Aronwitz was still at large when Andy Simons drove to
Kingwood City, that sweltering afternoon in June. He went alone. His partner, Danny Schnieder, who had been out of the field office when the call came through, was due to follow as soon as he could. Andy had not paused to call Teresa, apparently because all the signs were that the situation was already under control by the police.
The reality was different. Although Aronwitz was surrounded, the delivery area of the mall had large goods bays, connected at the rear by a long metal passageway, wide enough and high enough to take the forklift trucks that were now abandoned at a number of positions along its length. These, plus the steel doors that separated the bays, gave Aronwitz cover and several possible places of concealment.
When Andy arrived, the police SWAT team were trying to gain access to the delivery bays from inside the building, while Aronwitz was held down by other police staked out in the service area. Two of the police had been shot during the operation; one was killed. One of the hostages was also now dead, and her body lay in full view of the long lenses of the TV
cameras clustered behind the police lines. Aronwitz's score for the afternoon had already reached fourteen dead, and an as yet unknown number of injured.
Andy Simons was to become the fifteenth and last victim.
When his presence at the scene was known, the SWAT officer in charge briefed him on the situation. Andy pointed out that there was usually another way of gaining access to the delivery bay, from the service ducts below. After the feasibility of this had been established, a detachment of SWAT men went with a team from the mall administrator's department to get through to the delivery area that way. Shortly afterwards, Aronwitz was seen to open an inspection hatch behind one of the bays and drop down out of sight. Confident that this signalled an imminent end to the
operation, the SWAT forces moved forward to arrest or deny. Andy followed. A few moments later Aronwitz emerged from another part of the basement area and opened fire on the police.
He died as they returned fire, but not before Andy himself had been struck in the head by a bullet. He was dead within seconds.
CHAPTER 15
Teresa's first thought was, How do they get the cars looking so real? Do they have old cars?
And the city! She whirled round in amazement, staring up at the buildings. Where do they find them, how do they build them? Who are all these people? Are they actors? Do they get paid for doing this?
But there was an armed man further along the street. His name was Howard Unruh, and she had to disarm and apprehend him.
She was in Camden, New jersey, and it was midday on September 9, 1949. She was not in role: this was an ExEx training scenario where the subject brought his or her own identity into the simulation.
Teresa was distracted by the cars, the sound of traffic, the city noises. The street was filled with big saloons and sedans, mostly black or dark grey, some with a lot of chrome, some with running boards, all looking huge and cumbersome and slow. Trucks were upright and noisy.
People in baggy clothes and oldfashioned hats thronged the sidewalks.
It's a movie! she thought. That's how they do it! They hire one of those companies that work out in Hollywood, renting period cars to the studios. They bring in extras from somewhere!
She heard the crack of another shot, sounding closer, but Teresa was still new to extreme experience, and the sheer physical detail of the simulations was a shock to her. She wanted to run into the street, force the traffic to stop, then
lean down and talk to someone in one of the cars. Who are you? How much do you get paid for this? Do you have to give the car back at the end of the day? May 1 take a ride with you?
Where are you going? Can we leave the city? What's beyond? Can you drive me to New York?
She knew everything that happened to her in the scenario was being monitored and recorded, so she began to walk along the street, past large stores and downtown office buildings. It was like the first few minutes in a foreign country: everything looked, sounded and smelled different. Her senses tingled. She heard old-fashioned honking car horns, engines that sounded untuned and rickety, a bell ringing somewhere, crowds of people, voices with the unmistakable New jersey accent. The air smelled of coal smoke and engine oil and sweat.
Every detail was authentic, painstakingly exact. The longer she was there, the more she noticed: women's makeup looked false and overapplied; people's clothes looked shapeless and unsuitable; advertisemerits were painted on walls, or stuck up as paper posters; not much neon anywhere, no backlit logos; no creditcard signs on doors.
lt not only felt strange it felt unsafe, a place that existed on the edge of chaos. A reminder of this came with another outbreak of shooting.
Other people were noticing the gunfire. A crowd had gathered at the next intersection and were staring down the street. She wanted to stand with them, listen to what they said, hear their accents, find out what they knew.
Remembering at last why she was there, Teresa reached into the shoulder holster beneath her jacket and pulled her gun. She set off down the street, looking for Howard Unruh.
Twenty yards further along two cops drove by her, heading down the same way. One of them sat by the open
window, holding a rifle in both hands, the barrel pointing out at the street. He saw Teresa, said something, and the car braked sharply to a halt. Teresa turned towards them, but the cop with the rifle aimed at her chest and killed her with his first shot.
Dan Kazinsky, her instructor at the FBI Academy in Quantico, said, 'You don't pull your gun till you need it. You don't run down the street with a gun in your hand. You specially don't run down a street with a gun in your hand when there's someone up there at the end of it firing, and when there are other agencies at the scene of crime trained in summary termination of the situation. Soon as you see a cop, show him your ID. It's his city, not yours.
Keep your mind on your work, Agent Simons.'
'Yes, sir.'
'And quit rubbernecking.'
'Yes, sir.'
Teresa took it as calmly as she could. She replayed the video, made notes, put in more hours on the shooting range. She went again to the offender profile workshops from which she had already graduated. She wrote a paper on armed intercession. She tried again.
It's a movie! she thought. That's how they do it! They hire one of those companies that work out in Hollywood, renting period cars to the studios. They bring in extras from somewhere!
She was amazed by the amount of trouble they had gone to in the cause of making it authentic.
There was the crack of another shot, sounding closer. She moved quickly to the intersection, where a crowd had gathered, staring down the street. She was briefly amazed by the men's baggy clothes, the women's garish lipstick.
She slipped a hand under her jacket, checked the weapon
was ready for quick retrieval, then walked warily down the street towards the sound of the shooting. When another shot came, she realized Howard Unruh was positioned on the opposite side of the street, so she crossed quickly, darting between the bulky saloons and sedans, finding cover against the walls of the buildings.