I came to a crowded street corner where people from the neighborhood were being interviewed for TV I was starting to walk by, lost in my thoughts, when I heard one of the women talking between wrenching sobs. "That my flesh and blood trapped inside. Nobody care. Nobody give a damn!"
I stopped to listen to the interview. The woman couldn't have been more than twenty, and she was pregnant. From the look of her, she was due any day. Maybe tonight.
"My gramma is seventy-five. She inside to make money so my kids can go to Catholic school. Her name Rosario. She a beautiful lady. My gramma don't deserve to die."
I listened to a few more emotional interviews, mostly with family members of the lab workers – but also a couple with the wives and kids of the drug crew trapped inside. One of the runners in there was just twelve years old.
Finally, I headed back inside the barricades, the inner perimeter, and I went looking for Ned Mahoney. I found him with some administrative types, suits, and Captain Moran outside one of the command-post vans. They were discussing shutting off the building's power.
"I've got an idea," I told him.
"Well, it's about time."
Chapter 25
THE BUTCHER WAS still hanging around the police barricades in Washington, and he knew he shouldn't be there. He was supposed to be home in Maryland hours ago. But this was worth it. The craziness of it all. He wandered through the crowd of looky-loos, and he was feeling like a kid let loose at a state fair, or at least what he thought a kid at a state fair would feel like.
Hell, they even had ice cream and hot dog vendors at the scene. People's eyes glistened with excitement; they wanted to see some real-life action. Well, hell, so did he, so did he.
He definitely was a crime-scene junkie, and he thought it stemmed from the days spent with his old man in Brooklyn. When he was little, his father used to take him on fire and police calls that he intercepted on his two-way. It was about the only good thing he ever did with the old man, and he figured it was because his father thought he'd look like less of a freak if he dragged a kid along beside him.
But his father was a freak. He liked to see dead bodies, any kind – on a slab of pavement, inside a crashed car, being hauled out of a smoldering building. His crazy old man was the original Butcher of Sligo – and much, much worse. Of course, he was the Butcher now, one of the most feared and sought-after assassins in the world. He was the Man, wasn't he? He could do whatever he wanted to, and that's what he was up to now.
Michael Sullivan was pulled out of his reverie by the sound of somebody talking into a mike at the hostage scene. He looked up, and it was the detective again – Alex Cross. It almost seemed like fate to him, like ghosts calling to the Butcher from the past.
Chapter 26
I FIGURED MY IDEA was a long shot, and definitely out of left field, but it was worth it if it could save some lives. Plus, nobody had come up with anything better.
So at midnight we set up microphones behind a solid row of police cars and transport buses parked on the far side of Fifteenth. It looked impressive, if nothing else, and the TV cameras were all over it, of course.
For the next hour, I led family members up to tell their stories into the mikes, to reason and plead with the men inside to put down their weapons and leave the building, or at the very least to let the lab workers out. The speakers stressed that it was hopeless not to surrender and that many of those inside would die if they didn't. Some of the stories told at the mikes were heartbreaking, and I watched spectators tear up as they listened.
The best of the moments were anecdotes – a Sunday soccer game a father was supposed to referee; a wedding less than a week away; a pregnant girl who was supposed to be on bed rest but who came to plead with her drug-runner boyfriend. Both of them were eighteen.
Then we got an answer from inside.
It came while a twelve-year-old girl was talking about her father, one of the dealers. Gunshots erupted in the building!
The gunfire lasted for about five minutes, then stopped. We had no way of telling what had happened. We knew only one thing – the words of their loved ones had failed to move the men inside.
No one had come out; no one had surrendered.
"It's all right, Alex." Ned took me aside. "Maybe it bought us a little more time." But that wasn't the result either of us was looking for. Not even close.
At one thirty, Captain Moran turned off the mikes outside. It looked like nobody was coming out. They had made their decision.
A little after two o'clock, it was decided by the higher-ups that the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team would go into the building first. They would be followed by a wave of DC police – but no one from SWAT. It was a tough-minded decision, but that's the way it was these days in Washington – maybe because of the terrorist activity over the past few years. People didn't seem to want to try to negotiate their way out of crisis situations anymore. I wasn't sure what side of the argument I was on, but I understood both.
Ned Mahoney and I would be part of the first assault team to go inside. We were assembled out on Fourteenth Street, directly behind the building under siege.
Most of our guys were pacing, restless, talking among themselves, trying to stay focused.
"This is a bad one," Ned said. "SWAT guys know how we think. Probably even that we're coming in tonight."
"You know any of them? The SWAT team inside?" I asked.
Ned shook his head. "We don't usually get invited to the same parties."
Chapter 27
WE DRESSED UP in dark flight suits with full armor, and both Ned and I had MP5s. You could never predict too much about a night assault, but especially this one, with SWAT types on the inside and HRT as the force coming to get them.
Ned got a message on his headset, and he turned to me. "Here we go, Alex. Keep your head down, buddy. These guys are as good as we are."
"You do the same."
But then the unexpected happened. And this time, it wasn't such a bad thing.
The front door to the building opened. For a few seconds, there was no activity at the door. What was going on in there?
Then an elderly woman dressed in a lab smock wandered out into the bright lights aimed at the building. She held her hands up high and kept saying, "Don't shoot me."
She was followed by more women in lab coats, young and old, as well as two boys who looked to be twelve or thirteen at the most.
People behind the barricades were screaming out names. They were weeping for joy, clapping wildly.
Then the front door slammed shut again.
The exodus was over.
Chapter 28
THE RELEASE OF ELEVEN lab workers stopped the full Hostage Rescue Team assault and opened up communications again. The police commissioner and the chief of detectives appeared on the scene and talked with Captain Moran. So did a couple of ministers from the community. Late as it was, the TV crews were still here shooting film.
At around three, we got word that we were going inside after all. Then there was another delay. Hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait.
At half past, we got the go. We were told it was final.
A few minutes past three thirty, Ned Mahoney and I were up and racing toward a side entrance into the building; so were a dozen other guys from HRT. The good thing about protective gear is that it might stop a fatal or damaging bullet; the bad thing is that it slows you down, makes it harder to run as fast as you need or want to, and forces your breath to come in gulps and gasps.