4:21 p.m.
4 minutes until the gloaming
I screeched to a stop alongside the police barricade. I didn’t want the bloody dressings caught on camera, so I tugged them off and left them on the seat.
Fortunately, my jacket covered most of the blood, but as I stepped out of the car, I zipped it up anyway. Two officers met me and, as television cameras followed us, hustled me to a SWAT van the size of a small mobile home.
Inside, I found Ralph, the SWAT commander, as well as Lieutenant Thorne, Lyrie, and a female officer from internal affairs. What she was doing here right now was anyone’s guess.
“Heard you were shot,” Thorne said concernedly. “You alright?” Everyone else was asking the same question with their eyes.
“Yeah.” I indicated toward the bank. “What do we know?”
“Are you sure you’re-?”
“I’m fine.” I waited for the update. Ralph spoke up: “As far as we can tell, he’s got three bank employees, two or three customers.”
“Do we have a video feed of the surveillance cameras?”
“Not yet. SWAT’s working on it.”
I saw two phones and headsets. “Who’s talking with him?”
“For now, me. Radar mentioned that the guy who took his son, he called him by his nickname. Called him Radar.”
“What? He knows him?”
Ralph shook his head. “We don’t know. But right now we need to move. He told me you have to be in there by 4:25. I don’t know why, but he’s really sketchy right now and I don’t want to push things.”
My gun had jammed earlier, but Radar didn’t know that and I guessed he wouldn’t want me coming in armed. I unholstered my weapon, handed it to Ralph. “Let’s go.”
“You need a vest.”
“He’s my partner. He’s not going to shoot me.”
“You go in there,” Ralph said firmly, “you’re going in wearing a vest.”
This wasn’t the time to argue and I didn’t want to waste what few precious minutes we had.
I couldn’t help but cringe as I slumped off the jacket.
Everyone in the van stared at the blood covering half of my chest and most of my sleeve. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” I assured them, even though it hurt like it was. I picked up a vest and began to put it on, trying not to move my left arm at all, but it wasn’t possible and pain chugged through me again, this time, actually making me dizzy.
I had to stop, close my eyes, and try to funnel the pain into another place.
Ralph carefully helped me into the vest. When he was done, I pointed to his voluminous FBI jacket tossed on a chair in the corner. “I don’t want to walk past those cameras with my shirt covered with blood and I don’t want to alarm the hostages. My jacket’s gonna be too hard to get into. Let me use that thing.” There was still a dark stain on my pant leg where I’d been stabbed with the scalpel, but I could deal with that.
He grabbed the jacket and helped me ease it on. “Congratulations,” he said, trying to keep things light. “You’ve been promoted.”
“Thanks.” I zipped up. “Tonto.”
Using one of the portable phones in the SWAT van, Ralph put a call through to the bank and then nodded for me. “We’re a go. He’s waiting for you. Be careful in there.”
“I will.”
Leaving the van, I held out my hands to show that I wasn’t armed. With the gunshot wound, it hurt terribly to move that left arm, let alone hold it to the side, but I did the best I could. Trying to conceal my limp, I crossed the parking lot.
The walk seemed to take forever.
I made it to the door.
Paused.
Then laid my hand against the glass and pressed it open.