by Brian Thiem
Gunshots echoed from inside the school. Two, then three more, followed by a pause, and then a succession of shots too numerous to count. The shots were sharp and loud, as Sinclair had feared, undoubtedly coming from rifles such as AK-47s or SKSs. Armed with only handguns and a shotgun, they were significantly outgunned.
Buckner squeezed his lapel mic and said, “Shots fired inside. We’re on the scene and approaching the front door.”
Sinclair gripped his .45 Sig Sauer with both hands at a low ready as his eyes scanned the parking lot and the front windows of the school for any movement. The rain beat down on him, rolling off his head, down his face, and soaking his shirt. He ignored it. In the right side of the parking lot, he spotted the mud-brown Ford Bronco parked next to a green Prius.
A couple rows down, a familiar red Mazda Miata was parked—Alyssa’s car. This was the school where she was doing the career presentation. He felt his heart skip a beat. But he forced himself to return to the present. Mission focus, he reminded himself.
They reached the alcove by the front doors where Sinclair and Braddock had stood two days ago. The reinforced glass in the doors was shattered, a few shards of glass still hanging from the doorframes. A sledgehammer lay on the ground on top of the broken glass.
They stepped through the doorframes. Two adult women were sprawled on the floor in pools of blood inside the main office. One was moaning and writhing in pain; the other, a tall, thin woman, remained motionless. A pair of large black-framed glasses lay in the puddle of blood.
The harsh reality in active shooter incidents was that to save the most people, you sometimes had to leave people to die. Rendering first aid had to come later. The hardest part for Sinclair and any officer responding to a school shooting was seeing injured and frightened children, knowing they’d have to bypass them to stop the killers.
They flowed through the office, Buckner leading the way with his shotgun. The door to the headmaster’s office was open. No one was inside. She was likely the woman lying wounded on the floor.
Sinclair tried the other door. Locked.
“Police,” Sinclair said. “Anyone inside?”
The door squeaked open. A heavyset woman, her arms wrapped around three small children, peered out. Her eyes froze on the women lying in front of her.
“How many are there?” Sinclair asked.
“Are they alive?” The woman’s face was white. Obviously in shock.
“They’ll be fine,” Sinclair lied. “Help’s on the way. How many armed people did you see?”
“I saw two, announced lock-down on the PA, then pulled the children in here and locked the door. Then I heard voices. More than two. They asked where Mrs. Harper’s classroom was. The headmaster wouldn’t tell them. Then I heard gunshots.”
“Stay here,” Sinclair said. “Lock the door.”
She pulled the kids inside. The lock clicked. Through the door, she said, “All the third and fourth graders are in Mrs. Harper’s classroom for a presentation by a nurse. You have to get there before those men do.”
Buckner spoke into his radio mic, “One dead, one wounded in the front office. Teacher and kids barricaded in a room. We’re headed toward the classrooms.”
Even with the volume on Buckner’s radio turned low, Sinclair heard the dispatcher acknowledge and one unit announce he was five minutes out. Men armed with semiautomatic rifles could kill a lot of people in five minutes.
They stepped into a short hallway. Fifty feet ahead, a longer hallway turned right. Sinclair remembered from Monday that it was a long corridor, maybe two hundred feet long, with Harper’s classroom near the end. Beyond it, another hallway turned right and led to more classrooms, an auditorium, and a cafeteria.
They marched forward, Sinclair and Buckner in front, shoulder to shoulder, with Braddock in the rear, glancing back every few steps to ensure no one attacked from behind.
Suddenly, a man jumped around the corner in front of them. Black trench coat, black ski mask. He held an SKS rifle at his hip and fired.
Buckner’s shotgun roared. Sinclair brought up his pistol and shot. The SKS rifle barked again, and again. Sinclair continued to shoot. He didn’t know how many times Buckner shot or how many rounds the man fired. He focused on his front sight and the man beyond it, and he continued firing until the man dropped and Sinclair’s slide locked back.
He depressed the magazine release, and the empty magazine rattled to the ground. He inserted a fresh magazine of eight rounds, guiding it into the pistol’s butt with his left index finger touching the top round and slamming it home with the heel of his hand in one smooth movement. He thumbed the slide release, which slammed a .45 cartridge into the chamber, and scanned the hallway.
The shooter was down, but so was Buckner.
Braddock was still standing. She went to Buckner and Sinclair went to the shooter, lying in the open area where the two hallways intersected. Rule number one in a gunfight: it’s not over until you’re certain the threat is neutralized. Sinclair pulled the SKS rifle from the shooter’s hands and ripped open the man’s trench coat, revealing a ballistic vest similar to what he was wearing. A dozen or more projectiles were embedded in the Kevlar fibers. Half of his throat was missing, blown out by one or more .45 slugs or .33 caliber pellets from the shotgun. Sinclair flipped him over. The back of his skull was gone. The exit wound from a .45.
Sinclair glanced to his right. Two men in black raincoats came out of an empty classroom halfway down the long hallway. Their guns came up. A third man took up prone position at the end of the hallway, pointing a rifle down the corridor. Sinclair leaped back around the corner as they fired.
Sinclair duck walked backward to where Braddock was attending to Buckner. Buckner’s face was pale and coated with sweat. Braddock had stripped off his vest to reveal an entry wound just below his right breast. The Kevlar vests they wore weren’t designed to stop rifle bullets. Sinclair rolled Buckner on his side. The bullet had exited near his kidney, creating a bloody hole an inch in diameter.
“Is it bad?” Buckner asked.
“Hell, brother, ACH will patch you up good as new,” Sinclair said, hoping Buckner would believe him.
Braddock shook her head. She knew it was bad. Sinclair had seen wounds like this in Iraq. They couldn’t do much for him here. The internal bleeding could only be handled by opening him up in an operating room. In the meantime, he needed bandages, direct pressure, and an IV to counteract the blood loss and to keep his body from going into shock until the trauma surgeons at ACH could do their magic.
Sinclair grabbed Buckner’s shoulder mic. “Thirteen-Adam-Five, we have an officer down. GSW to the chest. We need paramedics to the front door now.”
“Thirteen-Adam-Five,” the dispatcher said. “Ambulances and fire are staging one block south waiting for the scene to be secured.”
Screw radio procedure. “Damn it!” Sinclair yelled into the microphone. “An officer’s going to die if we don’t get him out now. Send them to the front door. It will be secure.”
Buckner forced a smile. “So it’s worse than you said.”
“Don’t you fuckin’ give up,” Sinclair said. “You’re gonna make it.”
It wasn’t fair that police ignored wounded civilians in an active shooter scenario but would stop and aid a fallen officer. But that’s the way it was. Just like with soldiers on a battlefield, cops don’t leave a fallen officer behind.
Sinclair said to Braddock. “Drag him to the front door. If you don’t see the paramedics or fire department, keep dragging him. All the fucking way to ACH if you have to.”
Tears began welling in Braddock’s eyes.
“There’s no time for that,” Sinclair said. “Buckner’s gonna make it if you get him out of here.”
She blinked away the tears. “What about you?”
“I’m gonna go and get those assholes.”
“Alone?”
“Don’t worry about me. Save Buckner.” Sinclair watched as Braddock grabbed
Buckner under the armpits and dragged him down the hall.
Chapter 41
Sinclair picked up Buckner’s empty shotgun, loaded the four rounds from the buttstock carrier into the magazine, and racked a round into the chamber. He peeked around the corner. Only the man proned-out with the rifle in the hallway was visible. The other two were probably searching classrooms for children. Sinclair peeked again and pulled his head back just as a bullet zinged past him.
The man securing the hallway was two hundred feet away. Too far for a pistol shot but an easy target for someone with a rifle. To enter the hallway and get to the men searching the classrooms, Sinclair had to take out the rifleman.
He knew the spread of the shotgun’s pellets was about an inch for every yard of distance, so at this range, the nine pellets would spread half the width of the hallway. A short-barreled shotgun with buckshot wasn’t designed for this distance. A man could stand right in the middle of the pattern and remain unscathed as pellets hit all around him. A man lying on the ground offered an even smaller target.
Sinclair stuck the shotgun around the corner with one hand and fired. The recoil nearly ripped the gun from his hand. Two rifle bullets pinged into the wall behind him. The man wasn’t a skilled rifleman, but at this range, he didn’t need to be. Even an amateur could keep his sights on the corner from where Sinclair would next appear and get a round off within two seconds.
Sinclair did another quick peek. The man was still there. Two seconds later, a gunshot rang out. Sinclair’s shot obviously didn’t hit him or frighten him into giving up his position. Sinclair was capable of hitting a man-sized target with his pistol at two hundred feet, but it required careful aiming and three or four misses for every hit. The rifleman would nail him before he got off the first shot. A shotgun with rifled slugs would’ve been a game changer, and although some officers carried them, Buckner didn’t.
Although the man presented a small target by lying in the prone position, he had obviously never learned about ricochet shooting or grazing fire, as they called it in the military. When a bullet is fired at a surface at an acute angle, it has a tendency to skip along the surface, much as a flat rock can be skipped along the surface of a lake. The Army taught machine gunners to keep their fire low when engaging enemy forces. Rounds that don’t hit the personnel directly and miss low will graze along the ground, often bouncing a foot or two high, much like a skipped rock.
It had taken two seconds for the rifleman to get off a shot. If Sinclair appeared at a location different from the corner of the hallway where the man was now aiming, the rifleman would have to shift his aim, thus giving Sinclair another second. If Sinclair could get his first shot directed at the floor halfway down the hallway within that time, one or more pellets, skipping along the floor, might hit the target. Even if he missed, Sinclair might get close enough to upset the rifleman’s aim and give him time to fire the last three rounds. He had a good chance of hitting the rifleman if he could put thirty-six pellets downrange.
Sinclair quick peeked. Two men were disappearing into a classroom near the end of the hall. Lisa Harper’s classroom couldn’t be much further. The rifleman was still in position.
Sinclair checked the shotgun. One round in the chamber, three more in the magazine. He got a running start and dashed into the hallway, immediately dropping to his knees and sliding halfway to the far wall. The shotgun’s stock was already against his shoulder. He twisted his body and fired. Without waiting to see the results, he pumped the action and fired again, and again, and again.
Sinclair dropped the empty shotgun and drew his pistol. The rifleman was motionless. He hadn’t gotten off a shot. Two men in long, black raincoats and ski masks exited a classroom and pointed guns in Sinclair’s direction. One was an SKS rifle, the other a pistol. Sinclair sprinted back around the corner out of their field of fire as a barrage of bullets struck the wall behind where he had been standing.
Although he had taken out one target, Sinclair wasn’t much better off than before. He was pinned down once again. The only way forward was through open ground defended by a man with a rifle.
Sinclair looked in front of him. The dead man’s rifle lay ten feet into the exposed kill zone. Although he had never fired an SKS, he’d handled them as evidence on numerous occasions. Years ago, Oakland was flooded with thousands of Norinco SKS rifles. At two hundred dollars each, the Chinese-made rifles were a favorite drive-by shooting choice of drug gangs for several years. Crudely built, marginally accurate, but utterly reliable, the SKS was a military rifle designed by Russia during World War II. Because it didn’t match the characteristics of an assault rifle, it was legal to purchase even in California.
Sinclair had survived one sprint into the long hallway, and he hoped his luck would hold out again. If the two remaining gunmen were skilled at hitting a moving target, as were many hunters, he was a dead man. He dashed into the corridor and grabbed the SKS. His leather-soled shoes provided little traction on the slick floor, and he nearly fell. Bullets pinged around him as he dove back to safety around the corner.
He pulled the SKS’s bolt to the rear and ejected a live cartridge into his hand. The internal box magazine, which could hold up to ten rounds, was empty. The dead man had fired them during their brief gunfight. Sinclair wished the body wasn’t in the kill zone because the man’s pockets surely contained stripper clips of ammo, but he didn’t dare risk searching the body while exposed to gunfire. He pressed the single cartridge into the magazine, released the bolt, and watched it load into the chamber. He had one shot. If he was lucky, he could take out the man with the rifle, close the distance to the final man, who was armed only with a handgun, and finish the fight.
He quick peeked around the corner. The muscular man had a crowbar in his hand and was trying to pry open a classroom door at the end of the hall—Lisa Harper’s room. His rifle lay at his feet. The other man, tall and thin, stood nearby holding a pistol in his hand. Both wore black backpacks identical to the one Sinclair saw in the parking garage just before it detonated.
Sinclair shouldered the rifle and stepped into the hallway. He pointed it at the thin man and walked forward. If the muscular man went for the rifle, Sinclair would shift to him, put the sights on his chest, and take the shot. He’d then drop the rifle, draw his pistol, and engage the thin man. Sinclair was confident he was a better handgun shooter than his adversary, and even with the time it took to drop the rifle and transition to his pistol, he had a decent chance of prevailing. He was now 150 feet away. The man with the crowbar looked up at him. The other just stood there and watched him advance. An easy rifle shot, but still far for a pistol. Sinclair continued to close the distance, moving slowly to maintain his balance and shooting stance.
The muscular man, who Sinclair suspected was Andrew Pearson, put down the crowbar and began to reach for the rifle. Sinclair shifted to him and prepared to pull the trigger. He thought of yelling, “Police! Freeze!” but it seemed ridiculous under the circumstances.
“I’ve got this handled,” the thin man said to Pearson, and he pulled the ski mask off his head with his gun hand.
Sinclair immediately recognized Travis Whitt from the photos he’d seen. He shifted the rifle back to him, settling the sights on his chest while watching Pearson in his peripheral vision.
“Keep working on the door,” Travis said to Pearson. He then pulled his left hand from his pocket and held a small black box the size of a garage door opener above his head.
“What’re you doing?” Pearson shouted to Travis. “I thought the plan was to hightail it out of here before you pulled that out!”
“Just get the door open,” Travis said.
Pearson shoved the straight end of the crowbar into the gap between the door and the frame and pulled backward. It slipped out and he jammed it in again.
Sinclair took a few steps closer. He pictured all the third and fourth graders huddled together in the back of Mrs. Harper’s classroom, surrounded by teachers hushing them
in hopes the gunmen would think the room was empty and move on. He imagined Alyssa in the middle of the huddle, trying to comfort the terrified children while hiding her own fear from them.
“Put the triggering device down, Travis,” Sinclair said. “You know I’m not letting you get in that classroom.”
“Prostitutes destroy families,” Travis said. “You, if anyone, should know that. They deserve to die.”
“Even if that was true, why the innocent kids?”
“That’s the only way the one-percenters take notice.”
It was futile to argue with crazy men armed with guns and explosives. They only understood one thing. He shifted the sights to the imaginary triangle between Travis’s eyes and nose. A bullet there would kill him and short-circuit his brain before he could trigger the explosives.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Travis said. “Kill me and no big boom. But what I’m holding here is a dead man’s switch. I’ve already pressed one button. If my finger comes off it without depressing the other button first, both backpacks explode.”
“Wait a fucking minute,” said Pearson. “I’m not part of any suicide mission.”
“Just open the door,” Travis said. “The cop knows if he shoots us, he’ll die with us. Besides, cops don’t kill unarmed men.” Travis crouched down and set his handgun on the floor.
Travis might have been right about the explosion killing Sinclair as well as them. He was forty yards away, more than twice the distance from the last bomb. But this was an enclosed area, which would contain and direct the explosive force to the areas of least resistance, one of which was down the corridor where Sinclair was standing. He wondered if people inside the classroom would survive an explosion in the hallway, and whether the bombs packed more explosives than the last one, and whether they were filled with nails or other shrapnel that would rip through his flesh like a wall of high-velocity bullets.
His only other option was to back down the hallway. But he couldn’t do that. One bomb inside the enclosed classroom would surely kill everyone inside. Maybe Travis was bluffing about the dead man’s switch. But suicide was often the final step in many school shooters’ plans.