American Shutdown - Chapter 8: Panic Sets In

Because Sam, Peg and Jermaine had taken a back way out of the plant the officers on site were not aware of their presence. Peg had started walking back to her car with Mimi to get warm while Sam went into the busy throng of police and M-Mtek employees to find someone who looked like a head honcho to fill him in on what the deal was with Bernie.

He noticed a Waltham police captain who looked familiar to him but wasn’t exactly sure why. He took a shot and approached him with his hand extended to ask him if he knew him from somewhere. It helped having his M-Mtek ID badge dangling from around his neck when he said to Captain James Mahoney, “Hey, I work for M-Mtek and my best bud at the office might be the guy inside causing all this panic. Do you know yet who it is?”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say. Aren’t you the guy who helps Iraq vets with personal problems and such?” Mahoney asked.

“Yep, that’s me. That must be why I recognized you. Were you in Iraq,” Sam asked back?

“Two tours and out.” The captain added, “I’m lucky the police force took me back when I got home. I had one of those missions where I can’t tell you what I did there.”

Sam alerted Captain Mahoney, “Look, my wife and an M-Mtek another guy took a back way out of the building. Jermaine, the plant janitor, said he was near the percussion bomb set off inside. He thinks it’s my buddy, Bernie Soloff who’s holed-up in the third floor conference room. I’ve been wondering where he’s been all day. All morning he had been checking in sporadically asking me to do stuff for him relative to the shutdown drill. He said he had a lot of chores to do. Around 3 PM, just before we had to turn in our company-owned stuff in the conference room, he did come back on site. He might have hostages with him. My wife is in her car right now talking to his wife. She’s been worried about him all day, too. The guy takes meds for PTSD.”

“Well, in that case we’d better get you over to the command center trailer to see if they might need you to help them with this mess,” the captain replied.

“Thanks, Jim. Bernie’s wife thinks it’s him for sure - that he’s crying out for help. And, yes, I think I can help,” Sam assured.

“Well let’s get over to the command center and I’ll introduce you to Special Agent Dean Ramos from the F.B.I. who’s in charge of the negotiation team.

Most police departments had mobile trailers or motorized units that could be hauled out to a public emergency site whether it was a disaster or hostage situation. It was a sign of the times. The town in which M-Mtek was located was no different than hundreds of others who needed to be prepared for the worst.

Captain Mahoney led the way up the skimpy aluminum steps into the mobile command center’s technical unit office. Sam followed him over to the coffee maker that sounded like a fresh batch was brewing. “First things first,” the captain grinned.

Sam quickly pored over the inside of the trailer and was impressed with what he saw, especially the advanced communication gear they had for occasions such as this. He could see much of it was wireless and interfaced with the complex systems of the other federal, state and local public safety agencies.

Seeing the equipment, he said to Jim, “If that’s Bernie in there, he’d know all about this communications stuff you have in here. That’s what he kind of did in Iraq and what he did for us at M-Mtek. He ran the worldwide communications networks for the entire company out of our Waltham facility.”

“Really,“ Jim responded, as the sputtering of the coffee maker stopped. “How do you like your’s?”

“Black,” Sam, said. “It’s high test, I hope.”

“Oh, yes. It’s high test and mean. Only way we make it around here,” the captain joked back.

With coffee mugs in hand, the captain escorted Sam over to the only enclosed office in the command center. Inside the office was a casually dressed officer with a cell phone to his ear. He looked up while still listening to his phone, waved at him and the captain while pointing to the two chairs against the wall.

He told the party to whom he was speaking that he had to go because Mahoney had a guy who says he knows our guy in the conference room. The guy says he works with him and is good friends with him.

“So, you’re Sam.” He started by explaining, “Sorry about my lack of a formal officer uniform. It was my day off and I had to come in off the 93 on our way to the Rockingham Mall where we were going to do some shopping.”

Captain Mahoney interrupted, “Sam, this is Commander Mike McCardle. He’s been around a while in the force.”

Sam greeted the commander with, “Well, pleased to meet you, I guess, under the circumstances. Yeah, Jermaine, our custodian at the plant, was near the percussion bomb and stumbled into my office on the second floor in a daze to tell me he was pretty sure it was Bernie Soloff holed up in the third floor conference room. Bernie and I are good friends. He’s an Iraq War vet and runs all our corporate communications networks out of the Waltham facility.”

Commander McCardle asked Sam if Jermaine actually saw him in the conference room or was speculating based upon hearing a voice or something along those lines.

Sam had to admit to the commander that Jermaine never said he saw him in the room. He was so woozy that by the time they got him out of the building he was going in and out of consciousness. They had to hauled him off to the hospital with an EMT rig before they could question him further.

“Mike, I know this guy, Bernie,” Sam emphasized. “We golf a lot together. He’s been acting real strange since the meeting in the cafeteria this morning when they announced they were shutting the plant cold turkey at 6 PM this evening. He’s been making excuses to me all day why he wouldn’t be at the plant to pick up his separation package or turn in his company issued cell phone and such. His wife, Mimi, has been calling my wife all day. She’s a wreck and believes it’s him in there - that he’s crying for help. My wife, Peg, might still be in her car talking on her cell with Mimi.”

“You golf with him. Is that why you’re wearing red socks?” noted the commander. “So, what is it you want to do? You want to see if you can connect with whomever is in there? And, if it’s Bernie, then what? I got this feeling you want to try to talk him out before he does more damage, right?”

“Hey, it would be your call, commander,” Sam fired back. “The wife brought me the socks from home when we went out to lunch at Jimmies. Mine got wet when I tried to jump a slush bucket by the parking spot I got this morning.”

Commander McCardle asked Sam what he thought his friend was capable of doing in a hostage situation. Sam informed him Bernie had post-traumatic stress disorder and may be over the top from the abrupt shutdown announcement.

McCardle directed Captain Mahoney to entertain Sam while he cleared the idea of Sam connecting up with whomever it was in the third floor conference room. And, if it was Bernie, to try to have Sam talk some sense into him.

“Well, let’s find a place to cool our heals outside the office,” Captain Jim told Sam with a nod to the commander. “How about more coffee. Never enough coffee in situations like this. Right, Sam?”

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American Shutdown by Benjamin F. Campanelli
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