by Neely Tucker
“Sullivan! You’re where?”
“The Capitol. There’s been some—”
“AP bulletin says shots fired. What, what?”
“We got bodies, brother, we got six, seven, this is minimum, this is in the Crypt and then the second floor, I’m talking the floor the Rotunda’s on, more hit. Ah, what, I got two police officers dead in the, the Rotunda, one gunman reported—”
“—slow down, down, give it to me again, I got a file, I got a file, where, now now now. Seven bodies? Dead, wounded? You’re inside the building?”
“—with a semi, I, I got, I wasn’t taking pulses. One guy, his head blown open, he’s gone, that’s in the Rotunda, this lady in the Crypt, she’s gone, the cops and this other guy in the Rotunda, all head shots.”
“Where are you?” Sully could hear R.J.’s hands flying over the keyboard, banging out the dictation.
“A meeting room in the hallway to the Speaker’s office, just off the Rotunda. You know where—”
“You’re inside the building?”
“Did you hear me? Write this down: In the fucking middle of it.”
“What can you see right now? What are you looking at?”
“The underside of a desk.”
“Goddammit—”
“Calm down. I know, I know. I can—”
“The shots, man, the shots. Did you see anybody with a gun?”
“You got to slow down. I ain’t seen nobody with a gun. It started down low, though, I can tell you that, the shooting, I mean. The Crypt, from that entrance. The east side. The shooter came in from the east side. Moved up to the Rotunda, seems to be behind me in the Speaker’s office, but I can’t confirm the last. May be just the one shooter.”
“Basis for the observation?”
“This kid, this intern? He got tagged on the shoulder, there in the Rotunda? He said one. The shots I’ve heard, from a distance? They’ve all seemed to be in one place. I think it’s here. You know, the Speaker’s office. But I can’t hear shit from in here, this room. Calling in to dictate.”
“Go, go, go.”
“Okay, let’s go with, ah, Jesus, okay.” He took a deep breath and closed his eyes. “At least one gunman fired dozens of rounds in the U.S. Capitol building this afternoon, killing at least four—ah, it’s gonna be more, but let’s stick with four for the minute—and seriously wounding several others in an attack unlike any other in the nation’s history. . . . With me?”
“Keep going.”
“At least four bodies lay in the Crypt and the Rotunda in pools of blood. Shots rang out. The screaming of women and bellowing of men was, what, what, it was pronounced, the raised voices echoing down hallways of marble and tile. A fire alarm was activated, adding to the confusion, though no flames or smoke were immediately present. Two security officers were hit by gunfire at the east entrance to the Crypt and they fell, perhaps fatally wounded. Two more officers were hit, fatally, in the Rotunda, one floor above. Also in the Rotunda, at least two other victims had been shot to death. A witness in the Rotunda, a young man hit in the shoulder with at least one bullet, said he saw only one gunman, and that the man had gone toward the Speaker’s office. Time that at, what is it, 5:37 p.m.”
Running his palm over his forehead, through his shock of black hair, “Okay, okay, how we doing? What else, what else you guys getting—”
“Complete and total fuckery. First AP bulletin was, was eleven minutes ago. ‘Shots fired at the eastern entrance to U.S. Capitol building.’ A follow six minutes later, reporting Capitol police officers down at that entrance. Something about a confrontation at the metal detector, guy pulls out a gun and goes all Columbine.”
“Ah, shit.”
“Television has some cameras outside, but they’re not close. Everybody was down at the federal courthouse. I’m looking at long-range lens stuff on the screen. People running. Did I say fuckery yet?”
“Is there a wide shot of the building?”
“What? Yes, yes. CNN.”
“Is there smoke?”
“Not that I can see.”
“Good. Then somebody just yanked the alarm; it didn’t go off because of some sort of fire I can’t—”
“When can you get—”
“—get to, look, keep an eye on that body count, right, particularly the officers? My numbers are all over the place. I saw two dead, two dead cops, in the Rotunda. Didn’t see any other reporters, or anybody else at all, so I wouldn’t think those two are included in the AP’s count of three. So we may have five cops down.”
“Networks and the cables are on air now with people calling in from the building, hiding in offices, like that.”
“The kid I saw, the one that got tagged? He should be outside by now, but he’s catatonic. He’s not going to make it to the cameras. Too bad. He saw the shit firsthand.”
“You’re sure about the female fatality in the Crypt, though?”
Sully closed his eyes. The blood, the bubble on the lips, the way she’d looked not at him but in him. He could not let that in, not now, maybe not ever. You could not do this job and let the eyes of dead and dying see into you.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’m pretty goddamn sure.”
“Okay. Okay.”
Sully’s eyes popped open, the thought just coming to him.
“Wait, wait, wait. Isn’t Timothy in the building? I saw him upstairs about an hour ago.”
“Timothy is in the press room. He’s on the line with the National Desk. Says they’ve barricaded themselves in there. He’s calling, looking for the leadership.”
“Barricaded?”
“Says they locked the door, moved chairs and couches.”
“The fuck is he doing in the press room?”
“Timothy has been in the press room for approximately forty-three years.”
“You’re saying the press corps locked themselves in the press room when the shooting started.”
“Yes.”
“To keep themselves from getting to the news?”
“I don’t think they want the news getting to them.”
“Jesus the fucking H.”
“Are you going to get over this?”
“Tell Timothy to find his dick—it’s usually right below the belt buckle—and get out of the press room and do some gotdamn reporting.”
“Not happening. Turtles in the Galápagos move faster than Timothy. He’s—wait, National sends an all-newsroom message here.” There was a pause. “He saying he’s got the House Speaker on the line.”
“Who is where?” Sully said, startled, sitting up straight.
“At home in Georgia.”
“That’s going to help.”
“Nobody is in town. Nobody.”
“Where’s POTUS and Vice POTUS?”
“West Texas and a secure location, respectively.”
“Is Al Haig in charge?”
“Can you get out?”
“Of what?”
“The building!”
“Why, why would I do that?”
“An outburst of common sense?”
“You pay me to—”
“Then stay put. Now gimme the rest of what you’ve got. Gimme, gimme the narrative, walk it through.”
“—to, what, okay. Look, I was stalking Evans, the senator lady from back home who approved these drilling rights, like I’m supposed to be doing—fuck Clarice, why am I the pinch hitter? I’m walking to this hearing Evans is supposed to be holding, but like three people are in there and, and nobody is up at the stage thing or wherever they sit, right? The dais, is that the word? So I’m going back the other way, going through the Rotunda, thinking I’m in the wrong place, and then there’s this noise, this rumpus from way off, it’s like you’re at the beach and somebody a quarter mile down starts yelling ‘Shark
!’ but you can’t hear them for the wind? But something’s obviously going south? This was downstairs at the time. Absolutely downstairs. People start running like a cattle stampede, screaming ‘He’s got a gun! He’s got a gun!’ Like that. Bursts of shots, one, two, half a dozen, you can’t really tell because it’s all marble and tile and everything echoes. So I ran downstairs, heard some fire, hit the floor, but then the next volley was from upstairs because—”
“Clarifying. You were going toward the gunfire?”
“—it, what, yes, what? For all I knew it was firecrackers. Didn’t see a body till I got downstairs. Shooter ran upstairs after I went down.”
“So, wait, did you come in through that east entrance to the building, same as the shooter?”
“Yes. Peaches and cream at the time. But that was a couple hours ago. Look, I can’t hear shit in here. I got to move.”
“Sullivan. Sit tight. The SWAT team, the Navy Seals, the fucking cavalry, is coming. We’ll get eyewitnesses, survivors, from outside. What you—”
“Did you see the video from Columbine?”
“—gave me just, wait, what?”
“The video. Columbine. You mentioned it. Did you see it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you should know I’m not going to sit under a desk and hope the douche bag with a gun doesn’t come find me. I’m going to do my job, with a reasonable share of prudence and concern, and report in. What did you think I was doing abroad all that time? We need the scenery from when they take this guy down, the—”
“I am telling—”
“—visuals of that. Do me a solid though, hey? My nephew, Josh? He’s staying with me for the summer? Call the house, tell him not to freak about the news. There’s stuff in the freezer he can microwave for dinner or—”
“Sullivan!”
“—just get whatever. Gotta run, brother. Turning this thing off. Keep 1-A open. I’m coming back to you, and it’s gonna be a freight train.”
FOUR
HE OPENED THE door to the conference room a few inches. Nothing but the endless, bell-clanging alarm. His head was really thumping now. It was jabbing at his vision, shards of light. You’d think somebody would shut that fucking thing off. Down he went to his good knee, to bend and—“Ay!”—he staggered, his good leg bent beneath him and the other, gimpy, suddenly splayed out. His head clipped the edge of the door. Beads of sweat burst out on his forehead. He wiped them away with a shirtsleeve. His scars itched.
His fingers found the edge of the door. He pulled it open an inch, then another. He peered out, looking far to the right and to the left. Empty. A deep breath. In through the nose and out through the mouth. Calm. He was calm as fucking little white clouds above a flat blue ocean.
Exhaling, he shoved off and was sprinting to the Speaker’s chamber, completely exposed, nowhere to hide—and then the door to the chamber burst open. A herd of humanity shot out of it, ten or fifteen or twenty of them, struggling to get through the doorway all at once, arms here and legs there, women in skirts, men in suits, nobody in charge, faces tight and drawn, everybody coming at him so hard he couldn’t register what anyone looked like. They swept past him helter-skelter, churning hard, no one speaking, just grunts and gasps, the last guy through in his sixties but a hard-ass, had to be former military, you could tell, that gait. Sully reached out from the wall to take his arm.
“Where is he? How many?”
The man snatched his arm back. Never slowed, but half turned in his retreat. Hissed, pointing: “Down that hall! White. White male.” And he was gone, the herd stampeding ahead of him, out of sight down the corridor.
Sully waited a beat, then two, to see if there were footsteps coming in pursuit of the herd. None. He shuffled forward, now almost flat against the wall.
The corridor made a ninety-degree turn to the right up ahead, a hard L. Across the hall was the entrance to the Speaker’s office. The left side was a dead end. To go down the hallway to the right, he’d have to make a full turn, blind, and gamble the gunman was not waiting in the hallway.
This seemed reasonable—the man hadn’t opened fire on the group that just ran past, nor had he pursued them. The problem for Sully, if he made the turn, would be finding a safe spot in the next hallway. No idea what it looked like, no idea of where to look for a safe haven.
R.J. was right. The troops were coming. The last group down, they would tell them where to find the gunman. It was no longer a blind search through the massive building with its Brumidi corridors of gold and stone, the marble stairs, the open chambers, the Old Supreme Court and Statuary Hall, the tucked-aside meeting rooms and back stairwells.
There was a target, there was a destination. He could just sit tight and wait.
Gunfire and an echoing scream jolted the air just then, coming from around the corner and down the hall. Scream after scream now, long and gurgling. Goddammit goddammit goddammit. The gunman was not in the hallway. He was in a room, an office, down the hall, and some poor bastard was paying for it.
There wasn’t any more time to think. Sully rounded the corner, bending at the knees, coming on the run, staying next to the wall. Down the hall in front of him—maybe forty, fifty feet ahead—there was a thump and another scream. Far behind him, Sully heard the hoofbeats of boots on stone. A door, a door, he needed a door. . . . There was a small one, on the right.
Hit it with his shoulder, his full weight behind it. It gave and he was falling, stumbling inside. He regained his balance and pulled a pen from his jacket pocket. He came back and wedged it between the door and the frame, keeping it open just that much. Turning back, disoriented, what the—he was in the women’s bathroom—how do you figure. . . . He took two steps toward the nearest stall, making himself count by Mississippis now, because it wouldn’t be long and it was hard to keep track of time.
Then the lights went off and the world went black.
* * *
One Mississippi, two Mississippi, three . . . it was absolute, crystalline, total darkness. Little purple motes popped into view, dancing away from his eyes in the void, the retinas trying to adjust. He blinked, like that was going to help, and then turned to look back at the door, to see if light was streaming in from the crack. None.
The lights in the corridor, if not the building, had been cut. The SWAT team was coming hard and soon now. Lights out had to mean they were coming with night goggles. He was in the process of kneeling down on the floor, getting low, when he heard a door open, somewhere down the hallway. He froze. Over the fire alarm he could hear grunting, cursing, dragging. A disembodied voice, from out there in the darkness, said, “Well ain’t this some shit.”
The voice gave him a locator beam. The noise was coming from down the hall, to his right. He waited until he heard more dragging before he moved again. Easing down onto his hands and knees, then bringing a knee forward, setting it down gently, an arm and hand extended in front of him, waving gently, like a blind man in a crystal shop. Then a touch of cold tile, the front wall of the bathroom. He swept the hand toward the left and hit an outcropping. There was a small gap between the two. The door, wedged open by his pen.
He waited, listening for any sound over the fire alarm. Nothing. Slowly turning, sitting, he pulled himself up to the edge of the door.
There was something—shuffling, rattling, things being moved—but nothing he could make out. There was no flicker of a flashlight. The shooter, or whoever was at the end of the hall, was as blind as he was.
A heavy settling and then, “C’mon, c’mon, answer.” Sully sat very still, closed his eyes, concentrating.
“Hey, um, 911?” a man’s voice warbled. Sully missed the next string of words, the man mumbling. He held his breath to hear better. “No, no, not a prank. Um. It’s, uh, me. Terry Waters. From Oklahoma. The guy with the gun in the Capitol.”
Terry Waters Terry Waters Terry Waters Oklaho
ma Oklahoma Oklahoma—the words shot through Sully’s mind like quicksilver, turning this way and that, seeping down into the well of memory, repeating silently over and over. No way he could write anything down. Not now, maybe not for hours.
A pause, this fucking fire alarm making him strain to hear.
“No, hey, seriously. What’s with the attitude? I’m up in the Speaker’s office, or area, or, um, whatever they call it. Down that hall. You listening now? I shot two guards downstairs, and look, I mean, sorry about that. They wanted to check my backpack, like I was straight out of St. E’s or something, you know? And they just couldn’t do that. Also, I shot some people as I went through the building. Maybe I shouldn’t have. That was probably wrong. But Barry Edmonds, you know him? The representative from Oklahoma? I had to kill him. It got messy. He’s right here.”
Dust, the tension, something, tested the end of Sully’s nose. He squinched his eyes shut to keep from sneezing. How far away was the shooter? Fifty feet? Sixty?
“I don’t know why you’re being this way. I really thought you guys would be here by now. Okay, so I’m sorry, I got to hang up then.”
Silence followed, some muttering, and then the sound of a match striking. A flare in the darkness and a sizzle. Whoomph whoomph, something flew by him, sparkling, and hit the tiled floor. It slid past him, sparks of red and white light illuminating the hallway. A flare. A roadway flare. Then movement. Scuffling sounds, a grunt, a zipper closing, a clatter, something hard and metal hitting the tile floor. Then, soft as a rose petal, footsteps.
Christ. He did not breathe. The steps came slow and steady. As he peered out the slit in the door—his one chance to eyeball the shooter—it dawned on him. His pen. His pen was stuck in the door, providing his narrow window. It would be sticking out in the hallway, knee level. Obvious now in the flickering light.
The footsteps came alongside him and then passed, the man’s body between Sully and the flare, illuminating him by backlight. The ponytail, that was the first thing Sully noticed. The man bent by the flare, the hair frayed and pulling loose. Sully breathed as slow as a swimmer.