Helen jerked around to see Special Agent Eules, the Bureau’s M.F.O. SAC Chief, trotting toward an opposing apartment building. “Come on!”
Helen trotted right alongside, impressed that she hadn’t yet lost her breath. Without realizing it, she had her Beretta .25 drawn. Eules huffed right beside her.
“Barricade situation?” she asked.
“Yep. It’s some guy our BR Squad had tagged for a month—bank jobs. He knocked over a First Federal this afternoon, and we been on his ass since. He ditched his getaway on Forest Avenue, jumped the fence and came here. Grabbed the first female he saw and dragged her up to her apartment. I got a cherry-picker in the unit facing him.”
Cherry-picker, she thought. More federal parlance, but Helen knew what a “cherry-picker” was. A sniper.
“What’s he packing?” she asked, trying to sound on Eules’s level.
“Right now, just a knife. He was toting a Glock when he took down the bank, but he emptied the clip at our guys when we surrounded him here.”
Aw, no, Helen fretted. She was no gun expert, but she knew full well that a Glock was an rather notorious, part-composite semi-auto pistol. With a big clip. Like fifteen or sixteen rounds. She dreaded the next question, as any cop would. “Did you…did you lose any men?”
“Naw, naw,” Eules casually replied. “All our people wear Kevlar jackets, Threat-Level III, with titanium rifle plates. He hit a few of my guys but they got right back up and dusted themselves off.”
Thank God.
Their footfalls pattered the steps. Three floors up, Helen followed Eules as he barged into a unit. “Behind you, guys,” he announced. “It’s Eules. Don’t pop no caps.”
Two men in suits greeted him with curt nods. Some relay equipment had been plugged into the apartment’s phone.
“You got that running yet?” Eules asked, pointing to one of the components.
“It’s up and running, sir,” one suit said.
The other suit: “We already called him. He says he’ll talk to you.”
“Good.” Eules smiled imperceptibly. “Put us on intercom—not now, but on my mark.”
“Yes, sir.”
In the apartment’s darkness, Eules led Helen on to the front family room plate-glass window. The glass had been intricately removed via a diamond cutter and suction frame, so not to risk shattering. Frigid winter air gusted in, and before the window’s opening stood a man in dark-blue utilities—FBI in pale gold letters stamped across his back—and a reversed blue ball cap.
“Talk to me, Sandie?” Eules asked. “What’s the target’s status?”
“Nervous,” the sniper replied without taking his eye out of his rifle site. It was a long, black rifle, black grips, black stock, black barrel—a Beretta M82—fit with an array of sitting equipment at the rear of the muzzle. A high power scope and laser site, Helen guessed. The sniper continued, “Jerky, sweating, lot of nervous ticks. He’s high.”
“Still got the knife?”
“Yeah. He’s standing in front of the window like he’s got brass balls, got the knife to the female’s throat. He knows we’re spotting him.”
“Fuck him,” Eules said. “You say he’s nervous. Is he flashing the knife any? Moving it around?”
“Yeah. Every time he tries to ring us on the phone, he waves the knife around.”
“Good. That’s your firing mark.” Then Eules passed Helen a pair of Zeiss binoculars. In the infinity-shaped border, she saw the guy, strutting his stuff before the window, with a pallid-faced woman standing before him. Her cheeks were washed with tears. He held a large sheath knife to her throat, and every so often pulled it away to wave it at them. A neon-red laser dot hovered at his shoulder.
“You’re going to shoot this guy?” Helen queried.
“No. We’re going to play pattycakes with him. We’re gonna take him out for pizza and go for rides at the amusement park.”
“What I mean, Agent Eules, is isn’t it imprudent to lay fire on this guy considering his position. He’s got a knife. Even if you fire when he’s got the knife off her throat, the inertia from the round might knock him back.”
“Can’t happen,” Eules asserted, peering into his own set of binoculars. “Autonomic impossibility. My guy’s firing a custom-loaded .50 round, no deflection through the glass. We’re talking two-thousand feet per second, with a foot-pounds measure that would knock the Jolly Green Giant on his ass. We going for a head shot. Once he gets hit with that round, his brain synapses release a flood of stage histamines which instantly causes his entire nervous system to distend. He’ll drop the knife and be dead before he hits the ground.”
“Okay, fine,” Helen objected. “But how can you be absolutely sure?”
“Justice Department clinical statistics. They’re never wrong.”
“All right,” she went on. “But what about this? What if your sniper misses?”
Eules offered her a disapproving glance. “My men never miss.”
Helen shrugged, still watching the scene in her binoculars.
“What’s the problem, Captain?” Eules asked.
“No problem. I’ve never done a barricade situation before. I’m just wondering if some other scenario should be considered. Do you really have to kill this guy to terminate the situation?”
Eules lowered his binoculars. “I’d appreciate your input. You got a better solution?”
Helen watched further, watched the guy strut, laughing, pressing the knife to the crying woman’s throat. His other hand, then, came around her front, mauled her breasts and molested her pubis.
“Kill him,” Helen said.
“Dial me up,” Eules instructed the suit. “It’s time Uncle Eules had a talk with Mr. Scumbag. Put me on intercom.”
A rudely loud ringing was heard. Helen watched the perpetrator turn, then pick up the phone in the woman’s apartment.
“Yeah?” she heard over the intercom.
Eules, also a trained hostage negotiator, talked aloud, peering into his field glasses. “My name is Special Agent Eules; I’m with the F.B.I. Let’s talk a deal.”
“No deals, fuckface. I want safe passage out of here, or I cut this dizzy bitch’s head off and throw it at ya. I want a fuckin’ armored car here in twenty minutes, to take me to Canada.”
“That’s a long haul, man,” Eules said over the open line.
“I don’t give a shit. You do it or I start cutting.”
“Listen, pal. All you did was knock over a bunch of banks. You never hurt anyone. I’ll get you off easy if you drop your shit.”
“I hit some of your pigs, so don’t bullshit me!”
“They were wearing vests, man. You didn’t even muss their hair. We take you down our way, you’ll get twenty years max, parole in six or seven probably.”
“Open your ears, jackass! I ain’t going to the fucking can!”
“You drop the shank,” Eules continued, “let the woman go, and walk out of there with your hands up, and I guarantee you you won’t be shot. I’ll drop the assaulting-federal-officers charges, and I’ll even guarantee you don’t do more than five years. Keep your act clean, and you’ll be out in three on GB. You can do five years standing on your head.”
Helen watched. The perp seemed to consider this, and Helen was impressed by Eules’s resolve. At least he was giving it a shot.
Eules waved a finger, a flag for one of the suits to cut off the intercom. Then Eules told the sniper, “Watch for your mark. Tell me when you’ve got a good laser bead. It’s gotta be a head shot.”
The sniper stood still as a granite statue. Helen watched at the same time, and noticed the tiny red laser dot high right on the perp’s chest. It began to raise.