The Siege

by Stephen White

  If SSG had sent a team to the bar to tail the out-of-town cop, Poe was realistic enough about his own capabilities to acknowledge that he would probably not be able to spot any of them until someone—the out-of-town-cop in particular—went on the move.

  The Special Surveillance Group was comprised of ghosts. They were either already in the lounge of the Omni Hotel and he was incapable of spotting them, or they weren’t in the bar and he was incapable of recognizing their absence.

  SSG either had reason to continue to track the cop or they didn’t.

  He considered the possibility that he had misread the earlier clues about the cop, and he revisited the possibility that the man wasn’t an out-of-town cop at all.

  Poe decided he could live with the consequences of those mistakes. He’d made worse.

  Dee’s text riff from earlier in the day kept running through Poe’s brain like a song that wouldn’t go away. And maybe he’s planning something worse than carnage. If Dee was right—and she was right a hell of a lot more often than she was wrong—Poe knew he could not live with the consequences of ignoring her caution.

  This out-of-town-cop might be the key to understanding why the unsub wasn’t killing all the hostages. Why some were being released. What else he had planned.

  In Poe’s mind’s eye, he was looking out his office window. He was seeing a Ryder truck parked at the curb.

  He tried to shake the image away. It didn’t work.

  The waitress brought him his beer. Poe carried it to the bar. He slid onto the stool next to the out-of-town cop, intentionally sitting so close that he couldn’t be ignored.

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  NEW HAVEN

  Seventeen minutes after the explosion of the IED in front of the tomb, the FBI HRT Zulu sniper checks in with command. Each façade of the building is being monitored twenty-four hours a day by rotating members of separate sniper teams; Zulu sniper has responsibility for the surveillance of the rear wall of Book & Snake. He notes a visible change in the small triangular attic vent at the top of the shallow gable near the roof—one of the vent louvers has been adjusted a couple of centimeters.

  His communication is received at the Tactical Operations Center.

  Six minutes later he reports that two of the louver panels appear to be in the process of being adjusted.

  Seven more minutes pass. He sends word that the two louvers have been removed. The opening created at the top of the vent is approximately seven inches in height and fifteen inches at the hypotenuse. The sniper notes that the gap is too small for a body to pass through. He confirms that infrared is revealing overlapping heat signatures in the attic space.

  Unsubs or hostages? He is unsure. He has no visuals. Attempted escape in progress? He can’t confirm. Weapons present? Rifle barrel? Scope? None identified.

  The sniper’s well-disguised aerie is atop Beinecke Library, high ground that provides him with an unobstructed view of the backside of the nearby tomb. If circumstances develop that require the sniper to take a shot, the distance to target is twenty yards. Wind is out of the south at less than five miles per hour. For someone with an HRT sniper’s training and skill with weapons, the conditions are nearly perfect. The range is virtually point-blank.

  The sniper’s shot would be equivalent to an extra point try for a Pro Bowl placekicker. In a dome.

  In the cavity of the building below the sniper’s belly is one of the world’s most valuable collections of rare books and priceless manuscripts.

  Christine is not informed about the activity in the attic of the tomb, or about what the sniper is seeing from the rooftop of Beinecke Library. Her job remains circumscribed. Neither HRT nor Hade Moody is willing to risk the possibility that she might inadvertently reveal intelligence to the unsub.

  The HRT SAC is waiting for an update on an attempt to get a microphone and camera inside Book & Snake via the sewer lines, and ultimately through a toilet.

  He’s also waiting to hear from intel with theories about the meaning of the final message on the YouTube video.

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  Sam

  Here’s something I hate.

  I’m sitting someplace where I’m determined to mind my own business—I’m in my dentist’s waiting room, or I’m having a couple of eggs over easy at the end of the counter at Dot’s or the Village Cafe in Boulder, or I’m enjoying the first sip of a cold beer on my favorite stool at the West End on Pearl at the conclusion of a trying day—when somebody walks in and decides the best place to sit in the almost empty room is the spot right friggin’ next to me. The idiot doesn’t take the empty chair on the other side of the room or the stool at the other end of the bar. The fool sits right in my damn lap.

  That’s something I hate.

  That Saturday night in New Haven I was contemplating my impotence and my rage while I lubricated the process with a much needed beer in the Omni’s top-floor lounge. I’m not a hotel bar kind of guy, but it was the only place I knew where I could sign for a brew and not use real money. This guy comes up from behind me carrying his bottle of beer and proceeds to plop down on the stool right next to me. There were at least five other open stools at the bar, all farther away from me, including the one beside him on the other side, but he chose the seat that was two inches from my damn elbow.

  I glanced over at him for half a second with my best get-the-fuck out-of-my-face face. The asshole was ready, waiting for me to look his way. He smiled back at me.

  Does he actually want to friggin’ chat?

  His reaction left me wondering if I was really that far off my game. When I want to, I’m usually pretty successful at emitting unmistakable not-sociable vibes.

  “Hello there,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I was about to pick up my beer and go find a table. One that had only one chair. But I liked my current stool, and the day’s events had left me in the kind of mood that doesn’t predispose me to voluntarily yield territory. I kept my voice even as I added, “You mind maybe moving over a stool or two, or even three? I could use some breathing room. Thanks.”

  He didn’t move. Ten seconds passed. He was looking straight ahead, not at me, when he spoke again. He said, “I know what you’re up to. I just don’t know why you’re up to it.”

  I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from him, but that wasn’t it. I gave his response a few seconds of focused cogitation before I concluded that the odor I was detecting was the scent of a reporter possessed with an irritating dramatic flair. Guy was probably working for some second-tier local paper and was maybe hoping to turn this tragedy into a screenplay or a novel on the side. The movie would never be made, the book would never be published. How he’d stumbled onto me I had no idea, but I already didn’t care too much.

  Failing to come up with any alternatives, I decided he’d made a lucky guess. On a day when innocent college kids were being slaughtered like quail on a caged hunt, I had no patience to spare for the man.

  Even “no comment” would have been telling him altogether too much. I said, “I got nothing to say to you.”

  He responded by sighing like my mother used to when she was disappointed with me. That pissed me off. My mother could get away with it. I’d even let my ex-wife get away with it for a while.

  That was the end of the list of the people from whom I had ever tolerated it.

  I had watched a kid get blown up earlier that day. I’d heard another explosion kill another kid less than an hour earlier. I didn’t feel like I had to make any excuses about what would soon become clear was my complete lack of manners with this stranger. In my most sarcastic tone, I said, “Nice talking to you.” I scooped up my beer and began to stand up.

  He grabbed my wrist.

  Once again it was not at all what I expected.

  I’m not the kind of guy who gets his wrist grabbed by strangers. I tend to send off the kind of signals that are successful in keeping even complete knaves with self-destructive tendencies fr
om even thinking about grabbing any of my body parts.

  I’d had enough. I switched from my not-sociable voice to my cop voice. “What the fu—”

  “Sit back down,” the intruder said in a low, serious tone. He released my arm. “Now.”

  Turned out that the guy had a cop voice, too. I began to adjust all my prior calculations.

  The new equation revealed that any advantage I thought I had was an illusion.

  He was holding his FBI creds just below the edge of the bar. He held them in a way that I couldn’t miss them, but that no one else could see that he was displaying them. I wasn’t wearing my reading glasses so I didn’t know anything more than that the man was a fed. Given the circumstances, that was a lot to know.

  It explained some things. But not others.

  My first thought about the new developments? So much for my low profile in New Haven.

  I paused to consider my options with the special agent. With the cards I had in my hand—I was holding less than nothing, and the fed whom I had been treating as though he didn’t even deserve a seat at the table was suddenly showing a full house—my choices were limited to either bluff or hold.

  “Sit down,” he suggested, again.

  I sat. His eyes were still straight ahead. He wasn’t looking at me.

  He said, “I showed you mine. Now show me yours.”

  I thought his voice was tired. Not long-day tired. Long-life tired. I was thinking he was mid-forties.

  If he were a used car, he’d be one to be wary of. Body looked okay. But the frame was probably bent. Sheet metal was covered with putty. Seals leaked. Needed rings. Bottom line? He had way more mileage than the odometer revealed.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said without a whole mess of reflection coming first about whether it was a prudent thing to say.

  From my short list of options—bluff or hold—I’d apparently chosen bluff.

  He sucked some air between his front teeth. “Neither of us has time for an extended courtship,” he said. His tone was low, conspira torial. “The asshole in that tomb could be killing another kid while we sit here and finish our beers. You going to talk to me, or am I going to make you wish you never came to New Haven? Your fucking choice. Just don’t waste time that I don’t have.”

  My new drinking buddy didn’t talk like a fed. He didn’t dress like a fed. But he had that my-way-or-the-highway manner that was certainly fed reminiscent.

  I didn’t trust him, of course. Why? Well, he was a fed. That alone was sufficient cause for distrust. Why else? I knew he wasn’t interested in helping me out of my predicament, whatever my true predicament turned out to be. And he certainly wasn’t interested in helping Jane or Ann Calderón.

  “Great talking to you,” I said. For the second time I made it all the way to standing.

  He said, “I have enough to detain you.”

  “Then detain me,” I said. Once again I had omitted the contemplate-my-options phase of deliberation. I’d spoken on pure instinct.

  Probably not good instinct. Pure instinct.

  That instinct, apparently, was that I should go all-in. Since the reality was that I couldn’t even rub two damn deuces together, it would have been a wise moment to consider the consequences—at least for a second or two—that a federal arrest might have on my commitment to help Ann and Jane, and on my plans to effect a positive outcome of my suspension from the Boulder Police Department.

  He zipped open his sweatshirt with his left hand.

  It turned out that move was a distraction. I fell for the misdirection like a drunk conventioneer at a Vegas magic show.

  The very next thing I felt was the cold steel of handcuffs closing around my wrist.

  My new fed friend had a little David Blaine in him.

  “Give me the other one,” he said. Noting my hesitation, he added, “I suggest playing along. In case you haven’t noticed all the activity, I’m not in town by myself. You know enough about us to know we tend to travel in posses.”

  At that point I considered my bluff called. I was of no use to Ann or Jane in federal detention.

  “My name is Sam Purdy,” I said, offering neither my other wrist nor any additional information.

  “You’re a cop. A detective. Who you with, Sam Purdy?”

  What? I wondered how he knew that much. And if he knew that much, what else did he know? I had to be careful about the lies I might choose to tell. I said, “What are you talking about?”

  He grimaced. More disappointment with me. I really didn’t want to hear another sigh. He said, “Don’t chew on my hemorrhoids, Sam. Makes me grumpy. You don’t want me grumpy. We both know you’re on the job. Who you with?”

  The cuffs continued to hang from my left wrist. I kept my arm still to keep them from jangling. I said, “Turns out that is kind of complicated.”

  He sipped from his beer. “I’d like to tell you we have time for a leisurely back-and-forth about the complexities of your employment situation. Well, we don’t. Either you get helpful fast or I move on. What happens if I move on without you? I pass you on to my colleagues in intel. I will let them know exactly how you spent your day. I suspect you won’t enjoy what happens after that.”

  I looked at him. He had a pleasant face and wounded eyes. I needed more information to read him. His use of the word “courtship” was bouncing in my brain. Was he a potential ally?

  He held up his beer. He said, “I think I’m going to have one more. You want to join me?”

  “You buying?”

  He laughed. He thought I was trying to be funny, which meant he didn’t know enough about me to know that I was merely broke.

  I sat back down. What a friggin’ mess I was in.

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  Poe

  Cuffing the out-of-town cop was a risky move. Poe knew that. Soon enough, he’d know whether it was the right move. Poe needed to get the guy’s attention, but he didn’t want to frighten him into clamming up. He needed to learn what the man knew.

  If anyone from SSG was in the room, the tracker would not have failed to recognize the telltale clack of closing cuffs. No one from the surveillance team would move in. Instead, the point tracker would invisibly signal for help from the special agent cavalry. Maybe call for an entire HRT posse.

  Poe kept one eye on the mirror behind the bar that reflected the entrance to the room. He saw no one exiting, or entering.

  That fact told him nothing more than that no one was being careless.

  He made a circular motion to the bartender with his index finger. He then waved the finger between himself and Purdy.

  Sam Purdy’s purportedly complicated story—he was a detective on suspension from the Boulder, Colorado, police department—didn’t take that long to tell and, because it betrayed human weakness, rang true enough to Poe’s ear.

  “So what brought you here, Sam?”

  Sam’s answer was “How’d you make me?”

  “Were you actually trying not to be made?” Poe asked, a little incredulous at the cop’s question.

  “Not really,” Purdy said. “I didn’t think anyone would be paying that much attention. I’m not that distinctive.”

  “We’re paying attention to everything that moves. Why are you here?”

  Purdy hesitated. Poe tasted the interval of the delay for the presence of precious metal. His assay said: gold.

  Poe said, “So you know where we stand—if the next words out of your mouth have even a passing resemblance to a mistruth, we’re done. At that moment your life changes forever, and not in a good way. Your career? Such as it is? History. I am not playing games with you.”

  “What’s your name?” Purdy asked.

  The beers arrived. Poe waited for the bartender to retreat before he said, “Special Agent Christopher Poe. Now answer my damn question.”

  APRIL 19, SATURDAY EVENING

  Sam

  To stay out of custody I needed to be of some peculiar value
to Special Agent Christopher Poe.

  I didn’t have a good lie ready so I teased him with a few morsels of the truth.

  “I’m helping . . . the family of one of the students who is inside Book & Snake.” I remembered Ann’s phrase. “I am here strictly as a volunteer. I am not here in any official capacity. I am their eyes and ears. That’s all.”

  “Which student?” Poe asked me.

  Without any hesitation I said, “I’m not ready to tell you that.”

  I thought my reply might cause Poe to close the cuffs on my right wrist and march me away. But that didn’t happen. Poe seemed contemplative. He narrowed his eyes.

  The man had more gray hair in his eyebrows than he did in his stubble.

  I knew I had to figure out quickly what it meant that Poe hadn’t ended the conversation right then and there. In his shoes, I would have.

  Apparently I’d made a decent move. A buy-some-time kind of move. The fact didn’t tell me much because I didn’t know the game we were playing and I didn’t know the rules I was expected to follow. But somehow I’d stumbled onto something. My confidence barely afloat, I took another shot. “What field office you with?”

  “Not currently attached. Special investigations.” Pause. “I’m thinking this mess qualifies.” Pause. “If I demand to know the kid’s name, what do you do next? Just curious how far you’ve thought this through. Whether you think this match is checkers or chess.”

  I haven’t thought this through as far as you, I’m afraid is what I thought, but didn’t say. I was already confident that I didn’t want to get into a chess match with the guy. I was pegging him as the kind of reckless player who would dangle his queen after half a dozen moves.

  And then somehow get away with it.

  I was assuming that Poe was pondering the nature of my relationship with the student’s family.

  I was also wondering what kind of special investigations Poe did.

  He took a slow pull from his beer. “Kid’s name? If I insist?”

  I held out my right wrist.