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  Suddenly there was a spontaneous whoop from a group of reporters, and at that moment, several broke and rushed to the young corporal, pushing the Girardis aside.

  “WUFF is on air saying there’s an agreement, why the hell don’t we have that?”

  “Where’s Obobo? We need a confirmation!”

  “Okay, okay,” said Corporal Jasper, “let me check.” He turned from the Girardis to grab his own cell phone, and the two watched as the circus moved elsewhere.

  The phone rang in Nikki’s hand three thousand feet above the mall in the WUSScopter, and she saw that it was Mrs. Birkowsky, the hiding clerk’s mother.

  She punched answer immediately.

  “Mrs. Birkowsky?”

  “Ms. Swagger, I just got what I think is good news from my daughter.”

  Nikki did a little jump in her copilot’s seat, and the sparkly horizon on the plains above Indian Falls seemed to leap with her. Was this thing going to end happily? Could it?

  “Please, share with me,” she asked.

  “Amanda says the gunmen are all jumping happily and some have shot their guns off in jubilation, she thinks.”

  “What could that mean?” asked Nikki.

  “Whatever their demands are, I’d guess, the government has just agreed to them. It means that the hostages will be released soon.”

  “Yes ma’am,” Nikki said. “Is that all Amanda said?”

  “Well, she said there was also a kind of roar from the crowd, she called it a happy roar, a roar of excitement. I’m going to see my little girl again soon. I just had to share it.”

  “Mrs. Birkowsky, I’m very happy for you. But please tell Amanda not to come out of hiding until after the police authorities have taken over. With people like this, you never know.”

  “Yes, yes, of course, but isn’t it wonderful?”

  “It’s fabulous,” said Nikki.

  She switched to Marty at the station.

  “Okay, is anything going on?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “I mean from our ground people. Has there been a newsbreak? Is there a new presser scheduled? Are there any signs, say, of buses moving up or ambulances getting into position or even the armed men drawing back?”

  “Not a thing. It’s still a holding situation.”

  “What about gunfire from within the mall?”

  “No reports. Nothing, all quiet on the western front. What is this all about?”

  “I have a report from inside the mall that the gunmen are celebrating, shooting off their guns in jubilation, and that the hostages are suddenly, I don’t know, happy, or relieved.”

  “Is it enough to go live?”

  “It sure sounds like the state has met their demands.”

  “I don’t know, Nik.”

  “Well-wait, wait, I’m seeing buses beginning to feed in.”

  “Okay, that’s it, let’s go with it now, on air.”

  “You got it.”

  Jim the cameraman leaned in, supporting himself in the bulwark, turning his camera light on. She heard her vocal wired into the main feed, heard the ridiculous dit-dot-dash bullshit intro music, and heard Phil Reston’s syrupy, staff-announcer voice say, “Breaking news from WUFFnews, the WUFFcopter, over America, the Mall, where terrorists are holding a thousand hostages as the Crisis at America, the Mall, goes into its fourth terrifying hour. Here is Nikki Swagger, WUFFnews.”

  “WUFFnews has just learned that inside the mall, gunmen have fired weapons skyward in jubilation and that hostages themselves are relieved and excited. Some believe these factors indicate that the state government has agreed to terrorist demands, as yet unspecified, and that the terrible crisis might reach a peaceful conclusion, and that freedom for the hostages might be imminent.”

  Though she couldn’t see him, she knew that the shot had cut to the anchorman, who now said in his best Ted Baxter profundo, “Nikki, can you confirm a timetable for this terrific news?”

  “Reports here are still preliminary,” she said, “and we will be following developments as they occur and-”

  “Nikki, Nikki, I’m getting word that the state police superintendent and incident commander Colonel Douglas Obobo is about to make a statement, we’re going live to Incident Command headquarters.”

  She stared off into space, and, no monitor being available on board the WUSScopter, simply listened to the audio feed.

  The colonel’s voice was calm and reassuring. “Less than an hour ago a man calling himself the commanding general of Brigade Mumbai communicated with us from within the mall where he and his colleagues hold approximately a thousand hostages at gunpoint, many of them hurt and in need of medical attention. He demanded immediate transfer of three brothers, Yusuf, Jaheel, and Khalid Kaafi from the state penitentiary, where they are imprisoned for bank robbery, to the airport, where they are to be put aboard an Air Saudi airliner bound for Yemen. He gave us an hour to begin compliance or he would begin to execute hostages. I have just received word that his demands will be implemented, that indeed the prisoners are en route to the airport.”

  One of the cameramen poked Nikki, then held up one finger, signifying that she had it first, that she was number one, goddammit, and this was the scoop of all scoops. Didn’t matter that she was only ninety-odd seconds ahead of the announcement: she broke a worldwide story!

  “When they have cleared American airspace, the hostage taker says, all hostages will be released unharmed. That is all I have for you at this time.”

  Nikki heard a thousand questions launched and not a one of them answered, and imagined the pompous goat turning and exiting smartly stage left.

  “Great work, Nikki. Baby, you own this story. You will be in New York before the week is over, I swear.”

  “I just got lucky,” she said, “and in the long run it doesn’t mean-whoa!”

  The chopper suddenly dipped sideways, falling about ten weightless feet, until Cap’n Tom got his two rotor blades back in synchronicity. At that same second, a black shape slid by, uncomfortably close, before it too leveled off.

  “Bastard,” said Cap’n Tom. “Man, learn to fly before you come up here into crowded airspace.”

  “WUSScopter almost got clipped!” said one of the cameramen, unsettled.

  “You ought to report him, Tom,” said the other cameraman.

  “Ah,” said Tom, “he’s just a traffic amateur, he’s not used to being in formation or a jammed area. Still, what a jerk.”

  But Nikki had watched the craft slide by, so close, and her insides were still roiling. It occurred to her, Yes, you could die up here.

  “Tom, really, someone’s going to get hurt. Call it in.”

  “I’ll make a formal complaint tomorrow,” said Tom, meaning, of course, he wouldn’t.

  But something else nipped at Nikki.

  “I saw his emblem. He was from that all-traffic crowd, POP.”

  “Like I said, an amateur. His idea of flying is holding stable over a highway.”

  “But I thought they had run into hard times. I don’t know who told me, can’t remember, but I heard they were grounding their chopper and buying their traffic from a big outside vendor.”

  “I heard that too,” said one of the cameramen.

  “Maybe so,” said Tom. “Whatever, he’s gone now.”

  And he was. Whoever POP was, he’d shot up high and she couldn’t pick him out in the dimly lit skies above.

  The message came to Major Mike Jefferson, huddled with his surreptitiously collected shooters, in a parking lot near the entrance to the system of heating ducts that would eventually lead to the chamber beneath the amusement area concession stand. He had put this little operation together on the QT. Hanging around Command was only going to get him demoted. So he thought, I’ll just get some people and move into the area.

  “Mike,” another major told him on the secure tactical radio channel, “the colonel wants you back here. He’s also pulling all the SWAT guys back and bringing in a fleet of buses.�
��

  “What?” said Jefferson. “Are you nuts? What the fuck?”

  “Hey, Mike,” said his colleague, “don’t blow at me. It’s the colonel’s decision. We’re going to let this thing play out. You heard, they’ve made demands, we’re acceding to those demands, and they’re going to let the hostages go, maybe within the hour. Any sign of offensive action against them and they could open up and take out dozens, maybe hundreds, of hostages. You’re to stand down, return to Incident Command, and return your shooters to their original units.”

  “And what happens if after it’s all done, and the Kaafi assholes are on their way to freedom and glory, this motherfucker still opens up on the hostages? Only this time, we have no way to get to them in minutes and they just kill and kill and kill while we’re blowing doors?”

  “It’s not our decision, Mike. It’s the colonel’s call and the consensus up and down the line is that it’s a good one. Media’s gone nuts about him. He’s their guy, he’s the hero, he’s the winner. That’s the narrative. Suppose you go in, set up underneath just in case, and one of your people drops a forty-five and it goes off, and the bad guys panic and start blasting.”

  “These are trained men. Nobody is going to drop a forty-five. Plus, forty-fives don’t work like that. Plus, we all carry Glocks or Sigs.”

  “Mike, just bring it back, okay? We’ll make a note of your objections, that’s the best I can do.”

  Jefferson announced the decision to his all-star SWAT group and got from them what he had given to the other major: disbelief, anger, a sense of something important slipping away.

  “If you let these guys get away with this,” somebody said, “it’s open season on America all over the world. We have to fight them now and kill them now. That’s our responsibility.”

  “Are you suggesting a revolution?” said Mike. “You want us to go rogue? You realize what that means? End of all careers, for a start. Possible legal action because without formal authorization, we’re just vigilantes. I’m talking prosecution, fines, maybe prison time. You want to do hard time after all the skells you’ve busted? You wouldn’t last three nights in the showers and your ass would get royally fucked before your throat was cut.”

  So that was it.

  Walk back to their units, join the pullback, make way for the buses, hope that the colonel and all the heads on suits had made the right call, and if they hadn’t, go in afterward and supervise the forensics and the janitorial.

  “Tell you what,” said Jefferson. “Let’s go real slow. Now obviously we’re not going in underground, but some of you guys have door-breaching rounds for your shotguns, right?”

  There were a few yeses from the assembled crew of helmeted guys with MP5s, ARs, and Rem 870s.

  “Okay, I’ll play for time. Meanwhile, I want you guys to chamber your breaching rounds. If it goes down, we’re only fifty yards from that set of doors”-he gestured to an entryway boasting the name NORTHEAST, where one township’s SWAT people were withdrawing-“and we can get to the doors, breach them fast, and get into the fight maybe not in five seconds but maybe in one minute.”

  “Mike, I have a better idea.”

  “Yeah?”

  The man explained. Then he said, “And it’s not quite a revolution. More of a coup d’etat.”

  “No,” said Mike, smiling, “it’s a coup de SWAT.”

  McElroy had found him another target. Still on the second floor, Ray was rotating another corridor to the left, moving down the outer ring toward Hudson, when he heard the sound of the shots.

  He recoiled, thought someone had seen him, was shooting at him, and rolled backward, slipping the rifle off his back, knowing he was behind the curve and would take one in the head soon. But the shots were ragged, not a volley, more spontaneous, and he realized that they were echoing down the hallways from the wide-open amusement park where the hostages were being held. Then he heard this other thing, this animal thing, he wasn’t sure what it was, some kind of crowd noise, a hubbub, a roar, a vibration. It communicated… joy. Well, excitement, maybe relief. It was, of course, the sound of a thousand people letting out their breaths involuntarily, as if they’d just gotten the good news. It was somehow the opposite of mass dread; it was mass undread.

  Ray waited for it to die down. He was puzzled but alert. He settled back into his scuttling position, ready to proceed, waiting for some kind of cue to suggest a path, a course, a possibility and, seeing none, decided to continue on plan.

  He moved ahead, slowly, his eyes scanning for motion. Nothing. It was quiet. Ray rounded the corner under the window into a bright, still-lit retail space called DSW Shoe Warehouse and peered down Hudson to the atrium space. This angle afforded him a close-up view of the log flume ride, and the smell of chlorine, from the heavily disinfected waterway, reached his nostrils, recalling the pool on the Subic Bay Naval Base of his childhood and the many summer days he’d spent there. He wondered absently what had happened to the installation since the Navy closed it down. Then he got his war brain back, excoriated himself for taking a little mental vacation in the middle of a combat zone, and started to scoot ahead, hoping he’d reach the railing before whatever gunman was lounging there had gotten bored with his cigarette break and taken off.

  But then-the vibration of his phone.

  Always at the wrong time! Jesus Christ, don’t call me, goddammit, Molly.

  But it wasn’t Molly.

  “Sergeant, this is McElroy. We just got the news. We’re to stand down. They reached some kind of agreement, we’re going to pull back, the hostages will be released as soon as the plane takes off-”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “A deal, a deal. We’re sending some supposedly ‘political’ Somali prisoners back, they’ll let the hostages go.”

  Fuck, Ray thought. It went against everything he believed in. If you don’t stand up to them, you embolden them. You teach them that we’ll quit and it only makes them hungrier and crazier and the killing goes on and on. You fought wars to win or you didn’t fight them at all.

  “Do you hear me, Sergeant? Please acknowledge.”

  “Fuck,” said Ray.

  “It means you too. They’re very worried at Incident Command that some kind of accident or some guy not getting the word could queer the whole deal. So you have to cease operating. You’d best pull into a store, take the rest of the day off, and we’ll let this play out. Then we’ll come and get you.”

  “Ray,” came a new voice, “Memphis here, listening in. Obobo thinks he’s got it done, you have to do what Five is telling you. Let it cool.”

  “Suppose these guys don’t play fair,” said Ray. “I’ve had five tours fighting these guys and I know they can look you in the eye and give you total sincerity from the bottom of their hearts and be lying like a son of a bitch, and to them, lying to an infidel isn’t a lie, it’s a gesture of love for Allah.”

  “We have our order,” said McElroy.

  “Ray, yours not to reason why, et cetera, et cetera. It doesn’t sit right with me either, but-”

  “Are they choppering you guys out?” Ray asked McElroy.

  “Nobody’s said anything yet.”

  “You have any demolition there?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Okay, listen to me. You have to have a contingency. That’s all I’m saying.”

  “Listen to him, Five,” said Nick.

  “You have to be able to blow a hole in that window.”

  “That’s fine to say but-”

  “You have to be able to blow a hole in that window. You squad with the other snipers, you figure out something, just in case, to get through that fucking window fast and start taking people down. You may have just seconds to engage. Solve it yourself, solve it now.”

  “You’re basically asking me to disobey orders.”

  “Sniper Five,” said Memphis, in Washington Crisis, “you do what Cruz tells you, and if it comes to flak, you give them my name and I wi
ll swing for it, got that?”

  “Got it, yes sir,” said McElroy.

  “And you don’t know anything about this, Webley, if you’re listening.”

  “I never heard a thing, sir,” said Webley, who had been listening. “Now McElroy, get busy, you have work to do.”

  Ray put the phone away and tried to search out a retail outlet near the balcony where he could get into action if something happened, but he sensed a presence. Turning, his eyes met those of a jihadi gunman not three feet away. The man stared at him quizzically, and in the split second of stillness, Ray saw him trying to solve certain problems. Why, he had to be wondering, is this fellow here, in our uniform? Why is he not Somali? Who was he talking to?

  And then he and Ray leaped at each other.

  Dead Santa, atop his throne, gazed with sightless eyes upon the mortal anguish his passing signified. A woman on the other side of the crowd had also died, of a heart attack. There was a man near the Tilt-a-Whirl who was very, very close to death; he needed blood badly. One of the babies had started to cry and would not shut up. Everywhere, people were giving up or surrendering to bitterness and despair, trying to sneak last phone calls to tell relatives how much they loved them. Worst of all, the odors of colonic release filled the air. Generally it felt like the end of the world in the mass of hostages packed on the byways of the amusement park, dwarfed by the skeletal struts of various thrill rides, mocked by flappity-flapping banners and signs for refreshments and insane Christmas muzak from unstoppable speakers. “Silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright,” yadda yadda.

  But Mom had seen worlds end before and gotten through, so she was not upset. She held Sally close to her. She did not want Sally looking around, with her bright face and bright eyes. She knew the child’s charisma was like a beacon and that it attracted attention, the wrong kind.

  In her native language she prayed to Buddha for deliverance, but she also prayed for death to come to the filth that had engineered this thing. Everywhere she looked, she saw bleakness and turmoil. She continued to steal a handful of dirt into her bag every few minutes or so, as yet unnoticed, uncaught. It was just about time for another load.