“Then listen to me,” he says. “Don’t let him touch that door. Do exactly what I tell you.”
The mobile command unit could be the inside of his skull—the hum of electronics, the faint vibration of idling engines, the way everyone holds their breath and pretends they’re not.
On the screens, Jack watches Sarah’s body camera feed. The hallway is narrow, concrete sweating condensation, a steel door at the end with a sliver of light at the bottom. The red wire is visible now—thin, mean, stretched from the hinge to an unseen point above the frame.
“Copy,” Sarah says again, lower this time. “Where are you?” Jack asks. “West corridor.
Ten meters from the service exit. Suspect is inside with the device and one hostage. Maybe two.” She breathes out, in.
“Door is rigged. If he opens it…”
“We get a crater,” Jack finishes. “Good eyes.”
He doesn’t say *good girl*.
She’s earned better than that. In the cramped unit, the captain—Reyes—leans over Jack’s shoulder, eyes locked on the screens. The tech at the console types without needing to be told—thermal overlay, schematic from city records, cross-referenced with the utility company’s underground lines.
“Door opens outward,” the tech mutters. “Blow radius goes straight into the loading yard and the south wall.”
Jack’s mind catalogs, sorts, discards. “Sarah,” he says, “what do you hear?”
“Voices,” she whispers.
“Male. Late thirties, maybe forties. Angry.
Pacing. I hear metal scraping. Hostage is crying—female, older, maybe fifties.
There’s a… beeping? Soft. Steady.
Not a timer. Something else.”
Pacemaker, his brain supplies. Or medical equipment.
Or something in the device he hasn’t seen yet. Doesn’t matter. The wire is the immediate problem.
“Is your team stacked?” Jack asks. “Two with me,” she says. “Lewis and Hargrove.
Third team was moving to the rear until you called them off.”
He can hear the tension in the other voices too, faint in the background. “Good,” he says. “New plan.
You’re not going through that door.”
Reyes gives him a sharp look. “We can’t leave her and the hostage in there. He’ll panic.”
Jack shakes his head.
“We’re not leaving them. We’re just not using the front like he expects.” He points at a different screen: the exterior camera of the adjacent building. “What’s this wall made of?”
The tech pulls up the property record.
The story doesn’t end here — it continues on the next page.
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