The Hypnotist

FORTY-SEVEN

Fulton banged his fist against the aluminum wall. He and his men were as trapped outside as Richmond, Glass and the others were trapped inside.

“What kind of signals are you reading?” Fulton asked Travers, whom he’d put in charge of both the GPS and the MRSS devices while he tried to organize the rescue and continued to monitor the radio.

“The sculpture is the only thing holding steady, and-”

Electronic noise spat out of the radio. Fulton held up his hand to stop Travers, depressed the speak button and shouted, “Come in! Come in!”

Not a single word broke through the angry static.

“Come in. Come in. Are you there?”

The only response was more crackling electricity.

Fulton stared down at the radio, wanting to fling it against the highly polished surface. “Travers, do you have anything new on the MRSS?”

Early on they’d been able to track the first burst of activity when the team entered the building. They’d seen two of the five men already inside show up in the same vicinity as the FBI agents and remain there even after the agents moved in deeper, eventually reaching the area where the three other occupants were. Then all hell broke loose. Now the scanner was having trouble reading inside the high-tech fortress. Travers reported that as far as he could tell it looked as if all but two men inside the building had moved to an area below the first floor.

“Drasner?” Fulton called out to another member of his team. “Any news on the chopper?”

“On the way. ETA less than seven minutes.”

There were two ways around the fence. Equipment to rip through the aluminum was on its way by truck but could take as long as forty minutes to reach them. Too much could happen inside the compound in that much time, so Fulton had also requested a helicopter, which could airlift him and his team up and over the wall. They had all the weaponry they needed to storm the building and overwhelm everyone inside-they just couldn’t do it from where they were.

“What is taking so long?” Fulton shouted at Drasner, knowing as he did that raising his voice wasn’t going to help, but the pressure was getting to him. His job was to think and to act, and he hadn’t been able to act on anything for fifteen minutes. There were men in there depending on him, and he wasn’t coming through for them, either literally or figuratively.

“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” Drasner said.

Travers stood up. “Agent Fulton,” he shouted, “I’m picking up activity in the building.”