[Up for a little more Freedom Fiction, Gentle Reader? This one is mine. — FWP.]
Less than half a second after the alarm light flashed on his intercom panel, Integral Security Services commander and CEO Kevin Conway surged out from behind his desk, plucked his life vest from his coat tree, and sprinted down the stairs toward the monitoring room.
He donned the vest as he ran. People were scurrying and red lights flashing throughout the building. As he passed through the ready room, he distributed quick shoulder pats and murmurs of encouragement to the officers garbing for battle, then moved as swiftly as was politic to the large, dark chamber that housed Integral’s twenty-four-hour audio / video monitoring operation.
The officers on duty at the monitoring stations were unusually quiet even for them. The overhead screen tuned to the feed from Integral’s drone aircraft displayed the reason: a SWAT team of considerable size assembling in the staging area behind Onteora County’s First Precinct.
This one could get ugly.
He stooped to whisper to the young woman attending to that data stream.
“Do we have a target yet, Phyllis?”
She shook her head, eliciting a faint rattle from her headgear. “Still quiet, Boss. Orders should be coming down…wait one.”
Conway held his breath. On the screen, a police lieutenant was unfolding a stapled sheaf of papers.
“2317 Kettle Knoll in Foxwood, Boss,” the young woman murmured.
That’s Art Giordano’s place.
