own, surrounded by crumbling, gravel-strewn tarmac. A trail of blood led to a single vehicle-sized door at the front, which was now closed. The guy from the course wanted to rush it. With two of us he thought we’d be OK. I wasn’t so sure. There was no way of approaching silently or under cover. We had no weapons. No knowledge of the youths’ objectives or disposition. Nothing to force open the door. No information on the area or surroundings. And strong odds we’d end up giving them three hostages instead of one.
I pulled out my phone. It was the right decision to make. The whole scenario had been staged. The emergency procedures were drummed into us every day. We all knew the backup facilities that were available to us. The question was, did you have the presence of mind to use them when it really counted? Or would you become John Wayne and make the situation worse?
Varley, Weston, and Lavine were already in their mobile command center when I got there, twenty minutes after I sent the balloon up. It was tucked in at the end of a row of maintenance vehicles behind Temple Emanu-El on Sixty-fifth and Fifth. All three were in the control room. Weston was nearest the front, sitting at a console. The others were standing behind him. They were all staring at an array of flat-panel monitors. There were nine, arranged in a square that covered the whole end wall. None of them were working.
The central panel flickered into life just as I walked in. It showed a dainty four-story building, only two windows wide with ornate stone carvings around the frames and a sloping roof covered with embossed copper sheeting. The hulking, utilitarian offices that bore down on each side made it seem tiny and out of place, like a slice of old-world Europe sandwiched between two concrete cubes.
“The external camera’s online,” Weston said.
“That’s the place?” I said.
“It is,” Lavine said. “Looks respectable, doesn’t it, for a human chop shop.”
“It does,” I said. “But we can soon change that.”
“That won’t be easy,” Varley said. “We have no ground-level access at the back. No approach for a vehicle. First- and second-floor windows are heavily barred. There are no skylights.”
“What about a cellar?” I said.
“There’s no access to one. And we can’t blast through from the neighboring buildings. Old place like that, there’s too much risk of collapse.”
“That just leaves the front,” I said.
“Right. The front door, and the two dormer windows on the roof.”
“What about inside?” I said. “Any idea where they’re holding her? She told me the first floor on the phone, but she could have been moved.”
“Nothing yet. But we’ve got surveillance teams in both office buildings. Kyle, any word on the fiber cameras?”
“Any minute now,” Weston said. “They’ve finished drilling through. The cables are all in place. Wait-the first camera’s coming up now.”
As we watched, a shadowy, indistinct picture spread across the bottom left-hand monitor. I had to look closely, but could just about make out three rows of shelves piled up with bedding and towels. They were leading away from us, toward a distant flight of stone steps.
“It’s the basement,” Weston said. “There’s not much light. The others’ll be better.”
One by one, brighter pictures filled the other screens until finally eight were in use. I held on, waiting for the ninth, but it remained stubbornly dark.
“OK,” Lavine said, after a moment. “This is what I see. Basement: storage. Access by stairs only. Ground floor: reception desk, waiting area, two offices.”
“No,” Weston said. “One office, one consulting room. Look at the walls. The diagrams and posters.”
“You’re right,” Lavine said. “One’s a consulting room. Also we have stairs and an elevator. A large one.”
“Big enough for a gurney,” Weston said.
“It would have to be, I guess,” Lavine said. “OK. First floor: I don’t know. It looks like a room within a room. I can’t see inside.”
“It’ll be their OR,” Weston said. “It’s an old building, drafty, they probably had to make it self-contained. Only way to guarantee it’s sterile.”
“Makes sense,” Lavine said. “And again, stairs and an elevator. Leading to the second floor: two beds, hospital style. Vases. Flowery decor. Must be their recovery ward.”
“Right,” Weston said. “Looks like a nurses’ station in the corner.”
“And finally the attic,” Lavine said. “Two small bedrooms. A bathroom. Functional, not fancy. Must be for the on-call staff.”
“Right,” Weston said. “But staff? Where are they?”
“Where’s Tanya?” I said. “I didn’t see anyone in the whole place.”
“Must be in that OR,” Varley said. “It’s the only room we can’t see into.”
“That’s where I’d go,” Lavine said. “It’s self-contained. No external walls or windows. It’ll even have its own oxygen supply.”
“How would you see out?” Weston said. “You wouldn’t know what was going on.”
“CCTV,” Lavine said. “See the cameras? Both sides of the front door. More at the back. They’d just need to reroute some cables and hook up some monitors.”
“How are we for sound?” I said. “Have we got any ears in there?”
Weston picked up a headset from his console, pressed a button, and repeated my question.
“Nine,” he said, after a moment. “Two parabolics and seven probe mikes. Not a whisper on any of them.”
“But they wouldn’t reach the OR anyway,” Varley said. “So we still have to assume that’s where everyone is. Agreed?”
No one replied.
“Good,” Varley said. “Now, time check?”
“Tanya told David one hour,” Lavine said. “That means we have twenty-four minutes remaining.”
“I don’t want to take this to the wire,” Varley said. “They may not be that precise. Or they could panic, we could hit a snag, anything. So, Kyle. The office buildings. What’s their status, please?”
Weston made another call on his headset.
“Red and blue teams are in position on the roofs,” he said. “They’re roped up and ready to go, in case you need both of them. All civilians are contained within the buildings. No one is being permitted to leave. All exit points are secured by our own people.”
“Good,” Varley said. “Now, the NYPD?”
Weston checked with someone else.
“They’re ready,” he said, covering his microphone with his hand. “Covert units are in place on Fifth and Madison, both sides of the junction. But they’re getting jumpy. Worried about the number of people. They want to start intercepting the pedestrians right away.”
“Tell them no,” Varley said. “It’s too risky. The clinic guys could have eyes on the street. They don’t deploy till I say so.”
Weston passed on Varley’s orders.
“Done,” he said, turning back to us. “They’re standing by. Waiting for your green light.”
“And the chopper?” Varley said.
“In place,” Weston said. “Two minutes and we’ll have their live pictures.”
“All right,” Varley said. “So. That just leaves you, David. Are you good to go?”
“Always,” I said.
Varley decided to go with both roof teams. Eight agents. That was a big number for such a small building, especially with the lack of confirmed targets showing up on the monitors. The whole setup was a nightmare. It screamed of a trap or an ambush. But we were concerned about time. We still couldn’t see into the OR. We couldn’t hear anything. There was no telling what the kidnappers would do if we were forced to go in.
And they had Tanya.
I walked across East Sixty-sixth Street, directly opposite the clinic, until I reached the edge of the sidewalk. I forced myself to move slowly and smoothly, but it was nearly impossible. With each step I took another tortured vision of Tanya squirmed its way into my head. I imagined her tied up. Hooded. Thrown on the ground. A gun
