More than half of Jimmy's week-long vacation had passed, yet there hadn't been any information about the OPR investigation. No one had informed him, and calling directly to ask was also not an option, as Jimmy didn't know anyone from the OPR side.

Fortunately, just after Jimmy got back, he received a call from Peter who gave him a phone number for a brokerage firm the department worked with. It seemed his house hunt might be looking up.

Jimmy arranged a meeting with the broker, and the two chatted in a coffee shop next to Jimmy's apartment. The broker offered several options, all apartments they had information on; the ones in better locations were going for over $600,000, while the less pricey ones were around $200,000. Of course, these cheaper apartments were smaller and in less desirable locations.

Feeling that the options were a bit small, the broker played his trump card, auction houses repossessed by the banks. Due to the stock market crash following the internet bubble of 2000, a significant number of people had defaulted on their loans, leading to banks taking possession of their homes. These properties would enter the auction process and, even now in mid-2002, a substantial number remained unsold. For those with the right connections, acquiring such properties was not an issue.

After agreeing to some conditions, the brokerage firm began searching for the right house for Jimmy—one not too far from Manhattan, reasonably priced, and larger than the previous options.

Jimmy left the rest to the broker, and went home to rest. But his vacation didn't offer much respite. Just as he arrived home, he received a call from Ruiz, "Jimmy, are you still in New York?"

Jimmy: "Yes, I'm at home."

Ruiz: "Get ready, I'll come pick you up."

Jimmy: "Wait, I've been forced on leave by Hughes, is it appropriate for me to get involved in a case now?"

Ruiz: "I'll call Hughes. Wait for me downstairs," he said, and then hung up the phone.

Jimmy rushed back to his bedroom, got dressed in a suit along with two holsters, and went downstairs to wait. It wasn't long before Ruiz arrived by car, and Jimmy took the passenger seat.

Ruiz: "Fxxk, a bank robbery just happened in Queens. Four gunmen entered the bank, taking the manager hostage. An employee triggered a silent alarm, and now the NYPD has surrounded the bank."

Jimmy: "What does that have to do with us? Isn't this something for the Queens office to handle?"

Ruiz slapped the steering wheel, "One of the robbers has been identified by the tattoo on his arm; he's a member of the MS13 gang. We need to get there and figure out how deep their involvement is."

The MS13, a gang of Latin American origin, started in Los Angeles. In the 1980s, civil war broke out in El Salvador, causing a large number of refugees to flee their homes and head to the United States, including some members of the Salvadoran guerrilla forces. They originally formed their gang in Los Angeles' 13th street district, and later, due to various reasons, they recruited a large number of refugees from Honduras and El Salvador.

To survive, these refugees had to join gangs for protection, and M13 skyrocketed. Their members were numerous, spreading from South America to Canada; a significant portion was within the United States. According to FBI files, members of M13 were definitively present in over 40 states. Incomplete statistics suggest that there are at least 10,000 members just within the US borders.

Later they recruited members from within prisons, and the influx of hardened criminals propelled M13 onto a path of large-scale violent crime, involving smuggling, drug trafficking, robbery, and murder. One could find individuals with M13 gang tattoos even in the Latin American communities of New York's various boroughs.

As the FBI and police crackdown, the gang typically started to organize their illegal activities more tightly. Typically, such gangs wouldn't get involved in crimes like bank robberies, which could easily implicate the entire local gang. Speaking strictly, the various gangs in New York usually instruct their members to steer clear of such cases.

Jimmy had previously examined the files. Recollecting the information he read, he asked Ruiz, "When did MS13 start robbing banks again?"

Ruiz: "There haven't been any bank robberies by them recently; I'm not clear on the details. We'll see what's going on once we arrive at the scene."

Ruiz drove to Springfield in Queens, where the bank was already heavily surrounded. Field agents from the FBI's Brooklyn-Queens office had also arrived on the scene.

The FBI's New York branch had a local headquarters in Manhattan, as well as the Brooklyn-Queens office, which handled Brooklyn and Queens; the Hudson River Valley office, covering Dutchess, Orange, and Sullivan; the John F. Kennedy office, responsible for LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International Airports; the Long Island office, for Nassau and Suffolk counties; the Westchester office, covering Putnam, Rockland, and Westchester.

Normally, if a case involved other districts, the Manhattan office would take charge of coordinating with other offices for on-site processing. Of course, sending agents directly from the Manhattan office to the scene wasn't an issue either.

"What's the situation now?" Once Ruiz arrived on the scene, he asked, finding the FBI agents' position. Jimmy followed by his side.

"The four robbers have been surrounded. In the bank lobby, we can see two of the robbers. There are 18 hostages including staff gathered in the lobby, and the two robbers are hiding in blind spots, invisible from outside.

The other two robbers' whereabouts in the bank are still unknown; they're presumed to be around the vault area. That van parked over there is the vehicle they came in, but they left no driver inside."

"Do we have the building blueprints of the bank?"

"We do, and they're currently with the ESU team, which is planning their strategy."

"Have we confirmed the identities of the robbers?"

"No, we've only identified one person so far due to part of a tattoo visible on his right forearm, which we believe to be an MS13 tattoo. The others are all masked and have not exposed any body parts, so we cannot confirm."

Ruiz didn't continue the conversation; instead, he walked towards the ESU team. The ESU, New York's version of SWAT, had already deployed a negotiation specialist, but the negotiator was currently outside the bank, shouting to communicate with those inside. The robbers, however, would not open the door or make any demands.

In such cases where robbers took hostages inside a bank, resolving the situation quickly was difficult. From the moment the alarm was raised to when Jimmy and the others arrived, more than two hours had passed. With the police, FBI, and special forces involved, waiting and maintaining the siege were the only options. In a large city like New York with a thriving media industry, senior officials often avoided the responsibility for casualties resulting from a forceful breach, leading to indefinite delays in case resolution. Encounters lasting several hours, or even a day, were entirely possible.

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