The Siege

by Stephen White

  Poe also catalogued the fact that the jogger did not appear to be at all winded and that his shirt wasn’t sweaty. Not in the center of his chest. Not in the pits under his arms. No sweat-matted hair was stuck to his forehead or to his temples. No tendrils were moistened on his neck.

  In the New Haven humidity that meant either that the man was a freak of nature, or that he had just started his run.

  Without trying to stare, without being obvious, Poe registered every last thing about the guy.

  The runner’s most obvious tell was that the back of his bone-dry T-shirt read “NYU.”

  The team has just landed from the City, he thought. And that jogger is my receiver. He’s wearing his New York City tracking clothes—he’s so new in town he didn’t even have time to switch it out for Yale garb. He’s the one who caught the blonde’s pass. Poe thought that the runner’s microphone was hidden in the gray headband he was wearing. His earpiece was disguised in his mop of dark hair.

  SSG is here, Poe concluded. Well, damn.

  The FBI had brought their crack surveillance squad—the Special Surveillance Group, SSG—up from New York City. The NY team, the Bureau’s most elite, had urban tracking skills that were refined to perfection. On foot, or in vehicles, they were legends. Poe felt like a bird-watcher who had somehow stumbled across the rarest and most elusive of species. He knew he’d been fortunate to spot SSG at all. He felt particularly proud that he had managed to ID two of the surveillance team members while they were actively working a tail.

  He knew he had probably missed three or four more that had been part of the intricate choreography. But still, Damn.

  SSG guys were the superheroes of domestic surveillance. Their powers were their teamwork and their practiced, bland invisibility. They were the ones called on to invisibly track the pro who was certain he was being followed. As individuals, SSG team members were designed to be easy to miss. They blended like blades of grass in a lush lawn, snowflakes in a drift. They were the hay-colored needles in the golden haystack.

  Poe thought, These SSG guys like my out-of-town cop for something.

  Poe knew that with SSG in New Haven he couldn’t tail the out-of-town cop any longer. If he made one false move, SSG would sweep him up, too. They wouldn’t miss the attention he was paying to their prey.

  Poe had to disappear without drawing any additional notice to himself. He chanced one last glance toward the jogger—the man hadn’t reappeared around the back of the cemetery—before he marched into the same throng that had swallowed the blond fake grad student.

  He made his way through the crowd and exited the throng behind the law school. He cleared his head and spent a moment considering what he knew about the response in New Haven from his colleagues in the FBI.

  The Hostage Rescue Team was in New Haven. Poe had seen them.

  That meant that HRT commanders had undoubtedly taken over planning and control for rescuing the hostages at Book & Snake. HRT typically traveled with both assault and sniper teams. The sniper teams deployed quickly; Poe felt confident they were already in place. That meant that multiple sniper teams would have set up shop in high-ground positions—in this urban landscape that would mean rooftops or building windows. Poe was certain that the snipers had already begun twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance of the tomb, their scopes and weapons aimed at preassigned target fields covering a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of Book & Snake. The snipers missed nothing. If a fly landed on a doorknob, they would report what direction it was facing.

  In a jungle, in a desert, in the mountains, or in this urban miasma, the snipers were masters of camouflage. Poe knew that he could spend all day staring up at the tops of the nearby buildings trying to spot the snipers’ lairs and he would not find them. He wouldn’t spy the glint of glass on their scopes’ lenses. He wouldn’t find the hard horizontal lines of their rifles’ barrels. He wouldn’t see whatever city version of ghillie veils the snipers had constructed to augment their camouflage.

  If HRT was in New Haven, then the FBI talkers were surely in New Haven. The talkers were the hostage negotiators. They were the FBI agents whose job it was to make contact with the hostage takers. They were tasked to coax an outcome that would keep the FBI commanders from ever having to give the orders to send in the assault teams.

  If the Hostage Rescue assault teams were ordered into Book & Snake, they would not proceed ambivalently. HRT did not stand for “Hesitant, Reluctant, and Tentative.” Assault teams went in hot and heavy. Their introduction into the Book & Snake tomb would involve explosives, firearms, and blinding speed. People would certainly die.

  The talkers were supposed to prevent that.

  Once the assault teams moved in, the talkers’ job was done. The second an order was given for an assault team breach was the second after headquarters acknowledged that the negotiators had run out of time. Productive time, tactical time, political time. Whatever.

  Poe thought, Waco. Ruby Ridge.

  If HRT were in New Haven, and the talkers were in New Haven, then the support personnel that fed them, literally and figuratively—minds and bellies—while they were on the road were in town, too. Helicopters, both small and large, were deployed nearby, at the ready. Medics and medical support units were in place. Transport vehicles, armored and not, were at their disposal. Mobile communications were active. Investigative officers were doing intel. A logistics unit was making it all possible.

  Although any individual HRT operator could deploy as light as air, HRT en masse did not travel light.

  And Poe had discovered that SSG was in town, too.

  SSG wasn’t attached to HRT. SSG was not comprised of special agents. The FBI’s Special Surveillance Group had one job. They tracked people and vehicles. Poe wished he knew if they were in town to stand by to support HRT, if they were in town to go fishing, or if they’d already had targets identified when they arrived.

  Was it possible that the out-of-town cop without the shoulder holster—the one that SSG was tailing—was a target of opportunity, someone they’d stumbled across at the perimeter? Could he be an accomplice of the guy inside the tomb?

  Poe didn’t know whether he would learn more by watching the surveillance team or by looking for the out-of-town cop. Poe knew he wouldn’t know the answer to that question until he knew the identity of the out-of-town cop.

  Poe considered the roster of fed involvement that went beyond the Bureau. If anyone else in FBI intelligence had come to the same conclusion as Poe—that the events at Book & Snake were a potential terrorist act—then JTTF would be active in the investigation, too. The Joint Terrorism Task Force was a multiagency, multidisciplinary team with responsibility to do local emergency response to perceived terrorist threats. They could be in town already—emergency response is what they were set up to do.

  A dozen other counterterrorism agencies could be on the ground, too.

  For Poe, it all meant that he had a long list of feds he didn’t want to bump into.

  Poe texted Dee. SSG is here.

  Who?

  Poe forgot sometimes that Dee worked the other side of the aisle, that she was CIA, not FBI.

  Bureau’s best trackers, from NYC.

  Oh.

  He asked, Did you hear anything from Langley?

  Nothing. It’s all ntk.

  The cryptic “ntk” didn’t compute for a second. Poe finally made the translation: need-to-know. Dee was telling him that she wasn’t getting access to whatever raw data Langley was receiving from New Haven.

  That posed a problem for Poe. He was counting on her help with the intelligence side. He couldn’t risk operating solo and blind. He hoped she could at least let him know what had just happened in front of the tomb.

  Poe typed, What happened to the secretary of the army’s kid?

  He read something off a card. I didn’t hear it. Then he went back into the tomb.

  Is he the first hostage to go back inside?

  He is, Poe. He is.

>   Poe texted his assistant in the District.

  FBI regulations prohibited the use of text messaging for official communication—special agents were required to use email for business.

  But Poe didn’t want to use official channels. The hostage situation did not fit comfortably into his portfolio. The media profile was way too high. The victims were too prominent. The moment his superiors learned he was in New Haven was the moment he would be ordered to abort whatever he was doing. That’s why he was texting instead of emailing. In Poe’s hierarchy of official sins, use of an unapproved communication method was venial.

  He thumbed, SSG is here. Why?

  His assistant’s reply was On it.

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EARLY EVENING

  Poe

  After he left SSG behind to complete the tailing of the out-of-town cop, Poe continued to blend in with the crowd. He returned to the backside of Beinecke Plaza, hoping to learn something new, and hoping to get lucky. He tried to become part of the cluster of gawkers that was gathered on the far side of Wall Street. But there wasn’t much to gawk at. From that location, the blunt form of the Beinecke Library completely blocked the line of sight to the back of Book & Snake.

  Suddenly, the insistent beat of a bass guitar accompanied by enthusiastic drumming engulfed Poe.

  The volume started off loud. With each beat it seemed to get louder.

  At first it was four notes. Pause. Four notes. Pause. Four notes. Pause.

  The stone buildings and the stone plaza provided the necessary ingredients for echoes. The reverberations soon filled the pauses with ever-diminishing beats of bass and percussion.

  The volume of the song topped off at eleven on a ten scale. The music seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. Poe spun to find the source of the beat. He completed a three-sixty. The noise—it had gotten too loud to be considered music—seemed to be emanating from everywhere at once.

  He saw almost everyone around him doing the same thing he was doing—looking every which way to locate who was playing the music. Where it was coming from.

  A kid pointed toward the law school. Poe was baffled. His ears would have guessed one of the colleges on Cross Campus.

  A few more seconds and it was clear to Poe that the song was hip-hop. What artist? He knew nothing about hip-hop.

  As a male vocalist kicked in with some rap lyrics that Poe couldn’t decipher, the volume seemed to increase. He wondered if that was an illusion or if it were possible that his ears could really register anything as louder than the noise he’d already heard. Some of the people gathered closest to Poe started to cover their ears and grimace.

  Others began walking or running to get away from the noise.

  Poe stayed put. He was determined not to be distracted. He focused his attention on the back of the Book & Snake tomb.

  What are you up to?

  The tomb gave up no secrets.

  The music pounded.

  He tried to make a judgment about how the authorities outside the tomb were responding to the noise. He stepped down the sidewalk across from Woolsey, moving closer to the cemetery.

  The noise on the backside of Woolsey was even more deafening.

  Is this possible?

  Poe’s BlackBerry vibrated. Deirdre’s name lit up the caller ID. He raised the device to his face. “Hey,” he said.

  “What is that noise?” she said.

  Poe couldn’t hear her. He said, “Somebody started playing some hip-hop so loud I can’t even hear myself think. I’ll call you back. I have to think it’s the unsub. I don’t know what it means.”

  He killed the call. He was close enough to the corner that he could see the black suits of an HRT assault team congregated out of sight of the front of the tomb. The individual HRT members were looking in different directions. They couldn’t locate the source of the music either. He assumed they had all inserted ear protection. They weren’t known for their lack of preparation.

  After about five minutes the music stopped. At first, the silence seemed as loud as the song had been.

  Poe returned to the backside of Beinecke Plaza so he could once again eye the rear corner of the tomb. He couldn’t identify any changes.

  He returned Dee’s call. “You’re not on board?”

  “I missed that flight. I’m on the next one. Do you know what that noise was?” she said.

  Thank you. “Not sure. I’m thinking the unsub just bombed the whole area around the tomb with a hip-hop song at outrageous volume.”

  “I got that much on CNN. Distraction?”

  Poe said, “I guess. The question is for what purpose.”

  Dee said, “Could be a million things. Anybody puts together that I’m helping you, I’m dead, Poe. You know that?”

  “They won’t, Dee. But thank you for . . .” Poe didn’t know how to end the sentence. “Do you have something for me? I’m hoping, you know . . .”

  She went silent for ten seconds. “Yeah, I do. I missed it live the first time—and no, I don’t have access to whatever Langley might be learning—but before the music started CNN replayed the footage of the last kid who came out of the tomb. The secretary of the army’s son, the one who read something, then went back in.

  “He wasn’t killed, and he wasn’t released. That means that there’s no pattern we can rely on, yet. Your unsub has killed a couple of kids he sent out. He let others go. Now he sends one out before he brings him back in. By being unpredictable, he’s keeping us guessing. That’s probably intentional on his part. We can’t be certain what he will do next, how to react to the next kid he pushes out the door. It’ll make your cowboys think twice or three times about a breach.”

  “Yeah. You said the kid read something. Did you get that?”

  “There were a few parts to it. I wrote as fast as I could—taking dictation is not my thing. Like I said, this was the secretary of the army’s kid. Stoic. Strong. Steel jaw but gorgeous Bambi eyes. Kid was reading from a card, like an index card. I’m quoting him here the best I can. It’s probably not exact:

  Number one, remove the contact microphones from the outside of the building. Five minutes. Don’t replace them.

  Number two, remove the cranes and cherry pickers from behind the law school. Don’t use them.

  Number three, the original hostage negotiator will resume her role. She will stay there for the duration.

  “Then the kid disappeared back inside. That’s it.”

  “What do you make of it, Dee?”

  Dee had given it plenty of thought and had already reached a conclusion. “Your unsub has accomplices outside that he’s communicating with. Or . . . he has multiple cameras set up that overlook the tomb and the surrounding area that he is able to monitor remotely, maybe online. Or both. Either way, he’s watching our every move. Anticipating our every tactic. The law enforcement response hasn’t surprised him.”

  Poe knew she was right. Dee’s conclusion also explained the presence of the FBI surveillance team. SSG was in town in order to spot and track potential accomplices. Was the music the work of the accomplices? Was the out-of-town cop part of the unsub’s plot? Poe’s gut said no, but he couldn’t be sure.

  “Damn,” he said. “The unsub is good. He’s done his prep.”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  “If he’s watching the law enforcement response—which we have to assume he is—then he has to know HRT has arrived in New Haven, but still he prefers the local hostage negotiator over the FBI negotiator. What’s that about?”

  Dee said, “Maybe he prefers the lack of experience.”

  “And maybe he prefers the devil he knows. He’s watched her for a while already. He might have identified a weakness.”

  “We do,” Dee said. “We prefer the terrorists we know. When we turn over rocks, that’s who we’re looking for. The ones we know. That’s why we’re prone to miss the ones we don’t recognize as familiar.”

  Poe had heard Dee hum that tune many times before. He wanted to
hear her sing the lyrics. He loved to hear her riff. Sometimes she improvised. “Go on,” he said.

  “If your instincts are right about this situation—that it’s not a hostage thing in any traditional sense—then this could be brand-new, Poe. New group. New goals. New grievances. New strategy. Most of all, new tactics. Definitely new tactics. He may not be on our radar at all. Not in our experience model. I don’t have a read on this. But it could be fresh. We may not find tracks.”

  “An evolution,” Poe said. The word was his way of acknowledging that he was hearing her loud and clear.

  “I’m sorry I can’t get more from Langley,” Dee said. “I’m still pecking away, looking for an avenue into the data streams so I can see what they’ve been able to pick up. But all of my traditional routes are dead ends. If I start being any more persistent they’ll recognize what I’m up to and shut off my access. Then I’ll be useless to you.”

  “Impossible, baby. Did they get anything from the microphones they attached to the outside of the building?”

  “They’d been in place for less than an hour. If anything’s been analyzed from them, I wasn’t able to see it. I don’t have access to any reports or the raw data,” Dee said. “Thick stone walls? I would guess they didn’t get anything, but that’s not a technology I know well . . .” Dee took a long inhale. “Other than your gut, you still haven’t explained why you think this is yours, Poe. What makes you so certain this a counterterrorism problem?”

  Dee wanted to hear Poe’s thinking. He stepped away from the group he was using as camouflage. He checked to make sure he could not be overheard. “The key is the kids, Dee. Can you see what he’s got in there? Yale’s the cream of the crop academically, right? The kids who apply are from the top ten, maybe top five percent of high school seniors. Yale accepts what—one out of ten of all those applicants? That makes Yale’s students the top one percent in the country. That’s elite, right?”