Hostage Taker (32 page)

I
look at the carnage below…and I remember.

They called for reinforcements after Stacy was taken. Of course I joined them—although the commanding officer mumbled something about conflict of interest and I had to promise to keep my head on straight.

Five hours and seventeen minutes later we received a report. A body had been found.

They were pretty sure it was an American. If not a soldier, then someone who worked for the U.S. Army.

One of the things I had first noticed in Afghanistan was how the locals didn’t wear socks. Villagers wore sandals. Afghan soldiers wore unlaced boots without them. That’s how everyone knew: This victim was not an Afghan. There were remnants of wool, stuck between each toe, wool that used to be socks.

The victim had been shot.

Then burnt.

Then driven through the city.

Then hacked to pieces by both adults and children in front of a cheering crowd before—finally—being hung from a bridge in a burlap sack.

After the autopsy results finally came through, the corpsmen—our medical personnel—assured me that Stacy had not suffered for long. That the torture had come well after the gunshot.

I knew they said this to everybody who lost a loved one.

I hoped—just this once—they weren’t lying.

Three weeks later,
I was helping to clear the road of IEDs before a unit made up of a group of young twentysomething Marines passed through. The same guys Stacy had assisted.

Things happen in war zones. Sometimes in the chaos, we have friendly fire. Sometimes in our state of exhaustion, we miss spotting an IED. Tricky little buggers can be hard to find, after all.

Oops! My bad.

The way I saw it, if Stacy didn’t get to go home safe, then why should they?

Why should any of us?

There’s no safety or security left.

Not in our homes.

Not in our workplaces or cities.

Not even in this house of God.

A
iko Tanaka was no more. She was the trace of blood that smeared a swath on the protective plastic that surrounded the perimeter. She was a fragment that rested against Saint Elizabeth Seton on the lower corner of the bronze door. She was no longer bone and flesh, but evidence in a crime scene.

Eve tried to take a step forward, but her knees buckled and she almost fell. Cops and Feds swarmed around her. A forensics team in full body armor swept in to secure the scene.

Eve’s body shook. Her head pounded. She was barely conscious of Haddox putting his arm around her, turning her away from the chaos on the steps, guiding her back to the MRU. All the while saying words she could not hear, but found to be comforting all the same.

When García felt
he had enough air, he forced himself to leave the room—the secret chamber where he’d been able to stand and breathe freely—and reenter the tight, narrow passage. Crouched low again, he felt his back begin to throb.

This time, he didn’t have to go far. He came to a wall.

It was rough stone. He felt its jagged surface with his fingertips. No apparent opening.

García studied it, looking for something out of the ordinary. A recessed area. A stone that protruded slightly more than the rest. A break in the pattern of the way stones were laid. Anything that didn’t quite belong.

He searched for four minutes and twenty-six seconds. It felt like forever.

Then he decided to put on the special glasses he had rejected earlier. Just to see if they changed his perspective.

They immediately sharpened his vision. Made brighter what had before been shadowed in darkness. He revisited the wall again, this time with the aid of technology. Slowly, so as not to miss anything.

That was when he found it—though it was so caked in sediment and dirt that he almost missed it. A thick steel-plate door in the shape of a circle with a handle. It looked just like the entrance to an old-fashioned bank vault.

Except luckily there was no lock.

García dug in his heels as he pulled it open. It was made of concrete behind the steel, about three feet thick. He grunted as he used all of his strength, straining his already tight back. It was one of the heaviest objects he’d handled in months. Its hinges groaned when it finally swung open.

García peered into the opening. He saw nothing but darkness, and for an instant he panicked. Had he just encountered another tunnel? For all he knew, there was a whole maze of them.

Then he focused his flashlight beam.

It was a tiny room, the size of a closet. This time with a small black iron door in the shape of a square. It was about five feet high and four feet wide.

García unhooked its rusty latch and pried it open.

He got down on his knees. Eased his head carefully through the opening. And looked straight up into the dimly lit statue of Saint Andrew atop one of the fifteen altars that lined the periphery of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral.

He had never seen a more beautiful sight.

9:03 p.m.

More details are emerging about some of the individuals believed to be held, even now, inside Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. One of them is Monsignor Thomas DeAngelo, forty-seven years old, of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Monsignor DeAngelo comes to Saint Patrick’s every Christmas to help handle the extra confession load brought by holiday visitors. This year he is also substituting for the Cardinal and his staff, who have been away on a humanitarian mission, stopping by the Vatican before continuing on to Middle Eastern refugee camps.

According to his parishioners at Saint Mary’s, Monsignor DeAngelo is a beloved leader. His large following have him in their prayers tonight. He has fought for equality, weathering rebukes from church leaders who objected to his advocacy for gay and lesbian rights—as well as his willingness to allow unordained guests, mostly women, to speak during Mass.

G
arcía hesitated before entering the sanctuary. It was only natural: He knew the Cathedral was wired to the hilt. Filled with booby-traps designed to reduce the place to embers, ash, and stone ruins in the event of a breach. And García hadn’t survived the IEDs of Fallujah, making it home in one piece, only to die in the concrete jungle of Manhattan. At least the odds were low that the Hostage Taker knew about this particular access point.

He checked his belt, making sure his favorite Randall #1 knife was within easy reach.

He listened. He heard no footsteps. No movement. In fact, there was no sound at all except for the creaking of the floor-to-ceiling scaffolding that dominated the center of the Cathedral.

He smelled only the faint scent of candles and the lingering perfume of incense.

So he scooted into the building, bent over so as to fit through the door’s three-foot width. His knee joint cracked; the sound dully echoed around the stone walls and granite pillars. He cursed the noise—but mainly was annoyed at how, despite the fact that his body was a prime fighting machine, sometimes it still betrayed its age.

He swiveled, his eyes focusing first on the aisle to his left, then on the Ambulatory to his right. All was dark inside the massive Cathedral. No candles. The chandeliers were unlit.

He looked up. He was under a stained-glass window, which was shrouded by tarps and scaffolding. He crossed himself.

All clear.

“I’m in,” he whispered into his headset.

He didn’t wait for a reply. He moved into the open. And prayed for the best.

In a low crouch, he inched toward the Ambulatory, closing the access door behind him with a
thud
that was louder than he wanted. The noise echoed through the vast cavern created by soaring Gothic arches, though they eventually swallowed the sound. Iron on the inside, the door was sealed with marble on the outside. It disappeared into the wall that was part of the Altar of Saint Andrew.

Normally his path would be lit with votive candles, but tonight he was grateful for the dark. Some unseen source from above bathed the marble walls with just enough light to cast an otherworldly glow. García was superstitious enough to believe it was a miracle of the Holy Spirit.

Keeping low to the ground and close to the wall, García made his way around the first bend of the Ambulatory.

He passed the altar of Saint Teresa.

Crouched past the Archbishop’s Sacristy.

García liked peace and quiet—but this was too quiet. He saw no hostages. He saw no Hostage Taker. The church had the same desperate feel he remembered from patrols in Fallujah—usually right before all hell broke loose and the mission turned to shit.

To his left was the High Altar and Baldachin—the bronze canopied focal point of the Cathedral. This was the point where he knew he was most exposed, so he crept swiftly past it. Past Saint Elizabeth’s Altar. Toward his destination, immediately behind the High Altar.

Not the Lady Chapel—the small area dedicated to the Virgin Mary.

But the entrance to the Crypt.

Before he descended the marble stairway that would take him there, he took one final glance down the long nave of the Cathedral. He could see all the way to the great choir loft and pipe organ, with its thousands of pipes soaring to the Rose Window above it.

No hostages were visible. That didn’t mean they weren’t hidden among the pews, altars, nooks, and crannies of this great Cathedral.

It was tempting to check.

It was smarter to stick to his original plan. He didn’t want to save one life, only to jeopardize the larger goal.

So García stayed low to the floor and far to the right and went down the stairs behind the High Altar and Baldachin.

He descended one level and came to a landing with a green, glass-paneled door. It was the burial Crypt—a marble room where the Cathedral’s former Archbishops slept for eternity. He left it for now, continuing down to the foot of the stairway, beneath the foundations of the two rear support piers of the Cathedral.

The Sacristy.

García had a near-photographic memory for spatial organization. He had only to see a map or a blueprint once to remember its details. So when he saw the two open archways at the rear of the Sacristy, he knew exactly what they were.

The one on his left led to the Rectory. The one on his right led to the Cardinal’s Residence.

Two paths in and out.

He went to the left—his default move when all else was equal.

He had his Maglite in his left hand, his knife in his right. Both at the ready. He made his way through the dark void.

Until he found a door—rigged up exactly as he had expected. He studied it with a determined stare—and hoped he remembered how to be creative about disarming it.

The FBI’s definition
of a hostage-taking is quite simple: Agents are instructed to treat every crisis as a potential homicide.

No matter that it was defeatist.

It was also highly accurate.

Losing another hostage when they couldn’t produce the real Luis Ramos didn’t lessen Eve’s guilt. It steeled her resolve.

And García’s message encouraged her. She had a man on the inside. Arguably, her best man: a finely tuned fighting machine.

The moment she received word, she found Henry Ma. The director was still attempting to placate Monsignor Geve—who feared he saw damage to the figure of Elizabeth Seton on the Cathedral’s central bronze doors—but wasn’t being permitted to inspect it. “I cannot allow you anywhere near an active crime scene,” Henry was saying.

She pulled Henry just out of the Monsignor’s earshot.

“I need you to stand down,” she explained. “Table any and all assault plans until you hear from me again.”

“Sorry, Eve,” Henry responded in a tone that suggested he wasn’t. “Your negotiations have broken down—and time is of the ess—”

She didn’t let him finish. “I’m three steps ahead of you. I’ve got García inside. I need all tactical divisions to stand down until I know exactly what is needed. If you do another end run, the blood and destruction will be on your hands.”

She left before he could reply.

Just as the Hostage Taker had demanded, she was back in charge.