The Professionals (41 page)

“She’s a
snitch
, Pender,” said Tiffany. “You’re making a huge mistake.”

Sawyer slammed his hand down on the table. “She’s no fucking snitch,” he said. “She’s part of the team.”

Tiffany stood up. “All right,” she said. “I can see how this one’s going to end. I’m out.”

Sawyer stared. “You’re leaving?”

“Let her go, Sawyer,” said Pender. “Better she walks out now than when we really need her.”

Tiffany walked to the door. She looked back at them. “You guys are going to let this girl bring you down,” she said. “I can’t be here when it all falls apart.”

Then she turned to the door, but before she could reach the handle, a knock on the other side froze the room. Sawyer and Pender stared at each other, and Sawyer reached for the Uzi. “Who is it?” Pender called.

“Arthur Pender,” came the voice from the other side. “This is the FBI. Open up. We’ve got you surrounded.”

T
iffany stood frozen in midstride. Sawyer picked up the Uzi while Pender stared at the door, feeling like he’d just jumped out of a plane without a parachute.

They’d been made. Somehow the FBI had found them, and the entire game had changed. They had moved from a simple kidnapping to a hostage situation, and Pender didn’t need to go to the window to imagine the scene outside. There would be police cars and Feds, helicopters, news reporters, SWAT teams, snipers, and hostage negotiators. They were now in the middle of something huge, something disastrous.

Okay, he thought. Don’t panic. He turned back to Sawyer. “Help me move this bed,” he said. “We gotta barricade that door.”

Sawyer stood and helped Pender drag the bed to the door. They fit it tight against the wall, and then Pender stood back to survey the room. So this is it, he thought. Our Little Bighorn. This is where we make our stand.

Another knock on the door. “Arthur, we know you’re in there.”

Must be Stevens. Pender walked to the window and slipped the heavy curtain apart as gently as he could. He peered out into the parking lot, and after his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw the scene exactly as he’d imagined it, spread out and surreal like some kind of movie.

He saw two Grosse Pointe PD cruisers and two unmarked sedans, the cruisers angle-parked and their occupants kneeling behind open doors, their service revolvers drawn and aimed square at the motel room door. At the door stood two FBI agents, a middle-aged man and a younger woman, both with guns drawn. The man reached up and knocked again. “Arthur,” he said. “If you don’t open up, we’ll have to break down the door.”

Pender stepped back from the curtains and drew them tight. “Go ahead,” he said, forcing his voice to sound calm. “You come in here with anything less than five million dollars and you’ll have yourselves a dead hostage.”

There was a pause. Then the woman spoke. “Arthur,” she said. “Listen up. We have you surrounded. There’s no way you’re getting out of there alive. This game is over, okay? Make it easy on yourself.”

“This game is not over,” said Pender. “And if you think you can force our hand, you’re dead wrong.”

He walked to the bedside table and picked up the TEC-9, glancing at Sawyer as he did. Sawyer nodded, and he walked back to the door.

“If you want to give Angel Cardinal her husband back in one piece,” Pender continued, his voice barely his own, “I’d suggest you pay closer attention to our demands this time around. Are you listening?”

Pender waited. Finally Agent Stevens spoke. “We’re listening, Arthur.”

“Good,” said Pender. “We want the ransom within twelve hours. We want safe passage to the nearest airport and a jet airplane and pilot package capable of flying us to Asia or northern Africa. You will deliver Marie McAllister to the airport and put her on the plane. When we’ve verified the delivery of the money and that the plane meets our requirements, we’ll release Mr. Cardinal and you can forget about us.”

“Arthur.” Windermere spoke. “We’ve been over this. The money’s no problem. But we can’t get you Marie. I’m sorry.”

“This is not a negotiation,” said Pender. “Any deviation from our demands
will result in Mr. Cardinal’s being shot. We’re not willing to listen to excuses.”

“I’ve got a jet.” Cardinal’s voice surprised them all. “I’ve got a Gulfstream 550 at Coleman Young airport. You can have it and my pilot. The money, too, no problem. Just don’t kill me.”

“You get that?” said Pender. “Cardinal’s going to help you out with the jet. That just leaves Marie and the money. You’ve got twelve hours.”

He walked back from the door and picked up the television remote, cycling through the channels until he found the news, and he sat down on the edge of the bed to watch the coverage, remote in one hand and machine gun in the other, focusing on the screen and trying to calm his racing heart.

A
gent Stevens watched the first news helicopter arrive and began to trace its urgent pattern above the Motor City Motel, a droning speck against a glorious sunset. Then he brought his eyes back down to earth and surveyed the parking lot and the circus contained therein.

He and Windermere had cleared out the motel as soon as the desk clerk confirmed it was Pender and his gang holed up on the property. Now the displaced guests crowded outside the yellow police barriers, littering the sidewalk with fast-food wrappers and getting in the way of the police moving in and out of the lot.

Grosse Pointe PD had mustered a handful of uniformed cops and cruisers to work crowd control and contain the danger zone around the outside of Pender’s unit 23. Officer Stent from St. Clair Shores was posted up somewhere with Angel Cardinal and her children, trying to keep the woman calm. Meanwhile, Detective Landry waited with his partner in his unmarked sedan, both of them riding out the storm with a fresh closure on their minds. Those kids inside had killed Donald Beneteau, and as soon as they were cuffed and booked, Landry would get credit for a high-profile case solved, good for at least a month’s worth of goodwill from the duty lieutenant in homicide.

And then there were the tactical officers, the superheroes in body armor and assault rifles, the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. They’d flown in from Quantico as soon as Stevens and Windermere notified the Detroit office of the situation, and they were commanded by a burly special agent named Wellwood who’d spent the last half hour trying to wrest control of the scene away from Windermere.

“These kids aren’t trained for this,” Wellwood was saying. He had the motel blueprints spread out in the back of the FBI’s tactical van and was examining them as he spoke. “We can get in there with a flash-bang grenade and take them out inside of a minute. Problem solved, we all go home.”

Stevens shook his head. “As soon as they see you coming, they’ll grab that hostage and put a bullet in his head.”

Wellwood looked up from the blueprints. “All due respect, Agent Stevens, but my guys are professionals. We’ll take them down before they get a shot off.”

We’re professionals, too, Stevens thought, and I want those kids alive. I don’t want to see them shot down. I want to talk them away from the ledge, get them out of that motel room, and walk them into FBI headquarters in cuffs. I’ve worked this case too damn long to see those kids shot up by a bunch of cowboys with M16s.

Windermere stepped up into the van, flipping her cell phone closed. “Gilbert says we have the ball for now,” she said. “If things start to look ugly, Agent Wellwood, you and your guys take over. For now, we try to talk them down peacefully. Clear?”

Wellwood frowned. “You want my negotiators to play the point?”

Windermere shook her head. “We know these guys. They’re only talking to us.” She turned to Stevens. “So let’s do it, big guy. How do we get them out of there?”

Stevens stared back at the motel, listening to the ambient chatter of radio calls and the drone of the helicopters overhead. “Where do we stand on their demands?” he said.

“Angel Cardinal’s willing to pay the ransom. She can wire the money anywhere in the world. Confirmation in seconds. That’s the easy part.”

“The jet?”

“Hall talked to Cardinal’s aviation company. They’re fueling the plane as we speak. Pilot’s being briefed on the situation.”

“So it all comes down to Marie.”

“Yeah.” Windermere turned back to the motel. “I’ll get on that plane my damn self before I let that girl anywhere near it. Cardinal can give them his money and he can give them his plane, but those kids aren’t getting our girl.”

“Agreed.” Stevens stared across the parking lot at the row of police cars and the dark motel room beyond. He pictured Arthur Pender holed up behind that door, and he wondered what the kid was thinking. Was he scared? Was he angry? Did he think he was in control?

He turned to Windermere. “Those kids want to see McAllister,” he said. “Let’s show them McAllister.”

M
arie was asleep when the FBI agent arrived. She’d been dreaming, and she woke up with the sickening feeling that Arthur was in danger. It had been days, maybe weeks, since they’d locked her away. She slept when she was tired, and the rest of the time she stared at the wall of her cell and listened to the other prisoners and tried to imagine she was somewhere else. Sometimes when she woke up there was a plate of bland food sitting in front of her door, and sometimes a blank-faced guard took her outside for an hour of exercise in the barren yard. But mostly she was alone with her thoughts, and she would sleep, or try to sleep, and think of Pender and Sawyer and always of Mouse.

She woke to the sound of a key in the door and looked up to see the FBI agent, Stevens, standing in the hall. “Get up,” he said. “We’re gonna take a ride.”

She thought at first he was taking her to another court hearing, but when he led her out of the holding area, she saw the way the guards looked at her, the way the police openly stared, and she knew this was something different. Something was wrong.

Stevens signed a couple of forms and led her out to the parking lot,
where his unmarked sedan waited. He stopped beside the back door. “Hold out your wrists.”

She looked at him, saw the handcuffs. “I’m not going to run,” she said.

He shook his head, cuffing her wrists in front of her. “Sorry,” he said. “I’m going to get in enough shit for this as it is.”

He opened the door and ushered her into the car. Marie sat down in the backseat, still half asleep and confused.

The agent got in the driver’s seat and pulled out of the parking lot and onto a grimy Detroit street. Marie watched him drive for a minute. Then she leaned forward. “Where are we going?”

Stevens glanced at her in the rearview mirror. His eyes caught hers, and she watched him examine her. He looked back at the road and drove a few blocks. Then he spoke. “You know,” he said, “I’m not even an FBI agent.”

What the hell does that mean, Marie thought, but she said nothing.

“I’m an agent with the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, the state police. I don’t usually work kidnappings.”

Marie watched him in the rearview mirror. He kept his eyes on hers.

“That’s mainly because we don’t get too many up in that part of the country. I guess you probably knew that, being a professional kidnapper.”