Terminal Rage (6 page)

“About six foot one, quite buff.”

“That
’
s not typical for Gulf men.” Carter dropped his head to the side as if to consult his internal database of “typical Gulf men” and assess that comparison. But there was no further reaction from him.

Blackwell ploughed on. “How about security footage from the Rome abduction?”

“Up until today, the whole Julia Price thing was kept out of the Bureau
’
s system. Deputy Director Benny Marino wanted it that way and just involved his inner posse. With the blessings of the director, might I add.”

There was something bitter about the way Carter had said the words “inner posse.” Back in the day, Carter had lacked the necessary ambition to advance his career. Just an honest agent who did what he was told. He hadn
’
t evolved much since Blackwell had last seen him, judging by the kinds of jobs they were still sending him to do.

“Monica and her team have all that juicy stuff waiting for you.”

Monica and her team. What a shit show that promised to be.

After years of battling with his anger and hatred of Monica Vlasic, Blackwell had concluded she was the sort of demon that could only be exorcised if you let her go. Thinking about her dredged up all the darkness of Hermosa Beach. So he started pondering something else that was bugging him.

“Carter, why was there staff at Exertify
’
s office on a Saturday?”

“I don
’
t know. Maybe Price wanted a full house to impress him? The fake prince was the one who picked the time and date of his meeting at Exertify.”

“He picked a Saturday so it wouldn
’
t take long to evacuate the rest of the building. This was all planned.”

Carter nodded.

Blackwell was just conjecturing at this stage. Nothing about this whole case made much sense. Like why the hostages obeyed the perp
’
s commands and stayed in the building if he didn
’
t even have a gun to their heads, let alone explosives. He understood why Price would do it to protect his niece. But the rank and file? He questioned Carter about that.

“My guess is the hostage-taker kept Price
’
s inner circle for a reason. The people with enough loyalty to the man and the family to stick it out for Julia. At that level, things get pretty incestuous.”

“Did we try communicating with any of the hostages inside?”

“Tried and failed. He
’
s confiscated all their devices and shut off phone and internet connectivity on the thirty-ninth floor.”

“So how
’
d he make that one call to ask for me?”

“He left a land line active in the conference room where he is now holed up with the hostages.”

Carter fired up a map application on his iPad to show him the setup at the scene. Blackwell had seen one of these tablets with Milo and Calista and had assumed it was a just toy. It wasn
’
t until Carter showed him Julia
’
s proof-of-life video that Blackwell realized these things could also serve a useful purpose. He had some catching up to do on operational tech advances.

“We have a hostage rescue unit on the rooftop of the building. Monica and the other agents have set up at fifty-four Vanderbilt Avenue, which is right across the street.”

“And midtown?

“It
’
s a fucking pandemonium like you wouldn
’
t believe. We faked a HAZMAT at the corner of Vanderbilt and Forty-sixth.”

“How do you fake a HAZMAT?”

“A broken-down chemical truck.”

“Is that even legal?”

Carter shrugged and studied Blackwell
’
s face for a few seconds, as if Blackwell had been abducted by aliens who vaporized the part of his brain required to differentiate between important and trivial questions.

“It was the only way we could
’
ve evacuated and barricaded a big chunk of the city. We
’
ve also enforced a no-fly zone over Manhattan.”

“News media? How
a
re they coping with the no-fly zone?”

“They aren
’
t buying it of course and dying to get the skinny on the whole affair. But, we
’
re managing the narrative pretty well. So far, at least.”

“What are the boundaries of the barricade?”

“East of Madison, west of Lex, south of Fifty-third and north of Thirty-fourth.” Blackwell looked at Carter
’
s map to get a spatial sense of the evacuated zone.

Thank God it
’
s the weekend.

“Grand Central?” The hub of the New York metro system was close to the besieged building.

“Trains are just passing through it now with no access to the station. I think even that will stop, depending on how this plays out.”

Blackwell put his shades back on and tried but failed to sleep for the remainder of the flight to the aircraft carrier. Not with all the unknowns ahead of him.

Then Milo and Calista crossed his mind. When he was done with this op, he
’
d go see them. Melanie would be pissed the visit was unscheduled, but the kids would love it. And it would do him good. Whatever healing he had been able to achieve on his own had multiplied when his kids reentered his life.

With the way this case was shaping up and the prospect of working with Monica Vlasic again, he
’
d be needing all the rebooting he could get.

SIX

Saturday, November 5, 2011—5:37 p.m.
Manhattan, NY

B
lackwell stood alone in the cavernous meeting room converted to the FBI
’
s forward command post for the hostage operation. The space had been sequestered from an accounting firm in a building right across from the besieged tower.

The room had been set up in record time, but they
’
d chosen one with no windows for security, and Blackwell already missed the fresh air and natural light. The oppressive smell of toner ink and moldy carpeting didn
’
t help either.

His mind was yet to conform to the absurdity of what had just happened to him. He had started his day with a run on the beach with his dog, then had a strong coffee sitting on his porch looking out to sea. On a Caribbean island where he lived and ran a boat charter. The last thing he would ever have imagined was to be back in the thick of the life he
’
d spent four years negating.

The FBI had made him sign reams of paperwork to enable him to come in as a one-time contract negotiator on this case. Including signed assurances he would be protected and defended by the FBI and the US government if something went wrong and he was held responsible.

A younger agent called Liam Nishimura, Monica Vlasic
’
s second-in-command, had toured him around the setup. Multiple adjacent rooms had been transformed into a living organism to serve as the operation
’
s critical communication and intelligence hub.

The negotiating station they had set up for him consisted of a space-age Embody chair facing a large oak table. And strung on the wall in front of him at eye level, a series of razor-thin monitors played live streams from the key sites. Such as the rooftop of the target building, where the Hostage Rescue Team
’
s blue squad, flown in from Quantico, was positioned. And the windows of the Exertify conference room on the thirty-ninth floor of the old Pan Am building where the hostages were held.

On his ample work surface, a Nespresso coffee machine and a micro chiller stocked with Red Bulls, foretold the grueling, sleepless hours ahead.

A wireless headset made by a small German company called Clupster had also been prepared for him. He didn
’
t trust any other brand. The last time he
’
d used one of these was four years ago—not to speak to a hostage-taker, but to counsel traumatized victims. Three teenage girls holed up inside their house in Hermosa Beach in Southern California. Their attacker had rigged their bodies with sophisticated bombs and fled the scene.

Blackwell knew he had to snap out of it quick. There was no possible benefit descending into a vicious cycle of guilt-ridden memories. These kinds of thoughts only led to the darkest places.

He turned his attention to the framed photo of Milo and Calista they
’
d placed on the desk. It was a tradition Blackwell had started when Milo was born, and someone at the Rapid Deployment Logistics Unit
—
the entity responsible for managing the practical and technical activities necessary to set up an FBI command center
—
had remembered. This photo was about five years old, and they
’
d taken the liberty to crop his ex-wife Melanie out of it.

After he left to Anguilla, Melanie hadn
’
t wasted any time filing for divorce. Their shaky marriage had begun to unravel well before his meltdown. Knowing he was in no position to look after them, Blackwell had surrendered custody of Milo and Calista and left Maryland to disappear in the Caribbean. Toxic is what he felt like. And he needed to get as far away as possible from his kids, for their own good.

For his first two years in hiding, Blackwell was a silent hermit roaming every inch of the island on foot. A curious sight, even for the easygoing and tolerant locals. With his Labrador Jacky by his side, he tried to make sense of it all to find a reason to keep going.

In the end, it was what had pushed him away in the first place that kept him alive. His children. The thought of how Milo and Calista would turn out without a father pulled him from the abyss and gave him a new purpose in life—to get well enough to be their father again.

Launching the charter business was a gentle way for Blackwell to interact with people he
’
d never see again or be tied to emotionally. And it seemed to have worked. Coming out of his shell was transformational. Six months after he started the island-hopping cruises, he felt stable enough to see his kids again.

When he first reached out to Melanie, she turned him down. He had to be dreaming after what he
’
d done to them. From where she saw it, he
’
d been a selfish, self-absorbed bastard who
’
d put his own state of mind ahead of his children
’
s well-being.

But in the end it wasn
’
t Blackwell
’
s pleading that convinced her. Milo
’
s violent tantrums and Calista
’
s ever-increasing phobias had become unbearable. A therapist told her what she
’
d probably known all along. The kids had never come to terms with Blackwell
’
s departure and needed a father.

She came around and allowed Blackwell to see them in Bethesda. These early encounters were painful for everyone but had recently started to improve. The road to regaining his children
’
s trust and forgiveness was still a long and tortuous one. But at least he had started walking it.

Although he had his back to her, Blackwell sensed the minute Monica Vlasic slithered into the room. The sheer power of the charge that had built up between them over the years was manifesting itself. And it catapulted him to that day in Hermosa Beach he was desperately trying to forget.

He
’
d been sitting at a negotiating table then, too. The sleeves of his sky-blue shirt were rolled up, his elbows on the table, one hand pressed on his headset. There was not a single gray hair on his head. Monica was standing behind him, with her hand on his shoulder encouraging him.

With every skill he knew, Blackwell tried to reassure those three girls held hostage by high-tech explosives attached to their bodies. “I
’
m proud of how brave y
’
all are. This will all be over soon, I give you my word.” And he was right. It ended a short while after that. But not in the way he had promised. Far from it. If only he could take it back. If he hadn
’
t told them what turned out to be a lie.

Four years later, he was only just learning to forgive himself for the carnage of that day. He sealed shut that window into the past and filled his lungs with as much oxygen as his body needed to help him turn around and look Monica in the face.

She extended her hand to him. “Hello, Alex.”

He kept his arms to his side and pointed with his chin to the photo frame. “A photo of the kids minus the ex—was that your bright idea, Monica?”

“The FBI will bend over backwards to please you, Alex. Nothing
’
s changed on that front.”

Blackwell stood firm, ignoring her hand.

Carter had told him Monica was now the FBI
’
s Legal Attaché in Rome after making unit chief back in HQ. She still maintained close contacts with the Critical Incident Response Group. Unlike Blackwell, Monica hadn
’
t always been attached to the CIRG.
She started off as a special agent in the Violent Crimes Unit, but after five years and a stellar record of putting some seriously violent criminals away, the CIRG came knocking and directly recruited her.

Now as the Rome Legat, Vlasic was not expected to head the investigation on the ground. Her official role was limited to exchanging information with local and national law enforcement and security agencies. But Marino must have pulled some serious rank to bend the rules and assign her as the lead investigator of Julia
’
s kidnapping, and now to helm the Exertify hostage standoff. He trusted her and she was one of his favorites, Carter had said.

She still commanded a powerful presence but had a softer demeanor. More purposely styled, more feminine. Barely a few years older than him, at forty-seven, Monica could still turn any number of heads. The almost invisible peach freckles on her cheeks, long flowing black hair, and satiny olive skin didn
’
t reveal much about her mixed Slavic, African, and East Indian roots. She could even pass for an Italian or a Latina. A black knitted dress hugged her ten-out-of-ten figure and ended halfway down her thighs. And those knee-high tan
leather boots screamed more attitude than price tag.
If only she looked this good on the inside.

Standing across from Monica, Blackwell felt an unexpected bout of nostalgia at seeing an old colleague, despite the tragic history they shared. He had come a long way in the last two years. His obsession with her as the focal point of everything wrong with his life had damaged him. It was only after he
’
d stopped blaming her and started taking responsibility for his own actions that he
’
d been able to move on with his life.

His eyes penetrated hers, and right before she was about to put her hand down, Blackwell finally shook it.

“I
’
ve had a lot of time on choppers today to think about what I
’
d say to you now—”

“Do it, Alex, and let
’
s get this out of the way quick.” Still snappy as he remembered her.

He thought about the speech he had prepared, but it sounded hollow now with her eyes prodding him to get on with it. He
’
d have to improvise and it had to be from the heart.

“I have never hit or wanted to hit a woman before, Monica, but then you came along. After Hermosa Beach, I spent two years in the doldrums—hating you, hating myself, hating life. And then two more years trying to come back from the brink. That
’
s when it hit me—I was one lucky son-of-a-bitch to have worked that long before anyone died on my clock.”

She nodded her head.
Duh
, she seemed to think. Finally you get it. And it only took you four years.

“Alex, I didn
’
t get into this job for special treatment because I
’
m a woman. Punch me now and get it out of your system. I don
’
t want your hang-ups about me to fuck this up.”

“No more hang-ups—”

“Hang-ups. Issues. Baggage—whatever you wanna call it.
You
’
d rather be somewhere else—I get that part. But we have a job to do. And the fact you showed up, tells me you knew exactly what you were getting yourself into.”

Monica was missing the point. He inhaled deeply, and started again. “What you did at Hermosa Beach flushed me rock bottom. But climbing back up has taught me a thing or two about myself.”

“And you think Hermosa was the highlight of
my
career? You think I
wanted
them to die? You never once stopped to question—”

“Monica, you
’
re not listening to me. This is not about Hermosa Beach. I am over it now. You did what you had to do. But that doesn
’
t change the fact I never wanted to see you again.”

She flicked her hair and took a few steps towards him, enough for him to smell her black vanilla leave-in conditioner. It wasn
’
t an aggressive advance, but it reminded him of how domineering she could be. He was determined not to let her get under his skin this time.

“Let
’
s get one thing straight, Monica—I
’
m here to work with you on this op. I agreed to do it, and yes I understand you
’
re the commanding agent. It took me a few years, but I finally managed to forgive you for how the decisions you took affected my life. But what I need you to understand—if you give me a chance to speak— is that I will
never
forgive you for what you did to those girls. Never.”

Monica tried to manufacture a smile as if what he said didn
’
t sting. But he knew her far better than she was able to mask her feelings.