25 Hours: The Last Hostage

By R L Humphries

Jake Barlow and his wife Anne have been living a sedate life, after Jake has helped the Police solve some difficult murders. He and Anne were threatened at these times, and were glad to be finished with dead bodies, guns and knives. He begins to write books and life is peaceful. Until Jake goes into Brisbane city to do some banking and then looks forward to meeting beautiful Anne for lunch. It's a nice spring morning and Jake is at peace, waiting for his appointment at the bank. He sees three young men of middle eastern appearance come into the bank and then begin shooting, killing a security guard and taking over the bank. When things calm they let it be known that their 20 hostages will be sacrificed until the Australian people contribute ten million dollars to a ransom fund. They have three million from the bank so need seven million. Jake takes a lead role and, despite being bashed by the Jihadists, continues to try to reason with them. When donations to the ransom slow, the Muslims kill two hostages and a plain cloths policeman, detected because of his concealed pistol. The bandits decide to use Jake as a conduit for their demands, through Anne, who eventually is in touch with the Prime Minister. Jake formulates a secret plan but things go wrong until Jake can reason with the Muslims. Their demands for safe transport with the ransom money are met and they travel to an aerodrome where a jet plane awaits. Jake is tied and is kept by the bandits as the last hostage after they release all the others. They are going to take Jake to Syria where they will publicly behead him because he's been a difficult hostage Jake is securely bound with tape and a necklace bomb and a suicide bomb are attached. The watching Annie thinks that, finally, her husband has met his match. She watches , in agony, as the TV shows Jake being loaded on the jet, which takes off for Syria and his certain death. But she still has faith in her husband...

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Dec 15, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483544847

Book preview

fiction

Chapter 1

Tuesday--9:25 am

Jake Barlow

I’d opened my eyes, gazed upon my sleeping wife, and, as one does, contemplated the day ahead on this beautiful spring morning in Brisbane.

It was going to be a very pleasant day…. a quick visit to the bank in the city; a leisurely visit to the State Library doing research for my latest book; then lunch with gorgeous Annie at her favourite posh restaurant; some shopping, because Anne couldn’t pass any shop’s open door; and a quiet evening at home with my favourite girl.

Instead, I’m sitting on the floor of a bank, with my back against a counter, watching three hysterical young masked and robed Jihadists waving submachine guns around and screaming what I assumed were threats…or orders.

In Brisbane?

Nothing like this happened in Brisbane.

Nothing like this had happened in Australia! A short time ago I’d been sitting in the Commonwealth Bank, awaiting my appointment with a financial adviser, when, for some reason, I noticed the three young men enter the bank and move over to the big high desks that people used to fill out forms.

Each carried quite a big bag, and they had a fourth very big bag which two of them shared. Each was of Middle Eastern appearance and each, to me, spelled trouble. I was about to draw someone’s attention to them but a middle-aged security guard beat me to it. Bags and Middle Eastern appearance were definitely questionable in Australia at the present time. Fear of Muslim terrorists was rampant. Public beheadings in places like Syria were becoming the norm.

They confirmed my worst fears. As the guard approached, being courteous and not drawing his gun, one of the men pulled a pistol from within his jacket and shot the guard in the head. He went down and the blood flowed.

Then the screaming and panic began and people headed for the exits, so panicked that a few tripped over the dead guard’s body.

The bandits let them go, reaching down into their bags and pulling out small machine guns. Well-drilled, they moved across to the door, guns ready, and blocked the exit. They were screaming at everybody and ordering them down onto the floor, face down. All parties in this drama were screaming.

One bandit ran to us and around behind the cluster of desks where we were. We heard shots and my financial adviser said, ‘They’ve got the manager and his staff.’ His eyes were bulging.

But not so. The bandit came back, half-dragging Colin Burns, the manager. Brad Wilson, the assistant manager, was trying to help support Colin, who’d pissed himself, the poor bugger. The gunman waved his gun at us and pointed out to the front and we joined the other innocent and terrified customers. I felt very sorry for Col. I knew him and he was a good bloke. In these circumstances people would look to him for leadership but Col was well beyond that point, on his way to abject terror. A few young girls came running out from the back, terrified, and joined the others on the floor.

So what were the shots, Jake? I asked myself.

I thought for a while and guessed that the gunman had disabled the elevators and the opening mechanisms of the doors at the rear. I suppose they’d locked the fire doors in some way. They’d cut us off from escape or help from outside.

I took a peep at our captors and they were now fully theatrically dressed in Arab robes, with scarves wound around their lower faces, and their heads. They must have carried their wardrobes in those bags.

Now, they’d stopped screaming at people and were standing guard. Waiting.

So that’s what I did. Waited.

Here I am, Jake Barlow, a loyal and harmless Commonwealth Bank customer enjoying a peaceful life and hoping to do a little business. All of us bewildered citizens were. The Commonwealth Bank in King George Square in Brisbane was where we were.

I took another look and the robbers seemed bothered. Perhaps this was their first time? My first quick look at them made me think that they were very young.

Two of them started to count their hostages. I counted with them until they got near me. Then I ducked my head. We wanted no excited gunmen with nervous trigger fingers now, did we?

Then they moved around, tapping some people on the head with their gun barrels and telling them they could go. I waited, a little tense, but the release concluded well short of Barlow. Hard luck!

I’d been involved in a few hairy scrapes in my time and had saved myself and my lovely wife, Anne, in all of them. I was arrogant enough to think that, being one of the hostages, I might be able to help. I think I wouldn’t have gone, even if I’d been tagged. What Annie would have thought of that is something not to go near.

They held twenty of us, customers and staff, in the main public area of the bank. This branch is housed on the ground floor of the big Commonwealth Bank building in Adelaide Street just across the road from King George Square in front of the Brisbane City Hall.

Things were now fairly quiet except for the sobbing of quite a few of the women. I didn’t blame them. As I said, I’d been in some risky situations which had involved violence and some shooting, so my task now was to think our way out of this one. I wasn’t fearful. That, fortunately for me, wasn’t my nature. These ladies were harmless housewives and bank officers and in a terrible place.

Courage, ladies! I’ll try to help.

While we sat, the bank-robbing Muslims were busy. The apparent leader pulled a laptop computer from a bag and plugged it into a power point and spent some time fiddling with different sites. I could see most of the screen from where I was sitting. Satisfied, he went to the branch manager and pulled him to his feet—pretty roughly. Col was not a young man, overweight and bald and he was scared---his eyes huge and bloodshot. Two of them dragged him around the back. There was some shouting and then they dragged him back to us, and I mean dragged. The poor man’s legs had gone and wouldn’t function. When these arrogant young Jihadist or whatever they were, saw that the poor bugger had wet himself, they began to mock him, in English, asking loudly if he needed a diaper (their word) and cruelly humiliated him. Eventually they flung him away from them onto the floor.

And so we were all down again, sitting on the floor, leaning back on the fronts of the counters.

And now it’s time to start thinking, Jake.

First of all, think of Anne, your wife and the most beautiful woman in the world and, probably by now, the most worried. I’d set out from our lovely home by the Brisbane River at Hawthorne, dressed in a nice suit, checked over by Annie, before she sent me off.

There was a huge irony in all of this. Anne and I had been married for ten years and our marriage had begun in the middle of a series of murders in our Retirement Village at the Gold Coast. I’d solved them and we departed to Hawthorne. Then I’d become involved in more murder cases, helping my mate, Jerry Hellen, the Police Commissioner. We’d gone close to being on the receiving end, Annie and I, so she asked me to stay clear of all murders in future. I promised and I nearly had. But some priests were being murdered in Brisbane, the Police asked for my help so I helped. And things had got dicey there, with Annie wounding a bloke who was about to shoot me. I’d gone closer than was comfortable so I promised Annie I was finished with all that. I now wrote books.

And now, here I am, involved in more violence. I could imagine Annie’s reaction when she heard. Dismay!

And now I could see armed and armoured Police gathering over the road in King George Square and the helicopters started to flap above us.

The Muslims seemed startled and unsettled. What had they expected---a concert by the combined city brass bands? I watched them carefully. Their state of mind affected our wellbeing greatly. We want nice calm bank robbers here, folks; not nervous trigger fingers.

I looked around at my fellow captives---I suppose we were hostages; time would tell, or one of the Muslims, perhaps. At present they were gazing above, where the choppers were. The hostages were sitting patiently, but a young girl next to me was dabbing at her eyes and nose. She was very frightened and understandably so. They were your ordinary Brisbane shoppers and office workers, caught in the wrong place. There were eight women and nine men, including me, plus the two bank managers. There were three middle-aged women and the young, frightened girl beside me. The other four were youngish. The men were all fairly young. I sized them up. Would they be any help in a fight? They looked fit but what about guts? And a fight was the only way we were going to get out of this thing. That or meekly die, and I’d never do that. Or, be smart, Jake!

The first thing to do was to find out who the hysterical Arabs are and why they’re here. To rob the bank, obviously, but, by the ranks of Police and probably Army, outside, they couldn’t depart with the money unless they used us as hostages.

Well, Jake, the best way is to talk to them, I guess.

They were grouped around the laptop so I stood up with my hands held high, like my kids used to do in front of the TV each morning---‘Reach for the sky!’

Huey, Dewey and Louie didn’t notice until I loudly cleared my throat, and then they went off their heads, shouting at me and pointing to the floor. I shook my head and called, ‘I want to talk but I have no Arabic. Does one of you speak English?’

They kept shouting and pointing guns, so I sat. They watched me for a while and then turned back to the computer. It certainly was engaging them.

When I sat, I moved closer to the young girl and patted her hand. She was still weepy.

And then, as I looked up, there was a bank security guard, with his pistol drawn, lying behind one of the counters. He showed himself to me and then pulled back

He suddenly jumped to his feet behind the counter and started shooting. But he was nervous and his shots sprayed, missing the Muslims. They returned fire and they didn’t miss. I saw blood spray from his head. He made a noise and fell to the floor. One of