Bridge subway station and the bridge itself,” Tony said from the passenger seat. “There was even a big sustainable energy sit-in already in progress on the front steps of City Hall, with a planned march across the Brooklyn Bridge to follow. Luckily, because it was a scheduled demonstration requiring a city permit, the NYPD had extra officers down here for crowd control, so they used those same officers to clear everyone out. Pull over,” he said, pointing at the David N. Dinkins Municipal Building to their right. “We’ve all got our orders and can get where we need to be on foot from here. Teo will want you out of this area right away, so you need to turn around and head back to Brooklyn.”
“I will.”
Gemma, Tony, Joe, and Mark had all been called in as news of the hostage taking spread. While they all felt sober after their holiday lunch, none of them wanted to risk being behind the wheel. Rachel—who hadn’t been drinking, as she was still breast-feeding Nate—had been roped into driving them into Lower Manhattan. Once they made it over the Brooklyn Bridge, they’d been stopped by the cop redirecting traffic away from the Civic Center and down to FDR Drive. After a mass showing of badges, he’d stepped back to let them through, with the promise of Rachel’s immediate return.
Rachel pulled over to the curb and they all climbed out. Gemma met Rachel’s eyes in the rearview mirror and answered her mouthed “Be careful” with a nod. Mark slammed the door shut behind them and rapped his fist twice on the roof of the SUV, sending Rachel on her way. She swung around in a U-turn in the empty street, making her way back to the Brooklyn Bridge and over the East River.
Father, daughter, and sons took a moment together on the curb.
Tony made eye contact with each child in turn. “Be careful, every one of you. I know you’re all supposed to be out of harm’s way, but you know how these situations can turn on a dime. This one’s going to be high profile, and we don’t know what kind of splash the hostage taker plans to make. Stay alert and stay safe.”
Gemma reached up and lightly kissed her father’s cheek. “Same goes for you.”
She gave his arm a squeeze, exchanged silent nods with her brothers, and jogged away from them down Centre Street, taking care to keep to the far side in the unlikely case the hostage taker was at a window on the near side of the building. She flashed her shield at the cop standing on Park Row at the top of Beekman Street and he waved her through. Only then did she consider herself far enough away from the building to cross the road to enter City Hall Park. As she jogged past the Jacob Wrey Mould Fountain in the middle of the park, she threw a quick glance to her right. City Hall was visible at the end of the path, three stories of graceful marble French Renaissance architecture, blindingly white in the afternoon sun. At its center, the figure of Justice stood atop the domed tower, holding her scales aloft to pierce the cloudless blue sky.
Somewhere inside, victims are in danger.
She remembered the frozen terror of staring down the barrel of a captor’s gun, knowing her life could end instantly at his slightest whim.
Gemma ran faster.
She arrowed toward Broadway on the far side and the address Garcia had provided for their impromptu negotiation headquarters. As she broke from the park, heading north, she spotted the location across the street. Only months before, it had been a Citibank branch on the corner of Broadway and Murray until the branch moved to bigger quarters; now the deserted space would be perfect for the negotiation team. Close enough to visualize the building, but far enough out of the way that if bullets flew, they’d be safe.
The golden rule in negotiating was that no negotiator ever died while on the phone with a suspect. That was the trick: physically remove yourself from danger to keep that immediate stress at bay, allowing you to maintain the deadly calm essential in every successful negotiator. Leave the bullets to the Apprehension Tactical Team.
Gemma knew the A-Team would already be on-site, and she scanned the tops of buildings as she sprinted across Broadway. She couldn’t see anyone, but knew they’d already have their best long-distance sharpshooters in spots with a perfect line of sight on the building, and that positioning would change as they became surer of the hostage taker’s location. There were likely even a few of them up the trees close to City Hall if they could find a position with line of sight through summer’s dense leaf canopy.
She pushed through the door of the old branch office to find the kind of organized chaos that always occurred at the beginning of a situation. A map of Lower Manhattan was tacked up on the wall at a slight angle, which spoke of a rushed effort. A white board with multicolored scribbles was propped on a chair. Tables were covered with aerial shots of the building and the surrounding park and Civic Center, City Hall blueprints, a list that was likely a roster of departments in the building, and the beginnings of the briefing book—the negotiator’s bible during any hostage situation. As the incident wore on, information about the hostage taker and his history, as well as details concerning the victims, would be added. She spotted Garcia’s bulky form and salt-and-pepper hair as he bent over the book, pointing something out to a tall man with a military bearing, a high-and-tight haircut, and who was dressed in tactical gear, with his helmet tucked under his arm.
Gemma swallowed a groan. Great. Sanders.
The A-Team was high-stakes and high-stress 100 percent of the time, but she always felt this commander pumped it up an extra 10 percent. Sanders was a firm believer that “might makes right,” and he was known to jump the gun when negotiations took longer than he’d like. While sometimes that was the right call, it didn’t always lead to a positive outcome.
She understood the origin of some of Sanders’s logic, even if she didn’t always agree with it. Sanders wasn’t just a mustache-twirling complication sent in to make their lives even more difficult. She’d heard the story from her father—a hostage situation early on in Sanders’s career as a commander that had started as a domestic violence call between an estranged husband and wife, with their three young children caught in the middle. There’d been a handgun involved and the standoff had gone longer than Sanders wanted. He’d argued for going in to remove the children and had men ready to do so. But the primary hostage negotiator had convincingly argued for more time.
By the time Sanders finally followed his gut, overruled the negotiator, and had sent in his teams, the hostage taker and a baby, toddler, and preschooler were all dead. The wife had been shot and ended up surviving her wounds, but only as a shell of the woman she’d been. Sanders had reportedly raked the negotiator over the coals for pushing so hard to keep him and his teams out. But in the end, Sanders recognized the final decision had been his to make. And it was one he clearly never intended to miss again.
So now they’d not only be fighting the suspect and the clock, but possibly the man running the operation, if they couldn’t convince Sanders to give them the time they’d need to effectively negotiate. In some ways, it was too bad the serial approach to hostage situations—talk first, then show your tactical abilities when you hit a wall—wasn’t nearly as effective as the parallel approach—talk while making a visible tactical show—to get a hostage taker’s attention and cooperation. It was always a fine line to walk: a large show of force could make a suspect insecure and desperate, while a small show of force could leave the suspect overconfident and unwilling to work with the negotiators.
Damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t.
She spotted two more negotiators at the back of the large room and nodded in approval at Garcia’s handpicked choices. Granted, with a high-profile situation like this, he could have any of the over one hundred Hostage Negotiation Team members at his beck and call, even if they were in the middle of their own incidents, which some, no doubt, were. The HNT dealt with hundreds of cases annually, which boiled down to more cases in
