by Conlan Brown
“We’ll pull over for you!” Dalton pleaded.
“This is it,” the driver said, removing a rifle with a wooden stock and a set of drum magazines beneath it to each side. “Take the rifle. Shoot this guy and take the rifle!”
Dalton let his eyes move quickly to the rifle for a moment.
John capitalized—swatting at the pistol in his face, pinning it against the driver’s seat. Dalton turned back to John, punching with his left, sending John sprawling back into the bench seat.
He shook off the blow, and when he looked up, Dalton had dropped the pistol and grabbed the rifle from the driver.
John tried to attack, but Dalton was out of his seat—the rifle butt slamming into John’s chest. His lungs felt like they were shattering. Dalton stepped forward, pushed the rifle laterally into John, pinning him down, the drum magazines driving into his shoulders.
“I told you to get out!” Dalton shouted, angry.
“Less than a block!” the driver announced. “Take care of him and get ready!”
John took a fist as he tried to struggle free. The world swam— the world outside blurred in motion.
“I’m not”—Dalton choked, exerting himself in trying to subdue the viciously fighting John—“in position!”
The driver’s voice grew even more intense. “Get the window open!”
“I’m not in position!” Dalton stammered again, taking a knee to the stomach.
“This is it!” the driver shouted. “Do it now!”
John felt Dalton pull away and grabbed at the rifle, trying to stop him. The wooden stock of the rifle hit John in the side of the head like a club. John hit the floor of the van hard. He looked back and saw Dalton—pointing the rifle toward the unopened window:
At the sidewalk.
At the press conference.
At people…
John cocked his leg and kicked Dalton in the side as hard as humanly possible.
Dalton fired the rifle.
Fully automatic. Blasting out with the van window. Spitting broken glass and casings and muzzle flash and smoke. Deafeningly loud.
John pulled to his feet and threw himself at Dalton.
The glass door behind the senator exploded. “Gun!” one of the security guards shouted, and Senator Warren Foster threw himself down behind his podium, hearing someone scream as a reporter went down. Panic overtook him. Someone was shooting at him. Someone was really doing it. Someone was really trying to kill him.
Rough hands grabbed him, pulling him away—a security guard. The world spun. Everything was happening so fast, there was no time to get his bearings—he had to do what he was told: follow his security and get to someplace safe.
They pulled him back through the front doors into the spacious lobby. Four guards—two holding him tight, two with pistols drawn.
“Get him to security!” one of the guards shouted, waving the bystanders away as they scurried from the lobby or stood, staring in confusion.
“Go!” one of the gun-wielding guards shouted, pointing toward the security station fifty yards away. He shouted again, “Go!” but was cut off by the blasting noise of a shotgun.
Devin ran forward full steam, watching the first of the senator’s guards go down as two men with shotguns burst from a bathroom near the front desk. They wore brown coveralls, black masks, and Kevlar vests.
A security guard shot at the two men—aiming instinctively at the central body mass. The bullet hit one of the attackers in the vest, and he stumbled back. A shotgun blast and the guard went down—Foster’s security pulling the senator toward the guard station as quickly as possible.
Devin reached for the FN Five-seveN and raised it, aiming down the promenade. The assaulting shotgun crew seemed distracted for a moment, trying to control the crowd. What little security was reacting seemed confused.
A bathroom door opening to the right—a man with an M14.
Falling back toward a hotel bar, Devin felt it seconds before it happened. The door opened—another assassin, dressed like the other two, only with an M14 automatic rifle. Devin fired blindly with the FN handgun as he took cover around the corner, just inside a hotel bar.
There were shouts of panic and worry from inside the bar as the occupants scattered. Return fire came from the new gunner, shooting wildly into the establishment. Glass containers and mirrors were obliterated under the onslaught of charging bullets, wreaking havoc on the bar.
Devin thought as quickly as possible, trying to sort through it all despite the shattering world. The point of the crew outside had been to get security to pull the senator inside. These gun crews were here to surround the senator once he was pulled inside and to kill him—and Devin had stepped into it.
Three gunmen, he counted so far. But John had said there would be eight.
The incoming fire lulled for an eerie moment of quiet, and Devin leaned from cover, firing and missing with a string of five rounds that popped effortlessly from the sleek pistol. He ducked back before the return fire started. Wherever the rest of the other gunners were, he had to act fast before they showed up.
His heart thundered.
He’d made it in time, but everyone might still die.
John took a heel to the chest as Dalton came down on him. Fighting him into submission, Dalton brought down the rifle butt again.
John could feel himself losing control of the situation as the driver cranked the wheel madly, trying to get away from the scene. He was tossed inside the van as it took a turn too sharply. Dalton lost his balance with the swerve, landing in the bench seat.
John stood—steadying himself against the door—the whole van shaking side to side.
Dalton was up, rifle dropped somewhere. He grabbed John by the hair with two hands. The van swerved again, and John felt Dalton use the momentum, ramming John’s head into the hard glass of a window.
His vision blurred, filled with bright lights from the impact.
John spun, attacking with an elbow, connecting with Dalton’s skull.
The driver shouted something about traffic as he made another sporadic move, the van hopping up onto the curb. John lost balance and hit the floor.
Sirens in the distance.
“Get the rifle!” the driver shouted.
John was on his side. He turned his head and saw the rifle Dalton had used, tumbling across the floor of the van, beneath the seat. He reached for the rifle and took a heel to the shoulder. Dalton must have seen it too, his feet moving around the seats, heading toward the back of the van where the rifle lay.
John pushed himself up and leapt, headfirst, over the seats, reaching for Dalton as he grabbed the rifle. They hit the seat in a flailing mess, wrestling for control of the weapon, the barrel waving toward the front of the van.
Then something went wrong, and the M14 went off in a wildly swinging burst of gunfire.
It was like a ripple that moved from the back of the van to the front—holes blowing through the seats, front dash, and windshield, spitting out clouds of stuffing, sparks, and glass.
The driver was hit, and what was left of the windshield was washed in a spatter of blood.
The van went out of control, tipping to the side. Glass burst from what few windows were still unbroken, framing shrieked, and the world went spinning.
Chapter 20
DEVIN PULLED OUT of cover, pistol lifted. There were gunshots and shouting. Suppressing fire ripped in the direction of the hotel’s front doors, the gunmen shouting at the bystanders to stay down and get out of the way. People were flooding toward the exits in droves, largely ignored by the gunmen. It was still an assassination, not a massacre—there was only one person they were looking for.
Devin couldn’t see any of them just yet. He stepped around a pillar that stood against the wall.
The gunman with the M14 turned to Devin and lifted the rifle. Devin leapt behind the nearby pillar, the blunt thunder of the fully automatic weapon barking down the promenade, brass casings bouncing across
the marble floor. The shooting stopped, and the gunman yelled at a nearby bystander.
Stepping out, Devin took aim and fired a quick succession of rounds. He missed the gunman’s head and bounced a bullet off Kevlar, hitting the shoulder. The gunman let go with the impacted arm and held the rifle with one hand, firing wildly as he tried to wrestle the weight of the weapon under control with just one arm.
The pillar—gold and green, covered in scrollwork—pocked as one of the stray rounds hit it. Devin slammed his shoulder into the wall, pulling behind cover again.
He couldn’t see the senator. Or the other gunmen. Or the security guards. Maybe it was too late already. Maybe they’d already killed the senator and completed the assassination.
The M14 continued its heavy fire, brass jingling—
—then stopped.
Devin paused, listening.
The sound of the drum magazine being dropped from the weapon.
Devin broke cover, advancing fast. The gunman looked up. He was trying to jam a magazine into the rifle—ten feet away.
One shot to the head.
The gunman dropped.
Ahead—a hundred yards?—the two-man shotgun crew was firing wildly out the shattered glass doors. They didn’t seem to see Devin as he approached. One of the shotguns went dry, and the gunman reached into a bag for shells, loading. The other grabbed a yellow walkie-talkie. “Team two, team three! Where are you?”
He rushed down the hall, dead security everywhere. It looked like Devin was the only resistance that remained. He moved past crouching bystanders, looking for the senator. Then he saw him—covered in blood, pressed against the wall next to one of his dead security team.
“Mr. Senator!” Devin shouted, grabbing him by the arm, pulling him up. “I have to get you out of here!”
“Who…?” the senator stammered.
The senator didn’t finish. The shotgun crew at the doors had realized what was going on. They turned and fired. Buckshot pattered around them, too far away to hit with anything resembling precision.
“Come on!” Devin shouted, dragging the senator back toward the entrance he had come in—then stopped.
Another set of gunmen, armed with M14s, had arrived, approaching from the same direction Devin had come originally, cutting off their escape. Brown coveralls, Kevlar vests, black masks—two of them. Devin shoved the senator behind him, blasting at the assassins with an unexpectedly rapid series of shots.
The gunmen went for cover, startled by the fact that someone was shooting back.
Three more rounds went their direction before they fired back blindly.
Devin’s mind raced. The shotgun crew was charging from behind, dead security to the right, the new crew arriving ahead of them, and the casino to his left. He grabbed the stunned senator again, dragging him to the left, down the steps, into the casino—toward the forest of slot machines and poker tables.
Trista drove the rental car down the Vegas streets, the small handgun sitting on the passenger’s seat. The sounds of sirens were all around. Things had begun, and they were bad. She told herself that the police had everything under control and that John was right about her needing to get as far away as possible. But she could feel the future.
John—shot in the chest.
Bleeding.
Dying.
She couldn’t leave.
Not yet. Not if she could still change the future.
John Temple blinked, body hurting all over. He looked around at the interior of the wrecked van. Seat belts dangled against the light that shone through the cracked and broken windows. The van had lost control when the driver was shot, hitting its side as it tipped over the curb and sliding across the sidewalk.
John lay for a moment longer. He hurt too much to move. Nothing was broken as far as he could tell, but who knew what else might have happened. Internal bleeding, concussion. Just because he couldn’t spot anything on the outside of his body that alarmed him didn’t mean he was OK.
Something nearby moved. John looked. It was Dalton Waters, reaching for the rifle he’d dropped as he tried to crawl out of the badly damaged van. John groaned as he tried to follow after. Dalton reached for the black bag that had been inside the van. Grabbing it, he stood. The van rocked with the shift in weight.
“Dalton.” John choked. It hurt to speak.
Dalton gave him a glance through the black mask, then turned back to the front of the van and kicked at the fractured windshield. The laminated safety glass popped out in a sheet, crumpling to the ground. Dalton stepped out, disappearing into the bloom of warm light.
John ignored the pain, pushing himself up, staggering forward. He crawled past the driver’s seat, where the body of the driver hung suspended, locked in place by the seat belt. Blood dripped down a dangling arm and head. John caught his gag reflex before he was able to vomit and held it in.
He stepped into the golden sunlight, looking around.
Where was he?
Some kind of sidewalk filled with kiosks and tourists who stared at their newfound entertainment. He was at the foot of one of the hotel and casino complexes. Off the Strip? Probably. He didn’t recognize the place.
“Are you OK?” a guy in his twenties asked. “Do you need an ambulance?”
“Don’t worry,” a woman shouted, phone to her ear. “I’m calling 9-1-1!”
Police sirens had already begun, getting close fast.
John scanned for Dalton. “I’m looking for—”
“Hey!” somebody shouted. “What are you doing?”
They were looking at Dalton, who knelt over his black bag, locking a new drum into the M14 rifle. A man stepped toward him, and Dalton swung with the butt of the rifle, forcing the bystander back. He shouldered the hefty black bag, firing a deafening string of bullets into the air.
People scattered.
The first police car appeared up the street, lights swirling.
“Out of the way!” Dalton shouted with anger, pulling the rifle to his shoulder, aiming toward the police car.
John plowed forward—half a dozen rounds too late—a trail of bullet holes tracing their way from the police car’s grill all the way up to the flashing light that exploded. The car screeched to a stop—the driver wounded.
John rammed with his shoulder, sending the remainder of the shots uselessly wide.
There was a blur of motion, and John felt himself stumble, thrown off and sent sprawling, hitting the sidewalk with his chest. A gun barrel jammed into his back.
“Get up!” Dalton ordered. He pulled John to his feet, holding him by an arm, the muzzle of the rifle tipped into John’s back.
He was being pulled backward—toward a restaurant.
John suddenly realized what was going on.
He was a hostage.
Devin pulled the senator behind a slot machine.
The senator stammered, “Who—?”
A harsh “Hush” was all the senator got as a reply. Devin peeked around their obnoxiously chiming cover—as much hiding as anything. The exit was a hundred yards away at best. Maybe if they ran…
A gunman with one of the vintage M14s stepped into view, blocking the far exit.
Devin cursed his luck and looked back in the direction he had—
Thunder shook the air as a rifle hacked out a violent burst. A slot machine took the blow, blasting lights and glass to bits.
He pulled back behind cover, blind-firing with the pistol, popping trios of bullets.
He crouched as the return fire began, the senator crouching beside him, shaking in fear.
“Are you—?” the senator started.
“Shut up!” Devin ordered, impatient with the shell-shocked official. “Do everything I say, or we’re both dead!”
“Do you see him?” one of the gunmen shouted, trying to coordinate with the others in the room.
Devin grabbed the senator by a lapel and pulled him as fast as he could, head down, to the end of the row of slot machines. He looked qui
ckly, eyes peeking over the cover. The majority, if not all of the gunmen were in the casino now, all exits covered.
They were surrounded—and they were being hunted.
Dalton Waters shouted as he pulled his hostage through the restaurant. The place was darkly lit with yellowish lightbulbs at infrequent intervals. The place appeared as if it either hadn’t opened for the morning or was just opening now. There were no customers, only wait staff that scattered at Dalton’s command.
“Dalton…” John tried to say, still off balance from being grabbed.
How had John gotten involved in all of this? Dalton wondered. He’d always hoped that the interior team wouldn’t be necessary—that he’d be able to hit the senator from the van in the drive-by. But John had ruined that hope. Maybe everything. At least one of his people was already dead, and it was John’s fault. And now he was in danger of getting cornered, and that was John’s fault too.
A trio of police officers approached the glass doors at the front of the restaurant. Dalton lowered the M14 with one hand, firing wildly, blasting glass. The police—too afraid to risk their lives—backed away. And they’d stay away, Dalton thought, because unlike him, they were afraid to die.
“Out of the way!” Dalton shouted at a hostess, and she did what she was told as he pulled his hostage into the kitchen.
Devin listened to the sounds of feet moving along the casino carpet as the gunmen called instructions to one another. He motioned to the senator to stay and went prone, leaning around the corner of their position.
A moment to orient himself. A moment to brace his shooting arm. A moment to look.
In the dull metal side of a brass-colored slot machine he saw the warped image of an assassin moving perpendicularly to his left. Another moment as Devin held his breath.
A set of legs in brown coveralls stepped across his view ten feet away. The assassin was looking the wrong direction. Devin reacted fast, firing a burst from the handgun. Several rounds missed, but one hit a leg, sending the gunman to the floor, howling. The M14 in the man’s hands raised, and Devin pulled behind cover as the return volley exploded in their direction.