by A D Davies
Harpal slid into the passageway and Tane followed. Neither knew which way to go, so they headed toward the nearest stairwell. Harpal reasoned it was a sensible escape route to monitor, along with the stairs near the lecture hall and the elevators. Anyone posing a threat would cover each ingress and, manpower permitting, the exits too. Phil had said he’d spotted four on the roof, but that was before he could perform a full sweep. Then he got cut off.
“Hiding your employer in a loft, eh?” Harpal said. “Did they teach you that in close protection school?”
“Protect the principle,” Tane replied. “And since you might be useful to her, protecting you, too. Unless you think dragging four unarmed people around with me is better than just the one.”
“You didn’t have an emergency plan?”
“Yeah, but four suspicious individuals who get seen on camera means at least four others I can’t see. Lying low is the best tactic at this stage. Until we know the landscape.”
At the stairwell doors, Harpal lowered his voice and pressed himself against the wall. “Any idea who they are?”
“If it’s the North Koreans, they’re working for Ryom Jung-Hwan.”
“Who’s that? One of those crazy generals?”
“Private businessman. But loyal. Very loyal. They have contractors who’re former soldiers, and our intelligence says a fellow called Ah Dae-Sung is running the squad.”
Harpal searched his memory but could find no mention of that in any dispatches or briefings. “Okay, ready?”
Tane nodded and advanced on the doorway, gun tight to his chest. He counted down by dipping his chin three times, then gradually turned the handle and eased the door open. He listened.
Harpal cocked his ear that way, hearing nothing.
Tane widened the crack enough to blade his body through, weapon ready.
Harpal held the door, checking left and right as the big Kiwi intelligence officer craned his neck to view upward, then sidestepped to check down. He then backed up into the hallway and indicated Harpal should follow, shutting off the would-be escape route.
Once they were several strides away, Tane spoke in a low but urgent tone. “I couldn’t see exactly, but there were shadows. At least two people.”
“Could be students snogging.”
“Kids don’t need to hide when they make out. It was someone who shouldn’t be there. I don’t think I alerted them, but let’s check the other way out.”
Unarmed, Harpal felt exposed. Yes, he could shoot and handle physical confrontation better than the average man in the street, but he was in no position to question Tane leading this exit strategy.
Tane chopped the air with one straight hand, approaching the vestibule with two elevators. “If we get comms back up with your man, do you think you can reconfigure the satellites to map a way off the grounds?”
“I doubt it,” Harpal replied. “For one thing, by the time we get comms back up, we should be out of here. For another, we don’t have any satellites.”
Tane sighed at this, seemingly expecting LORI to have been as well-resourced as the FBI or Homeland Security. “Watch our backs.”
He flattened himself against the wall, gun close to his leg, and switched to a casual “leaning” pose as a kid of around twenty exited an elevator car and walked with a bobbing motion, ear pods buzzing. With his thumbs hooked into his backpack straps, he gave Tane and Harpal a cursory glance, before bobbing on his way. He hadn’t seen the pistol.
Tane resumed his military frame and peered around the corner. “Clear.”
Harpal followed him along the passageway beyond the lobby, approaching the lecture hall where they had first encountered Professor Garcia. The door was closed.
Harpal said, “The way we came in, the back of the hall?”
“It takes us straight out into the main quad. Plenty of people. If we’ll have a clear line from the janitorial closet, I think we have a better chance of getting Sally clear.”
“You’re sure they want her alive? Not a kill-squad?”
“If they wanted that, they could have jumped her anytime. Nah, this is an abduction. They want what she hasn’t left lying around on her laptop or YouTube.”
“And what’s that? Because it sounds—”
“Help me get her out of here, and then we’ll discuss it.”
Harpal repeated the process used when accessing the stairwell: palm on the door handle, squeeze, depress the lever, crack the door… Eye to the vertical gap running from the floor to the top of the frame.
Not in complete darkness, but very little light.
Harpal eased it closed. “We left the lights on. Are they motion activated?”
“They are. Guessing that means nobody is moving around in there.”
“Also makes us immediate targets if someone is lying in wait.”
“Then I guess we’d better be clever about it. We’re students looking for the prof.”
Without waiting for Harpal to agree, Tane opened the door fully and called out, “Professor Garcia?”
Harpal came in beside him. Cementing the ruse, he employed an American accent. “Yeah, Professor Garcia, I wanted to ask about that coffin in the ice.”
Both men wandered farther in, activating the nearest lights. They flickered on in turn, starting in their corner and spreading along the front. Nothing in the auditorium lit up.
Tane stared at the darker areas, dim rather than pitch black. He hefted his gun from the blind side of his right leg in a two-handed grip. He signaled with two fingers that Harpal should go past him towards the teaching station, then resumed his double hold.
“Come on, man,” Harpal said, retaining his American accent as he followed Tane’s directions. “She ain’t here. Let’s check out her office.”
“Nah, brah, I heard she sleeps in here sometimes.” He chuckled. “Crazy kook.”
Harpal laughed, reaching the heavy-looking desk, and wondering why he was here instead of retreating to the safety of the corridor. When Tane made a scooping shape with his free hand, Harpal slowly moved the chair and found a bundle of tape stuck to the underside of the desk.
“Professor?” Tane called.
As he adopted a shooting crouch, covering the seating arrangement, Harpal picked at the tape. He clamped the end between his thumb and forefinger and pulled as slowly as he could manage.
A barely audible rip sounded.
Both men froze, straining to see beyond the first ten rows. Nothing moved. No shadows. But the lights had plainly spooked Tane into initiating a more thorough search.
Once Tane recommenced moving, Harpal gave the tape another tug, this time eliciting a longer rip as gum disconnected from wood.
Again, they turned into statues, ears and eyes tuned for any sign of life.
When life failed to materialize, Tane twisted toward Harpal and raised a finger to his lips. Harpal braced two hands on the slack tongue of electrical tape, a pistol’s butt visible. He wondered how long it had been here, and what would have happened if a cleaner or other teacher searching for a dropped pen had spotted it. Maybe Tane removed it each evening and reinstalled it before class, giving him—and Sally Garcia—access to a firearm he couldn’t conceal in a shoulder holster.
What had made him risk the backup piece today?
“It’s a bust, brah,” Tane said, winding his hand to say, hurry. “Let’s go.”
Harpal managed to dislodge another inch of tape without transmitting it around the lecture hall, then got his hand around the grip. It was very sticky on one side. He waggled it but could not release it. He gave it a firm twist, which tore off several inches more tape and made the desk move, scraping on the floor as the gun pulled free. It was very loud.
The first of the men in janitorial overalls pounced from behind a white board that someone had wheeled to the right. He barreled forwards. The man of Southeast Asian appearance was built like he had been chiseled from stone in anticipation of worship by those who valued strength.
Harp
al whipped up the gun at the same time as Tane drew on the charging man. Before either could fire, their target halted, hands in the air, eyes wide as if startled by the weapons. Neither opened fire.
Mistake.
Two gunshots cracked in quick succession, but Tane had already thrown himself to the floor. The slugs impacted the closest wall, making Harpal duck lower. He brought the gun back up and fired in the general direction of the attackers.
Tane rolled and snapped onto one knee, but his target had fled behind the second row of seats and the barrel of a gun snaked around to fire blindly. He joined Harpal at the desk which was only hiding their exact position rather than bestowing a bulletproof nest from which to shoot.
Tane checked himself for bullet wounds, then returned fire. “Damn it. I knew it couldn’t be that easy. At least this will bring the cops.”
They only had moments until their attackers shredded the wooden desk. To have any chance of surviving, they had to keep the gunmen pinned down.
“And if I know Charlie,” Harpal said, “she won’t be hanging around if she hears this.”
Charlie pulled up the loft hatch, ignoring Toby’s instruction to remain where she was. “We can’t just hang around. Those are gunshots.”
“And we don’t know where they’re coming from,” Toby said.
Charlie hung her legs out and braced against the hatch’s frame. This was amateur hour, and it made her want to scream, but this group needed a level head. All the signs were there, all the tiny signals that someone was onto them, but they’d ignored them. Having faced only two regular competitors in recent years—Valerio Conchin and Colin Waterston—they could have grown sloppy about others. Even Toby, better versed in international subterfuge than perhaps any of them, ignored the fact two Korean men were asking about an obscure relic the same week they had discovered its whereabouts.
He was so desperate to pull LORI back together, it was hardly surprising that they’d sleepwalked into the facility where the foremost expert on the subject was based. But having toured extensively with the Royal Signals, learned her trade, and expanded that knowledge in Civvie Street, Charlie was no slouch in these predicaments. She rarely volunteered, but when backed into a corner with no other choice, she acted. And looking at the options available, she chose to move.
She said, “We’ll know where the fighting is in a moment.”
Sat in the dark loft, Professor Garcia held her head in her hands. “And people say I’m crazy.”
Toby reached for Charlie. “No, wait—”
Charlie swung down before he could say more, landing deftly before peeking out. There was no one to be seen, but another grouping of gunshots told her the firefight was going down to her right, and some distance away. To her left, the stairwell door was still closing after someone had used it.
Then, footsteps rushing from the direction of fire. A dozen or more students and faculty members hustled this way, a university security guard ushering them to evacuate, a handheld radio up high.
Charlie withdrew and called up, “Let’s get going, we can blend in with the evac.”
Toby fussed and wrestled with the ladder they’d pulled up after ascending to the hidey-hole, and Charlie helped him and the professor down. Sally Garcia moved sprightlier than her age suggested she would, and she even slapped Charlie’s helping hands away.
“I can manage, thank you.”
Swinging open the door, they latched onto the tail end of the evacuees, many asking if it was an active shooter situation or just some idiots letting off firecrackers. The guard herding them said, “I don’t know, but we’re treating it as a live event. Follow the drills, you’ll be fine.”
Charlie noticed him thumbing the radio and listening. As with her comms linking them to Phil back in England, it looked like local airwaves were also dead. Meaning LORI hadn’t been hacked; it was a blanket attack.
“Go, go,” Charlie said, pushing Toby to the stairwell. It was sweet the way the older man tried to be protective of her despite both knowing she was far more capable, physically, then he was. “Professor, do you have a car?”
Their voices echoed as they descended.
“Yes,” Professor Garcia replied. “But it’s the other side of the campus.”
“Any other vehicles?” Charlie asked.
“Some security personnel, maybe.”
“Then we go that way.”
Mingling with the students and staff, they broke out into sunlight. The people fleeing the noise that had lessened to the occasional pop, pop–pop stuck close to the walls in their rush to a predesignated safe area. Cowering under desks, it seemed, was no longer the standard practice.
God, how weird it must be to live in a country where “active shooter” drills were both commonplace and accepted as a way of life.
Static crackled in her ear.
“Phil?”
Toby and Garcia looked at her.
Charlie pressed a finger into her naked ear to amplify the bud in her other. More static. She asked, “Which way to the security car lot?”
The professor pointed and Charlie led them away from the line of well-drilled personnel toward the next building, actually more a collection of cabins. As soon as they got close, she saw the three saloons painted to look kind-of-but-not-quite like police cars.
“Ch—lie?” came Phil’s stuttering voice.
“I’m here.” Charlie had her phone out, checking every direction as she guided Toby and Garcia along. She snapped the nearest car’s number plate. “Sending you a reg. Can you see if it’s remote activated?”
“What’s happening?” Phil demanded.
“Just open the boot.”
While Toby didn’t exactly need mollycoddling, Charlie made sure he stayed ahead of her as they approached the security vehicle. The lights flashed to show it was unlocked.
Phil had come through for her, accessing the car’s computer by way of the manufacturing company’s anti-theft technology. Ironically, it made things easier for people like Charlie and Phil to break into them, providing they had an up-to-date back door to the firewalls. Which they did, for any number of companies—mainly security systems but auto firms were useful too.
With all security personnel distracted, Charlie popped the boot.
“Why are you opening the trunk?” Professor Garcia asked.
“To hide you two,” Charlie said. “Get in.”
“No chance.”
“Is this necessary?” Toby asked.
“Look, if those people are looking for us, or her, they’re not going to think about checking the back of one of these cars. And I’m needed.”
“You are not needed near any gunfight,” Phil said, likely tuned in to the police bands which must have lit up with the news.
Toby’s thin lips and narrowing eyes reflected the same sentiment.
“I won’t get involved,” Charlie assured them. “I’ll hunker down and wait for Harpal and our Kiwi He-Man to get clear. Then we all leave. Okay?”
Silence from everyone.
“I’ll take that as a yes.” Charlie prodded Toby, making him climb into the trunk, followed by an even more reticent Sally Garcia.
She closed the lid, jogged back to the trickle of people evacuating the building, and approached the security guard who had now exited and was directing stragglers onto the safe route. Charlie skirted close to the wall, hearing the static kick in, meaning Phil couldn’t hear, then sidled up to the guard.
She said, “Can you help me? I’m new here and I’m not sure which—”
“Follow the crowd, miss,” the beefy guard said.
“I will.” Charlie leaned into him, swiped his gun from his holster, and shoved him back. “Sorry.”
To the cries of, “Hey, come back with that,” Charlie sprinted toward the action, the guard having hesitated just long enough to give her too much of a head start to worry about him catching her.
There were four of them, opting for potshots, keeping Harpal and Tane pinned.
Tane had already made a dash for the door through which they entered, but their new friends dissuaded him from that course within two steps.
“Why don’t they finish us off?” Harpal said.
“They’re getting in position.” Tane had clearly taken more notice of their opponents’ movements than Harpal.
Mostly, both of them had been glad no one seemed to have a machine gun that could have shredded the desk to pieces. That they were still alive felt like a miracle in itself.
Tane had a hypothesis for that, too. “I’m guessing they want us to lead them to Sally.”
That made sense. And was scarier than attempted murder.
“Listen,” Harpal said. “If I unload this around the chairs, do you think you can make it to the door?”
“Sure, but then you’re pretty much dead.”
“Or I’m the only bargaining chip they’ll have.”
“You think they’ll take you captive, then you get to hold out until the cavalry arrives?”
Something like that, Harpal thought, but didn’t want to vocalize. He said, “Just do it. The professor is your chief concern, isn’t she?”
Tane bit down, his face a solid mass. “That’s—” A gunshot cut him off, and another coin sized section of desk splintered near his shoulder. “That’s true. How do you think you’ll hold out with a bullet in the knee?”
Harpal was thinking on the fly. He had never endured actual torture before, although he had been roughed up plenty.
“Long enough for you to get them out,” Harpal said. “My friends are there too. Let’s get on with it. Before I change my mind.”
Tane nodded once, his jaw still set with movie star grit.
Harpal placed one firm foot on the floor, checked the gun’s slide, which moved smoothly despite the bits of glue clinging to parts of it. “Count of three. One.”
Harpal risked a peek over the desk and pinpointed two of the four men.
The massive assailant who’d first shown his face had found cover behind the wall that ran alongside the far column of chairs, while a different janitorial impersonator took a post ten yards up the auditorium, using the natural V between two seats to shore up his aim. The others remained hidden.