hostages
Chapter Thirteen
Mon/June/2008 07:00 AM Chapter 1/2Chapter 13
Chapter 13 -
Captives
Renoir didn’t feel the bullet. It must have gone in and out in one clean motion, clipping him in the knee and causing one hell of a flesh wound. Hell, who was he kidding? It must have torn into something pretty vital, ‘cause his leg was killing him. The bleeding was profuse. It didn’t help that his assailant had forced him to walk on the injured leg and lead him to Raj’s lab downstairs.
Raj, of course that fucker was the cause of this. Michel often joked that Gupta would be the death of him. Looks like he’d been morbidly correct. Now here he was, stumbling through his own department, leaning against the wall, the water cooler, anything along the way that could support his weight, as this man with an assault weapon followed behind him, shouting orders to a dozen similarly armed men in fire fighter’s uniforms. The men ran past the two of them and headed down a side hallway, where they split off, guns held at the ready.
“If this is a bank heist, you have your buildings mixed up.” Renoir mumbled.
“Just get me to the labs, sir!” Tim shouted.
“I’m doing my best. I could move a bit faster if you’d chosen a different persuasion method.”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short at the sound of twisting metal. The noise rumbled through the building.
Tim ran to the windows as Renoir staggered behind. A wall of thick black smoke filled the air beyond the glass. It was the kind of smoke Renoir had seen in news footage during the first Gulf War, when fleeing troops had set fire to their own oil wells. It had been all the flames could do to keep up with the geysers of thick, choking oil as its spewed up from the ground and ignited. This was some sort of oil and gas fire. Flames roared up through the smoke. Renoir held his hand above his brow, trying to block the sunlight from his eyes as he looked down at the area below. He could see a fire truck to the north, circling around the main road in front of the hospital, coming down the back driveway that led to the main parking garage. A crowd to the south, in the courtyard behind the hospital, was starting to move down to the lake behind the building. Most of them were running, some looked up in the air, an expression of terror passing over their faces, like the shadow of a cloud racing over the earth.
What were they looking at?
Renoir looked up, as did his attacker, this man Tim.
“Oh shit,” Renoir muttered, at the same time his attacker sucked in a quick gasp of air.
The new wing of the hospital had been dwarfed by a construction crane for the last ten months. A massive construction crane. As he drove into the building each morning, under the shadows of overhead beams being hoisting above, and as he left at night, again under the shadow of the hulking, silent beast, he’d often wondered what would happen if that piece of machinery should come down. Looked like he was gonna find out.
His captor watched the far end of the crane’s arm, then his eyes shot down to the base, where a wall of flames danced around in a fiery ring. Flames crawled up the metal latticework, where strips of metal were curling and pulling away like footage from a time lapsed camera. The cries of tearing metal screeched through the windows.
That crane was definitely going to come down.
Renoir watched Tim’s eyes as they moved from the base of the crane, back to the top, then swept downward. He, like Renoir, was calculating the arc its massive arm would follow should its base give way. They both came to the same conclusion.
“Is there a problem?” Renoir asked through tightened lips.
Tim turned to him, his eyes set, angry.
“You’re parked in the garage, aren’t you?” Renoir’s almost laughed.
Tim’s hands tensed around the weapon in his hands.
The sounds of screaming metal rang out again as the two men turned back to the window, just as the crane gave way. It always surprised Renoir how much life could be like the movies. Big movies. This crane, this crane was big. And now here it was, collapsing under its own weight. The noise was cacophonous, a series of shrieks and moans that was only growing in intensity. Renoir’s eyes pulled back in awe as the massive structure corkscrewed ever so slightly in place, then slowly began its fall sideways, towards the lake, towards the building’s entrance and the main roadway. The people below ran for cover, while those on the north side watched helplessly as the crane pulled loose from its molten base and tore downward, through the air, through the surface of the roadway, and into the earth below, where it must have hit a series of gas and sewer lines, which themselves went up in flames, the explosions ripping up through the road even thirty yards, manhole covers and sections of roadway peeling off like blistered asphalt skin.
As quickly as it had happened, it was over.
The roadway was now completely obscured. What wasn’t blocked in by the metal grillwork of the destroyed crane had been torn apart by the ensuing utility explosion. There was virtual silence, save for the sounds of dozens of car alarms going off inside the main garage. At his age, Renoir had seen a lot, but even this took the breath from. He looked at his captor.
Renoir felt a tickle in his stomach.
Now they were both trapped.
Tim stared at the ground below, then clenched his jaw, turned to Renoir and motioned towards the door.
“Keep moving.”
* * *
Jeff was trying to figure these guys out. They didn’t look the way he might have pictured such men, but in his mind, they were undoubtedly terrorists. Was that a prejudice? Could you be prejudiced against terrorists? More often than not, wouldn’t that make you prejudiced towards prejudiced people? The point was, he couldn’t guess at the cause these men were fighting for. Maybe they were just after money. After all, except for the uniforms, which many of them had already removed, these guys looked like they could have been American businessmen. That’s probably how the fuckers had gotten as far as they had.
He’d been watching them closely since the moment they’d taken control of the room, and he prided himself on the fact that their intrusion hadn’t taken him by surprise, not in the least. The explosions outside raised eyebrows and Raj had sent one of his lab workers out to investigate, but the young man didn’t come back alone. He’d returned moments later, shoved into the lab ahead of two men with guns. The momentum caused the young researcher to lose his footing and tumble to the floor in the middle of the lab. Jeff and David immediately stepped forward to help him to his feet, as roughly ten other men, the ones in the uniforms, followed close behind. The last to enter the room was leading an older gentleman ahead of him. Jeff heard Raj mutter “Michel” under his breath as the older man staggered inside. So that was Michel Renoir, the chair of the department. Jeff had read many of the man’s papers over the years. They’d never met, but in all his publications, and in all Jeff had heard of his career, the overwhelming impression he’d gotten was of professionalism and character. Now here he was - Renoir - hobbling into the room, his pant leg stained with blood, a stain that was spreading rapidly.
Later, through whispered conversations in the corner, the group learned that a crane had come down - fallen across the road to the hospital’s parking garage. That was the sound they’d heard. The real fire department was busy outside, trying to get control of the fire that had weakened the crane’s base.
Tim and Simon were standing off to the side now, discussing something in muffled, staccato bursts. They weren’t speaking any language Jeff could understand. He glanced at David and Nina, arching his eyebrows to ask, “Are you catching this?”
David shook his head.
Nina was straining to hear.
Jeff kept watching the men in the corner, then he scanned the armed men around them. He was used to entering boardrooms and immediately sizing up the crowd, determining who was in charge, who wanted to be, and who would do anything for leadership. Being in Jeff’s position, most people demurred to him automatically, which he found amusing, as his only qualification for such preordained hierarchy was his money. He’d been incredibly rich for the better part of his life, but it was only in the last decade that his business acumen and agility had caught up with the level of control his bank statements allowed him to flex in each of his financial associations. His assistants would scoff at what he truly felt had improved his powers of deduction, but he didn’t care, that was the reason he had David and Nina on his staff, they employed the Harvard/Wharton business school principles on behalf of the Foundation, while Jeff got to play the part of the impulsive billionaire, who acted on whims, and ran his business dealings according to the principles of his sensei, Mr. Morita. He tried to imagine how sensei would size up the situation now. Jeff’s eyes scanned the faces of the men around the room. The taller guy, with dark hair and the Jack Armstrong, all American Boy look, that was clearly the leader, Tim was the name Jeff heard exchanged in the short mumblings among the group. What brief snippets of conversation Jeff picked up revealed a slight foreign accent, one he was still struggling to place.
The other man was Simon. He was blond, and about a foot shorter than his counterpart, but he looked as though he had more muscle to back up his actions. He seemed to be losing his cool a bit now. He was worried, while Tim seemed unflappable. Jeff studied Simon’s eyes closely. The eyes were always the give away. Jeff knew where Simon’s weakness lay and he knew how he could use it later. He tucked the knowledge away and moved on.
The rest of the room was another puzzle. Researchers, about a dozen of them, stood around the edges of the lab. None of them looked worried, they just looked irritated that their work had been interrupted. Their eyes gave up nothing.
The same was true of Renoir, who was leaning in the corner, holding one hand on his bleeding leg. Beads of sweat had sprung to the man’s brow, but his expression showed no strain. His mouth was a relaxed, thin line. His eyes were clear. This was a man Jeff felt he could respect.
He looked at his associates. Nina and David. Jeff had once heard the three of them referred to as “The Brain” of the Foundation. He supposed his associates were considered the left and right lobes, while he was, what? The primitive brain? The Id-controlling idea portion of the operation. That was fine by him. That was probably fine by everyone else as well, just so long as he kept signing the checks.
The description was dead on, however. Nina and David were the left and right regions of the organization’s central core. Just watching them now, Jeff could tell what each was thinking. Nina stood in her business suit, hair just so, clothes just so, legs just so… Never mind. He wouldn’t go there, not again. Maybe some day. She looked great, and the way her dark brown eyes were taking everything in, planning, strategizing, and extrapolating, well, it was quite appealing.
David seemed itchy to move. Jeff could see his fingers twitching and flexing behind his lightly clenched fists. The grip was loose, there was no white on the knuckles, but David was clearly ready for action. Jeff knew nothing stupid would take place, but it gave him comfort to see that one of them was thinking of revenge, especially when so many in the room seemed completely and hopelessly resolved to their fates.
Which brought him to Raj. Jeff had never liked the sound of the man. His personality had come through, even in his most technical project proposals, like the guy dotted every “I” and crossed every “T,” but he never found any heart or passion to put into the words on the page, and so, they simply read like cold, calculating requests for more money. Raj’s cold fish handshake was icing on a tasteless cake. Now he was just standing there, head cocked forward like a mindless coat hook. His face looked peeved, like someone had stuck a cold olive down the back of his shorts. The handshake was the clincher though. That was the deciding factor. Once they got out of this, Jeff was cutting the funding. He knew it immediately. The way the guy was standing, the angle of the melon on his pencil neck, the vacant irritation in his eyes, and the way one hand was clasping the wrist above the other, line a ten year old cowering in the corner during gym class, that was it. Jeff knew that look. Raj was someone who only looked out for himself. He was the kind of guy who never helped his buddies out in grade school. They might get tagged in the middle of a dodge ball match, and Raj might somehow survive, but he’d make no effort to help his friends out. He could be the only survivor, and he’d just stand there, all but closing his eyes, wishing the game was over, or daydreaming about his chemistry set back home. Well, now Jeff owned the man’s chemistry set, and he was ready to smash it, or barring that, take it and give it to the fat kid, Milton, the one who knew nothing, but would mix everything together and make it explode. Ah Milton, you old goof.
Jeff’s mind was wandering.
He looked back to Nina and David, who turned to him in unison, their eyes calm and engaged. They were working on a solution.
Jeff walked over to them and leaned in an ear. Tim and Simon glanced over their shoulders at the three of them, then turned away. It was like the negotiating parties at a corporate merger. This would be interesting.
Jeff looked at Renoir. This man could fill them in on their predicament. When they got a chance, Jeff was ready to pick his brain.
Renoir didn’t feel the bullet. It must have gone in and out in one clean motion, clipping him in the knee and causing one hell of a flesh wound. Hell, who was he kidding? It must have torn into something pretty vital, ‘cause his leg was killing him. The bleeding was profuse. It didn’t help that his assailant had forced him to walk on the injured leg and lead him to Raj’s lab downstairs.
Raj, of course that fucker was the cause of this. Michel often joked that Gupta would be the death of him. Looks like he’d been morbidly correct. Now here he was, stumbling through his own department, leaning against the wall, the water cooler, anything along the way that could support his weight, as this man with an assault weapon followed behind him, shouting orders to a dozen similarly armed men in fire fighter’s uniforms. The men ran past the two of them and headed down a side hallway, where they split off, guns held at the ready.
“If this is a bank heist, you have your buildings mixed up.” Renoir mumbled.
“Just get me to the labs, sir!” Tim shouted.
“I’m doing my best. I could move a bit faster if you’d chosen a different persuasion method.”
The man opened his mouth to speak, but stopped short at the sound of twisting metal. The noise rumbled through the building.
Tim ran to the windows as Renoir staggered behind. A wall of thick black smoke filled the air beyond the glass. It was the kind of smoke Renoir had seen in news footage during the first Gulf War, when fleeing troops had set fire to their own oil wells. It had been all the flames could do to keep up with the geysers of thick, choking oil as its spewed up from the ground and ignited. This was some sort of oil and gas fire. Flames roared up through the smoke. Renoir held his hand above his brow, trying to block the sunlight from his eyes as he looked down at the area below. He could see a fire truck to the north, circling around the main road in front of the hospital, coming down the back driveway that led to the main parking garage. A crowd to the south, in the courtyard behind the hospital, was starting to move down to the lake behind the building. Most of them were running, some looked up in the air, an expression of terror passing over their faces, like the shadow of a cloud racing over the earth.
What were they looking at?
Renoir looked up, as did his attacker, this man Tim.
“Oh shit,” Renoir muttered, at the same time his attacker sucked in a quick gasp of air.
The new wing of the hospital had been dwarfed by a construction crane for the last ten months. A massive construction crane. As he drove into the building each morning, under the shadows of overhead beams being hoisting above, and as he left at night, again under the shadow of the hulking, silent beast, he’d often wondered what would happen if that piece of machinery should come down. Looked like he was gonna find out.
His captor watched the far end of the crane’s arm, then his eyes shot down to the base, where a wall of flames danced around in a fiery ring. Flames crawled up the metal latticework, where strips of metal were curling and pulling away like footage from a time lapsed camera. The cries of tearing metal screeched through the windows.
That crane was definitely going to come down.
Renoir watched Tim’s eyes as they moved from the base of the crane, back to the top, then swept downward. He, like Renoir, was calculating the arc its massive arm would follow should its base give way. They both came to the same conclusion.
“Is there a problem?” Renoir asked through tightened lips.
Tim turned to him, his eyes set, angry.
“You’re parked in the garage, aren’t you?” Renoir’s almost laughed.
Tim’s hands tensed around the weapon in his hands.
The sounds of screaming metal rang out again as the two men turned back to the window, just as the crane gave way. It always surprised Renoir how much life could be like the movies. Big movies. This crane, this crane was big. And now here it was, collapsing under its own weight. The noise was cacophonous, a series of shrieks and moans that was only growing in intensity. Renoir’s eyes pulled back in awe as the massive structure corkscrewed ever so slightly in place, then slowly began its fall sideways, towards the lake, towards the building’s entrance and the main roadway. The people below ran for cover, while those on the north side watched helplessly as the crane pulled loose from its molten base and tore downward, through the air, through the surface of the roadway, and into the earth below, where it must have hit a series of gas and sewer lines, which themselves went up in flames, the explosions ripping up through the road even thirty yards, manhole covers and sections of roadway peeling off like blistered asphalt skin.
As quickly as it had happened, it was over.
The roadway was now completely obscured. What wasn’t blocked in by the metal grillwork of the destroyed crane had been torn apart by the ensuing utility explosion. There was virtual silence, save for the sounds of dozens of car alarms going off inside the main garage. At his age, Renoir had seen a lot, but even this took the breath from. He looked at his captor.
Renoir felt a tickle in his stomach.
Now they were both trapped.
Tim stared at the ground below, then clenched his jaw, turned to Renoir and motioned towards the door.
“Keep moving.”
* * *
Jeff was trying to figure these guys out. They didn’t look the way he might have pictured such men, but in his mind, they were undoubtedly terrorists. Was that a prejudice? Could you be prejudiced against terrorists? More often than not, wouldn’t that make you prejudiced towards prejudiced people? The point was, he couldn’t guess at the cause these men were fighting for. Maybe they were just after money. After all, except for the uniforms, which many of them had already removed, these guys looked like they could have been American businessmen. That’s probably how the fuckers had gotten as far as they had.
He’d been watching them closely since the moment they’d taken control of the room, and he prided himself on the fact that their intrusion hadn’t taken him by surprise, not in the least. The explosions outside raised eyebrows and Raj had sent one of his lab workers out to investigate, but the young man didn’t come back alone. He’d returned moments later, shoved into the lab ahead of two men with guns. The momentum caused the young researcher to lose his footing and tumble to the floor in the middle of the lab. Jeff and David immediately stepped forward to help him to his feet, as roughly ten other men, the ones in the uniforms, followed close behind. The last to enter the room was leading an older gentleman ahead of him. Jeff heard Raj mutter “Michel” under his breath as the older man staggered inside. So that was Michel Renoir, the chair of the department. Jeff had read many of the man’s papers over the years. They’d never met, but in all his publications, and in all Jeff had heard of his career, the overwhelming impression he’d gotten was of professionalism and character. Now here he was - Renoir - hobbling into the room, his pant leg stained with blood, a stain that was spreading rapidly.
Later, through whispered conversations in the corner, the group learned that a crane had come down - fallen across the road to the hospital’s parking garage. That was the sound they’d heard. The real fire department was busy outside, trying to get control of the fire that had weakened the crane’s base.
Tim and Simon were standing off to the side now, discussing something in muffled, staccato bursts. They weren’t speaking any language Jeff could understand. He glanced at David and Nina, arching his eyebrows to ask, “Are you catching this?”
David shook his head.
Nina was straining to hear.
Jeff kept watching the men in the corner, then he scanned the armed men around them. He was used to entering boardrooms and immediately sizing up the crowd, determining who was in charge, who wanted to be, and who would do anything for leadership. Being in Jeff’s position, most people demurred to him automatically, which he found amusing, as his only qualification for such preordained hierarchy was his money. He’d been incredibly rich for the better part of his life, but it was only in the last decade that his business acumen and agility had caught up with the level of control his bank statements allowed him to flex in each of his financial associations. His assistants would scoff at what he truly felt had improved his powers of deduction, but he didn’t care, that was the reason he had David and Nina on his staff, they employed the Harvard/Wharton business school principles on behalf of the Foundation, while Jeff got to play the part of the impulsive billionaire, who acted on whims, and ran his business dealings according to the principles of his sensei, Mr. Morita. He tried to imagine how sensei would size up the situation now. Jeff’s eyes scanned the faces of the men around the room. The taller guy, with dark hair and the Jack Armstrong, all American Boy look, that was clearly the leader, Tim was the name Jeff heard exchanged in the short mumblings among the group. What brief snippets of conversation Jeff picked up revealed a slight foreign accent, one he was still struggling to place.
The other man was Simon. He was blond, and about a foot shorter than his counterpart, but he looked as though he had more muscle to back up his actions. He seemed to be losing his cool a bit now. He was worried, while Tim seemed unflappable. Jeff studied Simon’s eyes closely. The eyes were always the give away. Jeff knew where Simon’s weakness lay and he knew how he could use it later. He tucked the knowledge away and moved on.
The rest of the room was another puzzle. Researchers, about a dozen of them, stood around the edges of the lab. None of them looked worried, they just looked irritated that their work had been interrupted. Their eyes gave up nothing.
The same was true of Renoir, who was leaning in the corner, holding one hand on his bleeding leg. Beads of sweat had sprung to the man’s brow, but his expression showed no strain. His mouth was a relaxed, thin line. His eyes were clear. This was a man Jeff felt he could respect.
He looked at his associates. Nina and David. Jeff had once heard the three of them referred to as “The Brain” of the Foundation. He supposed his associates were considered the left and right lobes, while he was, what? The primitive brain? The Id-controlling idea portion of the operation. That was fine by him. That was probably fine by everyone else as well, just so long as he kept signing the checks.
The description was dead on, however. Nina and David were the left and right regions of the organization’s central core. Just watching them now, Jeff could tell what each was thinking. Nina stood in her business suit, hair just so, clothes just so, legs just so… Never mind. He wouldn’t go there, not again. Maybe some day. She looked great, and the way her dark brown eyes were taking everything in, planning, strategizing, and extrapolating, well, it was quite appealing.
David seemed itchy to move. Jeff could see his fingers twitching and flexing behind his lightly clenched fists. The grip was loose, there was no white on the knuckles, but David was clearly ready for action. Jeff knew nothing stupid would take place, but it gave him comfort to see that one of them was thinking of revenge, especially when so many in the room seemed completely and hopelessly resolved to their fates.
Which brought him to Raj. Jeff had never liked the sound of the man. His personality had come through, even in his most technical project proposals, like the guy dotted every “I” and crossed every “T,” but he never found any heart or passion to put into the words on the page, and so, they simply read like cold, calculating requests for more money. Raj’s cold fish handshake was icing on a tasteless cake. Now he was just standing there, head cocked forward like a mindless coat hook. His face looked peeved, like someone had stuck a cold olive down the back of his shorts. The handshake was the clincher though. That was the deciding factor. Once they got out of this, Jeff was cutting the funding. He knew it immediately. The way the guy was standing, the angle of the melon on his pencil neck, the vacant irritation in his eyes, and the way one hand was clasping the wrist above the other, line a ten year old cowering in the corner during gym class, that was it. Jeff knew that look. Raj was someone who only looked out for himself. He was the kind of guy who never helped his buddies out in grade school. They might get tagged in the middle of a dodge ball match, and Raj might somehow survive, but he’d make no effort to help his friends out. He could be the only survivor, and he’d just stand there, all but closing his eyes, wishing the game was over, or daydreaming about his chemistry set back home. Well, now Jeff owned the man’s chemistry set, and he was ready to smash it, or barring that, take it and give it to the fat kid, Milton, the one who knew nothing, but would mix everything together and make it explode. Ah Milton, you old goof.
Jeff’s mind was wandering.
He looked back to Nina and David, who turned to him in unison, their eyes calm and engaged. They were working on a solution.
Jeff walked over to them and leaned in an ear. Tim and Simon glanced over their shoulders at the three of them, then turned away. It was like the negotiating parties at a corporate merger. This would be interesting.
Jeff looked at Renoir. This man could fill them in on their predicament. When they got a chance, Jeff was ready to pick his brain.