by Dale Brown
Counting the one in the garage, she’d seen five. They ranged in height from only a few inches taller than her to well over six feet. Two had full beards, but the others had faces that were simply scruffy, as if they’d forgotten to shave for a few days.
Three wore hotel uniforms—black pants and a blue blazer over a crisp white shirt. The others were in jeans and T-shirts.
All but one looked underfed, even malnourished. They’d hardly be imposing, if not for their guns.
Their guns: AR-15s, civilian versions of the M4 with some slight modifications, some subtly different stocks, a suppressor, and, in one case, a scope.
None of the men wore masks or disguises, as if they didn’t care if they were identified. That wasn’t good.
Chelsea and Victoria were led to the Patriot’s ballroom, where some fifty other guests and a handful of employees had been taken. Two terrorists stood guard at the back of the room near the main doors; another strutted across the small stage at the front, occasionally waving his gun at the people scattered around the floor.
The prisoners formed themselves into little knots, grouped around acquaintanceships and happenstance. A pile of wallets and purses, handbags and cell phones lay on the floor near the door; clearly these had been confiscated from the people in the ballroom, but the procedure was haphazard—neither Victoria nor Chelsea was searched, and Chelsea still had her cell phone and wallet.
“What do you think they’re going to do?” asked Victoria, settling into a spot near the wall, close to a man and woman with three girls, all under seven or eight. “Hold us for ransom?”
“Maybe,” lied Chelsea.
She turned her attention to the man on the stage, imprinting him on her brain: his face, brownish, speckled with a few black freckles and a large pimple on his cheek, a bad beard like most of the others, eyebrows far too bushy for the rest of his features. No marks on his brow, no wrinkles, eyes wide open, maybe too far open—it was hard to tell from here.
Khaki pants, a blue T-shirt with some sort of insignia.
A police shield?
Maybe. Some sort of emblem.
Shoes—scuffed brown.
His gun, like the others but with a folded stock. He waved it as if it were a pistol.
Be calm, collect as much information as you can, wait for an opening.
It was her father’s voice. He was always with her when she needed him.
Always with me, Daddy.
We’ll get through it, kid. Hang in there.
Chelsea turned her attention to the men at the door. One of them was talking into a microphone at his collar.
They were using radios. She hadn’t noticed that before.
Analyze it. What does it mean?
They’re very organized. They’ve been planning this for quite a while.
They have money. They’re well-funded. Radios. New guns.
They’re disciplined.
The man on the stage shouted at a man who was walking around, agitated, near the wall. He told him to sit or he would be shot.
An American accent. Flat. Not Bostonian but native. He was either raised in America or underwent extensive training to get his accent right.
He pointed at someone nearby and told him to get the man to sit.
Definitely native. Not Boston. Not New York either. Not Southern. Flat. Midwest.
He had a little strut. Overconfident.
Were the others American? Or were they foreign?
It suddenly seemed very important to know. She thought of striking up a conversation, talking to them—she could do that, gather information. It might be useful.
She had the cell phone. She could call and give the negotiators little tidbits to help them, intel on where they were, how many, what they were thinking and saying.
There would be negotiators. They would negotiate, even if they weren’t going to give in. Buy time until the SWAT team assaulted the place.
Chelsea looked around the room, trying to decide where the assault would come from. There was no way of knowing for sure, but she guessed the back of the room, since it was closer to the exterior.
It would begin with a flash of light and a loud bang: flash-bang grenades, intended to shock everyone inside for a moment, just long enough to get an advantage.
Then gunfire.
A lot of it.
“These bastards,” said Victoria. Her voice cracked. She was shaking, starting to lose her composure. “Savages. Who are they? What do they want?”
“ISIS,” said a woman nearby.
“Do you know that for sure?” asked Chelsea. “Did they say that?”
“Who else could they be?”
“It’s just that, knowing that and suspecting that are different things,” said Chelsea. She was thinking she would pass the information along when she had a chance to use her cell phone—assuming she could get a signal. “The more solid information—”
“It has to be them,” insisted the woman.
“Maybe we should pray,” said the mother with the children. “We should pray. It is Easter.”
Victoria nodded, but didn’t join in as the woman began mouthing the words to the Our Father. Two of the girls joined in; the oldest just stared at them.
“All the men will stand up!” shouted one of the terrorists near the door. “Stand and go over to the far wall. Faster!”
The men got up and made their way there, one or two quickly, the others, a dozen and a half, slowly, their shuffle the only way they could protest.
“You and you,” said the man on the stage, pointing to two boys barely into their teens. “With the others.”
A woman next to one of the boys grabbed him. “He’s just a child! Leave him alone.”
“I’ll kill him, then you,” said the man, pointing his gun.
The boy pushed himself away. “I’ll be OK, Mom.”
One of the men still had his cell phone; it began to ring as they mustered. The man on the stage jumped down in a rage.
“Whose phone?!” he demanded. “Whose phone!”
The men started to separate. Chelsea tensed, sensing they were going to gang up and attack the man with the phone.
What do I do?
She decided she would grab a weapon from one of the men at the door. They’d be so focused on the men they wouldn’t notice.
Can I make it?
She’d have to.
No question: I will make it.
She pushed her feet beneath her knees, ready to spring.
“Whose phone!” shouted the terrorist.
One of the men raised his hand. “It’s not working,” he said, stepping forward with the phone in his hand. “This is just an alarm—”
The terrorist slammed the man to the ground with the butt of his rifle. The cell phone flew to the ground; the terrorist smashed it with his heel.
“Who else? Who else has a phone?”
Victoria looked at Chelsea.
A woman near the front stood and held up her hand.
The terrorist turned on her and began firing.
Chelsea, caught off guard, turned toward the men at the door, but realized she was too far and too late.
“Down!” yelled Victoria, grabbing her as bullets began spraying through the room. “Chelsea!”
Caught off balance, Chelsea twisted down, knocking her chin against the floor so hard she blacked out with the shock and pain.
10
Boston—around the same time
“Goddamn these people,” shouted Johnny, unable to control himself as he watched what was happening in the hotel. The terrorists had just lined up a group of men and mowed them down.
“What’s going on inside the hotel?” asked the FBI agent on the other end of the communications line. They hadn’t switched in the video yet.
“They’re shooting people,” said Givens. “It’s time to go in.”
“The SWAT people are still getting in place. They need those feeds.”
“We’re working o
n it.” Johnny glanced over at the computer engineers. Telakus was typing furiously; the others stared in horror at their screens.
Sitting here really wasn’t going to get those people out of the hotel, Johnny decided.
“Can you find a map or a schematic or something of the hotel?” he asked Telakus. “That would help the SWAT people.”
“I’ve looked. I haven’t been able to find anything.” The computer whiz shook his head. “Maybe I can break into the architectural archives or something. City hall. The building inspector, whatever. If they’re online. But, uh, I probably need Mr. Massina to authorize that.”
“I’m sure he will,” said Johnny. He turned to his right, expecting to see Massina there. But the boss had slipped out of the room.
Massina had Borya repeat what she’d told Bozzone twice, listening in case there was some detail that he’d missed. But Borya simply had no clue where Chelsea was.
She had to be in the Patriot. Borya didn’t know what time she’d been planning to meet her aunt, but if she had left the hotel or not gotten there, surely she would have answered their calls by now.
Or come in to work. That was Chelsea.
“Keep looking for her,” he told Bozzone. “Keep calling her.”
“If we could use the telephone company’s GPS system—”
“Good idea,” said Massina.
“Can I do something?” Borya asked.
“Stay here in Chelsea’s lab, so we know where you are when we need you,” he said. “We may need you very soon.”
It was a white lie—there was very little a young girl could do—but he wanted to make sure she stayed where she was safe.
“I will.”
“Good.”
Johnny was ready with a list of what the SWAT team needed by the time Massina returned to the Box.
“Surveillance overhead is great for the grounds and the roof, but real-time surveillance inside would be gold,” he told his boss. “Telakus says we could bring one of our computers there, set up a mobile connection, then show them what’s going on. It’ll be quicker than trying to cobble a connection together.”
“That’s true,” said Telakus. “Time is running out.”
“Let’s do it,” said Massina.
“We need some sort of building diagram,” added Johnny. “Can we get somebody to call over to the building inspectors or something like that? Architectural review or—”
“We’ll launch a UAV with penetrating radar,” said Massina. “Tommy! We need you to set something up.”
“Heard ya. Workin’ on it. We have a Nightbird outfitted for that mining company and—”
“Do it!” said Massina.
“I want to go with them,” said Johnny. “I’ll take the computer there.”
“Are you sure?” asked Massina.
“Damn sure.”
“Good. Because I think Chelsea’s in that hotel.”
11
Boston—around the same time
Chelsea opened her eyes, dazed. Victoria pulled her into her arms, rocking her gently, half sitting, half crouched against the floor. The room smelled of spent gunpowder and blood. People screamed and cried, wailed and moaned in agony. Many of the men who’d been shot were still alive, but the terrorists didn’t allow anyone to help them.
“Savages,” said Victoria softly, her voice trembling. “They’ll kill us all.”
“Help will come,” insisted Chelsea. “I’m sure. Just stay strong.”
“I am.”
The terrorist who’d been on the stage earlier began shouting. The women were to move toward the door. A few seconds later, convinced that they weren’t moving fast enough for him, he raised his gun and fired toward the ceiling.
A few of the women ran toward the door, but most continued at a slow pace, cringing, unable to force more movement from their bodies. They had entered a fugue state of fear, paralyzed by the certainty that they were going to die.
One of the men near the door stepped forward and began directing them, waving his hand silently as he counted them into groups of five. Chelsea stayed close to her aunt, realizing that they might be split up, but it was no use—the man pointed at her and motioned for her to begin a new group.
Chelsea shook her head.
“I’m staying with my aunt,” she said.
Chelsea mustered a death glance as the man stalked toward her. He stared back, eyes locked with hers.
For a moment she thought he was going to shoot her. She stiffened, extending her barely five-foot frame to its full height, and took a deep breath, holding it, waiting for the inevitable—but instead of raising his gun, he grabbed her shoulder with his left hand and hurled her toward the wall.
“You and you,” said the terrorist, choosing two other women from the small cluster. Victoria started to join Chelsea, but the terrorist pushed his gun into her chest, nudging at first, then ramming her backward when that failed to stop her.
Chelsea raised herself to her knees and watched as her aunt’s group was led from the ballroom. Victoria walked with her head down, bent over, undoubtedly hurting from the blow.
Pressure had begun to build behind Chelsea’s eyes, a pain that felt similar to eyestrain. She rubbed her temples, then sat back, not wanting to kneel—it was too much like surrender.
The power flicked back on, fans whirring up, lights flooding bright.
The other groups were led out of the ballroom, leaving only Chelsea and the two other women selected with her. They were both about her age, twenties, slim. One looked Latin, the other Irish, with red curly hair. She had a large wet mark in the front of her taupe-colored leggings, running down her leg. The other woman wore a miniskirt and a sleeveless top that revealed well-toned muscles. There was something hard in her face, a kind of frown.
“Up!” yelled the terrorist who’d been on the stage. “Up!”
He waved his gun.
As she walked into the hallway, Chelsea thought of making a run for it. But there was nowhere to go—another terrorist was standing a few yards away.
“That way, right,” he said. “Right.”
“They’re not going to rape us, are they?” asked the girl in the leggings.
“What do you think?” answered the other.
12
Boston—around the same time
The commander on the scene outside the Patriot Hotel was a police captain whose oversize balding head contrasted sharply with his toned, sleek body: the face of a sixty-year-old above a thirty-year-old’s frame. Johnny had met Kevin Smith several times when he was an FBI agent and so wasn’t surprised at Smith’s blank expression as he detailed the resources he had brought with him from Smart Metal.
“That will all be very useful,” said Smith finally, with all the excitement of a man making out a check to the IRS. “Lieutenant Steller is handling intel for the SWAT team, and Percy is in charge of the assault unit. You know Percy?”
“A bit,” said Johnny. Johnny thought it best not to give the details; he and Percy had not particularly gotten along.
As in, shouted at each other and nearly come to blows.
“Good.” Smith nodded. “This communications specialist—when’s he getting here?”
“Any minute,” said Johnny. They had biked over, at Ciro Farlekas’s suggestion. A fellow security officer who like Johnny had worked with the FBI, Farlekas was an avid biker, to the point of having a Carbondale bike he rode to work every day. Johnny had borrowed something more akin to a tank, but managed to beat him here, thanks to his legs.
The police were working out of a mobile command center—a large, heavily modified van—around the corner of the hotel. Cameras on two police cruisers fed real-time visuals of the building’s front. Information on the other three sides depended on spotters who were calling into one of Smith’s own com specialists.
“Damn, you’re fast,” said Farlekas, riding up after being let through by the officers up the block. “Where are we setting up?”
“Right here,” said Smith.
“We’re gonna fix ya right up,” Farlekas told him, his Tennessee drawl unchallenged by Bostonian vowels or idioms. “Jest gimme a few seconds here.”
“He’s good, don’t worry,” Johnny told Smith. He didn’t know Farlekas really, but everyone at Smart Metal was pretty much the best at what they did. “We’re online with their security videos, and we’re getting a, uh, drone with radar to map the insides. Do you need mechs?”
Smith tilted his head.
“Mechs are like robots,” explained Johnny. All of this had been foreign to him just a few months before; he’d spent several weeks training with them and now could work with them the same way he’d work with a human partner. “They’re designed to handle specific tasks, and while they can generally complete that task without detailed instructions, they don’t have advanced AI, so they can only do what you tell them to do.”
He pulled over the backpack he’d brought with him. “These are small units designed to enter buildings and rubble sites. We can tell them to go somewhere and they’ll figure out how to do it.”
“They look like little cars without shells.”
“More or less,” said Johnny. The mechs were tracked, with small claws. They ranged from iPhone to desk calculator in size.
“How do they help us?” asked Smith.
“We can use them to get in,” said Johnny. “Kill the power. We come in through a window in the pool area and make our way up the corridors to where the hostages are in the convention rooms.”
“How do we know they’re there?”
“You’ll see when Ciro finishes setting up the link. Should be any second.”
Smith picked up the radio. “Percy, come over to the command center,” he said. “We’re getting fresh intel.”
13
Boston—around the same time
Walking ahead of the terrorist with the other women, Chelsea tried to force fear from her mind, as if the emotion were a paste that could be squeezed from a tube. She slowed her breathing, made her movements more deliberate; she focused her thoughts on the feel of her hips, her knees, her neck as she swiveled her head. She told her heart to slow; she told her glands to stop sweating.