31.
Sienna
I found the bank in question pretty easily. It’s hard to miss twenty police cars bounded by a street cordon in lower Manhattan.
As I came drifting down slowly, I saw the cops already moving back and forth behind the cover of their cars. They had a mobile command center set up about half a block away, parked unobtrusively between the massive number of standard patrol cars. A SWAT truck was parked at the end of the block. I stared at it for a second, a little curious, because I didn’t see any SWAT team members up near the bank. Maybe they were trying to keep the black-tactical-garbed cops off the street and out of the view of the robbers.
I set down outside the command post and waved at the officer in charge. He had a walkie-talkie up to his ear and frowned at me, waving me off from inside the truck. I shrugged and wandered down the street toward the bank, where the cop cars were set up like barricades to obscure fire in the event this thing went to hell fast. I could see the getaway vehicle parked out front, a black Ford Expedition with dark tinted windows. A cop was leading a bomb-sniffing dog away, presumably because he hadn’t found anything of interest.
The patrol officers were all crouching down, so I did the same, taking a peek at what we were dealing with. The bank was a storefront at street level with two paned-glass windows that looked in and a stone facade that blended with the rest of the Financial District architecture. The glass was reflective, but not totally, and I could see that on the left side was an office that appeared empty. On the right-hand side I could see the teller line that snaked its way up to the counter, completely empty, with a little motion in the window that suggested to me a robber was waiting in ambush on the right side of the entry door to unload on anyone who came in. It was not a bad setup. If there was an alley out back, they probably had a man stationed there as well—if they were smart in addition to being well funded.
How did I know they were well funded? Because Ford Expeditions aren’t cheap, and if they went to the trouble to either buy or steal one for the purposes of this robbery, it suggested they were more than petty bank robbers who were just looking to make a quick buck and vamoose before the cops showed up.
I edged sideways, trying to get a better look in the front window on the right. The haziness of the pane’s reflection made it increasingly difficult to see the deeper I tried to look into the bank. I caught a glimpse of shadows that looked the heads of people, all in a line, with someone standing tall over them. I squinted, using my meta-enhanced eyesight to try and make something of the scene, and when I realized what I was looking at, I felt a little chill run through me.
There was a robber with a high-capacity rifle, probably of the AR or AK variety, and he had his hostages all kneeling in a line in front of him, from tallest to shortest. His barrel was extended to just a few scant inches from the first victim in the line, and the trajectory was perfect for him to fire through and get multiple kills with a single shot. If he was good on the trigger and quick to adjust his aim, he could probably kill them all within three seconds.
“Holy hell,” I muttered to myself. These were no amateurs. They’d planned this, and if they were setting up in-case-of-emergency plans for their bank robberies, it didn’t suggest good or happy things were looming in our future.
I ran at a crouch back to the command center, where I swept into the open truck and caught a dirty look from the officer in charge just as he was bringing his walkie-talkie down from his ear. “What?” he asked me, like he was put upon for even having to lay eyes upon me.
“I’m Sienna Nealon,” I said.
He stared at me dully. “No shit.”
I stared back. “… And you are?”
“Forsythe,” he said, flicking his badge, which was hanging out of his front suit pocket, with a long fingernail. “I’ve got a lot going on here, Nealon, so—”
“I agree,” I said, “so I’ll make this quick. Do you have a band of professional bank robbers working in the five boroughs right now with this MO? We’re talking at least five guys inside, maybe more, with probably AR or AK weapons platforms who regularly use expensive getaway vehicles?”
Forsythe gave me a glare. “We’re not idiots here, Nealon. No, there’s no gang like that working the five boroughs, or active in the entire state—the whole fifty states, as near as we can tell. Trust me, we’re professionals, and we’ve noticed all the same things you have, the abnormalities, the skill of their preparation—”
“Did you notice that they’ve got the hostages lined up tallest to shortest, with a rifle lined up to take them out with three to five shots in the event you decide to breach?” I asked, folding my arms in front of me.
He paused. “That … wasn’t something we observed. How did you—”
“I have superhuman senses,” I interrupted. “Did you get a match on the plate for their vehicle?”
“Are you gonna tell me how to run my scene and investigation?” Forsythe asked, more than irritated now. “I’m just curious so that I can start screaming to HQ now.”
“Have I given you an order yet?” I asked, firing right back at him. “I’m an observer with some experience dealing with a harder-edged, more prepared class of criminal. I guarantee I’ve killed more professional mercs and guns-for-hire than you have, and these guys? That’s what they are. They are professional guns, with probable military experience, carrying out an op. You want to piss all over this scene, mark your territory, go for it. I’m just trying to help, and I fully recognize I’ve got no authority here, so if you’d like, I’ll just see myself out.” I threw a thumb behind me.
Forsythe gave me a simpering smile. “We’re the NYPD, okay? Not the JV team out in Iowa, okay? We’ve got this.”
“You know what they have in Iowa that you don’t?” I asked as I started to step out of the van.
“Pigs and chickens?” Forsythe asked.
“Yep,” I said. “And also, humility enough to realize that they don’t know everything.” I gave him a smartass salute. “Best of luck, numbnuts.”
I started to fly off, rising into the air, fully intent on heading back to my hotel and picking up my suitcase, but something stopped me. And no, it wasn’t guilt, or shame, or some sense of obligation. Those were all overwhelmed by a flaming desire to go back to the command center and turn Forsythe’s head into a piñata for my fists. Sometimes restraint means having the wisdom to fly away before you commit homicide. Dr. Zollers taught me that.
No, the thing that stopped me was almost like a tug on my shoulder, like someone had put an invisible hand on me and dragged me backward. I spun to face the empty air behind me, and threw up my hands to guard against what seemed to me like an invisible perpetrator before I caught a glimpse of the responsible party, still a few blocks away over Wall Street but heading north fast.
“Neat trick,” I said as Gravity Gal—Jamie—lurched to a stop a few feet away. The way she moved over the skyline was weird-looking; sometimes it almost seemed she was walking on uneven, invisible legs over the rooftops, and other time she was zooming like she was flying—like me—just zipping toward a destination with the wind whipping through her hair. “What’s up?”
“You leaving?” Jamie asked as she settled into a hover mode right in front of me. She had some bags visible through the mask’s eyeholes, and her stomach rumbled loud enough that a meta in the Bronx could probably hear it.
“The guy in charge of the scene here is not a great reflection on the NYPD,” I said, pointing down at the command center. “He basically told me that they had this under control, and he didn’t even pat me on the head first.”
Jamie tilted her head slightly. “Is it more or less condescending when they do that? Because I’m honestly not sure.”
“Probably depends on the situation,” I said. “You here to throw a monkey wrench in the NYPD’s plans? Because they are facing some hitters here, guys who might actually be ready for the SWAT—” I looked down to where the SWAT van had been parked a few minutes earlier. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Well, the SWAT van is gone,” I said. “Maybe they decided to breach at the rear of the building.” I flew over the back alley and peered down. She followed behind me, but slower. There were patrol cops down there, but no sign of the SWAT team. I did a quick loop of the block while Jamie watched, but there was no sign of SWAT at all. “That’s just weird. Why would they leave?”
“Coming up through the sewers?” Jamie asked.
“I doubt it,” I said. “In spite of what they show on TV, most businesses don’t have easy sewer access, or tunnels, or anything like that.”
“Could they have dropped their guys and moved the van?” she asked.
“Maybe …” I said, and watched below as Forsythe stalked out of the command center, walkie in hand, suit coat flapping in the wind. I held up a hand to hush Jamie as I listened to him a few hundred feet below.
“Where the hell is SWAT?” he shouted at the nearest patrol officer, who shrugged and pointed to where the van had been a few minutes earlier.
“Curiouser and curiouser,” Jamie said.
“Yeah,” I said, frowning. This was weird, no doubt, but I had other priorities at the moment than solving this mystery. “Without SWAT to breach and clear, my guess is they’re gonna have to sit on their hands for a bit, because these robbers have got a pretty sweet setup inside. They try and go in, it’s gonna end with a lot of bodies on the floor.”
“What if we went in?” Jamie asked after a brief pause. She sounded almost sly suggesting it. “Our way, you know.”
“You got a method for moving those hostages out of the line of fire?”
“I could probably do something about that,” and now she sounded really sly. “It’s not difficult.”
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Well, all right then. I think we might have just become these peoples’ best hope, cuz …” I looked down at Forsythe, screaming frantically at the cops around him and waving his hands like a madman, “… I’m guessing if we leave this to him, it’s not going to go well.”