Standoff

CHAPTER 4

THE UNEXPECTED, SHRILL SOUND STARTLED EVERYONE.

Donna was nearest to the ringing telephone. "What should I do?" she asked.

"Nothing."

"Ronnie, maybe you should let her answer it," Tiel suggested.

"How come? It's probably got nothing to do with me."

"That could be. But what if it does concern you?

Wouldn't you rather know what you're up against?"

He mulled it over for several seconds, then gave Donna the go-ahead to answer.

"Hello?" She listened for a moment, then said, "Hi, Sheriff. No, he weren't drunk. Just like he told you, this kid here has got us held at gunpoint."

Suddenly the front of the building was bathed in brilliant light. Everyone inside had been so focused on Sabra's condition that none had heard the approach of the three squad cars, which had now flashed on their headlights. Tiel deduced that the sheriff was probably calling from one of the units, which were parked just beyond the gas pumps.

Ronnie ducked out of sight behind a Frito-Lay display, yelling, "Tell them to turn off those damn lights or I'm going to shoot somebody."

Donna relayed the message. She paused to listen, then said, "About eighteen, I'd guess. Calls hisself Ronnie."

"Shut up!" Ronnie brandished the pistol at her. She screeched and dropped the telephone receiver.

The car lights went out, two pair almost simultaneously, the third pair seconds later.

Sabra moaned.

Doc said, "Ronnie, listen to me."

"No. Be quiet and let me think."

The young man was flustered, but Doc persisted in a low, earnest voice. "Stay here and see this thing through if you like. But the manly thing to do would be to let Sabra leave. The authorities will take her to the hospital, where she needs to be."

"I won't go," the girl said. "Not without Ronnie."

Tiel appealed to her. "Think of your baby, Sabra."

"I am thinking of our baby," she sobbed. "If my daddy gets his hands on the baby, I'll never see it again. I won't give it up. I won't give Ronnie up, either."

Seeing that his patient was close to hysteria, Doc relented.

"Okay, okay. If you won't agree to leave, how about this? What if a doctor were to come here?"

"You're a doctor," Ronnie argued.

"Not the kind Sabra needs. I don't have any instruments.

I've got nothing to give her to relieve her pain.

This is going to be a difficult delivery, Ronnie. There could be all sorts of serious complications, which I'm unqualified to deal with. Are you willing to risk Sabra's life as well as the child's? Because by allowing the situation to continue as it is, that's what you're doing. You could lose one or both of them. Then, no matter how it pans out, it will all have been for nothing."

Tiel was impressed. She couldn't have phrased an appeal any better.

The young man gnawed on Doc's words for a minute, then motioned Tiel toward the counter and the dangling telephone receiver. For several moments after Donna had dropped it, a man's voice could be heard, demanding to know what was going on. Now, it was silent.

"You're good at shooting off your mouth," Ronnie said to Tiel. "You do the talking."

She came to her feet and made her way past Sabra and Doc, past the Frito-Lay display and across the open space to the counter. She wasted no time calling nine-one-one.

As soon as the operator answered, she said, "I need the sheriff to call me. Don't ask questions. He is aware of this emergency situation. Tell him to call the convenience store back." She hung up before the operator could proceed with the routine drill, which would be a waste of valuable time.

They waited in tense silence. No one said a word.

Gladys and Vern were huddled close together. When Tiel glanced in their direction, Vern subtly drew her attention to the tote bag in his lap. Somehow he had managed to retrieve it without Ronnie's being aware. A crafty Casanova.

That in itself would make a good story, Tiel thought. Except that she had a better one, in which she wasn't just a reporter, but a participant. Gully would be ecstatic. If this story didn't secure the Nine Live spot for her- Although she'd been expecting the telephone to ring, she jumped when it did. She answered it immediately.

"Who's this?"

She avoided a direct answer by saying, "Sheriff?"

"Marty Montez."

"Sheriff Montez, I've been appointed spokesperson.

I'm one of the hostages."

"Are you in immediate danger?"

"No," she replied, believing it.

"Are you being coerced?"

"No."

"Give me a rundown."

She began with a brief and concise account of the robbery, starting with Ronnie's shooting out the security camera.

"It was interrupted when his accomplice went into labor."

"Labor? You mean labor like having a baby?"

"Exactly like that, yes."

After an extended pause during which she could hear the heavy breathing of an overweight man, he said, "Answer me if you safely can, miss. Are these robbers by any chance a coupla high school kids?"

"Yes."

"What's he asking?" Ronnie demanded to know.

Tiel covered the receiver with her palm. "He asked if Sabra was in pain and I answered." 'Jee-sus," the sheriff exclaimed in a near whistle. In a low voice he passed along to his deputies-or so Tiel assumed -that the hostage-takers were the kids "outta Fort Worth." Then to her, he asked, "Is anybody hurt?"

"No. We're all unharmed."

"Who-all's in there with you? How many hostages?"

"Four men and two women besides myself."

"You're a smooth talker. You wouldn't by any chance be a Ms. McCoy?"

She tried to hide her surprise from Ronnie, who was lis tening to her intently and closely monitoring her facial expressions. "That's correct. No one has been wounded."

"You are Ms. McCoy, but you don't want 'em to know you're a TV reporter? I see. Your boss, guy name o' Gully, he's called my office twice, demanding we put out an APB for you. Said you started from Rojo Flats and was supposed to call him-"

"What's he saying?" Ronnie asked.

She interrupted the sheriff. "It would be in everyone's best interest if you could provide us with a doctor. An OH if possible."

"Tell him to bring along anything he might need for a difficult delivery."

Tiel relayed Doc's message.

"Be sure he knows that the baby is in a breech position,"

Doc added.

After Tiel conveyed that, the sheriff asked who she was getting her information from. "He goes by Doc."

"You're shittin' me," the sheriff said.

"No."

"Doc's one of the hostages," she heard him pass along.

"Doc says the Dendy girl needs a specialist, huh?"

"That's right, Sheriff. And as soon as possible. We're concerned for her and the baby."

"If they surrender, we'll get her to a hospital pronto.

They have my guarantee."

"I'm afraid that's not a contingency."

"Davison won't let her go?"

"No," Tiel said. "She refuses to leave."

"Shee-ut, what a mess," he expelled on a heavy sigh.

"Okay, I'll see what I can do."

"Sheriff, I can't impress on you enough how badly this young woman is suffering. And…"

"Go ahead, Ms. McCoy. What?"

"The situation is under control," she said slowly. "For the time being everyone is calm. Please don't take any drastic measures."

"I hear what you're saying, Ms. McCoy. No grandstanding.

No fireworks, SWAT teams, and such?"

"Precisely." She was relieved that he understood. "So far, no one has been injured."

"And we'd all like to keep it that way."

"I'm very glad to hear you say that. Please, please, get a doctor here as quickly as you can."

"I'm on it. Here's the number of the phone I've got with me."

She committed the number to memory. Montez wished her luck and hung up. She replaced the telephone on the countertop, glad to note that it was an older model and didn't have a speaker-phone feature. Ronnie might wish to listen in on future conversations.

"He's working on getting a doctor here."

"I like the sound of that," Doc said.

"How soon before he gets here?"

Turning to Ronnie, she replied, "As soon as possible.

I'm going to be honest with you. He guessed your and Sabra's identity."

"Oh, hell," the boy groaned. "What else can go wrong?"

"They've been located!"

Russell Dendy nearly knocked down the FBI agent who happened to be standing in his path when the shout came from the adjacent room. He didn't apologize for causing the agent to spill scalding coffee over his hand. He barreled into the library of his home, which, since that morning, had been converted into a command post.

"Where? Where are they? Has he hurt my daughter? Is Sabra all right?"

Special Agent William Galloway was in charge. He was a tall, thin, balding man who, if not for the pistol riding in the small of his back, looked more like a mortgage banker than a federal agent. His demeanor wasn't consistent with the stereotype either. He was calm and soft-spoken-most of the time. Russell Dendy had put Galloway's pleasant disposition to the test.

As Dendy stalked into the room blurting questions, Galloway signaled for him to pipe down and continued his telephone conversation.

Dendy impatiently punched a button on the telephone and a woman's voice filtered through the speaker. "It's called Rojo Flats. Practically in the middle of nowhere, west-southwest of San Angelo. They're armed. They tried to rob a convenience store, but it was thwarted. Now they're holding hostages inside the store."

"Damn him. Damn him!" Dendy ground his fist into his opposite palm. "He turned my daughter into a common criminal! And she couldn't understand why I objected to him."

Galloway once again signaled him to keep his voice down. "You said they're armed. Are there any casualties?"

"No, sir. But the girl is in labor."

"Inside the store?"

"Affirmative."

Dendy cursed lavishly. "He's holding her against her will!"

The disembodied woman said, "According to one of the hostages who spoke to the sheriff, the young woman refuses to leave."

"He's brainwashed her," Dendy declared.

The FBI agent from the Odessa office continued as though she hadn't heard him. "One of the hostages ap parently has some medical knowledge. He's seeing to her, but a doctor has been requested."

Dendy thumped the top of the desk with his fist. "I want Sabra the hell out of there, do you hear me?"

"We hear you, Mr. Dendy," Galloway said with diminishing patience.

"I don't care if you have to blast her out of there with dynamite."

"Well, I care. According to the spokesperson, no one has been injured."

"My daughter's in labor!"

"And we'll get her to a hospital as soon as possible. But I'm not going to do anything that will endanger the lives of those hostages, your daughter, or Mr. Davison."

"Look, Galloway, if you're going to take a limp-dick approach to this situation-"

"The approach I take is my call, not yours. Is that understood?"

Russell Dendy had the reputation of being a real son of a bitch. Unfortunately, meeting him hadn't dispelled any myths or changed Galloway's preconceptions of the millionaire.

Dendy exercised despotic supervision over several corporations.

He wasn't accustomed to relinquishing control to someone else, or even to giving anyone else a vote in the way things were managed. His businesses weren't democracies, and neither was his family. Mrs. Dendy had done nothing all day except weep into her hankie and second her husband's answers to the agents' probing questions about their family life and their relationship with their daughter. She hadn't offered a single opinion that differed from his, or voiced any personal observations.

From the start Galloway had doubted Dendy's allega tion of a kidnaping. Instead he leaned heavily toward the more viable version: Sabra Dendy had run away from home with her boyfriend in order to escape her domineering father.

Galloway's dressing-down had left Russ Dendy practically spitting with fury. "I'm on my way out there."

"I don't advise that."

"As if I give a rat's ass what you advise."

"There's no room in our chopper for extra passengers," the agent called to Dendy's retreating back.

"Then I'll take my Lear."

He stormed from the room and began shouting orders to his band of flunkies who were ever present, as silent and unobtrusive as pieces of furniture until Dendy's strident commands jump-started them. They filed out behind him. Mrs, Dendy was ignored and not invited to go along.

Galloway disengaged the speaker phone and picked up the receiver, so he could hear the other agent more clearly. "Guess you heard all that."

"You've got your hands full, Galloway."

"And then some. How're the locals out there?"

"From what I understand, Montez is a competent sheriff, but he's in way over his head and is smart enough to know it. He's getting backup from the Rangers and highway patrol."

"Will they resent our presence, you think?"

"Don't they always?" she came back dryly.

"Well, it came to us as a kidnaping. I'm leaving it at that until I know better."

"Actually, Montez will probably be glad to land the problem in our lap. His chief concern is that there be no heroics. He wants to avoid bloodshed."

"Then he and I are on the same page. I think what we've got here is a couple of scared kids who've got themselves trapped in a situation and can't find a way out.

What, if anything, do you know about the hostages?"

She gave him the breakdown by gender. "One's been identified by Sheriff Montez as a local rancher. The cashier is a fixture at the convenience store. Everybody in Rojo Flats knows her. And that Ms. McCoy who talked to Sheriff Montez?"

"What about her?"

"She's a reporter for a TV station in Dallas."

"Tiel McCoy?"

"So you know her?"

He knew her and mentally formed an image: slender, short blond hair, light eyes. Blue, possibly green. She was on TV nearly every night. Galloway had also seen her outside the studio among reporters at the scenes of crimes he'd investigated. She was aggressive, but objective. Her reports were never unfairly inflammatory or exploitative.

She was a looker and utterly feminine, but her delivery merited credibility.

He wasn't thrilled to hear that a broadcast journalist of her caliber was at the epicenter of this crisis. It was a compounding factor he could easily have done without.

"Great. A reporter is already on the scene." He ran his hand around the back of his neck, where tension had begun to gather. It was going to be a long night. He predicted the previously unheard-of Rojo Flats would soon be swarmed by media, contributing to the mayhem.

The other agent asked, "Gut instinct, Galloway. Did that boy kidnap the Dendy girl?"

Beneath his breath, Galloway muttered, "I only wonder why it took her so long to run away."