Happy Birthday: A Novel

April just sat there and cried as she watched. She talked to her father and Maddie frequently on her cell phone, and Mike never left her for a minute. He said little, but he was steadfastly there with her and had been all day.

The scene in the street outside the network building was one of organized chaos and extreme tension. The hostage-takers claimed that they had enough explosives on them to blow up the building, and intended to do so. There were vehicles and men in uniforms of every kind everywhere, SWAT teams, crisis units, the office of emergency services, firefighters, police, police captains, fire chiefs, and there was talk of a National Guard unit being brought in. And UN diplomats were scattered everywhere, looking grim and feeling helpless. For the moment, they all were. The SWAT teams were poised to attack, but it had to be impeccably done, with speed and precision, and even then there was a good chance that all or most of the hostages could be killed. No one wanted to take that chance with a bungled attack that was badly orchestrated or premature. It was kept out of the news, but a small team of Israeli commandos who normally protected their ambassador had come to advise them, although their presence would have enraged the hostage-takers even more. It seemed like half the Middle Eastern security from the UN was there to help. No one wanted to be associated with the attackers, or to see another 9/11 happen. The tension in the air was palpable, and a command center had been set up a block away, teeming with experts, CIA, FBI. There had been no warning of the attack. It had just happened, and so far, no one dared to make a move, for fear of making the situation worse.

By sheer coincidence, Jack Adams had been on his way into the building when it happened. He realized he had forgotten his cell phone in the car and had gone back out, and by the time he returned five minutes later, the building was shut down, and he had stuck around to help. All of the police and SWAT teams recognized him, and were impressed that he stayed all day. He looked over building maps with them and conferred with network security, who were as helpless as everyone else. Unless they were willing to risk the hostages, their hands were tied. And at six o’clock, the heads of assorted units were formulating a plan to come up the vents from the floor below and take the hostage-takers by surprise. Jack was listening carefully to the plan with the others and being given VIP status by being allowed to be there.

The estimate was that close to a hundred people were being held hostage. The terrorists had released no one in the nine hours they had held the building, and given the frantic quality of the hostage-takers’ messages, it was becoming clear to everyone that there was a possibility that they could all be killed. They were impossible to reason with. There was no way of knowing how many had already died. No one was sure, and the terrorists weren’t telling. The captain of the SWAT team had finally established ongoing radio contact with them at four o’clock, and UN interpreters were translating, but so far their messages consisted mainly of threats, and lengthy diatribes about the situation in their country. Several UN negotiators from Middle Eastern countries attempted to talk them down to no avail.

By eight o’clock that night, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the only way to free the hostages was not by negotiation with the terrorists, but by force. And the captain of the SWAT team didn’t want to wait much longer. Other members of the SWAT team and the New York police chief were going over maps of the building in detail, as Jack Adams listened. They were studying the air vents and crawl spaces closely. Even the architect of the building was on the scene. The CIA and FBI finally made an executive decision to send the SWAT teams in by nine o’clock, and the governor and president were being kept closely informed. The mayor was on the scene, along with assorted diplomats and a UN task force, and the whole country was watching. It was all too reminiscent of 9/11.

A clumsy attempt by the terrorists to broadcast was made at 8:15, with hand-held cameras. They rambled on at length, and said they were going to blow up the building. You couldn’t see them clearly, but as the hand-held camera bounced crazily, you could see hostages in the background huddled together. The hostage-takers looked like a rough group. There were only six of them, but they appeared to have an arsenal of weapons that no one knew how they had gotten in.