Chapter 8

Danielle Lynette stuck her hand out of her driver’s side window and showed her federal ID to the police officer who’d just told her she had to turn around.

He bent down and examined her credentials. “I’m sorry, mam; please go ahead, they’ve been waiting for you.”

“Thank you.” Danni powered her window up. She knew he was only trying to be respectful, but the truth was, a single, thirty-three-year old woman with no man in her life and two loving parents who very much wanted to become loving grandparents did not want to be called mam.

The two police officers in front of her opened the barricade and stepped out of her way.

She inched her car down the street littered with police cars, federal cars, and a SWAT truck parked off to the side. She didn’t want to take her own personal car any closer to the bank in case any shooting started so she stopped and parked in the left turn lane about halfway to the intersection.

Danni opened her door and scanned the rooftops of the buildings on the opposite side of the bank.

The snipers and their spotters were already set up.

She turned and saw a cluster of FBI agents standing behind a police car and said, “Anybody order a hostage negotiator?”

Special Agent in Charge Ronald Putnam raised his hand. “Right here, Agent Lynette.”

She knew he was being respectful to her in front of the other agents. The fact was, she spent almost all of her time behind a desk as an analyst for the Department of Homeland Security. And because of her degree in Psychology, she doubled as a hostage negotiator on the rare occasion it was called for. It was so rare, that this was her first such case.

“What have we got?” Danni asked as she walked up to the agents.

“We’ve got at least three bank robbers who set off an alarm and couldn’t get out before the local cops showed up. Anywhere from ten to twenty hostages. They’ve been in there for more than three hours.”

Danni nodded. “Okay. All right. So, the first thing we’ve got to do is establish communications.”

“I already tried that.” Putnam said. “The bank’s phone rang twice and they took it off the hook.”

Danni nodded. “Okay, okay.” She thought everything over for a few seconds. “So… uh, someone is going to have to approach the bank.”

“Someone?”

“Well, you know, probably me.”

“You’re not going in there,” said Special Agent Vincent Cataldo. “You’re not a real agent. Do you even have a gun?”

“I’m not going over there to shoot anyone. I’m just going to talk.”

“Danielle, we’re not worried about you shooting the hostages, we’re worried about the bank robbers shooting the hostages.”

“Okay, Vince, what’s your plan?”

“I wanted to go in but we had to wait for you.”

“Well, I’m here and… I don’t give my permission for you to go in.”

Special Agent in Charge Putnam chuckled. “Danielle, as our negotiator, we’ll give you all the assistance we can, but make no mistake, I’m the one who’s in charge. If the shooting starts, you get down, and we shoot back.”

“Understood, sir.”

“So, what do you need?”

Danielle thought it over for a few seconds. “I guess what I’d really like… is a bulletproof vest.”

TJ looked out from behind the blinds in the bank’s reception area. He was black, nineteen, with a revolver in his hands. He was also extremely nervous. “Yo, fellas, somebody’s comin’.”

“Is it SWAT?” yelled Rikki from behind the counter. He was white, twenty, and holding a sawed-off shotgun. He was even more nervous than TJ.

“No, man, it’s a chick.”

“What? You mean, like a female?”

TJ turned to look at Rikki. “No, man, the cops sent in a baby chicken to come get us out. Why you gotta be so stupid all the time?”

“Both of you, shut up,” Dexter said from his spot standing over the hostages clustered together on the floor. He was white, thirty-five, and held an AR-15 in his hands. “She’s the negotiator. Let her in.” Dexter wasn’t nervous, just pissed off.

“Me?” said TJ. “Why I gotta do it? What if the cops shoot me when I’m at the door?”

Dexter looked around at the hostages. His eyes locked on an elderly woman who was about thirty pounds overweight. “You! Get up and let her in. If you run, we’ll shoot you in the back.”

The woman pushed herself up to her feet. She had come to the bank with her daughter and was offended at the supposition. “I don’t run, young man.”

She went past TJ, to the bank’s front door, and waited. After a few tense seconds, she unlocked the front doors, opened one, and stepped back.

Danni came in. She was wearing a bulletproof vest. The negotiator gave everyone a big wave, a smile, and an enthusiastic. “Hi.”

A couple of the hostages said hi back but with nowhere the same energy.

Danni looked around. She knew she had to emotionally disarm the robbers and she thought the best way to do that was by seeming as non-threatening as possible. The most practical way was to show a little vulnerability and get the robbers to try to cooperate with her on a common task. First a small task, then a larger one, then an even larger one and so on. “Okay, so, who are the bank robbers?”

TJ and Rikki put their hands up. Dexter kept his down. He wasn’t sure who this woman was but there was something very, very, wrong with her.

Danni pointed at Dexter but looked at TJ. “Is he with you?”

TJ looked at Dexter, then back at Danni. “Uh, yeah.”

“And it’s just the three of you?”

“Yeah.”

Danni looked over the would-be bank robbers. “This is very interesting. Criminals almost always self-segregate within their own race. But two whites and a black is very interesting. Do you have a Latino or Asian getaway driver?”

“No, it’s just the three of us. We didn’t have no getaway driver.”

Danni nodded as she saw an opportunity to break the tension. A smile crept across her face. “Yeah, I guess that’s why you didn’t get away, huh?”

TJ chuckled a nervous chuckle. “I guess so.”

“Give us your gun,” Dexter said. He was not about to chuckle with the woman.

“I don’t have a firearm.”

“You came into a hostage situation unarmed.”

“I’m not here to shoot anyone. My job is to make sure everyone comes out unharmed. Besides, I’ve got three snipers out there. They can all shoot way better than me.” She stopped for a second, then added, “But, hey, don’t worry about that. I’m sure we’ll resolve this peacefully.”

“Yeah, I’m sure we will. Let’s get the negotiations going. I’m in a hurry, sweetheart,” Dexter said.

“Sweetheart?” Danni snapped. He was the obvious alpha of the pack. And it was just as obvious that he was disrespecting her to diminish her in the eyes of his men. She now had to stick up for herself or the other two robbers would see her as unworthy of alliance. “I am the negotiator. If anything happens to me or to the hostages, the SWAT team is going to come in here and shoot the three of you all to pieces. I am the only one stopping that from happening. You talk to me with respect.”

Dexter rolled his eyes. He’d been interrogated enough times to recognize the good cop, bad cop routine. Although he had to give her points for originality; this was the first time he’d ever seen the routine with just one cop. “Negotiator, we need a bus.”

“For what?” Danni asked.

“To get out of here.”

“Wouldn’t a car be faster? And easier to drive?

“We’re taking the hostages with us.”

“You know that’s kidnapping, right?”

“We’re not gonna get caught.”

“You’ve already been caught.”

“We ain’t caught.”

Danni was quiet for a few seconds. “Let me ask you something. Being stuck in the bank surrounded by local and federal authorities, that wasn’t part of the plan, right?”

Dexter looked at her but wouldn’t answer. Even in this small thing, he would not yield.

“I’m guessing it wasn’t,” Danni continued. “So maybe, you guys aren’t really good at looking into the future and projecting the potential problems with your plans. Maybe… just maybe, you should call it a day.”

“I’m not going back to prison.”

“If you didn’t want to go back to prison, why did you try to rob a bank?”

“Because I needed the money?”

“Okay, but why not rob a drug dealer?”

“Because they’ll kill you if they catch you.”

“Oh, please. Everybody knows those idiots can’t shoot straight. How many times have you watched the news and seen a story about someone who was shot by accident? Do you think SWAT snipers miss? Those guys know how to shoot between heartbeats. Can you shoot between heartbeats?”

Dexter didn’t say anything. He was finally starting to get nervous.

“Maybe we should surrender,” Rikki said from behind the counter.

Dexter turned toward him. “Shut the fuck up! We ain’t surrendering!”

“Okay, you ain’t surrendering,” Danni said. “But if you did surrender, I could talk to the prosecutor and if you stay out of trouble for the first half of your sentence, I could have you moved from a maximum security prison to a medium one.”

Dexter turned toward Danni. “Lady, we’ve got seventeen hostages and a negotiator. We’re not going to prison.”

“Mister,” Danni said. “I’ve got three criminals and three snipers. You want to do the math on that?”

“Yo, man, maybe we can make a deal,” TJ said.

“The deal is, we get out free and clear,” Dexter said. “Any other deals and we start killing hostages. But not until we kill the negotiator.”

“Murdering a federal agent in the line of duty,” Danni said. “Great idea. Trials are really expensive. Just make it easy for my guys to kill the three of you before you can even say, look out.”

“Get us a bus, negotiator. You got ten minutes. Now to show I’m a reasonable guy, I’ll give you one hostage.”

“I didn’t come here for one hostage. I came here for all the hostages. And the three bank robbers.”

“Listen lady, I’ve seen movies and TV shows. You’re supposed to ask for one hostage as a sign of good faith. And it’s always the pregnant chick.”

He turned to the hostages. “Anybody knocked up?”

Three women who must have been very early in their first trimesters raised their hands.

“Put your hands down,” Danni told the women. She turned toward Dexter. “Listen, it’s obvious that you’re the one who planned this thing. And it’s even more obvious that things didn’t go the way you thought they would. It’s okay. These things happen. But you need to think over everything I’ve said.”

She saw how defiantly he stared at her and decided he was a lost cause. She had to work the two who had shown themselves to be receptive to her. She would look at one, then the other, back and forth every few words.

“I’m talking about spending some years in prison versus spending the rest of your lives in prison, versus spending eternity in a grave.”

She knew that approximately nine out of ten people believed in some sort of an afterlife, so she took a chance and said, “If there’s a Heaven… you know better than I do what you’ve done in your lives but… I don’t think you’re getting in. And if the atheists are right… and there is no Heaven… well then, that’s it, isn’t it? You’ve blown the rest of your lives for an eternity of nothingness. That can’t be what you want. That can’t be why you came here today.”

“Shut up!” Dexter said. “You take my demands out there and if they don’t say yes, I’m gonna shoot a hostage every minute--”

The sound of a shotgun blast interrupted him. He dropped his rifle and screamed as he fell sideways. As he landed face down, everyone saw his butt had a giant bloody hole in it. He writhed in pain on the floor. His rifle had fallen too far for him to reach.

Danni looked up at the man now in front of the counter. Some smoke still drifted out of the sawed-off shotgun in his hand.

Rikki looked at her. “If I disarm the suspect and surrender, that means less jail time, right?”

Danni tried to give him an honest answer but it was hard because her ears were ringing from the shotgun blast. Finally, she said, “I dunno, maybe.”

TJ said, “Aw, hell no.” He lowered his aim toward the man on the floor and shot him in the leg.

Dexter screamed again.

Outside, Special Agent in Charge Putnam and his men had already started to go in after the first shot. “They’re shooting! We’re going in!”

“Negative,” came the call from the radio.

Putnam spoke into the radio. “What the hell’s going on?”

“Sir, two of the bank robbers just shot the third. The leader, I think.”

“How do you know that? Who is this?”

“My name is Collins and I’m a sniper spotter. I know because the robbers didn’t close the blinds and we’ve been able to see inside the whole time.”

Just then, the phone rang. Putnam picked it up. “Yeah.”

“Sir, it’s me,” Danni said on the line. “Everything’s fine, just give me a couple of minutes. Sorry for the scare but everything’s fine, I promise.”

At first, he didn’t know what to say. After a moment, he recovered enough to say, “Take your time, agent. You’re doing great.”

“Thank you, sir.”

She hung up on the line. Putnam put the phone down. He saw Cataldo looking at him waiting for news. Putnam said, “She needs another minute.”

Cataldo shrugged his shoulders. “If she can get the criminals to shoot one another, she can have all the time she needs.”

Danni put the phone down and turned to face the robbers. “Okay, no more shooting. I’m serious.”

TJ held the gun on Dexter. “Okay, but he’s got a side piece.”

Danni knew a lot about a lot of things, but street vernacular wasn’t one of them. “A what? You mean… a girlfriend no one knows about?”

“No, I mean another gun. A backup, a spare.”

“Oh, okay, thank you.” She turned to the man lying on the floor. “You, on the floor, take out your side piece slowly or you’ll probably get shot again.”

“I need a doctor!”

“You need to disarm completely before I allow any medical personnel to help you.”

“I’m already unarmed.”

The sound of the shotgun getting racked echoed throughout the bank. A few of the hostages plugged their ears with their fingers.

“Wait, wait!” Dexter screamed. “Here, with two fingers.” He reached under himself and held a revolver by the barrel with two bloody fingers. He set it on the floor next to him and then slid it away. “I’m unarmed. I’ve surrendered. Please, get me a damn doctor before I bleed to death. Please!”

“Just wait a minute.”

“I don’t have a minute!”

“Hey, shut up! You should have surrendered instead of forcing your guys to shoot you. Now be quiet and let me think.” Danni thought everything over. She picked up the phone. It rang automatically to the feds outside.

She recognized Putnam’s voice when he said, “Hello.”