Born to Run

Chapter 43

Jack was counting bullets.

The warning shot and the security guard made two.

Mika was three. That was the sum total, as best Jack could recall. Could Demetri really have come this far on just three spent rounds? On the other side of the balance sheet, he’d picked up the security guard’s gun, Mika’s pistol on the nightstand, and the.22-caliber, pizza-boy special from Mika’s pants. At this rate, the chances of this guy running out of ammunition before killing a hostage were not good.

“Are you packing?” Shannon whispered.

Jack and the Action News anchor were sitting on the floor in front of the news desk.

“Packing what?” said Jack.

“Do you have a gun?”

“If I did, do you think my hands would be tied behind my back?”

“Good point,” she whispered. “Pedro’s our only hope.”

Pedro was the cameraman. Demetri needed him to operate the equipment, so he was the only hostage with free hands. Demetri had also used him to move furniture and barricade the entrance to the newsroom, turning the place into a windowless fortress.

Jack looked up at the ceiling. It was about twenty feet high. Scores of stage lights hung down in rows over the set, leaving about six feet of inky black crawl space between the suspended lights and the ceiling. The entire newsroom was built that way, though the suspended fixtures over the work cubicles were far fewer in number and not nearly as bright as the set lighting. Jack liked the idea of SWAT moving in like Spider-Man above the lights a whole lot better than Pedro the cameraman playing hero.

“It’s getting miserably hot here under these lights,” said Jack, speaking loud enough for Demetri to hear.

“Must be male menopause,” he said. “Deal with it.”

Does the whole freakin’ world know I’m forty?

“Smart ass,” said Shannon.

She’d muttered it beneath her breath, but the acoustics on the set were state of the art. Demetri threw her a deadly glare.

“Did you say something?” he said. He was seated on the couch that was part of the morning talk show set, just away from the news desk.

“Me?” she said. “No.”

Demetri rose, then pointed his pistol at Pedro and said, “Keep the camera right on me.”

The camera followed his slow walk across the set. Jack had noticed Demetri stretching his legs and massaging his hip as the night wore on, the way back-pain sufferers did, and the flare-up seemed to make him more ornery. Demetri stopped right in front of Shannon, showing the television audience his profile. A wireless microphone was clipped to his shirt, and he reached for the control pack on his belt and switched it off. Then he lowered himself onto one knee and pressed his gun between Shannon’s breasts.

“I don’t like a woman with a mouth,” he said.

She seemed on the verge of telling him where to go, which impressed Jack, but she held her tongue.

“We have two choices,” said Demetri. “You can behave yourself. Or,” he said, glancing toward the camera, “we can have ourselves a public execution. What’s it going to be, sweety?”

Switty. His accent seemed to creep in with fatigue.

A phone rang in the newsroom. It was in one of the cubicles nearest to the news set.

“Gee, who could that be?” said Demetri.

“You pressed your gun to her chest on live television,” said Jack. “You’re lucky the cops didn’t come busting through the door. That’s the way it works, pal.”

It rang for the second time, and then a third.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?” said Jack.

Demetri switched on his wireless microphone. The speakers whined with a bit of feedback, but a quick adjustment cleared it.

The phone continued to ring.

“You should talk to them,” said Jack. “What can it hurt?”

Demetri stepped down from the set and walked to the phone. For a moment, Jack thought he might answer it. Then he yanked the wire out of the wall and threw the phone across the newsroom.

The ringing stopped.

Demetri faced the camera and said, “As the saying goes, folks: ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you.’”

Then he walked back toward the news desk, pacing back and forth in front of his hostages as he spoke to his television audience. His movements were fluid now, as if his anger had a way of cutting through any amount of pain.

“Let me make something real clear,” he said. “This is not a negotiation. There will be no private conversations, no side deals here. Everything I have to say will be said on the air. There is only one reason for anyone to call this newsroom-and that’s to tell me when my demands have been met. So let’s get the ball rolling. Demand number one. Money.” He stopped pacing and looked at Jack. “How much do you think I want, big mouth?”

Jack didn’t like playing his games, but he’d seen Demetri’s temper. The guy had even lost it with his beloved Sofia.

“I have no idea,” said Jack.

“Come on, you can do better than that. You met one of my Russian friends tonight. He must have told you how much I owed them.”

“He wasn’t much of a talker,” said Jack.

“Even less now,” said Demetri.

“Like Chloe and Paulette Sparks.”

Demetri stopped pacing, his expression sour. “Now why’d you have to go and mention them already? That’s like killing off Jack Bauer in the second episode of the season. You gotta build up to these things. Where the fuck is-oops, sorry. Network television. Where the hell is your sense of drama, Swyteck?”

“The whole world knows what you did,” said Jack. “You’re just kidding yourself here. I have it figured out, the FBI has it figured out. I bet if you turn on CNN, they’ve even got the scoop. It’s all on the table. You don’t have any secrets left.”

Demetri fell silent, but that ember of anger that seemed to burn continuously inside him was about to burst into flames. He took a deep breath and swallowed his rage.

“That’s where you’re wrong. I got one left. The big one.”

Demetri turned away from Jack and spoke to the camera.

“I’m talking to you, big man. That’s right. You. I know you’re watching, so here’s the deal. I want five hundred thousand dollars in cash. Hundred-dollar bills will be fine. Old bills, not new ones. For you novices out there who’ve never worked as a bagman, that’s five thousand bills, which comes out to about ten pounds of money. And I want it delivered here to the newsroom by…let’s see.”

He checked the clock on the wall.

“It’s going on one o’clock. I’ll give you till seven A.M. That’s more than enough time. Don’t you think, Swyteck?”

Jack didn’t answer.

“You’re right,” said Demetri, again making that extra effort to speak clearly for his American audience. “We’re dealing with a very powerful man here. He can make things happen fast. Five hundred thousand in cash delivered right here to the studio by six A.M., not a minute later. Stay glued to those television sets, folks. I’m going to count it live and on the air. And if it’s not here by six,” he said, taking a step closer to his hostages, “then one of our lucky guests here will take a bullet to the head. I might even let you call in and vote on which one should get it. The pretty blond anchor woman, or the greedy lawyer whose father is a slick politician? Hmmm. Tough choice. But if I’m a betting man, Swyteck, I’d say you’re toast.”

He stepped even closer to the camera, his face filling the screen.

“I told you it was gonna get good.”