Free Terminal Rage by A.M. Khalifa Page A

Blackwell?”
    Blackwell felt a spasm tighten in his belly. The thing he feared most was coming, any second now.
    “They ’ re miserable human dumping stations. Right in the middle of the poorest shitholes. Struggling parents deposit their children there while they work forty-eight hours nonstop to make ends meet. Working-class America getting it right up the ass is how I see it.”
    “Some people work hard so they don ’ t have to beg or steal, Seth.”
    “There ’ s no pride in those shitholes, Mr. Blackwell—all you smell there is shame and despair.”
    Blackwell ’ s stomach churned harder as he waited for Seth to elaborate on some sort of diabolical threat to harm innocent children. It was the reason he had accepted this assignment in the first place.
    “Mr. Blackwell, we ’ ve wired four such daycares across the country with explosives that can be detonated remotely. Evacuate your men off my building within thirty minutes or one of these centers will go BANG. Monica Vlasic is there, isn ’ t she? I can smell it. Both of you have a track record of getting innocent children killed and I am only too happy to help you maintain that tradition.” Seth hung up.
    Blackwell hadn ’ t even realized he had snapped the pencil in his hand into two, a sharp splinter of wood burrowed in his skin. Motherfucker.
    “There ’ s no way in hell we ’ re doing this.” Monica had already made up her mind about what happens next.
    Blackwell wasn ’ t ready this early in the night for a showdown with her. “Let ’ s just think this through, Monica. We don ’ t even know his demands—”
    She all but snarled at him. “What ’ s the first rule, Alex?”
    The words travelled out of his mouth before he even checked to see if he remembered them. “ Never give a hostage-taker anything before you get something in return .”
    He focused straight at her and snarled back. “But what ’ s the second rule, Monica?”
    Her eyes avoided him, but Nishimura answered for her.
    “ There are times when playing it by the book can only make things worse . Both of you—listen, I may have a way out.”
    Nishimura stood up and came between them like a ref in a boxing match.
    “Monica ’ s right—after the evacuation, there ’ s no way he could still be monitoring the building. The best he could muster is to have someone outside the evac zone keep an eye on the skies for incoming aircraft. And the hostage rescue unit has swept for cameras on the rooftop and found nothing.”
    “I ’ m listening,” Monica said.
    “What if we flew in a chopper and performed a partial extraction? He doesn ’ t know how many men are on top of the building, right? And if we remove most of them and make it visible, he ’ d never know who we left behind.”
    Robert Slant jumped up and gave the plan his provisional seal of approval. “That would work. Leave behind a small covert unit that mixes with the concrete.”
    Monica paced back and forth like a caged lioness. They were off to a terrible start. Blackwell hadn ’ t been able to extract anything useful from the abductor except his alias, and now they were looking at losing their firepower. No wonder she was furious.
    “Get me Al on the line,” she snapped at Nishimura, who complied and patched her in to Albert Voss, the lead operator of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team unit on the rooftop of the tower.
    His voice crackled through the loud speaker.
    “This is Voss.”
    “Al, Monica here. Perp ’ s got eyes on you and your men. He ’ s made some pretty shitty threats if we don ’ t evacuate you.”
    “Bad idea, Monica. Very fucking bad idea. How the hell ’ s he tracking us?”
    “Probably someone on the outside scanned your incoming chopper before we evacuated mid-town. Liam Nishimura suggested a partial extraction as a decoy—would that fly?”
    “It depends.”
    “On?”
    “How many guys I get to keep. It would have to be me and three others. I can ’ t work with a unit of less than four.