Chapter 50

  Keeping an eye on the double doors leading into the hallway, I scanned the Grand Jury room, making sure no one was hiding behind the judge’s bench. That’s where I’d be if I was laying for someone who’d just killed two of my friends. Then again, it wouldn’t offer much cover if anyone opened up with a rifle. Keeping the telescoping H&K’s butt snug against the hollow of my shoulder, I sidestepped away from the conference room.

  Despite two walls of twenty-foot windows reaching to the ceiling, the snow-filtered light was dim, making the room dark and gloomy. I kept an eye on the rows of wooden seats bolted to the floor, half expecting someone to rise up from the gallery and start shooting.