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  The inside of the OBCC was equally as dreary as the outside. Industrial gray concrete block walls rose above what was probably originally a beige tile floor, now discolored with age and constant use into a nondescript mud brown. Fluorescent lights lined the ceiling, a random scattering of panels dark from an absence of maintenance. The air was stale, heavy with a lack of circulation, and tainted with the sour odors of sweat, mildew, and fear.

  Correction officers filled the hallways, clearing people through security and pointing them toward a meeting room near the warden’s office. Most of the officers were men, almost all were people of color, and, universally, their expressions reflected their fury at the deadly nature of the situation. Chaos had entered their house and they weren’t going to stand for it.

  They wore uniforms of navy blue or powder blue and navy, except for the captains, deputies, and warden who each wore a navy tie over a crisp white shirt. Each officer wore a DOC badge over the left breast pocket engraved with their name and a heavy utility belt that carried the tools of their trade, including a collapsible baton and a can of pepper spray.

  Firearms were strictly forbidden in all prisoner areas to avoid a situation where an officer could lose his gun to an inmate. The only exception to this rule would be the A-Team officers—if they were forced to go into the facility because correction officer lives were at stake, the situation was far past the point of nonlethal enforcement. They would avoid lethal force, but it had to remain an option for them.

  Gemma and the rest of the HNT were shepherded into a modest meeting room already filled to standing room only. They lined up against the rear wall, waiting as more people crammed in. Heat prickling up the back of her neck, Gemma unbuttoned her jacket; the temperature in the room was already climbing with the crowded conditions and lack of air flow, and they were likely going to be trapped inside for a while. Conversation was a grim hum.

  She caught sight of her father standing at the front of the room, talking to an older man in a white shirt and navy tie.

  Bet that’s the warden.

  Even at sixty, Tony Capello was still a commanding figure. He’d never cracked six feet, but he more than made up for his shorter physical stature in calm, logic, and decisive choices, especially during crises. His dark hair had long gone to gray—he told his children it was from raising them as teenagers after they lost their mother—but he still moved with the ease of a much younger man. Gemma smiled as she watched him talk, his hands expressively accompanying his point. You just can’t take the Sicilian out of the cop.

  McFarland dropped his bag between his feet and leaned sideways, cocking his head toward her. “Ever done a prison standoff before?”

  Gemma glanced sideways at him to find his eyes facing ahead. “No. You?”

  “Nope. I also haven’t done anything longer than a day or two. Mostly they’re only hours long. This one though . . . probably not so much.”

  “I have a feeling this one’s going to be a test of our endurance.”

  A dark-skinned, middle-aged woman wearing upper-rank white entered the room with DOC Commissioner Frye, a tall brunette in heels and a stylish skirt suit. The man talking to Tony excused himself, moved to shake the woman’s hand, and then waited as she and Tony took two seats in the front row before moving to stand in front of a smeared whiteboard badly in need of a good cleaning.

  “Good afternoon.” The older man, whose receding white hair was balanced with a bristly white mustache, stood with his feet braced apart and his hands on his hips as he scanned the room. “Thank you for coming out to assist. I’m OBCC Warden Carl Davis.” He gestured to the tall, thick-set woman beside him who wore her hair pulled back tightly into a simple bun. “This is Deputy Warden Nya Coleman.”

  A motion off to one side drew Gemma’s gaze. Lieutenant Cartwright stood framed in the doorway; he and his officers were still out in the corridor, unable to squeeze into the overpacked room with their bulky equipment and weapons.

  “About ninety minutes ago,” continued Davis, “an incident occurred in one of our two Enhanced Supervision Housing units. What started off as a prisoner escaping his shackles inside ESH1 became a fight, which then escalated to a hostage situation. For those of you unfamiliar with the ESHs, these are relatively new units, opened only a few years ago as an alternative to the Central Punitive Segregation units—solitary confinement—especially for inmates twenty-two and under, as per current DOC regulations. In solitary, inmates are in their cells for twenty-three hours a day with one hour of outside recreation time, if the inmate wants it. In an ESH, except for periods of lockdown when all inmates are in their cells twenty-four/seven, these inmates are out of their cells for a minimum of seven hours a day for interpersonal interaction. They’re also offered social programs and mental health assessments.

  “Ideally, it sounds like a great program. In practice, we’ve had significant difficulties. Part of the problem is the inmate populations in general and, specifically, in those units. The DOC is trying to decrease the inmate population by keeping more pretrial detainees in neighborhood facilities or out on bail pending their trials. They’ve been successful, but that means the population at Rikers, while smaller, is now a more dangerous group charged with more serious offenses. Those are the inmates we have in the ESHs. Most of them are gang members, and almost all of them have violent pasts. And violence is their go-to method to solve any problem, whether with an officer or with another inmate.” He tossed a glance in Cartwright’s direction that Gemma read as You know the kind . . .

  “What gangs are in ESH1?” The unseen voice came from the front of the room.

  “You name it, we have it. And all in very close quarters. It’s one of the reasons for the larger officer contingents in those cell blocks. It’s the only way to keep them under control. They don’t respond to reasoning, only to force.”

  On the other side of McFarland, Chen let out a low grumble of dissent.

  “This particular clash was between the Filero Kings and the Gutta Boys.” Davis beckoned someone in through the door. “I’d rather you hear what happened from a witness. Officer Neubeck, please come in.”

  A man squeezed past Cartwright, and Gemma recognized the correction officer she’d seen receiving medical treatment on the bench outside. His left eye was covered by a gauze dressing, and while his face was now clean, blood soaked the collar of his wrinkled, dirt-smudged shirt. He walked with a slight limp, and his knuckles were bloody and puffy. It looked like he’d given as good as he got.

  Neubeck came to stand beside Davis, glancing around the room and nervously shifting his weight from side to side. “Afternoon.” The word came out as a mumble, so he cleared his throat and tried again. “Afternoon.”

  Gemma could hear the correction officer in his tone.

  “We had an incident in ESH1 this afternoon. Following lunch, some of the inmates were out of their cells and shackled to the tables on the mezzanine, which is protocol for when they’re out of their cells. Rivas got free.”

  “How?” The question came from near the door.

  “A lot of the inmates, they learn how to get out of restraints. Some of the equipment, it’s not in the best shape. They know how to get loose. Rivas did and went after Burk, who was shackled a few tables over. He got Burk in a headlock, pulled out a switchblade, and started slicing the skin off his face.”

  A murmur of shock rippled through the room. What was a prisoner doing with a weapon like that inside a high-security unit? Sure, prisoners created their own shanks out of whatever was handy, but an actual switchblade?

  “It was a nightmare. There was blood everywhere and Burk was screaming and Rivas was yelling he was going to kill him slowly, starting with skinning him alive.”

  Gemma shuddered at the mental picture Neubeck was drawing in her mind. Rikers was rough, but this story was shining a spotlight on the brutality of inmate interactions.

  “The observing CO hit the alarm and we waded in to break it up. What we didn’t know was
four other guys were also free and they went after us so Rivas could keep working. A skills class was running in the classroom. Those inmates weren’t restrained, and they ran in to stop Rivas. It was total chaos and it all happened so fast.” He reached up and touched the gauze covering his eye. “It was a shit show. COs came from outside the unit. We would have gotten it under control, but then Rivas got Officer Evans in a choke hold with the switchblade to his throat right as the ERSU showed up.”

  Neubeck had to stop and take a breath. “Rivas told us to back off or he’d end Evans. And then if that didn’t get the point through, he’d move on to Officer Montgomer y. And then Officer Garvey. Other guys also had homemade weapons. A shank from a fork. A blade from a bit of radiator they’d ripped off. So we backed off, but had to leave eight COs behind. Some of the inmates begged to go with us, so we took anyone close who wanted to stay out of that powder keg. Then the inmates took over the control room and locked the door behind us.”

  Davis clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You did what you had to. We’ll go in and get our officers out. We won’t leave them in there with those . . .” His voice trailed off and Gemma could see him clamping down on the word he wanted to use—animals—and searching for a more acceptable term. “Inmates,” he finished.

  Neubeck tossed him a disgruntled look and stepped away, moving toward the door as if hoping for escape, but stopped short to stand against the side wall.

  Gemma studied the interaction with interest. Davis comes across as a magnanimous leader, but his own men don’t seem too fond of him.

  She glanced over at her own team to see if anyone else had picked up on it. McFarland’s eyes were fixed on the front of the room, as were Williams’s, but Chen raised a single eyebrow at her as if to say Did you catch that?

  “That’s where we are now,” Davis continued. “We’re still confirming head counts of both staff and inmates, but it looks like forty-two out of the original fifty inmates are still inside. Only inmates near the door were able to be escorted by the COs if they wanted out, so we’re not sure how many are there unwillingly. And they have eight COs. The building’s on lockdown—hell, the entire island’s on lockdown—and there’s an ERSU team stationed right outside the door, ready to move in if we give them the go-ahead. Or in case someone comes out, which doesn’t seem likely, but we’re prepared no matter what.”

  “We’ll replace that team with my A-Team officers,” Cartwright said from where he leaned against the door frame. “That way we’re ready to go right away. Then your men can assist with this and other facilities on lockdown.”

  The twist of Davis’s lips telegraphed he wasn’t happy with his decreasing control of this situation as the NYPD came in and took over, but he remained silent.

  “What kind of communication do you have into the unit?” Garcia asked, raising his voice to be heard at the front of the room.

  “We had security cameras in there, but the first thing the inmates did was rip them down or destroy them, so we don’t have eyes anymore. There’s phone communication into the control room. Each CO has a radio, but we’ve heard nothing from them, so they probably don’t have them anymore.”

  “What are our tactical options?” Cartwright asked.

  “Correction units are designed to be hard to escape from, but in this case, it makes it hard for us to get access to that same space. There are only three entrances to the unit—the main door from the corridor, and the emergency exit doors at the back of each of the two levels that lead to a stairwell and emergency exit. They’re all controlled from inside the unit, but we have alternate controls outside each door in case something like this ever happens. They’re usually locked out, but we have access to them. We can get you in as soon as you’re ready. I’d like to see my guys home for dinner tonight.”

  “It’s way too early to jump to that option,” Garcia said. “You’re going to need to moderate your expectations. A tactical entry at this time isn’t advised.”

  “You don’t know who you’re dealing with. These men are brutal. They won’t hesitate to kill or maim to get what they want. You need to get in there and get my officers out.”

  “I’ve been a negotiator for nearly fifteen years and a cop for more than a decade before that. I know exactly who I’m dealing with. And I’ve seen situations like this before. You go in with force, you’re going to lose lives, including your officers. Let the negotiators get in there. Give us a chance to talk them down.”

  “I agree,” said Deputy Warden Coleman, pinning the warden with a hard stare. “We don’t know who’s in charge up there or what kind of hold he has on the rest of the inmates. We might be able to talk to someone who understands the bind they’re now in.”

  Davis shot an acidic glance at Coleman.

  This guy doesn’t seem to be anyone’s favorite.

  “What do we know about the hostages?” Garcia asked. “Where are they holding them? Are they together, split up?”

  “The little we got before we lost visuals showed the inner doors all open and COs being held inside a couple of the central cells. But that was nearly an hour ago.”

  “That’s smart,” said Cartwright. “That gives the inmates plenty of time to get to the COs and kill them at the first sign of a perimeter breach. Someone is thinking rationally.”

  “What about injuries to our people?” asked a man in doctor’s scrubs. “As we can see from Officer Neubeck, there are injuries from the riot itself, not to mention anything that came after. If any of our officers are injured, we need to tend to them.”

  “That will be a negotiating tactic,” Garcia said. “We’ll negotiate for care for both the inmates and the correction officers. If they want the one, they’ll have to allow the other. That will let us get a real feel for the situation.”

  “We need to be careful of the mix of inmates we’ve got in there,” Deputy Warden Coleman said. “Warden Davis mentioned the gang issue, which is a problem anywhere on Rikers, but in ESH1, it’s going to be particularly problematic. It’s a pressure cooker at the best of times, but now . . . now it’s going to be a war zone because of the rival gangs.” She glanced over to Neubeck, who nodded in agreement.

  “We need to know whatever information you have,” said Garcia. “Once we make contact, it will help us know who we’re dealing with, and who’s at risk. We’ll need to find leverage over whoever is calling the shots . . . for everyone’s safety.”

  “There’s a wide range of gang members in there,” Coleman continued. “And different allegiances have formed between them because when you’re inside, you do what’s necessary to survive, even if it means calling a cease-fire with someone who’d be an enemy outside these walls. But there are those labeled as snitches by gang members. And ‘snitches get stitches’ doesn’t even begin to describe what these inmates will do to each other if they feel they’ve been wronged and have a chance at retribution. As it is, I’m afraid we may be about ninety minutes late there.”

  Davis jammed his hands in his pockets, his hunched shoulders stiff. “The first few minutes after an incident like this, it’s chaos. And it’s likely that following the retreat of the ERSU and the COs, vendettas were carried out while there was no hierarchy in place and no one in charge. At the beginning, it will be every man for himself.”

  “The first thing we need to do then is establish if anyone is injured. Or worse, dead,” Garcia stated. “Where would you like us?”

  “We’ve cleared an office for you.” Coleman pointed out the door diagonally across the hall. “They’re setting up the communication equipment you requested. If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you there.”

  Garcia led the team as they wound along the outskirts of the room and to the door, where they had to sidestep around Cartwright and his bulky gear to step from the stuffy heat of the meeting room into the cooler corridor air. Garcia stopped momentarily to talk to Coleman, and Gemma halted right behind him.

  She closed her eyes for a second and drew in a relieved breath a
s cool air washed over her. It had been uncomfortably warm in the meeting room, and the stress and fury from many of its occupants had raised both the temperature of the room and her own tension. She needed to let go of the absorbed stress to prepare to make contact with the inmates. A negotiator had to be calm at all times, so starting with stress only made a hard job immensely more difficult. She blew out a long breath and opened her eyes.

  And met Sean Logan’s gaze.

  Standing six feet away, he was dressed all in black, his bulletproof vest stamped with NYPD ESU and his heavy helmet in place, hiding his blond hair. He stood at rest, his hands layered over the butt of his rifle where it hung from its sling with the barrel pointed at the floor. She held his gaze without flinching—You didn’t have to take that shot—and then purposely turned away from him and fixed her gaze on Garcia as he finished his conversation.

  Garcia turned back to his team. “We’re in here.” He led the way down the hallway and through a doorway marked CONFERENCE ROOM 2.

  Gemma shoved down her irritation at Logan. Now was not the time for her head to be somewhere other than in the game.

  It was time to see who was still alive in ESH1.

  And who they could keep alive.

  CHAPTER 3

  The conference room was small, but it would be more than sufficient for their needs, even for a protracted negotiation. No fancy presentation equipment, glossy table, or cushy chairs; this room was strictly bare bones—a narrow table that sat six, held up by paired collapsible legs at each end, and surrounded by scratched black plastic chairs. But the phone equipment Garcia had requested sat in the middle of the table, even if it did look straight out of the 1970s.

  Garcia frowned at the basic equipment. “McFarland?”

  McFarland, a natural-born tech whiz, though it wasn’t his official role on the team, always seemed to be able to work wonders with almost nothing. “I’ve got it, sir. We’ll be ready for full communications in a few minutes.”

  As McFarland got busy setting up the equipment they’d need, liberally adding pieces from his bag of tricks, Garcia turned to the rest of the team. “We’ve lost a lot of time already and we need to make contact as soon as communications are ready, so let’s get organized.” He pulled two chairs away from the table, skirting McFarland as he sidestepped to drop a set of mic’d headphones on the far end of the table and pulled three more unmic’d sets from his bag. Garcia pointed to the chair on the far side, farthest from the door. “I’m going to make a calculation about suspect response, and put you, Capello, as primary negotiator.”