Exit Strategy. Jen J. Danna

of sight on the building, and that positioning would change as they became surer of the hostage taker’s location. There were likely even a few of them up the trees close to City Hall if they could find a position with line of sight through summer’s dense leaf canopy.

      She pushed through the door of the old branch office to find the kind of organized chaos that always occurred at the beginning of a situation. A map of Lower Manhattan was tacked up on the wall at a slight angle, which spoke of a rushed effort. A white board with multicolored scribbles was propped on a chair. Tables were covered with aerial shots of the building and the surrounding park and Civic Center, City Hall blueprints, a list that was likely a roster of departments in the building, and the beginnings of the briefing book—the negotiator’s bible during any hostage situation. As the incident wore on, information about the hostage taker and his history, as well as details concerning the victims, would be added. She spotted Garcia’s bulky form and salt-and-pepper hair as he bent over the book, pointing something out to a tall man with a military bearing, a high-and-tight haircut, and who was dressed in tactical gear, with his helmet tucked under his arm.

      Gemma swallowed a groan. Great. Sanders.

      The A-Team was high-stakes and high-stress 100 percent of the time, but she always felt this commander pumped it up an extra 10 percent. Sanders was a firm believer that “might makes right,” and he was known to jump the gun when negotiations took longer than he’d like. While sometimes that was the right call, it didn’t always lead to a positive outcome.

      She understood the origin of some of Sanders’s logic, even if she didn’t always agree with it. Sanders wasn’t just a mustache-twirling complication sent in to make their lives even more difficult. She’d heard the story from her father—a hostage situation early on in Sanders’s career as a commander that had started as a domestic violence call between an estranged husband and wife, with their three young children caught in the middle. There’d been a handgun involved and the standoff had gone longer than Sanders wanted. He’d argued for going in to remove the children and had men ready to do so. But the primary hostage negotiator had convincingly argued for more time.

      By the time Sanders finally followed his gut, overruled the negotiator, and had sent in his teams, the hostage taker and a baby, toddler, and preschooler were all dead. The wife had been shot and ended up surviving her wounds, but only as a shell of the woman she’d been. Sanders had reportedly raked the negotiator over the coals for pushing so hard to keep him and his teams out. But in the end, Sanders recognized the final decision had been his to make. And it was one he clearly never intended to miss again.

      So now they’d not only be fighting the suspect and the clock, but possibly the man running the operation, if they couldn’t convince Sanders to give them the time they’d need to effectively negotiate. In some ways, it was too bad the serial approach to hostage situations—talk first, then show your tactical abilities when you hit a wall—wasn’t nearly as effective as the parallel approach—talk while making a visible tactical show—to get a hostage taker’s attention and cooperation. It was always a fine line to walk: a large show of force could make a suspect insecure and desperate, while a small show of force could leave the suspect overconfident and unwilling to work with the negotiators.

      Damned if you did, and damned if you didn’t.

      She spotted two more negotiators at the back of the large room and nodded in approval at Garcia’s handpicked choices. Granted, with a high-profile situation like this, he could have any of the over one hundred Hostage Negotiation Team members at his beck and call, even if they were in the middle of their own incidents, which some, no doubt, were. The HNT dealt with hundreds of cases annually, which boiled down to more cases in a month than most NYPD divisions had in a year. With each major incident needing rotating rounds of four negotiators at a time over extended periods, that was a lot of manpower.

      Gemma made a beeline toward the two men who stood in the doorway of what had once been the bank vault. The massive door was propped open against the back wall, and cords and cables ran from the main room into the vault. Inside the vault, Gemma caught a glimpse of a familiar setup of two back-to-back tables. One table was large enough for the primary negotiator and the team member acting as coach, someone who listened in and passed notes suggesting alternate courses of action. The second table provided space for all the recording equipment, another team member to act as scribe, noting every aspect of any communication for instant reference, and the last chair was for the coordinator. In this case, the coordinator was the senior negotiator, who not only functioned as the chief adviser with the most experience, but also as the officer who would run interference with any other departments, including the tactical team. And, most important, the coordinator would be the person standing between his negotiating team and the brass, allowing the team to stay focused on their situation, and not on the politics and pressure that might rise up around it.

      A clock displaying the time in large, glowing red numbers was set up at the end of the tables where everyone could see it. That clock would rule their lives during negotiations. The hostage taker would want action and to cut the time short. Their job was to stretch out the situation as long as possible, hoping calmness, sanity, and exhaustion would play to their advantage. Several laptops for research or notes completed the setup.

      “Hey,” Gemma greeted the detectives as she approached. “What do we know?”

      “Only minimal details so far.”

      Elijah Taylor towered above Gemma, as always, dressed to perfection in an impeccably tailored charcoal suit, with a snowy shirt and a burgundy tie that complemented his dark umber skin tone. Taylor was well known as a stickler for details, for his precise notes, and for his calm with a hostage taker when an incident was exploding around him. On the other hand, team members who weren’t pulling their weight up to his expectations were easy targets for any simmering frustration with the situation Taylor couldn’t show the suspect.

      “We’re gathering additional details. We need to establish a line of communication to the hostage taker. However, we don’t know where he is in the building. We only have scanty witness reports to go on. The fire alarm was activated, emptying the building, but witnesses report seeing a man armed with an assault weapon with an unknown number of people on the first floor.”

      “We’ve tapped into the building’s security feeds, but this guy is completely out of sight. The corridors are deserted.” Fair-haired, freckled, and only about two-thirds Taylor’s size in height and weight, Trevor McFarland wore an ill-fitting, smudge brown suit that hung on his bony frame. Gemma couldn’t care less that he wasn’t a fashion plate because McFarland was a whiz with technology. Communications would be smooth sailing with him on the team once they made contact with the suspect.

      Gemma glanced down at her picnic attire—a gauzy, V-necked peasant blouse, white denim capris, and matching mesh summer sneakers—and felt extremely underdressed. But with Garcia’s marching orders, there simply hadn’t been time to detour home to change into her usual no-nonsense dark suit. She pushed the thought away; they had a job to do, and, at most, the hostage taker would only hear her voice. At least she had both her shield and her Glock 19 in a molded, black clip-on holster on her right hip under her blouse—luckily, her service weapon had been in the lockbox in her car when she was called in, so at least she had some of her normal on-duty trappings.

      “It sounds like we’re running on very little. The mayor’s office is on the first floor. Do we think he has the mayor? And his staff? What about the first deputy mayor?” she asked.

      “That’s unclear.” Taylor cocked his head in the direction of a group of people standing by the front window. “One of the witnesses reported the mayor was inside his offices, but according to his calendar, he was supposed to be off-site at a meeting. The larger issue is that no one can get hold of him. Until we know otherwise, we have to assume the mayor is inside City Hall and does not have access to his phone.”

      “There’s been no communication? No request for money or resources?”

      “None.”

      “Is the A-Team deployed? Do we at least have eyes on the building?”

      “You