e Sydney hostage siege was ended in just three minutes in the middle of the night Tuesday, but it took 16½ hours to get there — and it might have started more than a year before that.  Police stormed the Lindt Chocolate Cafe in Sydney\&#x27;s central business district at 2:19 a.m. (10:19 a.m. ET Monday) when they heard gunshots from inside, where a man was still holding a dozen of the 17 hostages he\&#x27;d taken the previous morning.  By 2:22, people were being carried and wheeled out on stretchers…