Step On A Crack

Chapter 21

THE TWO OF US turned as a cop in a flapping NYPD Windbreaker roared in through the 49th Street cordon on a dusty black Suzuki 750.

“Any contact?” Ned Mason barked at me in greeting as he got off his bike.

I’d worked with Mason briefly before I had left the Negotiation Team. The intense sandy-haired cop was a triathlete and a health nut. A lot of people dismissed him as arrogant and obnoxious, but I knew him to be one of those quirky loner cops who succeeds more by meticulousness and the solitary power of his strong will than teamwork.

“Not yet,” I said.

I started to brief Mason, but an NYPD Communications Division sergeant popped his head out the door of the bus holding a cell phone above his head.

“It’s them!” he said.

Commander Will Matthews joined us as we all rushed inside the bus.

“Write down everything I tell you to,” Mason said to me brusquely. “Don’t miss a word.”

I could see by Mason’s cocky attitude that he hadn’t changed a bit.

“Call came in to nine-one-one. We routed it to here,” a communications tech cop said, offering up the phone. “Who gets this? Which one of you guys?”

Mason snatched the phone out of his hand as Will Matthews and Martelli and myself pulled on headsets so we could listen in.

“Whoever you are,” Mason said into the phone, “listen closely. Listen to me.”

Mason’s voice was powerful, his tone stark and very serious.

“This is the United States Army. What you have done has gone beyond the bounds of governmental negotiation. The president of the United States has signed an executive order, and all normal channels have now been closed. In five minutes’ time, starting now, you will either release the hostages or you will be killed. The only guarantee I will give you is this: If you lay down your weapons right now and let everyone out, you walk away with your lives. This is your one and only chance to respond. Tell me now. Are these the last five minutes of your life?”

Mason was making a very bold move, I knew. He was using a controversial strategy, originated by Army Intelligence to end a stand-off by basically scaring the living shit out of the hostage-taker. He’d just gone “all in” on the very first poker hand. If pressure was gasoline, Mason had just dropped a five-thousand-pound daisy cutter.

“If this asshole,” a voice replied with equal starkness after a short pause, “isn’t off the line in five seconds, the former president joins his wife in the afterlife. Five…”

I almost felt sorry for Mason when I saw the deep frown cross his face. It had been a risky bluff, one that had completely blown up on him. And it didn’t look like he had a backup plan.

“Four,” the voice said.

Commander Will Matthews stepped forward.

“Mason!” he said.

“Three.”

Mason was clutching the phone; he didn’t seem to be breathing.

And nobody else was doing anything either.

“Two.”

I had been a good negotiator, but I hadn’t done it in three years, and this was a precarious time to dip my toes back into the pool.

But Ned Mason had just crashed and burned, and like it or not, rusty or not, as secondary negotiator, it was my job to step in.

“One.”

I stepped across the bus and pulled the phone out of Mason’s hand.