Chapter 26
I FIGURED MY IDEA was a long shot, and definitely out of left field, but it was worth it if it could save some lives. Plus, nobody had come up with anything better.
So at midnight we set up microphones behind a solid row of police cars and transport buses parked on the far side of Fifteenth. It looked impressive, if nothing else, and the TV cameras were all over it, of course.
For the next hour, I led family members up to tell their stories into the mikes, to reason and plead with the men inside to put down their weapons and leave the building, or at the very least to let the lab workers out. The speakers stressed that it was hopeless not to surrender and that many of those inside would die if they didn’t. Some of the stories told at the mikes were heartbreaking, and I watched spectators tear up as they listened.
The best of the moments were anecdotes ? a Sunday soccer game a father was supposed to referee; a wedding less than a week away; a pregnant girl who was supposed to be on bed rest but who came to plead with her drug-runner boyfriend. Both of them were eighteen.
Then we got an answer from inside.
It came while a twelve-year-old girl was talking about her father, one of the dealers. Gunshots erupted in the building!
The gunfire lasted for about five minutes, then stopped. We had no way of telling what had happened. We knew only one thing ? the words of their loved ones had failed to move the men inside.
No one had come out; no one had surrendered.
“It’s all right, Alex.” Ned took me aside. “Maybe it bought us a little more time.” But that wasn’t the result either of us was looking for. Not even close.
At one thirty, Captain Moran turned off the mikes outside. It looked like nobody was coming out. They had made their decision.
A little after two o’clock, it was decided by the higher-ups that the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team would go into the building first. They would be followed by a wave of DC police ? but no one from SWAT. It was a tough-minded decision, but that’s the way it was these days in Washington ? maybe because of the terrorist activity over the past few years. People didn’t seem to want to try to negotiate their way out of crisis situations anymore. I wasn’t sure what side of the argument I was on, but I understood both.
Ned Mahoney and I would be part of the first assault team to go inside. We were assembled out on Fourteenth Street, directly behind the building under siege.
Most of our guys were pacing, restless, talking among themselves, trying to stay focused.
“This is a bad one,” Ned said. “SWAT guys know how we think. Probably even that we’re coming in tonight.”
“You know any of them? The SWAT team inside?” I asked.
Ned shook his head. “We don’t usually get invited to the same parties.”