A Maiden's Grave (4 page)

0840 hours. Hostages taken
.

1050 hours. Threat Management Team
–
Potter, LeBow
–
in place
.

The backlit liquid-crystal screens poured eerie blue light onto the man's round face; he looked like an Arthur Rackham rendering of the man in the moon. Charlie Budd gazed at the man's fingers, flying invisibly over the keys. "Lookit that. He's worn off half the letters."

LeBow grumbled to Potter, "Saw the building. Lousy situation. Too well shielded for SatSurv and not enough windows for infrared or mikes. The wind's a problem too."

As in most barricades the bulk of information here would have to come from traditional sources – released or escaped hostages and the troopers who took food and drinks to the HTs and stole a glance inside. LeBow tapped computer buttons and created a small window on the chronology computer. Two digital stopwatches appeared. One was headed "Elapsed"; the other, "Deadline."

LeBow set the elapsed time clock to two hours, ten minutes and pushed a button. It began moving. He glanced at Potter with a raised eyebrow.

"I know, Henry." If you don't contact the hostage taker soon after the taking they get nervous and begin to wonder if you're planning an assault. The negotiator added, "We'll give Tobe a few minutes then have the briefing." He looked out over the fields behind them, the tall pale blanket of grass waving in the chill breeze. A half-mile away the combines moved in gentle, symmetrical patterns, cropping the wheat fields like a new recruit's scalp.

Potter examined a map of the area. "All these roads sealed off?"

"Yessir," Budd said. "And they're the only way in."

"Set up a rear staging area there, Charlie." He pointed to the bend in the road a mile south of the slaughterhouse. "I want a press tent set up near there. Out of sight of the barricade. Do you have a press officer?"

"Nup," Budd said. "I usually give statements 'bout incidents around here if somebody's got to. Suppose I'll have to here."

"No. I want you with me. Delegate it. Find a low-ranking officer."

Henderson interrupted. "This is a federal operation, Arthur. I think I should make any statements."

"No, I want somebody state and without much rank. That way we'll keep the press in the tent, waiting. They'll be expecting somebody with the answers to show up. And they'll be less likely to go poking around where they shouldn't."

"Well, I don't exactly know who'd be good at it," Budd said uncertainly, looking out the window, as if a trooper resembling Dan Rather might just wander past.

"They won't have to be good," Potter muttered. "All they have to do is say that I'll make a statement later. Period. Nothing else. Pick somebody who's not afraid to say 'No comment.' "

"They won't like that. The press boys and gals. I mean, there's a fender-bender over on Route 14 and reporters here're all over the scene. Something like this, I'll bet they'll be coming in from Kansas City even."

SAC Henderson, who'd served a stint in the District, laughed.

"Charlie -" Potter controlled his own smile – "CNN and ABC networks are already here. So's the
New York Times
, the
Washington
Post
, and the
L.A.
Times
. Sky TV from Europe, the BBC, and Reuters. The rest of the big boys're on their way. We're sitting in the middle of the week's media big bang."

"No kidding. Brokaw, too, you think? Man, I'd like to meet him."

"And set up a press-free perimeter one mile around the slaughterhouse, both sides of the river." "
What
?"

"Put five or six officers in four-by-fours and start cruising. You find any reporter in that zone – anybody with a camera – you arrest them and confiscate the camera."

"Arrest a reporter? We can't do that. Can we? I mean, look at 'em all out there now. Look at 'em."

"Really, Arthur," Henderson began, "we don't want to do that, do we? Remember Waco."

Potter smiled blandly at the SAC. He was thinking of a hundred other matters, sorting, calculating. "And no press choppers. Pete, could you get a couple Hueys down here from McConnell in Wichita? Set up a no-fly zone for a three-mile radius."

"Are you serious, Arthur?"

LeBow said, "Time's awasting. Inside for two hours, seventeen." Potter said to Budd, "Oh, and we need a block of rooms at the nearest hotel. What'd that be?"

"Days Inn. It's up the road four miles. In Crow Ridge. Downtown, as much as they've got a downtown. How many?"

"Ten."

"Okay. What's the rooms for?"

"The parents of the hostages. Get a priest and a doctor over there too."

"Maybe they should be closer. If we need them to talk to their kids, or -"

"No, they shouldn't be. And station four or five troopers there. The families are not to be disturbed by reporters. I want anybody harassing them -"

"Arrested," Budd muttered. "Oh, brother."

"What's the matter, Trooper?" LeBow asked brightly.

"Well, sir, the Kansas state song is 'Home on the Range.' "

"Is that a fact?" Henderson asked. "And?"

"I know reporters, and you're gonna be hearing some pretty discouraging words 'fore this thing's over."

Potter laughed. Then he pointed to the fields. "Look there, Charlie – those troopers're all exposed. I
told
them to stay down. They're not paying attention. Keep them down behind the cars. Tell them Handy's killed officers before. What's his relationship with weapons, Henry?"

LeBow typed and read the screen. He said, "All indictments have involved at least one firearms count. He's shot four individuals, killed two of them. Fort Dix, M-16 training, he consistently shot low nineties on the range. No record of sidearm scores."

"There you have it," Potter told Budd. "Tell them to keep their heads
down
."

A light flashed toward them. Potter blinked and saw, in the distance, a combine had just turned on its lights. It was early of course but the overcast was oppressive. He gazed at the line of trees to the right and left of the slaughterhouse.

"One other thing, Charlie – I want you to leave the snipers in position but give them orders not to shoot unless the HTs make a break."

"HTs – that's the hostage takers, right?"

"Even if they have a clear shot. Those troopers you were telling me about, with the rifles, are they SWAT?"

"No," he said, "just damn fine shots. Even the girl. She started practicing on squirrels when she was -"

"And I want them and everybody else to unchamber their weapons. Everybody."

"What?"

"Loaded but not chambered."

"Oh, I don't know 'bout that, sir."

Potter turned to him with an inquiring look.

"I just mean," Budd said quickly, "not the snipers too?"

"You can pull the bolt of an M-16 and shoot in under one second."

"Not and steady a scope you can't. An HT could get off three shots in a second." The initials sat awkwardly in his mouth, as if he were trying raw oysters for the first time.

He's so eager and talented and correct, Potter mused.

What a day this is going to be.

"The takers aren't going to come out and shoot a hostage in front of us before we can react. If it comes to that, the whole thing'll turn into a firefight anyway."

"But -"

"Unchambered," Potter said firmly. "Appreciate it, Charlie."

Budd nodded reluctantly and reiterated his assignment: "Okay, I'm gonna send somebody down to give a statement to the press – or not to give a statement to the press, I should say. I'll round up reporters and push 'em back a mile or so, I'll get us a block of rooms, and tell everybody to keep their heads down. And deliver your message about not loading and locking."

"Good."

"Brother." Budd ducked out of the van. Potter watched him crouching and running down to a cluster of troopers. They listened, laughed, and then started herding the reporters out of the area.

In five minutes the captain returned to the command van. "That's done. Those reporters're about as unhappy as I thought they'd be. I told ' em a Feebie'd ordered it. You don't mind me calling you that, I hope." There was an edge to his voice.

"You can call me whatever you like, Charlie. Now, I want a field hospital set up here."

"Medevac?"

"No, not evacuation. Trauma-team medics and triage specialists. Just out of clear range of the slaughterhouse. No more than sixty seconds away. Prepped for everything from third-degree burns to gunshot wounds to pepper spray. Full operating suites."

"Yessir. But, you know, there's a big hospital not but fifteen miles from here."

"That may be, but I don't want the HTs to even hear the sound of a medevac chopper. Same reason I want the press copters and our Hueys out of earshot."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to remind them of something they might not think of themselves. And even if they do ask for a chopper I want the option to tell them that it's too windy to fly one in."

"Will do."

"Then come back here with your commanders. Sheriff Stillwell too. I'm going to hold a briefing."

Just then the door opened and a tanned, handsome young man with black curly hair bounded inside.

Before he greeted anyone he looked at the control panels and muttered, "Excellent."

"Tobe, welcome."

Tobe Geller said to Potter, " Boston girls are beautiful and they all have pointy tits, Arthur. This better be important."

Potter shook his hand, noting that the dot of earring hole was particular prominent today. He recalled that Tobe had explained the earring to his superiors in the Bureau by saying he'd done undercover work as a cop. He never had; he simply liked earrings and had quite a collection of them. The MIT graduate and adjunct professor of computer science at American University and Georgetown shook everyone's hand. He then looked down at LeBow's laptops, sneered, and muttered something about their being antiquated. Then he dropped into the chair of the communications control panel. He and Derek introduced themselves and were immediately submerged in a world of shielded analog signals, subnets, packet driver NDIS shims, digital tripartite scrambling, and oscillation detection systems in multiple landline chains.

"Just about to brief, Tobe," Potter told him and sent Budd to run his errands. To LeBow he said, "Let me see what you've got so far."

LeBow turned the profile computer to Potter.

The intelligence officer said. "We don't have much time."

But Potter continued to read, lost in the glowing type of the blue screen.

The jackrabbit – not a rabbit at all but a hare – is nature's least likely fighter.

This is an animal made for defense – with a camouflaging coat (gray and buff in the warm months, white in the winter), ears that rotate like antennae to home in on threatening sounds, and eyes that afford a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the terrain. It has a herbivore's chiseling teeth and its claws are intended for tugging at leafy plants and – in males – gripping the shoulders of its mate when creating future generations of jackrabbits.

But when it's cornered, when there's no chance for flight, it will attack its adversary with a shocking ferocity. Hunters have found the bodies of blinded or gutted foxes and wildcats that had the bad judgment to trap a jackrabbit in a cave and attack it with the overconfidence of sassy predators.

Confinement is our worst fear, Arthur Potter continues during his lectures on barricades, and hostage takers are the most deadly and determined of adversaries.

Today, in the command van at the Crow Ridge barricade, he dispensed with his
Wild
Kingdom
introduction and told his audience simply, "Above all, you have to appreciate how dangerous those men in there are."

Potter looked over the group: Henderson, LeBow, and Tobe were the federal officers. On the state side there was Budd and his second-in-command, Philip Molto, a short, taciturn officer in the state police, who seemed no older than a high-school student. He was one of the tactical unit commanders. The others – two men and a woman – were solemn, with humorless eyes. They wore full combat gear and were eager for a fight.

Dean Stillwell, the sheriff of Crow Ridge, looked pure hayseed. His lengthy arms stretched from suit coat sleeves far too short and his mop of hair could have been styled from the early Beatles.

When they had assembled, Charlie Budd had introduced Potter. "I'd like you to meet Arthur Potter of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He's a famous hostage negotiator and we're pretty lucky to have him with us today."

"Thank you, Captain," Potter had jumped in, worried that Budd was going to begin a round of applause.

"Just one more thing," the young captain had continued. He glanced at Potter. "I forgot to say this before. I've been in touch with the attorney general. And he's mobilizing the state Hostage Rescue Unit. So it's our job -"

Keeping an equable face, Potter had stepped forward. "Actually, Charlie, if you don't mind…" He'd nodded toward the assembled officers. Budd had fallen silent and grinned. "There'll be no state HRT involvement here. A federal rescue team is being assembled now and should be here later this afternoon or early this evening."

"Oh," Budd began. "But I think the attorney general -"

Potter glanced at him with a firm smile. "I've already spoken to him and the governor on the plane here."

Budd nodded, still grinning, and the negotiator proceeded with the briefing.

Early that morning, he explained, three men had murdered a guard and escaped from Callana maximum-security federal penitentiary outside Winfield, Kansas, near the Oklahoma border. Louis Jeremiah Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray "Sonny" Bonner. As they drove north their car was struck by a Cadillac. Handy and the escapees murdered the couple inside and got as far as the slaughterhouse before a state trooper caught up with them.

"Handy, thirty-five, was serving a life sentence for robbery, arson, and murder. Seven months ago he, Wilcox, Handy's girlfriend, and another perp robbed the Farmers amp; Merchants S amp;L in Wichita. Handy locked two tellers in the cash cage and set the place on fire. It burned to the ground, killing them both. During the getaway the fourth robber was killed, Handy's girlfriend escaped, and Handy and Wilcox were arrested. Visual aids, Henry?"

With an optical scanner LeBow had digitized mug shots of the three HTs and assembled them onto a single sheet of paper, showing front, side, and three-quarter views, highlighting distinguishing scars and characteristics. These were now spewing out of his laser printer. He distributed stacks to the people assembled in the van.

"Keep one of those and pass them out to the officers under you," Potter said. "I want everybody in the field to get one and memorize those pictures. If it comes down to a surrender things may get confusing and we've got too many plainclothesmen here to risk misidentifica-tion of the HTs. I want everybody to know exactly what the bad guys look like.

"That's Handy on top. The second one is Shep Wilcox. He's the closest thing Handy has to a friend. They've worked together on three or four jobs. The last fellow, the fat one with the beard, is Bonner. Handy apparently's known him for some time but they've never worked together. Bonner's got armed robbery on his sheet but he was in Callana for interstate flight. He's a suspected serial rapist though they only got him for his last assault. Stabbed the victim repeatedly – while he was in flagrante. She lived. She was seventeen years old and had to change her eleventh plastic surgery appointment to testify against him. Henry, what can you tell us about the hostages?"

LeBow said, "Very sketchy so far. Inside we have a total of ten hostages. Eight students, two teachers from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas, about fifteen miles west of here. They were on their way to a Theater of the Deaf performance in Topeka.

They're all female. The students range in age from seven to seventeen. I'll be receiving more data soon. We do know that they're all deaf except the older teacher, who can speak and hear normally."

Potter had arranged for a sign language interpreter but even so he knew the problems they could anticipate; he'd negotiated in foreign countries many times and negotiated with many foreigners in the United States. He knew the danger – and the frustration – of having to translate information precisely and quickly when lives hung in the balance.

He said, "Now, we've established a threat management team, consisting of myself; Henry LeBow, my intelligence officer and record keeper; Tobe Geller, my communications officer, and Captain Budd, who'll serve as a state liaison and my right-hand man. I'm the incident commander. There'll also be a containment officer, who I haven't picked yet.

"The TMT has two jobs. The primary one is to effect the surrender of the HTs and the release of the hostages. The secondary job is to assist in a tactical resolution if an assault is called for. This includes gathering intelligence for the hostage rescue team, distracting the HTs, manipulating them however we can to keep casualties to an acceptable level."

In barricade incidents everybody wants to be the hero and talk the bad guys out with their hands up. But even the most peace-loving negotiator has to keep in mind that sometimes the only solution is to go in shooting. When he taught the FBI's course in hostage negotiation one of the first things Potter told the class was, "Every hostage situation is essentially a homicide in progress."

He saw the looks in the eyes of the men and women in the van, and recalled that "cold fish" was among the kinder terms that had been used to describe him.

"Any information you learn about the takers, the hostages, the premises, anything, is to be delivered immediately to Agent LeBow. Before me if necessary. I mean
any
information. If you find out one of the HTs has a runny nose, don't assume it isn't important." Potter glanced at two hip young troopers rolling their eyes at one another. Looking directly at them, the agent said, "It might mean, for instance, that we could slip knockout drops in cold medicine. Or it might indicate a cocaine addiction we could use to our advantage."

The young men were above contrition but they reined in their sarcasm.

"Now I need that containment officer. Lieutenant Budd here thought that perhaps some of you have had hostage experience." He looked out over the group of cocky young law enforcers. "Who has?"

The woman state trooper spoke up quickly. "Yessir, I have. I took the NLEA hostage rescue course. And I've had negotiating skills training."

"Have you negotiated a release?"

"No. But I backed up the negotiator in a convenience store robbery a few months ago."

"That's right," Budd said. "Sally led the tactical team. Did a fine job too."

She continued, "We got a sniper inside the store, up in the acoustic tile. He had all of the perps acquired in his sights. They surrendered before we had to drop any of them."

"I've had some experience too," a trooper of about thirty-five offered, his hand on the butt of his service automatic. "And I was part of the team that rescued the teller in the Midwest S amp;L robbery last year in Topeka. We iced the perps, nailed 'em cold, not an injury to a single hostage."

One other trooper had trained in the army and had been part of two successful hostage rescue assault teams. "Saved them without a single shot being fired."

Peter Henderson had been listening with some dismay. He piped up. "Maybe I better take that job, Art. I've had the standard course and the refresher." He grinned. "And I read your book. Couple times. Should've been a best-seller. Like Tom Clancy." His face went somber and he added softly, "I think I really ought to. Being federal and all."

Dean Stillwell lifted his head then glanced at the troopers, decked out in flak jackets and dark gray ammunition belts. The movement of his moplike hair gave Potter the chance to avoid answering Henderson and he asked Stillwell, "You going to say something, Sheriff?"

"Naw, I wasn't really."

"Go ahead," Potter encouraged.

"Well, I never took any courses, or never shot any – what do you call them? – hostage takers. HTs, heh. But I guess we have had us a coupla situations down here in Crow Ridge."

Two of the troopers smiled.

"Tell me," Potter said.

"Well, there was that thing a couple months ago, with Abe Whitman and his wife. Emma. Out on Patchin Lane? Just past Badger Hollow Road?"

The smiles became soft laughter.

Stillwell laughed good-naturedly. "I guess that does sound funny. Not like the terrorists you all are used to."

Budd glanced at the troopers and they went straight-lipped again.

"What happened?" Potter asked.

Stillwell, looking down, said, "What it was, Abe's a farmer, pig farmer born and bred, and none better."

Now Peter Henderson, SAC though he was, struggled to stifle his own smile. Budd was silent. Potter gestured for Stillwell to continue and, as always, Henry LeBow listened, listened, listened.

"He took a bad hit when the pork belly market went to heck and gone last spring."

"Pork belly?" the woman trooper asked incredulously.

"Just tumbled." Stillwell missed, or ignored, the mockery. "So what happens but the bank calls his loans and he kind of cracks up. Always been a little bit of a nut case but this time he goes off the deep end and holes up in his barn with a shotgun and the knife he used for dressing the pigs he kept for his own table."

"Cooked up that pork belly, did he?" a trooper asked.

"Oh, not just bacon," Stillwell explained earnestly, "That's the thing about pigs. You know that expression, don't you? 'You can use everything but the squeal.' "

Two troopers lost it at this point. The negotiator smiled encouragingly.

"Anyway, I get a call that something's going on out at his farm and go out there and find Emma in front of the barn. His wife of ten years. He'd slit her from groin to breastbone with that knife and cut her hands off. Abe had his two sons in there, saying he was going to do the same to them. That'd be Brian, age eight, and Stuart, age four. Sweet youngsters, both of 'em."

The troopers' smiles were gone.

"Was about to cut off little Stu's fingers one by one just as I got there."

"Jesus," the woman trooper whispered.

"What'd you do, Sheriff?"

The lanky shoulders shrugged. "Nothing fancy. In fact, I didn't really know
what
to do. I just talked him up. I got close but not too close 'cause I've been hunting with Abe and he's a heck of a shot. Hunkered down behind a slop trough. And we just talked. Saw him inside of the barn there, not but fifty feet in front of me. Just sitting there, holding the knife and his boy."

"How long did you talk for?"

"A spell."

"How long a spell?"

"Must've been close to eighteen, twenty hours. We both got hoarse from shouting, so I had one of my boys go out and get a couple of those cellular phones." He laughed. "I had to read the instructions to figure out mine. See, I didn't want to drive the cruiser up and use the radio or a bullhorn. I figured the less he saw of cops, the better."

"You stayed with it the whole time?"

"Sure. In for a penny, in for a pound, is what I say. Well, twice I stepped away for, you know, natural functions. And once to fetch a cup of coffee. Always kept my head down."

"What happened?"

Another shrug. "He came out. Gave himself up."

Potter asked, "The boys?"

"They were okay. Aside from seeing their mother that way, course. But there wasn't much we could do about that."

"Let me ask you one question, Sheriff. Did you ever think of exchanging yourself for the boys?"

Stillwell looked perplexed. "Nope. Never did."

"Why not?"

"Seemed to me that'd draw his attention to the youngsters. I wanted him to forget about them and concentrate just on him and me."

"And you never tried to shoot him? Didn't you have a clear target?"

"Sure I did. Dozens of times. But, I don't know, I just felt that was the last thing I wanted to have happen – anybody to get hurt. Him, or me, or the boys."

"Correct answers, Sheriff. You're my containment officer. Is that all right with you?"

"Well, yessir, whatever I can do to help, I'd be proud to."

Potter glanced at the displeased state commanders. "You and your officers will report to the sheriff here."

"Say, hold up here, sir," Budd began, but didn't quite know where to take it from there. "The sheriff's a fine man. We're friends and everything.
We've
gone hunting too. But… well, it's like a technical thing. See, he's local, municipal, you know. These're mostly state troopers. You can't put them under his command. That'd need, I don't know, authorization or something."