by Max Bolt
There are tears in Mason’s eyes. The phone is ringing again but Mason knows it is just going to be more lies from the men outside. They couldn’t have got the PM that quick.
“I hurt my boy Fitch. Scared him so bad he doesn’t talk no more. I wanted him with me today Fitch to try and make things better. And you know what Fitch, we had some fun. Had a great old time running around town.”
“It is not too late Mason,” Fitch interrupts, “you can make amends. Kids don’t bare grudges. Craig here is going to give you your job back. And once we’re out of here we can talk to Linda. Arrange for you to spend some time with Ben. Maybe spend some time with Linda.”
For a moment Mason is taken by the notion. But suspicion takes over. It is all just another neatly dressed up lie. He levels the gun at Fitch.
“That is bullshit Fitch.”
Fitch pats the air. He knows how Mason’s actions will be interpreted from outside.
“You got to put the gun down Mason.”
Mason shakes his head, prodding the air with the gun.
“No Fitch. You’re no different to the rest of them. You’re full of lies.”
Mason’s brain is overwhelmed by anger and despair. And with it comes the flashbacks of Afghanistan. The heat and dust, ghostly faces of the dead and dying.
“The gun Mason. Put it on the table.”
Mason keeps the gun raised and slaps his head with his free hand trying to rid his brain of the images. He keeps Craig close.
And Craig is starting to lose it. He wonders why the police don’t just raid the office.
*
The Commander has a sixth sense for these things and he has a very good idea of where this situation is heading. There is zero chance of the PM getting involved. They’ll alert the PM to the request, of course, but it will be quickly filed away in the not going to happen folder. And once the Target realises they’re not going to play ball things will get ugly.
The Commander instructs the negotiator to keep calling the office. If anything, the incessant ringing will distract the Target and wear him down much like disengaging the airconditioning. But those are just subtle tricks. They’ll weaken the Target but they won’t get him out of the office. The Commander checks in with his eyes in the sky and the snipers report an escalation of tensions inside the office.
The Commander considers the information but is interrupted.
“Chief,” one of his men mutters, “who is that?”
The Commander looks across the room and sees a young officer, crouched behind a desk near the office, looking at them.
“Where did he come from and what is he doing there?”
*
Nate, the loyal Labrador, waiting at the door for his master.
Returning from clearing the floor, Nate realised Fitch had gone into the office without him. Nate had considered going in after him but the Special Ops team had arrived too soon and he had instead taken cover behind Craig’s PA’s desk. Fitch was always saying to keep your options open. With options you are always in the game. So Nate had taken up a position close enough to respond if Fitch needed him but had kept his presence a secret from the Special Ops team, who he does not trust. Until now.
The Commander motions for him to stay put. Nate does, but he is his own man. He has been listening to the Commander issuing instructions and he does not trust the tough guys in black. Nate’s allegiance rests with Fitch. And Fitch said the man inside, his brother, was not dangerous, just misunderstood. And Fitch said he could talk his brother down and Nate believes him.
But the Special Ops team are preparing to enter the office. And once they do, things will get very ugly.
Nate hears the Commander talking now, receiving information from his snipers in the nearby buildings. The target is getting agitated. He won’t answer the phone anymore. Nate can hear raised voices inside the office. Nate senses Fitch’s time is running out. And there is a kid in there too. This is Nate’s chance to make a difference. Nate owes it to Fitch. Fitch would come in for him.
Nate eyes the key that Fitch left in the office door. He readies his gun.
*
What is that kid doing? Who was in charge of searching and clearing the floor?
The Commander is stunned to see the young officer but it is too dangerous to get him out now. And it will all be over soon anyway. The Commander connects to his hidden big cats in the sky.
“What do you see?”
The snipers’ response: “Target becoming increasingly agitated. Weapon raised. Hostile movements. Maintaining close proximity to hostage. Officer on his feet, calm, unmoving. Fourth, likely child, crouched in South East corner.”
The Commander assesses things. His negotiators continue to call the office but the Target won’t answer the phone. They’ve also been trying Police Officer (soon to be no officer after this) Fitch Turner’s mobile, but it has been ringing out.
The Commander has a clear conscience, he has played things entirely by the book, contain and negotiate first. He has cut the aircon and kept the phones ringing. He has done all he can and he feels the situation getting away from him and he’ll be stuffed if he’ll be fronting a Lindt Café style inquest into what went wrong. Now tell me Commander, what made you pause? Stage fright, fear, or did you just not know what to do? No way, not on his watch, he knows precisely what he must do.
“Sir,” one of his men mutters nodding toward the office.
The Commander sees the shadows moving inside. He hears raised voices. Movements that look like a struggle. The Commander raises his radio and mutters the words that seal Mason’s fate.
“Situation is red. Prepare for takedown.”
Then to the Robocops poised in front of him.
“Prepare for assault.”
The black clad machines rise and ready themselves.
Chapter 22
“The gun Mason. Put it down.”
But the dam wall, the mental barrier that has held Mason back for most of the day, has broken. Mason thrusts the gun at Fitch.
“No Fitch. You’re just like the rest of them. Never gave two shits about me. Just come down here because Linda wanted you to. And now she don’t give two shits about me neither.”
Fitch is desperate. He knows how the men outside will interpret things. The desk phone is ringing. Fitch’s mobile is ringing. Noise, movement, heat; the office seems to be spinning around him. He knows the men gathered outside are coming in.
He approaches Mason but Mason jabs the gun at him.
“Stay where you are Fitch. Don’t come any closer.”
Fitch stops and keeps his hands raised.
“I never wanted any of this Fitch. People just kept pushing. I ain’t never done anything to anyone.”
Mason is cracking.
“Just wanted me family back. Wanted me life back Fitch. I wanted to spend some time with my son.”
“The gun Mason. Put it on the table.”
Mason shakes his head but his gun arm is wavering. The resolve which Mason set out with this morning is fading. He wonders how he got into this office with the gun. He feels deeply fatigued. Like he could just sleep for days. He still wants the apology from the Prime Minister but that can come another time. He looks at his son crouched in the corner staring fearfully at him. He does not want to frighten his son anymore.
Mason lowers his gun arm. The butt of the gun touches the table. He is laying down arms. But the phone’s incessant ringing is suddenly too much for him. He picks up the phone and hurls it into the glass wall. It shatters with a sound like–
A heavy projectile.
A sound like–
Maybe one of the hostages getting assaulted.
A sound like–
Maybe…
*
…an explosive being thrown.
It snaps the Commander into action; there will be no dead civilians on his conscience.
To the snipers: “Take the shot!”
To the Robocops in front of him: “Brea
ch! Breach! Breach!”
Closely followed by a bemused, “what the fuck?” as the Commander sees the young officer who has been camped out in the exclusion zone rise from behind the desk and rush toward the office.
It is too late for the Commander to rescind his earlier order, the machine, as they say, has been set in motion. The armoured police rush forward with the medieval battering ram as their stun grenades make a flash brighter than any lightning and a crack louder than any thunder.
*
Mason and Fitch see it all in slow motion, like watching a movie car crash from different camera angles.
Mason has surrendered, in spirit at least, and is laying down his gun when the sliding door flies open. Mason sees a man, no a boy, seemingly not much older than his own son but dressed in a police uniform. The wide eyed officer barges in with his gun raised.
In coming. Taliban suicide bomber breaching perimeter.
Mason responds precisely how the military big brass trained him to respond. The blood, you might say, is on their hands. Mason swings his gun around. And in the instant before the shooting starts Mason hears the most prophetic words of the entire afternoon.
Ben the mute that was – or wasn’t, suddenly finds his voice.
“Dad. Nooooo!”
*
Fitch, who has lived twenty years with the penance of an ill-used split second, suddenly realises what today has all been about.
He sees Nate rush in with all his good intentions but knows the kid is about to exit with none. Guided by a conscience on autopilot Fitch snaps into action.
“Ben, lie down. Cover your head!”
Then, as Mason levels his gun, Fitch dives sideways in front of the young officer. It is the kind of dive that any decent action movie would present in over the top slow motion. Not bad movement, as they say, for a big man. Fitch flies through the air, as the world around him explodes with gunfire and shattering glass. Black shadows pour into the office. People screaming. Wood and metal splintering.
As battle zone Afghanistan comes to Sydney.
Chapter 23
It lasts all of ten seconds. And the trailing silence is all the more profound for the noise and madness that preceded it. There is just the rush of the wind through the shattered windows. The muck of the outside getting inside. And the sound of the black clad robots stepping through the debris, and Mason gurgling on the floor, choking on his own blood as he struggles to breathe.
Mason sees the world upside down, the downlights in the room swirl like stars. Frantic, faceless voices, float around him. Words about securing and sealing the room, disarming the Target, and keep away from those windows it’s a bloody long drop. Then Mason sees his son’s face, crying and afraid. He feels his son’s hands under his head. Then Fitch appears, calling for a paramedic as he starts compressing his chest.
Now why would he be doing that?
*
Mason may not know that he is dying but Fitch does. He sees the ragged hole in Mason’s chest, the result of a sniper shot. Nate’s shot flew high and wide. Fitch tries to plug the hole in Mason’s chest with his shirt and stray paper, and starts a desperate round of CPR.
Fitch is too amped up on adrenalin to realise he has been shot also. He caught Mason’s bullet in his right shoulder as he dove in front of Nate. It does not hurt now but it will later.
“Stay with us brother. Keep your eyes open.”
Fitch maintains the tug of war between the claws of death and the frail fingers of the living. One of the Special Ops officers tries to pat Mason down and roll him over but Fitch pushes the black robot away.
“He’s unarmed. Call an ambulance.”
Fitch sees Ben kneeling next to him. He sees the kid’s fear and wonders how the world can treat us like this.
*
Craig, the most ill prepared of all of them for what happened, still sits in his seat like a department store mannequin, advertising high end business shoes and shirts. Like the sole survivor of a plane crash, he is pure white and too stunned to move. It was a Matrix-like sequence; the shrapnel, glass and wood and metal seemed to fly around him in slow motion, all of it somehow avoiding him. How does that happen? He watches the men in black kick things around in his shattered office and listens as they ask him too many questions that he is too spaced out to answer. He looks at the former employee who started all of this lying bleeding on the ground and his son kneeling over him as the officer Fitch tries to keep him alive. Strangely, Craig does not want the man, Mason, to die. He senses an injustice, that the wrong man has gone down.
And amid his random soul searching Craig wonders whether Mia is enjoying her night out at the Ivy with the Bachelor from the The Bachelor, and what his father might think of things – chin up kid, rebuild and prosper, and son, never think of the people, the moment you do… they’ll come barging into your office with a gun.
But amid the confusion Craig is sure about one thing; his father can shove his job. Craig was never cut out for it anyway.
*
Nate sits wide eyed against the only remaining wall of the office. One of the Special Ops stoops, his face masked like Darth Vader, and hits him with some questions.
You been hit?
Injured?
Can you move?
Want to stand up?
No. Nup. Nada. No thanks, don’t think I can. Nate stares at the ugly aftermath of everything. Shooting and killing and enforcing the law isn’t as tidy as they make out in the manuals. It has been a stark lesson for the naïve. You barge into a tense hostage situation waving a gun around what do you expect to happen? He only shot when the Target looked like he was going to shoot. At least he survived, and as they say in sport, he will be better for the experience. He knows he got lucky. He knows his bullet intended for the Target flew high and the Target’s bullet intended for him found Fitch instead.
Once he recovers enough, Nate is going to have a – how did that happen moment – closely followed by a realisation he should probably seek a new profession. He can join Craig, and the earlier lunchtime Laksa slurper, in the queue for a career change.
*
Ben can feel his father’s pulse fading. He tries to haul his father out of the dark abyss he is slipping into. He blocks out the leering faces of the black clad police who don’t seem to care and just stand around watching his father die. Ben hopes that Uncle Fitch can save his father’s life.
Because today Ben saw a different side of his father. He saw beneath the twisted fake that returned from Afghanistan. He saw beyond the crazy man that scared him as a child. His father was trying to make amends. And his father had to work harder at things than other men. Not because he was bad but because the world treated him badly. Ben saw through his father’s twisted exterior and saw the genuine individual underneath.
Uncle Fitch’s efforts are getting more desperate and Ben can feel his father slipping away. His tears fall like rain on to Mason’s face.
*
Don’t cry son. I am not worth crying over.
Mason can see but he cannot talk. His body is shutting down. He watched this sequence play out countless times in the aftermath of Taliban ambushes. Seeing men shredded by shrapnel and burnt by flames, breathing fast, trying to stay afloat in the rough ocean between life and death.
As he fights for breath Mason recalls the single true gift of the afternoon. Two words in the instant before everything erupted.
“Dad no!”
It was Ben. His son’s voice exorcising a decade of demons. Mason had forgotten the sound but he will carry it with him now wherever he goes from here. He might have destroyed his son’s early years but the two words are symbolic, at least, of a new beginning.
Fitch compressing his chest is getting on Mason’s nerves. It is blurring his vision and he wants to see everything he can in these final moments. And the last thing Mason sees is his son’s face. The last thing he feels before he slips into that big black hole are his son’s hands. And the last thing he hears, as
if proving the earlier cry was not a fluke, is Ben’s voice.
“Dad… why?”
And Mason wishes he had the time to answer but even if he did, he’s not sure what he would say.
*
Eventually they pull Fitch away and he falls back breathless. He looks down at his brother; Mason’s features appear suddenly peaceful, like he has been asleep all this time. But Fitch knows the truth and has no idea how he is going to tell Linda. And how he will explain things to Ben. He holds the boy close and lets him cry into his chest.
Fitch sees Nate being led, unhurt from the office. Nate gives Fitch a tentative thumbs up, like I’m alright but what the hell just happened. And it is only when one of the paramedics asks to look at Fitch’s arm, he realises he has been shot.
One of the medics takes Ben.
“Careful,” Fitch says, “he is the son.”
The medic nods and leads Ben out of the office, as another applies a compression bandage to Fitch’s upper arm.
While he is being treated Mason finds his mobile with his free hand. He sees the earlier unanswered call from his wife. The call seems so long ago but suddenly significant. He calls home. The phone rings: once, twice, three times. Each ring tightens Fitch’s insides. He feels as if the world is tipping and he is slipping off the side of it. But just as he is about to hang up and call his neighbour to go and see, she picks up.
She sounds tired as always.
“You didn’t answer earlier,” she says
“I couldn’t. Where were you just now?”
“I was in the kitchen.”
She is alive. She had been ready to do it, the pills poised at her lips. It was not fear that stopped her, she stopped being afraid years ago, rather, it was the touch of heat that crept under the kitchen door that made her pause. After feeling nothing for so long, the heat was like a shot of electricity. If she could feel the heat she was capable of feeling other things. It convinced her she was not ready to leave.