does this thing have?'
'Battery's got two, maybe three hours. Same with the one in your vest.' Trent looked down the row, to the short SWAT officer holding the padded end of a headset against one ear.
'Loud and clear,' he told Trent.
From the duffel bag she removed a nylon sheath holding a tactical knife with an eight-inch blade. She strapped it underneath her left forearm, resting the handle, with its dual-pronged grips for quick and easy removal, near her wrist. She put her T-shirt back on and rolled the baggy cotton sleeve over the knife. Perfect. Charlie wouldn't see the knife, but he'd find it if he patted her down.
Trent had good taste in equipment. He had given her a Blackhawk Tactical Float Vest. Good Kevlar protection and multiple side pouches with ALICE clips. One side pouch held three empty slots for extra ammo. The bigger one contained a brand-new gas mask, a top-of-the-line model with a wide transparent polycarbonate visor and a military-grade filter positioned on the right side so it wouldn't interfere with her vision. The mouthpiece also had the new voice-amplifying system.
'Where'd you get the funds for all this equipment?' she asked, dipping into the duffel bag again for the tactical pouch holding her sidearm. 'You guys hit the lottery?'
'In a macabre way, yes, we did,' Trent said. 'After 9/11, the state got a massive influx of cash to upgrade all our gear and weapons, and there was enough money left over to buy the Bear.' He tapped the wall of the APC. 'What are you packing? Looks like a SIG Sauer.'
'P226,' Darby said, strapping the sidearm against her right thigh.
'Nice choice, but our guy's probably going to have you dump it. You're going to need a backup piece and someplace to hide it. I'd sug-'
'I've already got it covered.' She rolled up her jean cuff and showed him the weapon tucked beneath the lip of her boot — a compact SIG Sauer P230 in an ankle holster.
She slipped on the tactical vest, zippered it up and found, strapped to the right front, a black piece of metal shaped like a baton. It had a trigger.
'What's this?'
'Netgun launcher,' Trent said. 'Two rounds, though you only need one. Wraps the person in a web. It's electrified, gives the person a slight jolt. And it's made of this sticky shit, so there's no way you can tear it off. I'm not a big fan of the non-lethal gadgets, but this one shows a lot of promise.'
Darby started transferring the extra clips of ammo from her duffel bag. 'What's the plan? You going to drive the APC up to the house?'
'Our boy Charlie requested it. I'm going to park it right in front so he can't miss it.'
'I want you to keep your men in here until I give the order to breach.'
'He asked for us, remember?'
'Understood. But if you want me to go in there and talk to him, I'll be the one giving the orders.'
That hit a nerve. Trent's gaze narrowed in his stony face. She knew the senior corporal was about to launch into a lecture about how this was a tactical operation and, as such, he would be the one calling the shots.
'I don't know anything about this guy's mental state,' she said. 'For all I know, he's a schizophrenic. If he sees your men standing around the house, armed, it might set him off. He might start shooting.'
'All the more reason why my men should be positioned in and around the house.'
'I can handle him. And I'm going to get him to walk out of there alive. If we carry him out in a body bag, we won't know why he's holding the family hostage.'
'And if I say no?'
'Then you can go in and try talking to him.'
Darby removed her SIG, clicked off the safety and jacked a round into the chamber. She slid her weapon back into the holster, clipped the strap and leaned back against the wall, waiting for Trent's answer.
The APC came to a jarring stop.
Darby didn't move. Nobody did, everyone waiting for Trent to speak.
Finally, he did.
'Nobody moves or takes a shot until McCormick gives the word.'
Darby thought she caught a look of admiration flash across his eyes before he turned to his men. 'Everyone clear?'
Nods all around.
Now it was her turn to address the group.
'If I say 'blue', that's the signal to breach the house. If I use 'red', have one of the snipers take Charlie down. Any questions?'
There were none.
Darby opened the back doors to a rush of cold air and flashing blue and white police lights.
4
Darby stepped into a crowded police blockade. She didn't see any homes or streetlights, just a long, double-wide road paved through densely packed woods that seemed to stretch for miles in every direction. Country living at its finest. A city girl, she could never understand why anyone would choose to live in such an isolated setting.
The air crackled with police radios. She followed Trent, weaving her way through the blue-uniformed bodies and plainclothes detectives, almost every one of them talking on a cell phone. A strong breeze rattled the tree limbs and shed autumn leaves that had already started to turn — deep orange, yellow and red colours that danced in the wind and were lit up as they blew across the road by all the flashing police lights.
'Press here?' she asked Trent.
'Not yet. When they arrive — and God knows they will — they won't get close. We've got patrols on every street. The whole area is sealed off.'
But not the air, Darby thought. Once word got out — and she was sure it had — there'd be more than one news copter hovering close to the Rizzo home.
The command post, a plain white vinyl-sided mobile trailer, was parked to the side of the road between the two police blockades. Trent walked up a set of collapsible metal stairs and held the door open for her.
Inside, she found a good amount of space, all of it strategically designed and organized. The shelving carried almost every type of conceivable surveillance equipment: a microwave receiver for the trailer's roof camera, tactical audio kits and a stereo accelerometer that could be used to pick up voices through windows, walls and floors. The warm, stale air smelled of coffee and it triggered memories of long nights she'd spent at the lab, dry-eyed and desperate, fighting to stay awake while combing through notes, files and evidence with the hope of finding something that had been overlooked, something that would break a case wide open. It reminded her of that adrenalin-fueled feeling of racing against the clock. Of desperation.
It also reminded her of Coop. How deeply she missed him and how badly she wanted him standing here beside her. Now he was living in London and working for a firm that specialized in fingerprint technology, his area of expertise. Instead of going through crime scenes with her, he was now a consultant for Britain's Identity and Passport Service, a government branch that was currently attempting to create a fingerprint system that could be integrated with the world's largest biometric fingerprint database, IAFIS, owned and maintained by the American FBI.
The man she assumed was the hostage negotiator sat in front of a workstation set up on the wall behind the driver. Trent quickly introduced Billy Lee, a slight man with angular features. She had Lee pegged as being somewhere north of fifty. Dressed in a sharp charcoal-grey suit and tie, his grey hair combed and carefully parted, he looked more like someone accustomed to sitting on a board of directors. When she shook his hand and felt his dry palm, she had the feeling that Lee shared the same attributes as Gary Trent — precise and certain with his words, an alpha male accustomed to playing all forms of mental chess — and winning. That desperate feeling
