The Collective (18 page)

It wasn’t a perfect plan. If they cut him off, that would create its own problems. Certainly they could spin it, claim something had gone wrong and they weren’t interfering, but he would only demand that they resolve the problem, and then they were right back where they’d started. But for the moment, at least, it would buy time for the FBI SWAT team to get there, or for al-Jubouri to do something stupid, let his guard down so the cops inside could get to him.

“He’s on,” Captain Wetherell said.

They all looked at the monitor, where the face of the terrorist looked back. His jaw was bruised and his beard matted with blood. Al-Jubouri’s eyes were wide with zeal. His face loomed for a moment, as if he were looking right at them, and then he backed away, leaving a young woman in a Sarasota P.D. uniform sitting in front of the camera. Her lips trembled, but she didn’t cry or scream. Al-Jubouri stood behind her with a gun in each hand—one aimed at her skull and the other at the people not in view of the camera. Their shadows shifted and some of them muttered.

“Quiet!” al-Jubouri shouted, aiming at someone offscreen.

The female cop closed her eyes and tensed, waiting for the shot, but it didn’t come. After a moment she exhaled and opened her eyes, but her terror had not abated.

Son of a bitch
, Voss thought. She had been forced by circumstances to take a human life a handful of times in her career and those deaths haunted her, no matter how despicable the people might have been. But after the slaughter at the Greenlaw house, she didn’t think that killing al-Jubouri would haunt her. It was letting him live that would get under her skin.

“This is risky,” she said. “We should’ve waited for the FBI SWAT unit.”

“If we didn’t get him that laptop, he’d already have started killing them,” Turcotte argued.

No one else spoke up; apparently they agreed.

Voss watched al-Jubouri in the background of the camera’s view. The guy was twitchy, but he seemed excited instead of terrified. That didn’t bode well. She didn’t know if it was luck or planning that had led him to choose an interview room that didn’t have one-way observation glass. If he had taken his hostages into one of those rooms, others would have been able to see in without him seeing out. They might already have ended this thing. As it was, he had disconnected the camera in the corner of the room so no one could see what he was up to.

Now that had changed. He had
asked
for a camera, given them a window through which to watch the scene unfold. In addition to seeing whatever he might see on the laptop screen in front of him, they could spy on him through the laptop’s camera. Employers sometimes used the software to make sure their work-at-home employees were actually working.

“Log on to Skype with the account I gave you,” al-Jubouri told the female cop.

Every person in the truck fell silent as they watched her terrified features while she did as he asked.

“I’m in,” she said.

“Bastard,” someone growled offscreen. “You know you’re never getting out of here.”

Al-Jubouri smiled. Despite the temperature inside the truck, heated by the sun outside and the equipment within, Voss shivered. The killer didn’t reply, but she could almost hear him speak the words.
I know
.

“We’ve got his Skype account,” Boyd said, tapping keys. An image appeared on another monitor, off to the right of the first. “This is what he’s seeing on the laptop.”

“Call Jamil,” al-Jubouri said.

She tried. Voss watched Boyd working the keyboard in the truck. Jamil Nassif had been the alias that Gharib al-Din had used traveling to Maine. If they could find him …

“If anyone answers on the other end, I’ll try to disconnect them without disconnecting the slave link between the two computers,” Boyd said. “He might suspect we’re interfering, but more than likely he’ll just assume it’s problems with Skype or with the connection.”

Turcotte sighed. “A lot of trouble just to buy us an hour or so.”

“We’re looking for an opening to take this guy out,” Lewis said. “Another hour is an eternity of chances for him to give us that opening. And by then your tactical team will be here.”

Turcotte nodded. He knew that, just as Voss did. But they didn’t know what this guy really wanted, which meant they couldn’t predict how he would behave from moment to moment.

The female cop with the laptop tried to get through on Skype several times, but al-Din didn’t answer.

“See if there’s any way to track that,” Voss said.

Boyd glanced at her. “Nobody answered. Not a chance.”

In the background of the camera shot, al-Jubouri grew more and more agitated.

“Keep trying,” he snapped, glancing back and forth between the laptop and the other hostages—half a dozen cops and a civilian office worker—who were off camera.

“Anything?” he demanded.

“No,” said the hostage cop he had chosen as his proxy. Voss thought she looked like she was trying to come to terms with the idea of dying.

“This is going to blow up in our faces,” she said.

“Damn it, Voss, we had no way of knowing he wouldn’t be able to get through!” Turcotte snapped. He dragged a hand across his mouth like a drunk in need of a bottle. “Fuck!”

On-screen, al-Jubouri came closer to the woman with the laptop. He peered over her shoulder, glancing back at his hostages every second or two. The guy was still twitchy.

“We’ve got to go in,” Voss said.

“Not yet. Let’s just see what he does next,” Lewis said. “I can’t risk the lives of my people.”

Voss spun on him. “They’re already at risk!”

Turcotte had his cell phone pressed to his ear, demanding to know how long until his tactical team arrived.

“Call him!” Wetherell said. “Have the negotiators get him on the phone. See what else he wants. Anything to distract him.”

Boyd threw up his hands. “If we do that, he could twig to the fact that we’re watching him.”

“If we don’t—” Captain Wetherell began.

Al-Jubouri’s voice interrupted him. “You know how to make a video on that thing?”

The female officer—Voss hated not knowing her name—gave a little shrug. “Not really. I don’t … this isn’t my laptop.”

Al-Jubouri smiled thinly. He trained the gun in his right hand on the offscreen hostages and seemed to ponder a moment, as though deciding whether or not the time had come to kill them. Then he glanced back at the female cop—this nameless woman whose terror burned itself into Voss’s subconscious. And maybe her conscience.

“How old are you?” the killer asked.

The woman blinked and glanced away from him. “Twenty-four.”

“Twenty-four,” al-Jubouri echoed, “and you have never made a video on your computer? Not for Facebook or the YouTube? I don’t believe it.”

“I—”

He put one of his guns against the back of her head, watching the offscreen hostages warily, still training the other gun on them.

“I do not believe you,” al-Jubouri said. “You will prove me right, and we will make a video, you and I. Or you will prove
me wrong, and you will die, and someone else in this room will take your place.”

“You piece of shit,” said the same gruff voice they’d heard from off camera before. “If you pull that trigger, they’re coming through the door after you. You know that. You’re a dead man.”

Al-Jubouri raised his eyebrows. “Are we not all dead men? It is only a question of when we deliver ourselves to death.”

Voss knew it then. She had suspected it all along, but now she saw the cold certainty in al-Jubouri’s eyes and there could be no denying the truth. He intended to die. Al-Jubouri knew it was his only possible exit. He had wanted to get a message to someone, some kind of visual, but with Skype not working, he needed to make a video. Maybe he meant to post it, as he’d said, on YouTube or Facebook. Or maybe he wanted to make some kind of jihadist speech before he died, to show the world he had taken these hostages. But thus far he had not said a damn thing about Allah or Islam, never mind al Qaeda or any other cause or belief.

“Video,” al-Jubouri said, pushing the barrel of the gun against the back of the female cop’s head.

“Leave her alone, asshole,” the gruff voice snarled.

Al-Jubouri rolled his eyes. Whoever that gruff voice belonged to—uniform or detective—the guy was pushing al-Jubouri too far. Voss watched the glint in his eyes go dull, and the way he sighed, exhaling in surrender. And though he didn’t say the words, she could see the
fuck it
sentiment in his face. He was done.

“Go,” Voss said. Turcotte looked up at her. “Damn it, Ed! Go!”

Turcotte picked up his radio and gave the order. “Go, go, go!”

Al-Jubouri pulled the trigger. Someone shouted in pain—the gruff-voiced man. There were cries of fear and shouts of fury, along with the sound of people hitting the deck and diving under tables. A uniformed cop rushed at al-Jubouri, who shot him in the face—and all they could do was watch.

The female cop with the laptop jumped up, searching for someplace to run. Al-Jubouri shot her, but he only had half
his attention on her and the bullet punched through her shoulder. She spun around and fell out of the frame. A drop of blood obscured much of the camera’s view, smeared in a veil of red.

The door blew open. Gas canisters clattered, clouds of smoke erupting in the room. Cops in Kevlar burst into the room. The first one took three bullets, at least one of which hit flesh instead of Kevlar, because the cop clutched his throat and collapsed, letting the others jump over him.

Voss didn’t see any more. She ran, thinking about the guy with the bullet in his throat and the young woman in uniform whose name she wished she knew. She jumped out of the truck, barely aware that Turcotte was behind her. As she bolted through the police cordon and raced for the entrance to the building, shouting for the Sarasota cops there to open the door and let her through, she spotted a black BMW off to the right, parked near the car she and Turcotte had arrived in. Norris, the asshole from Black Pine, stood leaning against the hood, talking on his cell phone. His ankles were crossed and his free arm was across his chest. He looked casual and bored, cavalier about the violence erupting inside, and she couldn’t help wishing he had been one of the hostages upstairs.

Cops got out of her way. Others didn’t, maybe those who had friends or partners in the hostage room. She followed them into the stairwell, footfalls echoing off the walls, sharing their collective held breath as every one of them wondered how many people were going to die in the building today.

Behind her, Turcotte called her name, trying to keep up. Voss ignored him, running upward until she burst into the third-floor corridor along with a dozen others.

It was already over. Cops were milling around, weapons still drawn but dangling at their sides, wearing crestfallen expressions. One old detective who should have been retired by now wiped tears from his eyes. The cop who’d been shot in the throat sprawled half-in and half-out of the interview room. His blood was so fresh that the crimson pool around him was still spreading, but his eyes stared glassily at the ceiling. There was no hope for him.

Gun in her right hand, Voss dug out her ID with her left. “Homeland Security,” she announced, and they let her pass.

She stepped into the hostage room. Someone knelt by the female cop, pressing a jacket against her wound, but she was sitting up. She’d be okay, despite the fact that the laptop had been sprayed with her blood. The civilian aide in the room, a fiftyish woman with stylish glasses and a crisp, short hairdo, had been grazed on the thigh. She, too, would be all right.

Of the other five hostages, two were dead. Voss felt certain one of them had had a gruff voice.

Cops crowded the room, weapons trained on Karim al-Jubouri. The wounds in his chest were bubbling and his breath hitched as he bled out. His eyes were glazed but they kept moving, as if he was trying to see into the next world, the afterlife he thought would be waiting for him.

“Talk to me, you son of a bitch,” she said, dropping to her knees in the blood beside him. She felt Turcotte arriving behind her but didn’t take her eyes off of al-Jubouri. “What do you want? Why did you kill the Greenlaws? Where are the others?”

Nothing.

“Who the hell
are
you people?”

His breath hitched again, but she thought it had been partly a laugh. Voss wanted to scream. She bit back her hatred for him and leaned closer.

“Don’t you have any remorse at all?” she demanded.

“Did … did Herod have remorse?” he asked, coughing bloody spittle. “No. He did … what had to be done. This is the … the Herod Factor. Those who would … surrender … their beliefs for peace … must never be allowed to …”

He never finished the sentence. His last sound was a wet, burbling death rattle, and then he was still. Voss sat back, staring at him, and then she turned to look up at Turcotte.

“What was that?”

“No fucking idea,” Turcotte said.

Frustrated and pissed off at herself and the world, Voss got up and looked around, shaking her head. After a second, she walked over to the female cop, who was on her feet and being helped from the room.

“Hey,” Voss said. “You did just fine. You did what you needed to do.”

The woman just nodded.

“What’s your name?” Voss had to ask.

The cop looked at her oddly, eyes glazed from shock and blood loss, and let herself be led from the room.

Voss wasn’t going to grieve for Karim al-Jubouri—she had no tears to shed for terrorists and child-killers—but she wished he had lived long enough to give her the answers she sought, and which he would now take to the grave.