Born to Run

Chapter 49

“Yesssss!” said Demetri, clenching his fist like a tennis star who’d served an ace.

Jack glanced across the news set to see him standing in front of the flat-screen television mounted on the wall.

Shannon leaned closer to Jack and whispered, “Is that Air Force One?”

The television was a good forty feet away, too far for Jack to read the news banner at the bottom. But the red, white, and blue Boeing 747 was unmistakable.

“It sure is,” said Jack.

“Do you see that?” said Demetri, as he stepped toward his hostages. “You see how seriously they are taking this?”

Shannon whispered, “He’s delusional.”

Jack knew that he wasn’t, but he didn’t argue with her.

Every half hour or so, Demetri had been doing fifty push-ups at a time to keep alert as the night wore one, and he definitely had renewed energy in his step as he crossed the set and looked into the camera.

“All you doubters out there who have been watching on your televisions at home, do you understand how important this is? How important I am? The president of the United States has just landed. Do you think he flies into Miami at”-he checked his watch-“two thirty on a Sunday morning for just any old reason?”

Shannon said, “If he thinks the president flew down here to negotiate with him, we’re in bigger trouble than I thought.”

“Just don’t panic,” said Jack.

Demetri’s television address was gaining momentum, his excitement growing. “Now we are seeing some action!”

Shannon leaned closer and whispered, “I have a nail file.”

“What?” said Jack. He was trying to hear Demetri talk.

“It’s the metal kind with the pointy tip, like a knife. I found it in the bathroom and hid it in my hair.”

Jack checked her hairdo. It was full enough to hide a machete.

Shannon said, “All we have to do is get Pedro to step out from behind the camera and come over here. He can take it from me and then he can-” She paused, as if it were difficult for her to speak of such things. “Pedro can slit his throat.”

“That’s a suicide mission.”

“You got a better idea?”

Jack’s gaze swept toward Demetri, who was still speaking to his television audience.

“A word of warning,” said Demetri, almost shouting with renewed energy. “If sending down Air Force One is part of a strategy to stall, I got no sense of humor for it. That money-all five hundred thousand dollars-still needs to be here at six A.M., period. No extensions.”

Jack whispered, “Okay, let’s assume we can get Pedro over here and that he can get it out of your hair without Demetri noticing. Do you have any idea how hard it is to overtake an armed man and slit his throat with a nail file?”

“No, do you?”

“It’s hard,” said Jack.

“But not impossible?”

Jack’s thoughts suddenly flashed back to Eddie Goss, a former client on death row who had decapitated one of his victims with nothing more than brute strength and a nylon stocking.

“No,” said Jack. “Not impossible.”

“Then we have a plan. You got a problem with that?”

Jack glanced again at the Greek. He was down doing push-ups again, this time for the television audience.

“Is Pedro a former navy SEAL?”

“No,” she said.

“Green Beret?”

“Pedro? Heck no.”

“Then yeah,” said Jack. “I got a big problem with that.”

As the ground crew tended to Air Force One, Harry ducked into the bathroom and placed another call to his FBI contact.

Supervisory agent Glenn Perkins had told Harry to call whenever he wanted an update, and Harry was more than taking him at his word. Perkins was head of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, and for this standoff, the Miami negotiators-including Andie-reported to him. No decision to pull the negotiators and send in the SWAT could be made without Perkins’s approval.

“What’s the latest?” said Harry.

“You saw the same thing I saw on the TV,” said Perkins. “It’s what I cautioned about before you boarded the plane: bringing you and the president down to Miami would only embolden him.”

“Andie should call him again.”

“With all due respect, sir, you’re micromanaging.”

“That’s my son in that newsroom.”

“All the more reason not to micromanage.”

“I should give Andie a call.”

“Governor, I’m urging you not to do that. Agent Henning was not my first choice, not because she isn’t qualified, but for the same personal reasons I worry about you getting too close to this. I agreed to put her in as lead negotiator, but you promised to stand clear.”

“I have four voice mails from her on my cell. I should at least return the call and tell her I’m behind her.”

“I’m expecting an update from her in five minutes. I’d be happy to tell her for you. I hope I’m not being too blunt, but the last thing she needs is the pressure of you breathing directly down her neck.”

Harry grumbled into the phone, nervously picking at the Air Force One bar of bathroom soap with his fingernail. “I feel so useless.”

Perkins said, “There is one thing you can do to help.”

“Name it.”

“Ask the president to power up Air Force One and fly you right back to Washington.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Sir, we went over this before, but now that you’ve seen the gunman’s reaction on television, maybe you’ll understand my position. The next time Demetri makes a demand, Agent Henning needs to be able to buy time and tell him that she has to check with her superiors. If he knows that you’re in town with the president, he’s going to expect and demand immediate answers.”

Harry considered it, picking even more furiously at the bar of Air Force One soap.

“It’s basic negotiation 101,” Perkins continued. “In fact, I use Jimmy Carter as a case study for training here at Quantico. Back in the seventies, he offered to intervene in a hostage standoff and accede to a gunman’s demand to speak to the president. The bureau couldn’t have been any quicker or clearer in its response: ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. President.’”

“I understand your point,” said Harry.

“Good. Then you’ll do it?”

“Maybe I can disembark in secret, and I’ll get the president to fly back without me.”

“Not a good plan,” said Perkins. “It’s best that you stay with the president.”

“I need to stay near my son.”

“Sir, that is a totally understandable feeling, but there is nothing you can do to resolve this standoff. In fact, there is nothing President Keyes can do, either. My advice is to stay with the president and help him understand that. Most important of all, make sure he doesn’t pull a Jimmy Carter, try to intervene, and get somebody hurt.”

The bar of bathroom soap was almost entirely a pile of white flakes, and Harry was still a bundle of nerves.

“All right,” he said. “I’ll stay with the president. But I’m not leaving my son.”