Spectrum

by Ethan Cross

  The manager, her boss, had recently been taken to his office by the giant. She had heard his haunting screams.

  Gabi had felt the fear of death and worse before, but she had never faced an opponent like this massive African man. He was pure muscle and inspired pure fear. It radiated from him like a red aura of menace.

  The manager, Quentin Yarborough, still clutched his wounded hand to his chest and one of his eyes had been covered over with a blood-soaked field dressing. Yarborough hadn’t said a word since he’d been carried out of his office. He merely rocked back and forth and whimpered occasionally, like a dog after being hit by a speeding truck. She had caught a glimpse of the bloody and burned stump where his hand had been. The giant had apparently removed it, probably as torture to extract some kind of information. She had no idea what had happened to his face and eye, and she didn’t really care to know or see the wounds.

  The blonde mute woman still looked belligerent toward their captors, but it wasn’t as if the thin woman with the severely scarred trachea would be able to do much against the giant African, who seemed to have taken a shine to her. He would flip her blonde hair and run his finger down the side of her face every time he walked past. The blonde would pull away in disgust at each of his advances, once even trying to bite his massive fingers.

  The others were a collection of customers and employees: a pair of middle-aged vacationers in shorts and Harley Davidson T-shirts, an Asian business man in a $5,000 suit, a twenty-something young man who looked like he had been out clubbing all night, and the two workers from the vault room. Her fellow Client Specialist, Deb, had already been released with a message for the police. Not that Gabi counted that as a loss for their team. The white-haired matron had arthritis and a bad hip, so she would have obviously been of little assistance.

  But Gabi had to do something. She couldn’t just wait to die. That wasn’t her style. Plus, she knew that whatever the gunmen’s objective, they had no qualms about spilling blood. The giant had proven that fact when he played Russian roulette with Deb and her, gambling their lives merely to prove his resolve and force open a door.

  Gabi figured the male tourist with the bulging belly and Harley T-shirt would be her staunchest ally. He had a wife to protect, and his eyes showed a calm that could only have come from some time in combat or police service. She could recognize that look anywhere. It was the same quiet confidence that her father exuded from his years in service to India’s military.

  The smaller black gunman’s attention was focused on the front of the building, his rifle pointed menacingly at the front windows, as if he was ready for an assault.

  With his laser beam gaze and military-trained focus directed on the police, the one called Sparks presented the easiest target. The Giant and the red-haired woman they called Doc had disappeared into the vault room soon after the torture of the manager.

  Now was her chance.

  She tried to get Harley’s attention, but he was too preoccupied with his wife and her incessant crying. Gabi had little sympathy for people who took on a “woe is me” attitude.

  Deciding to move on to another potential ally, she tried to get the attention of the Asian businessman. He wore a blue suit with white pinstripes. It was a three-piece, and he had apparently elected to wear the full ensemble despite the blistering Nevada heat.

  He refused eye contact and kept muttering a prayer under his breath. Some kind of Buddhist proverb or incantation, she guessed. He’d be of little help either, unless he was some kind of warrior monk, which she highly doubted.

  The young partier’s eyes were still dilated from the previous night’s activities. He seemed to barely register what was happening. Perhaps, he was under the impression that this was all some kind of bad narcotic-induced hallucination.

  That left only the blonde, the mute woman who looked like she may do fine at palates but was probably worthless in a fight.

  Still, the blonde was hyperaware and, apparently having the same idea, motioned at the only remaining gunman with her eyes.

  Gabi gave a nod.

  Now all she needed was a distraction and a whole lot of luck.

  Her heart jumped as the gunman watching the door yelled, “Someone’s coming!”

  Chapter 26

  Samuel Carter felt like he was stepping out to face Goliath with nothing but a slingshot and some rocks, but in reality he wasn’t even that well-armed. He had nothing more than his FBI-issued body armor and his wits. He could feel the eyes of the SWAT officers at his back, and the deceptively calm façade of the GoBox facility ahead.

  Carter was ten feet from the door when it finally opened and one of the gunman stuck out the barrel of his assault rifle and said, “That’s far enough. Are you the SSA?”

  “Actually, you reeled in an even bigger fish. I’m Assistant Special Agent in Charge Samuel Carter. I’m second in command at the Las Vegas Field Office.”

  “Why didn’t you send an SSA?”

  “You wanted Ritchie Valance and you got Elvis Presley. Or at least maybe Buddy Holly. What are you complaining about?”

  “Buddy Who?”

  “What do they teach in school these days? No history?”

  “You think this is a game?”

  “Absolutely not, several people’s lives are in danger. I don’t really understand why you wanted an SSA, but I can assure you that I have all the same privileges and connections as an SSA, and a whole lot more.”

  “Stay there,” the gunman said. “Don’t come any closer.” Then he let the door slam shut.

  Carter considered the implications. Either this group wasn’t half as organized as it seemed to be or the man at the door wasn’t the man in charge but merely a messenger. He had suspected as much. The huge man who had played Russian roulette with the pretty Indian woman was clearly the one calling the shots, which implied there was a reason he was using an intermediary.

  The gunman returned and said, “I guess you’ll do.”

  Carter took a few steps forward, hands still raised in a nonthreatening manner. “Why don’t you tell me what this is all about?”

  “First of all, you ain’t in charge here. We are. Just keep your men back from the building, and we’ll send a list of our demands out when we’re ready.”

  “Why not tell me now? It’s coming up on midday. It may be hard for us to get things done if all the paper pushers have gone home.”

  “You take one more step forward, ask me another question, or do anything that violates the rules I just stated, and we’ll start throwing out corpses.”

  Chapter 27

  August Burke was sick and tired of Sam Carter and the way the over-the-hill agent had forced him into indentured servitude. All Burke wanted was to be a mechanic at his dad’s shop. He didn’t want to be in the FBI or work cases in the field, and he still couldn’t understand why Carter was so dead set on turning him into a dancing monkey.

  Burke still felt sick to his stomach from the little performance Carter had just forced on him. He replayed every word of the briefing and his assessment over and over again. He analyzed and reanalyzed his words and the reactions of all the people gathered in the comm center. And he would continue that analysis for days, knowing from past experience that those mistakes and transgressions would haunt him to the point of interfering with his ability to concentrate.

  The guilt and shame from his every action was suffocating him. He felt like a hydraulic jack had popped and dropped a car on his chest. He couldn’t catch his breath, his hands trembled uncontrollably, and he felt like his chest was a canon and his heart the cannonball.

  Why did he keep doing this to himself? When he was forced into social situations, the outcome was almost always the same: he hurt, alienated, and, sometimes, all out destroyed people with his words and actions. He felt rude, hurtful, insensitive, stupid, worthless, and unforgivable, all at once.

  He wished that he would have just kept his big mouth shut.

  He wished Carter would have never
roped him into all this.

  Unfortunately, his father, Daniel Burke, and Sam Carter were old friends, and Daniel had felt that August was wasting his considerable talents on twisting wrenches and changing oil.

  It didn’t seem to matter to his dad that his only enjoyment came from being alone with a car, analyzing and repairing it. He never hurt the car’s feelings, and he never felt hatred from a car. Being alone with his thoughts and his work gave him an opportunity to breathe and relax that simply wasn’t possible any other way.

  Burke smoked his cigarette in a secluded spot on the backside of the comm center and watched as Carter spoke to the man at the facility’s front door and then returned to the perimeter of officers. He immediately stomped over to intercept the FBI agent.

  “What the hell was all that about?” Burke said.

  “They’re saying that demands will be made when they’re ready. Still stalling.”

  “I don’t give a shit about that. I want to know why the hell you threw me under the bus back there.”

  “Where? I don’t know what you mean.”

  “In the comm center! What was all that ‘your thoughts, Dr. Burke’ crap. You want to know my thoughts? I wish I wasn’t even here. I wish I was back at the shop tuning up an engine. I’m not cut out for this.”

  “You did an excellent job. Your analysis was spot on.”

  “I’m not so sure about that, but I do know that I was rude and hurtful toward a lot of hardworking people, who didn’t deserve to be bullied.”

  “You’re too hard on yourself, and they needed a slap to the face to wake them up to the reality of this situation,” Carter said.

  “If you want someone slapped, you can do it your damn self.”

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t trying to put you on the spot. I honestly didn’t think you were paying any attention, and I guess I was trying to teach you a lesson.”

  Burke ran a hand through his shaggy blond hair and stuck another cigarette in his mouth. “You shouldn’t underestimate me.”

  Carter laughed. “Why? All you do is underestimate yourself.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “You were smart enough to earn three masters and a doctorate online. And while you were still attending high school. But you’re not working in any of those fields.”

  “I like to learn. It’s fundamental.”

  Carter shook his head. “Then why were you getting Cs on your school reports but straight As in your online courses?”

  “They were more interesting. High school was just busy work and a bunch of outdated crap that no one really needs anymore. My high school acted like the Internet and smartphones don’t exist. Why else would they force us to memorize such useless and easily accessible information?”

  “Now’s not the time for a debate on the effectiveness of our modern school systems. Don’t stress about what happened in there. You did an excellent job. I wish that I could take credit for giving you such skills, but all the praise should go to God for giving you that masterful brain of yours.”

  “Exactly! My brain is all I have, and you want to put me in a position where bullets may be flying at it. Not cool.”

  “There’s never any reward without a little risk, and bullets are hardly flying at your head. You’re not in any real danger.”

  Burke lit the cigarette, took a drag, and blew the smoke in Carter’s face. “The only reason I’m here is that my dad said he’d kick me out of the loft above the shop if I didn’t at least try to do whatever it is you think I can do.”

  Carter smiled. “What I think you can do is save a lot of lives. You have a special gift. Your brain is literally wired differently than a normal person’s.”

  “Neurotypical, not normal. The concept of normalcy is one so subjective and totally reliant on perspective that the word is utterly meaningless in such context. Your brain and your behaviors may seem ‘normal’ to you, but to me, you’re all like a bunch of alien beings composed of nothing but contradictions and lies.”

  Carter stared off into the distance. Burke hated nothing more than being ignored, except maybe being told what to think. But he supposed his communication skills also left much to be desired.

  He had a tendency for brutal honesty and very strategically placed comments. Like the comment he had made to Ms. Whelan. It was one of the few shockingly blunt and yet disarming intros that he had designed for use on the fairer sex. By his calculations, that particular line had a success rate of sixty-three percent, and it instantly established that he saw the comment’s recipient as a potential mate, avoiding all the usual confusion and social intricacies.

  Carter was looking up and to the right, as if remembering something. Then the FBI ASAC’s eyes narrowed.

  “What’s wrong?” Burke said.

  “The second time that man came to the door, I noticed a second weapon slung under his coat, one with a sound suppressor.”

  Chapter 28

  Nic Juliano couldn’t stop thinking about Burke. Mainly about punching him in the face, but not because of his analysis, which had been pretty spot on, but for the looks the young doctor had been giving Bristol. The man seemed entirely too aggressive when it came to women, which scared Nic. And he had to admit a certain amount of jealously at the way she looked at Burke. Once upon a time, she had looked flirtatiously at him like that, but the break-up had been entirely his fault, and so he had no right to say a word, at least not about Bristol.

  Carter and Burke pushed their way into the crowded comm center as Nic and Taz were studying a set of blueprints sent to them from GoBox’s corporate office. But the damn representative from the company was still MIA.

  “We may have a problem,” Carter said immediately.

  Taz laughed and said, “You’ll have to be a bit more specific there, boss.”

  “I saw a pistol with a sound suppressor under the coat of the man at the door, and he’s clearly not the one in charge.”

  Nic tapped a photo on the table which displayed the best image they had of the giant. “I think we all know who’s the one calling the shots.”

  “Yes,” Carter said, “but then why have this other man be the one communicating with us?”

  “It’s hard to tell,” Nic replied. “Maybe he just doesn’t want anyone to hear his voice, so they can’t identify him later.” Nic looked to Burke and added, “What are your thoughts, doc?”

  Burke had found a seat in the corner of the room and was leaning back against the wall with his eyes closed. He said, “At this point, it would be little more than conjecture.”

  “This isn’t a thesis paper. Go ahead and conject.”

  Burke frowned and said, “We obviously already have the large man’s voice on tape from the security footage. My guess is that he’s South African or at least from that region. So his reason for using an intermediary must be something else.”

  “Like what?”

  Burke shrugged.

  “Any ideas?”

  “Hard to say without knowing more about the facility and what they’re actually after. The big man seems to be calling the shots, but he may have better things to do than stalling us. And the weapon with the sound suppressor seems to have some fairly clear implications.”

  “Such as?”

  Carter stepped in and said, “Why does anyone want a suppressor? So they can shoot a hostage without any of us hearing.”

  “We’d hear the screams of the other hostages,” Nic said.

  “Unless they took the condemned into another room. Besides, the parabolic microphones we have on the building detected muffled screams earlier, but it wasn’t enough to justify a breach.”

  Taz sighed and dropped the blueprints on the table. With his rapid Puerto Rican accent, he said, “None of this makes any sense.”

  “They’re buying time, but why?” Carter said. “They triggered the alarm and told the workers to call the police, and now they’re stalling. But what could they possibly need time for? They can’t access any of the storage boxes
, and even if they could, they obviously aren’t walking out of there.”

  The door to the comm center opened, and a uniformed officer with a balding crown and a tattoo down his neck said, “Sorry to interrupt, but there’s someone out here who says he’s with the CIA.”

  Chapter 29

  August Burke really didn’t want to meet the agent from the CIA. To him, the agent was just another set of body languages, vocal patterns, and kinesic facial expressions that would need to be observed, catalogued, and analyzed. And this man would require an even deeper evaluation, since his profession mandated deception and misdirection as second nature. It was all so draining, both physically and mentally. And much of the time, despite his exhaustive efforts, he still couldn’t accurately understand what other people were thinking or feeling.

  Burke, Carter, and Nic Juliano had followed the uniformed policeman outside. Burke saw his ’67 Firebird sitting across the parking lot. That was where his time should have been spent. His mind kept popping back to the muscle car. He should have been alone at the shop today replacing the header gaskets and setting and adjusting the valve lash.

  The police officer led them outside of the barricaded area toward a black stretch limo. Burke wasn’t sure the budgetary and judiciary capabilities and restrictions for the CIA, but a black Lincoln stretch limo seemed a bit excessive.

  “Why do I have to come to this meeting?” he whispered to Carter.

  Carter smiled. “Because you notice things when others don’t, and you’re damn near a human lie detector.”

  Nic stepped in front of the others and pulled open the door to the Lincoln. Carter piled in with Burke in tow.