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
“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 on 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.