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 News studio. 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 sheriff’s 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 over-active 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?”