HotTango

by Sidney Bristol

  “Hi, Lily, the rest of us are fine for now.” The lie tasted bitter on her tongue. She knew that not everyone was going to survive and she hated it.

  Lily paused, as if she sensed the lie in her voice. But if anyone would, Lily was that person. When they first met Lily had performed a parlor trick displaying how she could tell if an individual was lying or not. That had been in person from physical tells, but it was reasonable to assume there were verbal ones as well. “Thank you, Tanya. Can you ask Nicolas and his friends what brought us to this situation today?”

  Tanya muted her end of the call and glanced between the three men. They appeared uneasy, shifting their weight from foot to foot and glancing around them. As far as criminals went, they weren’t very convincing. They were actually fairly normal looking. Only Trigger Happy even looked or sounded as if he weren’t born and raised in America. Still, she’d like to know the answers to Lily’s questions as well.

  “We want the release of Ali Saed,” Silence said. When she didn’t immediately relay the answer, he gestured toward the phone. “Tell her.”

  Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod.

  “Okay, sorry.” She shook her head and unmuted the phone, her mind spinning. It was everything Cole had feared. “Lily, Tanya again. They want the release of Ali Saed.”

  Lily paused. “Is that all?”

  Tanya spoke in a rush over the woman. The last thing she wanted her to say right now was that turning over the leader of their terrorist organization was an impossibility. She didn’t think Lily would make such a statement, but she’d also never been in a hostage situation before. “Yes. If you could work on that, I’m sure they would appreciate it.”

  “You know what would help me talk about this with the brass? Offer me a show of good faith. There are a lot of children in there, and they’re going to get hungry and noisy. You don’t want to have to keep them calm. Why don’t you send those kids out here, and I can take that to my supervisors to show them you’re reasonable?”

  Silence slapped his hand over the phone and shook his head vigorously. She nodded and he stepped back, giving her space.

  “I’m sorry, Lily, I don’t think they’re willing to negotiate that.”

  Lily sighed into the phone. “Okay, Tanya. It’s going to make it really difficult to get my bosses to take them seriously without showing them something.”

  Silence put his hand over the phone. “Hang up,” he whispered. “We’ve talked to them enough.”

  “Hi, Lily. I’m going to hang up. I believe we’ve spoken long enough to give you the information you need to give us some more space and work on their demands.”

  “Tanya, it would really help me if you stay on the phone—”

  Silence grabbed the phone and ended the call.

  “Hey! We didn’t ask how they figured out my name. Do they have my wife out there? What have they told her?” Nicolas glanced between the other two, Tanya’s presence nearly forgotten. The distress creasing Nicolas’ face was pained, tortured. Wouldn’t a terrorist be a little more resolved to his act of terrorism? Something wasn’t adding up about the whole situation.

  Silence held up his hand. “No, it doesn’t matter. We’ve discussed this. We know what the mission is. Stick to the plan.”

  Tanya was torn between wanting to slink back to the relative safety and company of the other hostages and staying where she was. Now that her head was somewhat in the game, there were details that stuck out to her. The mention of family members in danger, the lack of a unifying drive, the differing personalities. This wasn’t a team that had trained and worked together. Something had pushed them to this.

  And she wanted to figure it out.

  The cell phone in Silence’s pocket began to ring. He pulled it out and peered at the screen. The display was large enough that even Tanya could see the Unknown number flashing. But where the men wouldn’t know the digits, she recognized the prefix on the call. It was the same as Cole’s work phone.

  “Answer it.” He shoved the cell at her.

  This time she lifted the phone to her ear. “Hello?”

  “Hi, Tanya, this is Lily again.”

  “Hi, Lily, the guys don’t have anything else to say right now.” She glanced between them and saw no complaints with her answer.

  “Are you on speaker right now?”

  That wasn’t an answer she could speak without giving away that Lily wanted to talk to her directly. She’d have to wing it and hope that Lily picked up on her answers. “No. They don’t have anything else to say.”

  Lily paused. “Tanya, are you trying to tell me you aren’t on speaker?”

  “Yes. They’re positive they don’t want to talk anymore.”

  “Okay, Tanya,” Lily spoke in a rush, “you’re doing a great job. We want to keep them talking to us as much as possible. I know you’re scared. Your husband is here and we’re all working on getting you out of there as safe as possible.”

  Tanya’s eyes pricked with unshed tears and her throat constricted. Cole. She breathed deep and shoved the emotions deep. “Thank you for understanding, Lily.”

  “Tanya, we’re going to come in to get you. The bomb they threw out was just an empty pipe—”

  Silence grabbed the phone and ended the call. “That’s enough.”

  The bomb was a fake.

  They’d bluffed their way out of one situation.

  What else could they fake?

  Tanya studied their vests. Wires went into and out of what looked like honest-to-god explosives to her. Fact was, she wasn’t willing to chance it.

  Something banged on the roof of The Warehouse. Everyone jumped and stared at the ceiling. Another something hit it and then another.

  “Someone’s on the roof,” Nicolas said.

  “This is it.” Trigger Happy lifted the dead man’s charge and began peeling off what looked like clear tape from the trigger.

  Clear tape.

  On the trigger.

  Chapter Twelve

  “What are you doing?” Tanya gasped before she could stop herself.

  “I’m not ready for this,” Nicolas said, his voice growing small and lost. “I’m not ready to die. I have a wife. She might be pregnant.”

  Silence grabbed Nicolas by the front of his vest. “Too. Bad.”

  “If you blow yourselves up now you won’t get what you want,” Tanya said louder than she meant to. The three stopped and stared at her.

  Overhead, footsteps pounded across the ceiling. The most logical thing was to deploy gas, and if they thought the explosives were fake, well, Tanya had a bad feeling about it. Why tape a detonator to a bomb that wouldn’t explode?

  “We’ll make a point,” Trigger Happy said between clenched teeth.

  “What if you could get out of here, sneak past the police without them even seeing you?” Tanya prayed that Goldie had opened the tunnel and was long gone. Otherwise, they were going to be in a world of hurt.

  “How?” Silence asked, gaze narrowing.

  She held her hands up. “There’s a tunnel in the management office. They used to move inventory from warehouse to warehouse via a tunnel under the street. I can show you. You would escape.”

  And hopefully run straight into a line of police.

  Silence grabbed her arm. “Get ten hostages each. We’ll try the tunnel.”

  That wasn’t part of the plan!

  “Hostages? We’ll slow you down,” Tanya blurted.

  “Insurance,” he replied.

  He pushed her forward, using her like a shield.

  Metal screeched and something snapped overhead.

  “Out of the way,” Silence said loudly.

  People scrambled, making a path through the crowd to the back of The Warehouse. The management office sat dead center in the middle of the rear portion of the building, between the two sectioned-off rooms that served as locker rooms for their purpose. The door hung ajar, a telltale sign that someone had passed that way.

  “Get up. You, you and y
ou,” Nicolas said behind them. People moved, shuffled and even begged to be excluded from their selection.

  Overhead, the sounds of movement on the roof meant the police were getting ready to do something.

  Cole would be impressed with how much she’d paid attention when he talked about the process flow of escalation. Now she just had to live long enough to tell him.

  God, she loved him.

  If she survived, she was going to make sure he knew, from her mouth, how important he was to her.

  “Up, up, up,” Trigger Happy snapped.

  Silence pushed her into the office. The floor sloped down almost immediately, leveling off at a lift. Which was in the down position. As if someone had used it recently to reach the tunnel floor. The only other furniture was two desks on either side of the space, both bare.

  “Get the lift up here,” Silence demanded.

  There was a pole sticking out of the ground at the lip of the drop-off with one button on the pad. She pushed it and the hydraulics silently lifted until the lift was level to the floor.

  “Everyone on the lift,” Silence ordered from behind her.

  Tanya glanced over her shoulder and her blood ran cold.

  Goldie, Mallory and Lotta were the first of the other hostages pushed toward her. Their gazes were full of fear. None of them spoke, but they moved to the back of the lift as more people were herded into the office. Outside, people began to cough and it sounded as though someone was banging on the exterior doors.

  The entry team.

  Cole.

  Her heart clenched. She was so close. If she’d kept her trap shut, she might be rescued. But because of her they still weren’t blowing things up. Yet. It was still a possibility.

  “On the lift now,” Trigger Happy yelled. He slapped the button and the hydraulics jerked, dropping several inches suddenly before easing down, a little at a time, into darkness.

  The fluorescent lights were on inside The Warehouse, so it was hard to gauge the passage of time, but it was growing late.

  “What are you doing here?” Tanya asked Goldie. They were at the very back of the lift.

  “We couldn’t climb down, not with her arm like that,” Goldie whispered. “There were some other guys who went in after us and they did make it down. Said they were going to show the cops.”

  “Off the lift,” Trigger Happy yelled.

  People lurched forward, shoving Tanya and the other girls ahead of them. They started and staggered down the tunnel.

  “Where are your skates?” Tanya asked. Last she’d seen them, they’d been carrying them at least.

  “Back at The Warehouse.” Goldie wrapped an arm around Mallory’s waist and they started forward, into the near pitch darkness of the tunnel.

  It made Tanya think of every zombie movie she shouldn’t have watched.

  Darkness.

  The sounds of scurrying things.

  She didn’t know which nightmare she preferred. Terrorists versus zombies. It was a hard pick.

  A young man to Tanya’s right dug in his pocket and came up with another cell phone. He flicked the light on and chased away the shadows. Another light pierced the dusty tunnel then another. Cell phone apps. What a lifesaver.

  Tanya was grateful for their light. She also noted exactly who had phones.

  The tunnel slowly rose, sloping upward, until they were let out into what seemed to be an indoor junk heap. Wooden shipping pallets lay broken and scattered to their left. Piles of rusted scrap made a maze. There were paths through the debris, but they weren’t wide.

  The Derby Dames had held games across the street for years, and she’d never known this place existed.

  “Cell phones, hand them over,” Silence demanded.

  Tanya whirled to the closest person she’d seen with a phone. “Give me your phone. My husband is SWAT,” she whispered in a rush.

  “SWAT?” Goldie hissed. “You never said anything about SWAT.”

  Tanya snatched the phone from the man’s hand and shoved it in her shorts, smoothing over the lump. She glanced at her teammates. “Yeah, well, surprise.”

  Goldie opened her mouth to reply, but snapped it shut as Silence passed in front of them with barely a glance in Tanya’s direction. She’d ceased to exist to him, or maybe he considered her a non-threat.

  “Stay here,” Silence ordered. He gestured at the other two terrorists. “They’ll shoot you if you move.”

  Silence moved off between the piles of junk, leaving Tanya and the rest to cool their heels.

  Nicolas and Trigger Happy took up positions between the group and the garbage.

  Tanya desperately wanted to text Cole, but she didn’t know if her fellow hostages would turn her in or protect her. She didn’t dare risk it. The longer they remained prisoners, the less rational they became, and their chance of survival shrank.

  “Is he out there?” Lotta whispered after a few moments.

  “Yeah,” Tanya reluctantly admitted.

  “Damn. That’s rough.” Mallory punctuated her words with a cough. She was looking even paler than before. Blood was smeared all over her, Goldie and Lotta. Maybe even Tanya since they’d been in such close quarters.

  Goldie’s gaze was serious, the dim light shining off her eyes. “Be straight with me. Are they going to get us out of here?”

  Tanya glanced at the closest people to them, who didn’t seem interested in their conversation. “They don’t know where we are. Yet. But they will come for us.”

  Silence stepped out from behind a stack of oil drums. His gaze flicked to Tanya and she froze. Had he heard their conversation? Did he suspect her intention to inform on them?

  “Follow me. Don’t try to escape, we will shoot,” he said to the group.

  The gunmen herded the group between the refuse to a large shipping container. The doors hung open, like jaws waiting to snap shut. Tanya couldn’t see anything inside, but that didn’t mean there weren’t piles of trash or worse waiting for them.

  “In there,” Silence said, confirming Tanya’s suspicions.

  “Wait, what are you doing, man?” Nicolas demanded, circling the group to get in Silence’s face. “We should get out of here.”

  Silence thumped Nicolas’ forehead. “Use your head. How do we keep them together and moving? We move them, we get caught out in the open. No. We dig in here. They don’t know where we’ve gone.”

  “Then why didn’t we stay in the other building?” Nicolas shoved his hand through his hair.

  Both Silence and Trigger Happy ignored the question. Maybe they weren’t as committed to their cause as they thought?

  The hostages were given no choice. Tanya crept into their makeshift prison, keeping one hand on the wall. The doors clanged shut behind them and she didn’t know if she should be glad for the protection the metal walls provided or fearful that this might become her coffin.

  * * * * *

  Cole’s vision narrowed to the door.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Bang.

  Aaron pounded the metal with the ram. With each blow it bowed inward until the hinges popped.

  “Police! Get down! On the ground now,” their stand-in team leader, Sergeant Rylon yelled.

  Cole followed on his temporary replacement’s heels, shield and gun in hand, ready to give cover to any of the officers. It was a moment in time that would forever kill him, but he had to put the concern for his wife secondary to the mission.

  The inside of The Warehouse was full of smoke. People were coughing and lying facedown on the floor, others up against the walls, faces pressed to cracks in the metal. They’d deployed every canister of gas they had between all the teams into The Warehouse. His eyes stung, but he pushed through it.

  Officers poured in from the two single-person entry points. Across the space, someone began lifting the dock door.

  They spread out, looking for the gunmen but also pushing terrified hostages out through the doors into the waiting arms of officers ready
to aid the civilians.

  Where were the gunmen?

  Radios all over the building blared the same message, “Be advised, hostages are reporting the suspects took a small number of hostages into a back room.”

  Every eye zeroed in on the three partitioned-off rooms. Cole knew the ones on the far left and right currently served as locker rooms. The one in the middle was a mystery though.

  There were officers moving into position around the rooms, but Cole held back. Technically he shouldn’t be involved, but the need for officers was so great that he was permitted a small role in the entry and retrieval of hostages.

  As much as it killed him not to search for his wife, Cole began helping civilians up off the floor and to the exit. Many clenched his arm, crying and babbling about family members they wanted to call. He didn’t recognize a one of them, at least not until he found a Derby Dames skater, still wearing her skates and everything. Tears streamed down her face, either from the gas or what she’d just experienced, he couldn’t tell.

  Cole offered the woman a hand. “Have you seen Hot Tango?”

  She blinked at him as if she couldn’t understand his words.

  “Hot Tango, brown-blonde hair—”

  “They took her,” the woman blurted.

  His heart leapt to his throat.

  Of course they would.

  The derby girl gave him a once-over, her face creased in confusion. “Who are you?”

  “Give me your hand.”

  She took his hand and got to her skates in the odd way that derby girls had of using their toe stops and front wheels. “No, really. Who are you?”

  “I’m her husband,” he replied.

  The woman seemed to go into stunned silence. He helped her get moving and turned to lend a hand to others.

  Paramedics were suddenly everywhere. Stretchers bore off prone people. Officers were directing able-bodied civilians out in an orderly fashion. As if there wasn’t a hostage situation still ongoing.

  The rational part of his brain knew that there were teams working on it. There were officers following the suspects’ trail, everyone was doing their part.

  And Tanya was still missing.

  His precious wife, the love of his life—the person he couldn’t live without—was still a hostage.