Deadlock

35

It was two minutes to midnight in downtown Medford. With Lock behind him, Reaper walked into the blaze of TV lights, a prize fighter staking out his spot at the weigh-in. Still clad in his suit and tie, he looked more like an aging rock star than an avowed neo-Nazi psychopath. He settled into the chair opposite Carrie as Lock and two US Marshals took up a position directly behind him.

Carrie flicked through her notes as the camera settled over her shoulder to capture Reaper’s answers. While the interview was a major coup for Carrie, Lock had thought that it might also serve as a way of drawing out Reaper’s true motives for betraying his former brothers-in-arms. But before they got to that, Carrie had told Lock she wanted the viewers at home to know exactly the kind of person Reaper really was.

‘Mr Hays, why are you currently serving three life sentences without possibility of parole?’

Lock watched Reaper straighten in his chair, the muscles in his back tightening visibly as he did so.

‘Like I said in court today, I was standing up for the most beaten-down minority in America today.’

‘And who would that be, Mr Hays?’

‘White people.’

‘But you did commit a crime — several crimes, in fact.’

Reaper opened his mouth to say something, but Carrie cut him off with a wave of her hand. Lock tensed. Reaper was a man used to being heard.

‘According to the record, Mr Hays, while serving as a Navy Seal, and with a once proud record of service to your country, you planted an explosive device in the vehicle of your commanding officer which killed both him and his two young daughters. Your commanding officer was African-American. Was that why you murdered him and his family?’

Jalicia had briefed Lock on some of this but the details had been left sketchy. He’d known that Reaper had served in the army, but not with such an elite unit. He’d also known about the murder of Reaper’s commanding officer and his two daughters, and heard something about it being racially motivated.

Reaper lowered his head. ‘The two kids were collateral damage. They weren’t supposed to be there.’

‘But you did intend to kill Lloyd Thomas?’

‘Lloyd Thomas was an incompetent who climbed the ranks because of positive discrimination, because of the colour of his skin, and because of bleeding-heart liberals like you. As a result, men died. Good men.’

‘Good white men?’ Carrie prompted.

‘Yes, they were white. White men like the ones who built this country. With their own blood and sweat. And now it’s being torn from us, swamped by the mud people who want everything for nothing.’

There was a sudden crackle on the radio of a Marshal standing behind Lock. Carrie looked up from her notes in irritation. Lock turned round to see what was happening. The Marshal had his finger up to his earpiece, listening intently.

‘We’re going to have to finish this up later,’ the Marshal said. ‘We have a situation in the street outside.’

A sudden current of tension ran through the room. Everyone fell silent. Lock noticed Reaper’s back straighten, as though he was getting ready for action.

‘Kill the lights,’ Lock said.

The cameraman hesitated, glancing at Carrie for approval.

‘Now,’ Lock ordered.

He did as he was told, reaching down to click off the three high-powered tungsten lights arranged in a triangle around Carrie and Reaper. Immediately, the room was plunged into semi-darkness.

Lock crossed to the door and flicked off the main light, reducing everyone in the room to shadows.

‘If you move,’ he said to Reaper, ‘I’m going to shoot you.’

Crossing to the windows, he peered out. There was a black van parked in the middle of the street, surrounded by several police cruisers. Hunched behind the doors of the cruisers were four police officers, their service weapons drawn and trained on the van.

‘What’s going on, Ryan?’ Carrie asked, stepping towards him.

Lock reached back with his left arm, pushing her away. ‘Stay away from the window. That goes for everyone.’

He narrowed his eyes, trying to get a bead on the driver. It was difficult. The storm that had been building through the afternoon was now in full effect. Rain lashed the street, pummeling the sidewalk with heavy bullets of water which shrapneled upwards in a thousand fragments or dug themselves into rapidly expanding pools of water.

The Marshal in charge handed Lock a pair of binoculars. He put them up to his eyes and racked the focus wheel between the two lenses with the pad of his thumb. It looked like a woman was in the van. Dark hair. Dark complexion. One of the cops was shouting instructions to her. Lock could just about guess from his body language and demeanor that he was ordering her to get out of the van with her hands up. But she wasn’t moving.

Lock turned back to the US Marshal, who was right behind him, his finger still at his earpiece. ‘What’s the situation down there?’

‘This van just ran the roadblock, then it stopped. Single occupant driving, as far as we can tell.’

‘It’s a woman?’

The Marshal met Lock’s gaze. His expression suggested he was holding something back.

‘Who is it?’

‘Raise your hands where we can see them!’

‘Toss the keys to the ground!’

‘Keep your hands up and exit the vehicle!’

A litany of instructions. None of which she could follow. She looked down at her hands, which had been secured to the steering wheel with cuffs. Heavy-duty gaffer tape bound her tightly to the seat. After a hell of a struggle she’d finally managed to extricate her feet from the tangle of tape securing them, at an angle, to the gas pedal. Thank God, or she would have ploughed straight into the police cruisers racing towards her.

Jalicia’s heart was pounding, and her shirt was soaked in sweat. She’d never been so terrified in her whole damn life.

Lock watched the van from the window of the makeshift TV interview room, then turned back to the Marshal and nodded in Reaper’s direction. ‘Let’s get him back in a cell. Get on the radio and tell the people down there to fall back to the building. Also, get on your cell phone. We’re going to need every single member of law enforcement we can round up down here. Tell them to bring every weapon they have, plus all their ammunition. I want every gun cabinet and rack within a ten-mile radius emptied.’

‘It’s Jalicia in the van, isn’t it?’ Carrie asked. ‘What’s going to happen to her?’

Lock took Carrie’s hand. ‘Dime to a dozen that van is rigged with explosives. There’s nothing we can do for her. Not right now anyway.’

‘But we can’t just leave her,’ she said, defiant.

‘We can and we will,’ Lock said, grimly. ‘It’s a come-on. The guys who’ve rigged the van plan on drawing everyone in. Then they’ll blow it up. That gives them a window to get to their real target, which is this asshole here.’ He hauled Reaper to his feet.

‘And if you’re wrong?’ Carrie asked him, clearly unused to seeing this side of Lock, his ability to choose life for some and death for others.

‘If there are no explosives then she’ll be fine.’

‘But what if they’re on a timer?’ Carrie pressed.

‘Listen to me,’ Lock said. ‘These are classic terrorist tactics. It sucks, but we have to leave her. We don’t leave her, a lot more people die.’

‘OK,’ Carrie said reluctantly.

‘Goddammit!’ the Marshal erupted, staring at his cell phone. ‘I can’t get a signal.’

‘Same here,’ said one of the cops standing at the door. ‘My radio won’t work either.’

‘They’re using a jammer.’

Lock could see the beginnings of panic in Carrie’s eyes.

‘They can do that?’

Before Lock could explain that pretty much anyone with a credit card and an internet connection could purchase the technology to block communications these days, he froze, aware of a sound beyond the keening of the wind and the splashing of the rain outside.

‘Listen,’ he said, and the room fell silent.

Lock concentrated hard, separating out first the atmosphere of the room, then the roar of the storm. What was left was a low, rhythmic thwump that was increasing in volume. Accompanying it in the skies above them was a point of light. The pinprick quickly expanded so that Lock was at first dazzled, then all but blinded by it.

He narrowed his eyes and brought up a hand to shade them from the worst of the glare, which allowed him a clearer view of a black helicopter turning so that it was side on to the building. A man was sitting on the floor of the cabin, his legs dangling out, his feet almost on the blade of the skid. He was clad in full body armor and holding an assault rifle. With his free hand he was feeding out ropes which twisted and dangled in the wind like tendrils of overcooked spaghetti.

Lock twisted round so that he was staring into the saucer-wide eyes of the Marshal, who’d joined him at the window.

‘They’re not our guys, are they?’ Lock asked.

All the Marshal could manage was a slow shake of his head.

Mid-shake, the missile pod mounted at the front of the helicopter lit up with a fiery roar, punching out what Lock guessed had to be an RPG. It whistled downwards, leaving a ghostly yellow blaze burning across Lock’s retina.

Less than a second later, the van holding Jalicia disintegrated in a fiery blaze of distended metal. The blast wave thumped so hard into Lock’s chest that he and the others in the room were momentarily lifted off their feet and deposited ass-first on to the floor. The walls of the courthouse vibrated.

Ears ringing, Lock stood back up and went over to Carrie.

‘You OK?’ he asked her as she struggled into a sitting position.

‘What the hell was that?’

‘RPG.’

She gave him her reporter’s stare. ‘In English please, Ryan.’

‘A rocket-propelled grenade.’

He looked back to the window. Down below, flames licked around the skeleton of the van, and he could see the charred outline of Jalicia’s corpse slumped over what was left of the steering column. He tore his eyes away. By the time he looked skywards again, the light was gone. But up above them, the thump of the helicopter’s blades slashing through the storm grew louder, drowning out the sirens below.