Born to Run (26 page)

"Yes, sir."

The privacy partition rose automatically, and the men were alone, facing each other in the split rear seating.

Madera had just come from the airport, but he didn't complain about returning. No one ever complained to Dinitalia. The last guy to do it had been mad enough and stupid enough to twist his surname into "Genitalia"--and he promptly lost his with a flick of the knife in a scene right out of The Valachi Papers. Stories like that became legend. So if Dinitalia wanted you to hop on an airplane, fly into LaGuardia, and cab it over to his restaurant just so that he could have a backseat talk while taking you straight back to the airport, then you hopped on an airplane, no questions asked.

"My father is unhappy," said Dinitalia.

Madera's throat tightened. There were ways to smooth things over between friends, but Dinitalia's old man still ran the show. If he was unhappy, friendship didn't matter.

"How do we fix that?" said Madera.

Dinitalia looked out the window as he spoke. It had the desired effect, making Madera feel as if he were of no more substance than his reflection in the dark tinted glass.

"We get the job done right," said Dinitalia. "That's how we fix it."

"That was not my fuckup in Miami tonight."

"Of all the stupid plans," said Dinitalia, scoffing. "Spray the office with machine-gun fire? What do your boys think this is, an old rerun of Miami Vice? They should have walked up and put a bullet in the Greek's head. Bang. Game over."

"It was impossible to just walk up to him," said Madera. "He was with some Russian Majiya. We don't mess with them."

"So thanks to you cowards, not only is the old man still alive, but he's got complete control of a newsroom and is ready to talk to the camera."

"What?" said Madera.

"You haven't seen the news?"

"I've been on an airplane."

Dinitalia filled him in on everything that he'd missed since boarding the shuttle from Washington. It was the proverbial bad
-
to-worse scenario, and by the time Dinitalia had finished, Madera was literally feeling sick to his stomach.

"I don't think anybody saw that coming," said Madera.

Dinitalia's gaze drifted back in Madera's direction. "My father paid the Greek good money for valuable information. It changed everything. Two years ago we were still paying off city managers to grant us recycling contracts so that we could haul bottles and newspapers straight to the dumps for pure profit. A nice piece of change, if you like small potatoes. This year, when the new contract comes in from the Pentagon, we'll be over a hundred million dollars in private security contracts alone. Pretty good work for a company that doesn't even have a private security force, but who the hell is gonna fly over to Iraq and check? And all this is possible because we know something about President Keyes that nobody else knows."

"That's still the case," said Madera.

"For now. But it's all over if the Greek starts blabbering on television. And once that unravels, do you have any idea what kind of problems we'll have on our hands?"

Madera lowered his head. "I'd say no one has a better understanding of that than I do. Except for the president himself."

The two men rode in silence for several minutes. It was a dark night, but Madera recognized much of the old neighborhood passing by outside the car windows. Finally, they'd completed the big loop, and the limo was back on Grand Central Parkway and headed toward the airport. St. Michael's cemetery was coming up, and right next to it was the former Bulova watch headquarters. A famous watch manufacturer beside a cemetery. Madera had always thought it was the world's greatest metaphor for time marching on.

"I have friends there," said Dinitalia.

Madera knew he wasn't talking about the Bulova Corporate Center.

"My father has friends there, too," said Dinitalia.

Madera glanced out the window. He couldn't really see anything, but he'd traveled past St. Michael's so many times that he knew what was there.

"We've put friends there," said Dinitalia, crossing himself.

Madera said nothing.

Dinitalia said, "You and I have been friends for a very long time, Frank."

"A long, long time."

Dinitalia nodded. "But this is business. Very important business."

"I understand."

"I'm not sure you do. So let me spell it out. The Greek dies tonight--before he starts shooting his mouth off. Period, end of story. Tell me you can get it done, and I'll tell my father to let you live."

Madera felt numb. Never before had the disparity in power between the two old friends been more apparent.

"I can do it," said Madera.

Dinitalia leaned forward, deadly serious.

"Listen to me. At this point, I don't care if you, personally, have to run into that television studio with a machine gun and shoot the place up. This problem has to be taken care of."

"It'll happen," Madera said.

Dinitalia grabbed Madera by the earlobe and forced his old friend to look him straight in the eye.

"I want your word on it."

Madera met his stare and said, "You've absolutely got my word on it."

"Good man," said Dinitalia, as the limo steered onto the airport exit ramp. "There's a twelve-fifteen red-eye to Miami. Be on it."

Chapter
42

Andie almost had to shoot her way through the media.

The two-lane access road to the Action News studio was completely choked off. Police had established a perimeter around the property with teams of uniformed officers stationed about every twenty feet. Outside the police tape, hungry reporters poked and probed at the yellow membrane like free radicals on a skin cell. The largest concentration was at the main entrance to the parking lot. Media vans with satellite dishes and microwave antennae were parked two and three deep. The story of a newsroom held hostage was to the media as mirrors were to supermodels, and everyone from CNN to Noticias 23 was on the scene.

Andie tried dialing Jack's father on his cell. It was her second attempt in the past twenty minutes. This one went to voice mail, too, so she left another message.

"Harry, it's Andie. I'm just arriving at the scene. I know you must be worried. Technically, I can't tell you much, but I just want you to know that I'm . . . involved."

She frowned at her choice of words, but she'd never had such a personal stake in a standoff, and she didn't really know what to say.

"Call me if you can," she said.

She hung up and inched her car forward toward the perimeter, where television reporters with roving camera crews were staking out positions for live updates. They all seemed to want the same backdrop in the distance: the gaping hole that Jack's car had punched through the main entrance to the Action New s s tudio. A motorcycle cop finally had to part the media in order to get Andie to the entrance gate, where a highway patrol officer stopped her car.

"FBI," she said, flashing her credentials.

He looked at her skeptically, as if he'd seen reporters pull much cleverer stunts to get past him.

"She's legit," said the motorcycle cop. "I checked."

The trooper let her pass. Andie parked her car in the nearest open space and started walking across the parking lot to the FBI's mobile command center. The lot wasn't quite the state of confusion that raged outside the gate, but things were buzzing. In addition to the FBI, the sheriff's department was out in full force, as was Florida Highway Patrol. Three dozen squad cars surrounded the building in a first line of containment, forming a tight and fortified circle within the wider circle of crowd control. This close to the building, patrol officers wore flak jackets, just in case the gunman came out shooting. Andie also noted the obvious duplication of effort between local and federal law enforcement. There were actually two mobile command centers on site, one from the FBI, and the other a large motor van bearing the blue, green, and black logo of Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD). The antennae protruding from the roof indicated that it was equipped with all the necessary technical gadgets to survey the situation and make contact with the hostage taker. Andie could smell the turf war already.

Just then, another MDPD vehicle rolled past her and came to a stop beside the sheriffs command center. It was a SWAT transport vehicle, and before the engine cut off, the rear doors flew open and the tactical team filed out. They were armed with M-16 rifles and dressed in black SWAT regalia, including Kevlar helmets, night-vision goggles, and flak jackets. They were on hold for the moment, but they appeared ready--eager, in fact--to go on a moment's notice.

The turf war had just gone from cold to hot.

Andie's cell rang, and she answered. It was the Miami ASAC, Guy Schwartz.

"Where the heck are you?" he said.

"Headed straight toward you."

"Walk faster. We have some . . . logistics to work out."

She knew that "logistics" meant "politics." It was the part of her job that she hated most, and the last thing she needed was to waste time arguing with the local sheriff over who was in charge. Unfortunately, resolution of these matters was never as simple as pointing out that the gunman inside had three hostages at his mercy, that the coroner's van was already on the scene for a dead security guard, that three ambulances were waiting in the wings for the next victims, and that there was no time to waste.

"Why should today be different from any other?" she said, and hung up.

A helicopter whirred overhead, its bright white spotlight illuminating the demolished entrance to the building. She'd seen the damage on television, and she'd even recognized Jack's new Mustang in the rubble. But seeing it in person impacted her anew and with much greater force. She was doing her best to sustain her unemotional work mode, but it was impossible to keep a certain hostage out of the equation. Her gaze again drifted toward the ambulances, and she said a little prayer that it wouldn't be Jack who needed it.

She found Schwartz on the other side of the FBI mobile command center. He was standing in the parking lot, just him and someone from the sheriff's office. The conversation didn't look friendly, and she approached with trepidation, landing in the middle of a heated argument.

"Nobody called for FBI support," he said to Schwartz.

They would, if they could, thought Andie, meaning the hostages.

"Andie Henning," she said, introducing herself.

"Manny Figueroa," he said, "MDPD crisis team leader."

He and Schwartz looked as if they'd been cut from the same mold--or, more accurately, chiseled from the same block of granite. Some men shrank in a crisis. Andie wondered if there was enough room in Miami for these two angry warriors who were standing eyeball to eyeball at about six-foot-three.

"Any contact with the subject yet?" asked Andie.

"Just what you've seen on the air," said Schwartz.

Andie said, "Are we sure the phones are even working? The crash may have taken out the landlines."

"Our techies say they are," said Schwartz.

"That's good, but we don't need him talking to some overactive journalist. We'll want to block out all calls except those coming from our communications vehicle."

"You mean my communications vehicle," said Figueroa.

Andie ignored it. That was Schwartz's battle. "Has anyone contacted Building and Zoning yet?"

Figueroa said, "Before we get into this--"

"We'll want blueprints of the building," said Andie, stemming the jurisdictional argument. "The more detailed, the better. Bearing walls versus nonbearing, crawl space, duct work, attic clearance. Have we located the water main?"

"These are all good questions," said Figueroa, "but the first thing we need to talk about is who is in--"

"We may want to turn that off at some point," said Andie. "The same goes for electrical, though that will take some real thought. The gunman's one and only demand so far is to stay on the air, and it may actually play to our advantage to have an eye on the inside. Have we been able to confirm that no one else is in the building--just the gunman and his three hostages?"

"I can answer that," said Figueroa.

Andie almost smiled. She had him talking about the important stuff, and that was always step one toward cooperation.

"Great," she said. "Fill me in."

"MDPD officers swept all areas of the building, other than the newsroom, when we went in to retrieve the body of the security guard. We found one other guard hiding in a closet on the first floor. That's all we know."

"Was there a sign-in register at the front desk--anything to show if there were visitors in the studio?"

"The lobby is completely demolished. My guess is that the sign-in log is buried somewhere under that Mustang."

Andie looked at Schwartz and said, "We should establish contact ASAP."

Figueroa said, "Excuse me, Agent Henning. But exactly what is your role here?"

Schwartz said, "She's the lead negotiator."