Andrew Grant - Even

“It’s the basement,” Weston said. “There’s not much light. The others’ll be better.”

One by one, brighter pictures filled the other screens until finally eight were in use. I held on, waiting for the ninth, but it remained stubbornly dark.

“OK,” Lavine said, after a moment. “This is what I see. Basement: storage. Access by stairs only. Ground floor: reception desk, waiting area, two offices.”

“No,” Weston said. “One office, one consulting room. Look at the walls. The diagrams and posters.”

“You’re right,” Lavine said. “One’s a consulting room. Also we have stairs and an elevator. A large one.”

“Big enough for a gurney,” Weston said.

“It would have to be, I guess,” Lavine said. “OK. First floor: I don’t know. It looks like a room within a room. I can’t see inside.”

“It’ll be their OR,” Weston said. “It’s an old building, drafty, they probably had to make it self-contained. Only way to guarantee it’s sterile.”

“Makes sense,” Lavine said. “And again, stairs and an elevator. Leading to the second floor: two beds, hospital style. Vases. Flowery decor. Must be their recovery ward.”

“Right,” Weston said. “Looks like a nurses’ station in the corner.”

“And finally the attic,” Lavine said. “Two small bedrooms. A bathroom. Functional, not fancy. Must be for the on-call staff.”

“Right,” Weston said. “But staff? Where are they?”

“Where’s Tanya?” I said. “I didn’t see anyone in the whole place.”

“Must be in that OR,” Varley said. “It’s the only room we can’t see into.”

“That’s where I’d go,” Lavine said. “It’s self-contained. No external walls or windows. It’ll even have its own oxygen supply.”

“How would you see out?” Weston said. “You wouldn’t know what was going on.”

“CCTV,” Lavine said. “See the cameras? Both sides of the front door. More at the back. They’d just need to reroute some cables and hook up some monitors.”

“How are we for sound?” I said. “Have we got any ears in there?”

Weston picked up a headset from his console, pressed a button, and repeated my question.

“Nine,” he said, after a moment. “Two parabolics and seven probe mikes. Not a whisper on any of them.”

“But they wouldn’t reach the OR anyway,” Varley said. “So we still have to assume that’s where everyone is. Agreed?”

No one replied.

“Good,” Varley said. “Now, time check?”

“Tanya told David one hour,” Lavine said. “That means we have twenty-four minutes remaining.”

“I don’t want to take this to the wire,” Varley said. “They may not be that precise. Or they could panic, we could hit a snag, anything. So, Kyle. The office buildings. What’s their status, please?”

Weston made another call on his headset.

“Red and blue teams are in position on the roofs,” he said. “They’re roped up and ready to go, in case you need both of them. All civilians are contained within the buildings. No one is being permitted to leave. All exit points are secured by our own people.”

“Good,” Varley said. “Now, the NYPD?”

Weston checked with someone else.

“They’re ready,” he said, covering his microphone with his hand. “Covert units are in place on Fifth and Madison, both sides of the junction. But they’re getting jumpy. Worried about the number of people. They want to start intercepting the pedestrians right away.”

“Tell them no,” Varley said. “It’s too risky. The clinic guys could have eyes on the street. They don’t deploy till I say so.”

Weston passed on Varley’s orders.

“Done,” he said, turning back to us. “They’re standing by. Waiting for your green light.”

“And the chopper?” Varley said.

“In place,” Weston said. “Two minutes and we’ll have their live pictures.”

“All right,” Varley said. “So. That just leaves you, David. Are you good to go?”

“Always,” I said.

Varley decided to go with both roof teams. Eight agents. That was a big number for such a small building, especially with the lack of confirmed targets showing up on the monitors. The whole setup was a nightmare. It screamed of a trap or an ambush. But we were concerned about time. We still couldn’t see into the OR. We couldn’t hear anything. There was no telling what the kidnappers would do if we were forced to go in.

And they had Tanya.

I walked across East Sixty-sixth Street, directly opposite the clinic, until I reached the edge of the sidewalk. I forced myself to move slowly and smoothly, but it was nearly impossible. With each step I took another tortured vision of Tanya squirmed its way into my head. I imagined her tied up. Hooded. Thrown on the ground. A gun pressed to her head. A finger on the trigger…

I pushed the thoughts away and opened my jacket. I held it wide, to show anyone watching that I wasn’t armed. I let ten seconds crawl by. I lifted up my shirt, to show that my waistband was clear. Five more seconds ticked away. I turned around to show I had nothing tucked in the back of my jeans. Another ten seconds. Then I stepped up to the door, paused, and knocked twice.

I was at the clinic, alone. Unarmed. It was less than an hour since Tanya’s call. If the kidnappers were true to their word, it was time to let her go.

Ten seconds passed. Fifteen. There was absolute silence from inside the building. No one moved. No one came to open the door.

I raised my arms, held them out by my sides for a moment, then slowly knocked two more times. As my knuckles rapped against the wood for the last time I heard something, high above me. A pair of muffled explosions, one right on top of the other. It was the agents blowing the two dormers out of the pretty copper roof. My diversion had been a success. The kidnappers hadn’t complied. Now they’d lost the chance to negotiate. I just hoped Tanya hadn’t lost an awful lot more.

Another four agents streamed out of the office building to my left. One handed me a Glock. The next fixed a shaped charge to the clinic door, checked everyone was clear, and hit the button on his detonator. The door dissolved into a cloud of sawdust and the first agent was through the gap before the final few splinters had landed on the sidewalk.

Two agents dived through the door to the basement. The others stormed through reception and crashed into the consulting room. I could hear a commotion above me, but no gunfire. It would be the two roof teams swarming through the upper floors, working their way down to join us. The plan was to coincide in the hallway, but I wasn’t concerned about that. Tanya had said she was on the first floor. That meant there was only one place I was interested in going. Up the stairs.

My way was blocked by an agent, on his way down. The moment I saw him I knew something was wrong. It was more than annoyance over me ignoring our instructions. I could tell by the tilt of his head. The stoop of his shoulders. The distance he kept away from me. The tired way he removed his goggles before speaking.

“Commander Trevellyan?” he said. “Sorry to tell you this, sir, but we’ve found your friend. At least, I think we have.”

Every couple of years the navy brings in a new initiative. The last one was a health screening program. A series of examinations was to be held at the same time as the regular psych evaluations, presumably to keep the costs down. It was billed as a benefit, but that didn’t fool anyone. Its real purpose was obvious. To minimize sick leave. It was as if we were the machines, and the bosses wanted as little downtime on the production line as possible.

The scheme was optional. I’d estimate about half a percent of people took up the offer. Even that figure might be too high. Worrying about whether you may or may not get sick at some point in the future is not a typical mind-set in my line of work.