Jack whispered, “Okay, let’s assume we can get Pedro over here and that he can get it out of your hair without Demetri noticing. Do you have any idea how hard it is to overtake an armed man and slit his throat with a nail file?”

  “No, do you?”

  “It’s hard,” said Jack.

  “But not impossible?”

  Jack’s thoughts suddenly flashed back to Eddie Goss, a former client on death row who had decapitated one of his victims with nothing more than brute strength and a nylon stocking.

  “No,” said Jack. “Not impossible.”

  “Then we have a plan. You got a problem with that?”

  Jack glanced again at the Greek. He was down doing push-ups again, this time for the television audience.

  “Is Pedro a former navy SEAL?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Green Beret?”

  “Pedro? Heck no.”

  “Then yeah,” said Jack. “I got a big problem with that.”

  As the ground crew tended to Air Force One, Harry ducked into the bathroom and placed another call to his FBI contact.

  Supervisory agent Glenn Perkins had told Harry to call whenever he wanted an update, and Harry was more than taking him at his word. Perkins was head of the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, and for this standoff, the Miami negotiators—including Andie—reported to him. No decision to pull the negotiators and send in the SWAT could be made without Perkins’s approval.

  “What’s the latest?” said Harry.

  “You saw the same thing I saw on the TV,” said Perkins. “It’s what I cautioned about before you boarded the plane: bringing you and the president down to Miami would only embolden him.”

  “Andie should call him again.”

  “With all due respect, sir, you’re micromanaging.”

  “That’s my son in that newsroom.”

  “All the more reason not to micromanage.”

  “I should give Andie a call.”

  “Governor, I’m urging you not to do that. Agent Henning was not my first choice, not because she isn’t qualified, but for the same personal reasons I worry about you getting too close to this. I agreed to put her in as lead negotiator, but you promised to stand clear.”

  “I have four voice mails from her on my cell. I should at least return the call and tell her I’m behind her.”

  “I’m expecting an update from her in five minutes. I’d be happy to tell her for you. I hope I’m not being too blunt, but the last thing she needs is the pressure of you breathing directly down her neck.”

  Harry grumbled into the phone, nervously picking at the Air Force One bar of bathroom soap with his fingernail. “I feel so useless.”

  Perkins said, “There is one thing you can do to help.”

  “Name it.”

  “Ask the president to power up Air Force One and fly you right back to Washington.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  “Sir, we went over this before, but now that you’ve seen the gunman’s reaction on television, maybe you’ll understand my position. The next time Demetri makes a demand, Agent Henning needs to be able to buy time and tell him that she has to check with her superiors. If he knows that you’re in town with the president, he’s going to expect and demand immediate answers.”

  Harry considered it, picking even more furiously at the bar of Air Force One soap.

  “It’s basic negotiation 101,” Perkins continued. “In fact, I use Jimmy Carter as a case study for training here at Quantico. Back in the seventies, he offered to intervene in a hostage standoff and accede to a gunman’s demand to speak to the president. The bureau couldn’t have been any quicker or clearer in its response: ‘Thanks, but no thanks, Mr. President.’”

  “I understand your point,” said Harry.

  “Good. Then you’ll do it?”

  “Maybe I can disembark in secret, and I’ll get the president to fly back without me.”

  “Not a good plan,” said Perkins. “It’s best that you stay with the president.”

  “I need to stay near my son.”

  “Sir, that is a totally understandable feeling, but there is nothing you can do to resolve this standoff. In fact, there is nothing President Keyes can do, either. My advice is to stay with the president and help him understand that. Most important of all, make sure he doesn’t pull a Jimmy Carter, try to intervene, and get somebody hurt.”

  The bar of bathroom soap was almost entirely a pile of white flakes, and Harry was still a bundle of nerves.

  “All right,” he said. “I’ll stay with the president. But I’m not leaving my son.”

  Chapter 50

  It was officially “last call” at Sparky’s Tavern, and Theo was wiping down the cracked linoleum bar top.

  The band had packed up at 2:00 A.M., but the tavern was emptying out slowly. Theo had started the night at Cy’s Place, his jazz club where music was the priority. The typical crowd at Sparky’s would rather line-dance to “The Electric Slide” than listen to Duke Ellington reincarnated. It had been a good night, nonetheless, and it was winding down to the usual suspects: a handful of regulars and some Keys-bound college kids who’d challenged a couple of bikers to a game of eight ball. Not smart. They’d lost their shirts. Literally, they were stripped down to their waists. If it didn’t end soon, they’d be walking out stark naked.

  “You’re cute,” said the leggy blonde on the bar stool.

  Theo hadn’t arrived till 1:00 A.M., and by his count she was on her third martini. He had no intention of serving her a fourth.

  “Cute?” said Theo as he rinsed another beer glass in the sink. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m Mia,” she said. “Mia from Miami.”

  Theo smiled and shook her hand. “Now that’s cute.”

  “My ex-husband’s name is Phil. He was from Philadelphia. Mia from Miami, and Phil from Philadelphia. Isn’t that too funny?”

  “Funny, yeah,” said Theo.

  “Where you from, hon?”

  “Never-bed-the-last-chick-in-the-bar…berg.”

  “What?” she said, smiling as if she wasn’t quite sure she should be.

  “It’s a little town in Sweden near—ah, never mind.”

  She tried to rest her elbow on the bar and missed. “Hey,” she said, regaining her balance. “Do you ever watch anything but ESPN here?”

  Theo glanced up at the TV behind him. “Nope.”

  “How many times do we have to see the same highlights?”

  They were showing the Ohio State Buckeyes’ game-winning goal-line stand—for the fifth time of the night. Theo grabbed the remote and scrolled down quickly through the cable news channels. He soon realized that they all had the same coverage, and when he finally stopped surfing to check out the “breaking story,” his mouth fell open.

  “Jack?” he said.

  “You know that guy?”

  Theo ignored her and turned up the volume to hear the live update from outside the studio.

  “We are now well into our third hour of a tense hostage crisis here at Action News studio,” the reporter said.

  Theo stepped closer to the television, not quite believing, as the report continued. Jack and another hostage, whom Theo recognized as the Action News anchor, were on the left side of the split screen, their hands tied behind their backs. On the right side, a camera outside the studio was zooming in on what appeared to be Jack’s demolished Mustang in the rubble.

  “Not the ’stang,” said Theo.

  “More on this story,” said the newscaster, “after this commercial break.”

  Theo checked his cell. There was a call from Andie just before midnight that he’d missed. He speed-dialed a return call, but it went to her voice mail. He left a quick message, and the time flashed on his phone: 2:52 A.M. Not quite closing time, but close enough. He rounded people up, starting with Mia from Miami, and herded them toward the door.

  “That’s it folks, we’re locking up.”

  A few grumbled, but even first-timers at Sparky’s seemed to grasp that when Theo Knight said it was time to go, you went.

  “Call me,” said Mia on her way out the door.

  “Sure thing,” said Theo.

  He pushed the last customer out, locked the door, and ran to the back office. His uncle was sound asleep on the couch, snoring like a grizzly bear. Theo shook him till he woke.

  “Cy, I need your help.”

  His eyes blinked open, but he was still half asleep.

  “Jack’s in trouble,” said Theo.

  Cy yawned into his fist. “What else is new?”

  “I’m serious. I need you to close up for me.”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yes! Can you do it?”

  Another yawn. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  Theo grabbed his car keys and ran from the room before Cy could change his mind. He went out the front, locked it with his extra key, and started toward the parking lot. A voice in the darkness stopped him in his tracks.

  “Mr. Knight?”

  It was a woman’s voice, definitely not Mia from Miami. He turned, but it was too dark to see anything but a silhouette.

  “Who are you?”

  She stepped out from the shadows, and the face fit the voice—that of an older woman.

  “My name is Sofia,” she said, “and I want to help your friend.”

  Chapter 51

  The television screen closest to Jack suddenly went gray.

  The news set remained lit, and the ceiling lights and computer monitors still glowed in the newsroom. But each of the half dozen flat-screen televisions mounted on the walls throughout the newsroom was without a picture, and the audio was silent, as if someone had literally pulled the plug on the broadcast.

  “What’s happening?” shouted Demetri.

  It wasn’t clear whether he was talking to someone or thinking aloud. His gaze quickly swept the newsroom—up into the open catwalks above the lights, then across the newsroom to the barricaded doors. He walked completely around the news desk, then over to the weather set, then back to the sports desk. It was purely adrenaline-driven motion—short spurts of energy and panic that put the hostages even more on edge.

  “I said what’s going on!”

  “I have no idea,” said Pedro.

  Jack cringed at the sound of Pedro’s voice, knowing that all of the hostages would have been better off to remain silent and let Demetri vent.

  Demetri hurried toward the cameraman, almost frantic in his approach, and pressed the muzzle of his pistol up under Pedro’s chin.

  “What did you do?”

  Pedro went white, fumbling for a response. As far as Jack could tell, the camera appeared to have electrical power, and Pedro looked as befuddled as anyone as to the cause of the interrupted broadcast.

  “I didn’t do anything,” said Pedro.

  “Fix it!”

  “I—I don’t know what happened.”

  Demetri whacked him in the head with the butt of his gun, knocking Pedro to his knees.

  “I said fix it!”

  Blood ran from the gash above Pedro’s eye, and the left side of his face was quickly streaked with crimson rivulets that ran to his chin and dripped onto the floor. Pedro didn’t answer, either too stunned or too scared to speak.

  Jack leaned closer to Shannon and said, “Did you two somehow cook up a plan with the camera?”

  “No,” she whispered. “I don’t know what’s going on either.”

  “Fix the damn camera!” said Demetri. Another swift kick to Pedro’s ribs left him flat on the floor.

  “Stop!” Jack shouted.

  Demetri ignored him, or perhaps he was too enraged to hear Jack’s voice. He was suddenly caught up in destroying Pedro, as if each and every setback of the night mandated its own blow to the defenseless man’s torso.

  “Stop, or you’re going to kill him!” said Jack.

  A telephone rang in the newsroom, and Demetri froze. It was the same phone that Andie had called on earlier. Slowly, Demetri seemed to pull himself together long enough to process things. A final kick to the kidney elicited a deep groan from Pedro. Then Demetri went to the phone and snatched it up, his voice filled with contempt.

  “What the hell are you trying to pull?” he said, his voice booming throughout the newsroom.

  Andie bristled, not sure what to make of Demetri’s accusation. She adjusted her headset and spoke into the microphone from her command center.

  “We have a little situation here,” she said. “I need you to take a deep breath and calm down, all right?”

  “Get me back on the air—now!”

  “I was about to tell you the same thing,” said Andie.

  “Don’t mess with me. Get this show back on television, or the blood of one of these hostages is on your hands.”

  Andie glanced at Guy Schwartz, who was seated beside her and listening to every word. The initial word from their technical unit was that the cause of the broadcast interruption was internal, not of the FBI’s doing. Schwartz scribbled a quick note on a scrap of paper and slid it toward her.

  SWAT, it read.

  “Demetri, listen to me,” said Andie.

  She exchanged another glance with Schwartz, making sure that he wanted to go this route. He took back the note and double-underlined the word SWAT. The message was clear.

  Andie said, “I am being totally straight here, Demetri. I told you before that there is a tactical team on-site. SWAT is ready to bust down the door if you don’t turn the cameras back on.”

  “Aren’t you listening, damn it? It wasn’t me who turned them off!”

  “It wasn’t me, either,” said Andie. “Obviously we have some kind of technical difficulty beyond our control.”

  “Oh, what bullshit! I knew you were a liar, I absolutely knew it.”

  “I’m being totally honest with you, Demetri.”

  “I’m not going to listen to your excuses.”

  “Wait, wait,” said Andie.

  “Wait for what? More lies?”

  “I’m telling you the truth. Come on, you’re a very smart man, Demetri. Think about it this way: Why would I not want a camera inside the newsroom with you? My biggest concern is the safety of you and those hostages. If those cameras aren’t rolling, I have no way of knowing if anyone is hurt or not.”

  There was silence on the line, and instinct told Andie that her point was registering.

  “Doesn’t that make sense, Demetri?”

  He didn’t answer, but he didn’t hang up, either. She was definitely getting through to him.

  “Okay, I’ll tell you what,” said Andie. “We are going to do our best to fix this problem. But you have to stay on the line with me until you’re back on the air. If you hang up before that happens, SWAT will move in. That is not a threat. I don’t want that to happen, but if you break off contact now, I won’t be able to stop them. That’s just the way it is.”

  He still didn’t speak, but Andie heard a cross between a grunt and a shriek, and she envisioned him pulling his hair out in frustration.

  “You think you can take control away from me?” he said. “Is that it? Because if that is what’s going through your head, you need to give it up right now.”

  “You have to trust me on this,” said Andie. “It’s not about control. I’m just trying to keep everyone on an even keel here. I can’t do that if you hang up on me. Just stay on the line till we figure out what happened.”

  “I need to be on the air.”

  “Like I said, we are going to do our best to make that happen.”

  “You got ten minutes,” he said, and she could hear the anger in his voice. “Or Swyteck is the first to die.”

  Chapter 52

  President Keyes gripped the telephone tightly, biting back his anger. Harry Swyteck was still in the bathroom, leaving the president alone in the executive suite of Air Force One. But if Agent Madera had been there with him, the president probably would have slugged him.

  “Who do you think you’re talking to, Frank?”

  “The better question is who am I talking for.”

  Like so many times before, the president held his tongue. Even though he was speaking on his encrypted personal phone line, he feared the mere mention of the name Joseph Dinitalia.

  “I’m fed up with this,” said the president.

  “It will be over before dawn.”

  “I don’t mean the standoff. I mean this whole…arrangement.”

  “It’s not going to change.”

  “I’m sick and tired of you telling me what to do.”

  “That’s not going to change either.”

  “Did you hear what I said? I’m tired of it.”

  Madera scoffed. “Do you think you’re the first politician in history to feel this way?”

  “I think—”

  “We don’t care what you think,” said Madera. “Listen to me. You need to assert yourself with the Critical Incident Response Group. Go straight to the director if you have to. No FBI SWAT. Get Swyteck’s father to sing the same chant.”

  “I thought we wanted SWAT to go in.”

  “Not ours. If the FBI unleashes its own SWAT, there is no guarantee that they’ll make the kill. I have the local SWAT on board. You need to rein in the FBI and make way for the Miami-Dade police.”

  Keyes considered it, then answered in a firm voice. “No.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m not going to do it.”

  Madera said, “I can’t let FBI SWAT go in. I need a guaranteed kill shot.”

  “That’s not my problem.”

  “Yes, it is. I convinced MDPD to shut down the broadcast. Now, the FBI thinks he’s going to hurt the hostages. If you don’t rein them in, the only way to keep FBI SWAT from busting down the doors is for MDPD to put the Greek back on the air. And if that happens, there’s no telling what he might say.”

  “I’m not going to strong-arm the FBI or do anything else that might put Harry’s son at risk. That’s where I draw the line.”