Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

“Just heard from ESU,” he said. “Snipers think they got a pretty good bead on him through one of the back windows.”

I didn’t say anything, but Joe knew what I was thinking. He stared at me with his almost sad, world-weary brown eyes.

“Kid or not, we’re dealing with a violent sociopath,” he went on. “We need to give this to Tactical while those poor people inside still have a chance. I’m calling in the Wells Fargo truck. I want you to get D-Ray back on the phone and tell him to watch for it. Then Con Ed’s going to cut the power, and the snipers will drop him with night vision.” Joe heaved himself to his feet and gave me a rough pat on the shoulder. “Sorry, Mike. You did better than anyone has any right to expect, but the kid flat-out refuses to live.”

I passed my hands through my hair and scrubbed my own tired eyes. New York City has one of the best reputations in the world for resolving hostage situations nonviolently, and I hated like hell to be a part of changing that fine tradition. But I couldn’t argue with Hunt’s logic. D-Ray definitely wasn’t even trying to help me save him.

I nodded, defeated. We had to think about his family now. There was no other way.

I listened to Joe Hunt call the armored truck and order it to start moving toward us. As soon as it came into sight, I’d be talking to D-Ray for the last time.

We stepped out of the bus for a breath of fresh air while we waited.

Two

AS I CLIMBED OUTSIDE, the first thing I noticed was the chanting from a different crowd—at the far end of the block, in front of a housing project over on Frederick Douglass Boulevard.

It took my brain a second to decipher the words: “Fight the power!”

Hunt and I exchanged stunned looks. We cops were there to save the lives of their friends and neighbors—including two little children and the much-loved Miss Carol—and we were the bad guys? Talk about a neighborhood in need of some new role models.

“Fight the power! Fight the power!” The roar kept coming at me while I anxiously searched for the armored truck.

New role models! my brain yelled back.

Then, out of nowhere, the two thoughts connected.

“Hold that truck, Chief!” I hollered at Hunt. I rushed back onto the bus and snatched up my headset, nodding to a uniformed TARU tech to patch me into the brownstone again.

“D-Ray, it’s Mike Bennett,” I said when he picked up.

“You got two minutes, cop!” He was practically frothing with agitation.

“Whoa, whoa,” I said. “Listen to the crowd outside, will you? They’re rooting for you. You’re their hero.”

“What kind of bullshit you pullin’ now, Bennett?”

“This isn’t bullshit, D-Ray. Open up a window and listen. You think you’ve got nothing left to live for, but you’re wrong.”

All the cops and techs on the bus stopped what they were doing and watched the brownstone. After a very long thirty seconds, one of the window sashes rose a few inches. We couldn’t see D-Ray—he was beside or below it—but he was there, listening.

“Hear that?” I said into the headset. “Fight the power. They’re talking to you, D-Ray. They think you’re a badass for holding us off. Not only that, you know what one of your grandmother’s church-lady friends just told me? You’ve done this neighborhood a great service by getting rid of the Drew Boyz and all their dope-dealing and violence. People hated them, were terrified of them, and you took them out.”

“Ohhh, man! You serious?” For the first time, D-Ray sounded like what he was, a scared, confused nineteen-year-old kid.

“I’m damn serious, and I feel the same way they do,” I said. It was another bald-faced lie, but I’d sell him both the George Washington and the Brooklyn bridges if it meant saving lives.

The crew on the bus were staring at me now. I swabbed my sleeve across my sweaty face and took the next risk.

“Now, there’s two ways left you can play this, D-Ray,” I said. “You can keep your hostages and try to get away with the money. But you won’t get far, and you know it. Probably you’ll get yourself killed, and maybe your grandma and the little kids, too. Or you can stand up like the hero these people believe you are, and let everybody go.”

It felt like my heart stopped, and maybe time itself, as D-Ray suddenly cut the connection.

“D-Ray!” I yelled. “D-Ray, come back, goddammit!”

The line stayed dead. I tore off the headset and burst out of the hot, bright bus into the cool darkness of the street.

Three