Sean Black - Lockdown

The Van Stratens took their seats. Stafford was yakking away like he was on speed. In the rear-view Ty could see his father doing his best to tune him out. Still neither man had looked at him. Staff were like so much background scenery to guys like them.

The guard closed the door and started round the vehicle to get into the front passenger seat. Ty clicked the button on the console to his left which locked all the doors and accelerated away, leaving the guard standing where the Hummer had been.

The gates were open, and he sped through. ‘Where to, gentlemen?’ he asked, swivelling round, and savouring their expression of shock. ‘Or I could stop somewhere quiet, pull the two of you out, make you kneel over a ditch and shoot you in the back of the head.’

Stafford spoke up. ‘Listen, Tyrone, if this is about my terminating your contract-’

‘Oh yeah, cos this is how I usually respond to being laid off.’

‘Turn this vehicle around immediately!’ said Stafford, his voice shrill and unconvincing.

One eye on the road, Ty took his right hand off the wheel and pointed the 226 at him. ‘Shut the hell up.’

‘Yes,’ said Nicholas Van Straten. ‘Shut the hell up, Stafford.’

Ty noticed Stafford’s hand sliding down to the door handle, about as casually as a fourteen-year-old trying to cop a handful in a darkened movie theatre. ‘It’s locked. But if you want to take your chances, at least wait until I hit the freeway.’

‘Where are you taking us?’ Nicholas asked.

‘Don’t worry, you’ll recognize it when we get there.’

Josh stirred in his father’s arms as Mareta made the guard kneel on the floor with his face to the wall. In her right hand she held a Glock; in her left, two pieces of metal linked to the detonator, contact guaranteeing everyone’s death. Lock wanted the kid out of there, and here was his chance.

‘Hasn’t he seen enough killing?’ Lock asked her.

‘Then take him outside.’

‘I’ll do it,’ said Richard.

‘Go on, then,’ Mareta said, as if the desire to spare a child from seeing cold-blooded murder was a clear sign of weakness.

Lock watched as Khalid escorted them both out. ‘Thank you.’

The guard facing the wall began to break down. ‘Please, don’t let her do this. I have a wife and kids.’

Mareta swiped at the back of his head with the Glock, leaving a gash across the top of his skull. ‘Then why do you take this job?’

‘Five minutes. Give him another five minutes, Mareta,’ said Lock.

‘Then at the end of those five minutes, you ask for another five. I know these games.’

That was something Lock hoped Frisk and the rest of the JTTF were also factoring in. Most terrorists didn’t survive their first siege; Mareta attended them with about the same frequency that newly married women out on Long Island attended baby showers. By now she must know the hostage negotiator’s playbook better than they did.

‘How’s your leg?’ Lock asked, hoping to distract her.

‘Wonderful.’

She checked the screens. More vehicles massing outside the perimeter. Most of them clustered either side of the gate.

‘No sign of your friend,’ she said.

‘He’ll be here.’

Mareta lowered the gun. ‘OK, have your five minutes. But after that, it’s half an hour until I kill the next one.’

‘You said every hour.’

Mareta sighed. ‘We negotiate. I give you something, you give me something back in return. That’s how it works, no?’

Twenty miles short of the naval yard, the empty tank light on the Hummer’s console pinged on. Ty groaned. The fuel consumption on a Hummer wasn’t great at the best of times, but throw on close to a ton of B-7 armour and it practically required its own oil field.

‘Problem?’ asked Stafford from the back seat.

‘Nothing I can’t handle,’ Ty responded with a grimace.

Three miles down the road, he found a gas station. His plan was simple. Threaten the living shit out of his cargo. Get fifty bucks of gas. Throw a Lincoln through the slot and get back on the road.

Ty pulled in and swivelled round. ‘I’ll be gone less than two minutes. You’ll be in my sight the whole time. If I see you move in any way, shape or form that makes me uncomfortable, I’ll kill you faster than David Duke at a Nation of Islam cookout.’

He turned off the ignition, took the keys with him, got out and locked up. He then grabbed the nozzle and jammed it into the gas tank. His eyes flitted between the dollars and cents ticking over on the display and the doors of the Hummer. He stared at the point where Stafford and Van Straten would be. He couldn’t see a damn through the tint, but he didn’t want them to think that.

These days when he bought gas, the numbers flicked past like a slot machine, but this pump seemed near glacial. Fifty dollars up, he placed the nozzle back in the pump, closed the flap and went to pay, looking back at the Hummer every few yards.

He pushed the money through the tray in the bandit screen and jogged back.

As he went to open the driver’s door, he remembered. Damn. The Glock. He’d left it in the front compartment.

He glanced back. The gas attendant, a young Hispanic kid in his early twenties, was perched on a stool watching whatever crap they threw on TV at this hour.

Ty drew his own weapon, yanked open the door and stepped back behind it, bracing himself for the first flash of movement.

Nothing.

From the angle he was at he could see only Nicholas Van Straten’s shoulder. But Pops wasn’t the one he was worried about.

‘Step out of the car. One at a time. You first, Stafford.’

‘Stay in the car. Get out of the car. Which one is it?’

‘Be quiet, Stafford,’ Ty heard Van Straten mumble.

‘Could you at least open the door, then?’ Stafford asked, tetchily.

Ty slammed shut the driver’s door, moved up the side of the vehicle, reached over and opened the passenger door, making sure to keep the armoured plate between him and Stafford. Stafford stepped out, hands held high in the air.

Ty glanced over his shoulder to see the gas attendant staring at them, no doubt trying to work out what kind of special-needs criminal brings his victims to a gas station to rob them.

Nothing else for Ty to do now but get on with it. He patted Stafford down. Clean.

‘OK, now you.’

Nicholas Van Straten stepped out and Ty repeated the procedure. Nothing on him either.

‘Stay there,’ he told them.

Clambering into the front seat, he opened the compartment. The gun was gone. He stepped back to see Stafford waving frantically to the attendant, miming someone making a phone call.

‘OK, where is it?’ he asked Stafford.

‘Don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Stafford was doing exactly what Ty would have done in this situation. Stall. The gas attendant was already on the phone, one eye on what was unfolding outside, spitting his words out as fast as he could into the handset.

Stafford must have known that Ty had some purpose for them. Otherwise he would have killed them both at the house. Or pulled off the road back in Shinnecock Bay and done it.

‘I don’t need both of you,’ Ty said. ‘So who’s it to be?’

‘I think if you took a vote, it would end in stalemate,’ Nicholas Van Straten said drily.

‘Hmm,’ Ty said, mulling it over. ‘Guess that leaves me the casting vote then.’

He levelled the gun at Nicholas Van Straten’s head.

‘Go ahead,’ said Stafford.

‘It’s tucked into the back seat,’ Nicholas said.

‘So much for family unity,’ Ty said, reaching back into the vehicle and securing the weapon.