“Radios and phones are functional,” Janey said. “But there’s no video to show yet.”
“I want an open line to the EOC.” Emergency Operations Center—fancy name for the dispatch center.
Janey pointed to the headset that hung from a hook on Warren’s designated terminal at the end of the table. “Already established,” she said. “You can use that dial there to switch between the EOC and radio traffic on the scene.”
Warren sat in his chair, donned the headset and turned the dial from mute. “EOC, this is Michaels. Anybody there?”
“Right here, Chief,” said the familiar voice of Ray Boyd, the man who ran the night shift—the knife and gun club—at the EOC.
“Excellent,” Warren said. “Let’s get to work.”
* * *
“Scorpion, Mother Hen. Emergency traffic.”
Jonathan shifted his eyes from the windshield to the computer feed from Roxie while he pressed the transmit button in the center of his ballistic vest—the very vest onto which he had affixed a Velcro panel that read FBI.
“Go ahead.”
“I’ve been monitoring Braddock County police and fire radio traffic. They just dispatched a major shooting incident. Multiple active shooters in Mason’s Corner. Oh my God, I do Christmas shopping there every year. I was going there next weekend.”
“Whoa, look at that,” Boxers said, pointing ahead through the windshield. Police officers swarmed out of the headquarters building like bees leaving a hive. Most were heavily armed, and all of them were headed for parked cruisers.
“The dispatcher is calling for all personnel and issuing a recall of off-duty officers,” Venice went on.
“Please tell me we’re not going to join that fight,” Boxers said off the air.
Jonathan ignored him and keyed his mike again. “Okay, we can’t wait any longer,” he said. “Use a blocked burner phone to call the Braddock County Police Department. Tell them that it’s very likely that they are about to be swarmed by terrorists. They’re going to want to know who you are and how you know. Just tell them that you are a reliable source, and that they need to take action.”
“Suppose you’re wrong?” Venice asked.
“Then I’ll be wrong and they’ll have spent some time being overprepared. But I’m not wrong.”
“Okay,” Venice said. But Jonathan could tell that her heart wasn’t in it. At times like these, when there were so many moving parts to monitor, making a phone call based on an assumption was a pain in the ass.
Jonathan looked back to the feed from Roxie. The car he’d been following sat still, its doors closed. While he didn’t have eyes on the other two cars, he could only imagine that they, too, were being patient.
“Tell me what you’re thinking, Boss,” Boxers said.
“I think that the attack on the mall is a diversion from the attack here, on the police station,” Jonathan said. “And vice versa. I think they’re using a mass shooting to drain the station, and then they’re going to come in strong and take out everyone they can.”
“And then what?” Big Guy asked. “What do you do with a captured police station?”
“Spray and slay and get away,” Jonathan said. “Terror isn’t about capturing ground, it’s about making everyone feel unsafe.”
“Scorpion, Mother Hen.” Venice again. Ahead, the exodus from the headquarters building had slowed to a trickle.
“Go.”
“This is getting worse,” she said. “The BCPD dispatcher just said that the mall shooters are police officers.”
Jonathan and Boxers exchanged glances. “The uniforms,” they said in unison.
Over the air, Jonathan said, “Have you gotten through to them yet?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, when you do, tell them not to shoot the guys in the FBI tactical gear.”
“Say again?”
“Oh, shit,” Boxers said. He pointed to the Roxie feed, where heavily armed men poured out of the doors of the Cherokee. “Here they come.”
Chapter Twenty-nine
Pam kept the doorjamb pressed to her shoulder as she dared a look into the mall, down to the left, down toward where the shots were coming from. What she saw sickened her. Bodies of the dead and wounded lay everywhere. She could see ten of them in a single glance. People moaned, and the usually white tile glistened red and wet.
But she saw no shooters. She could hear them—hell, the whole world could hear them—and there was definitely more than one. She fought the temptation to call 911 and report what she saw. They’d be flooded with calls as it was, and she had plenty to do.
“I don’t see a shooter,” she said to Josh. “We need to find them and try to end this.”
Josh looked terrified. His face had grown pale, and his hands shook. But he said, “Okay. Do you want to split up?”
This was new territory for Pam. She’d gone through the motions of active shooter training, but she wasn’t a SWATer and had never wanted to be. On the one hand, she supposed they could cover more ground separately, but there was a reason why SWAT guys stayed together.
“No,” she said. “Stay on me. If you see a shooter, shoot him.”
“But they’re cops,” Josh said.
“Not today, they’re not.”
“But real cops will be here soon.”
And that was the nightmare: blue-on-blue shooting. “Then be careful,” she said. “And try real hard to be sure.”
The gunfire never stopped. It was no longer the full-auto sound that she’d heard in the first volley, but it was a sustained rate of single-shot fire. It seemed to be coming from everywhere, but as she eased out into the wide-open spaces of the mall, she realized how impossible it was to see everywhere. She kept her Glock in the number-three position, drawn and in a two-handed grip, but in tight to her body. From here, she could push out to shoot a target at any level, but as she passed doorways, no one could reach out and snatch her weapon from her.
She advanced at a low crouch, bent deeply at the knees, moving in exactly the opposite direction of the dozens of fleeing shoppers that swirled past her.
“Get under cover!” she yelled to the fleeing victims, and she made wide sweeping motions with her left arm. “Don’t stay in the open! Get inside a store!”
Two of them sprawled face-first onto the tile floor as two rifle reports reverberated off the walls. Those shots were twice as loud as the others, and Pam knew that a gunman was coming this way.
Josh darted out from behind her to help one of the fallen shoppers, but Pam grabbed his belt and pulled him back. “The wounded wait till the shooters are accounted for. They’re for EMS to handle, not for us.” Of the lessons that stuck from the SWAT-lite training she had received, that was the one that resonated loudest, because she imagined it was the one that the general public realized least. In an active shooter situation, the victims were likely to be on their own for a long time.
“Can you see him?” Josh asked.
“Negative, but he’s close.” They were crossing in front of a store that catered to teenaged girls. Rich teenaged girls, whose tastes even in the wintertime tilted toward covering as little skin as possible. Inside, it appeared empty save for the mannequins, but Pam assumed that people were cowering behind the display cases.
She was startled, then, when a female mannequin spoke. In a male voice. “He’s up there,” the voice said.
Pam whirled on him. He was a kid himself, maybe twenty years old, and he held his hands up at chest level. In his right, he held a pistol. Looked like an M&P Shield 9 millimeter. Nice weapon, not your typical thug gun.
“Please don’t shoot me,” the kid said. He seemed calmer than the circumstances warranted. “It’s been a bad enough day already.” And a silver shield dangled from his shirt pocket.
Josh nodded to it. “You a cop?”
“Firefighter,” the kid said. “David Boone. The badge is a little something to keep me from being shot as a bad guy.”
“Tha
t’s impersonating an officer,” Josh said.
“Yeah, like that’s my biggest damn problem,” David said. “Want to see my carry permit?”
“No,” Pam said. This was a stupid conversation, and she wanted to get past it. “Just know that if you shoot, somebody’s going to shoot back.”
“After this is over, I’ll take you back to my apartment and show you my bronze star,” David said. “Not my first rodeo.”
Apparently, he was older than he looked. Or he was lying his ass off. Pam didn’t care either way. “Pam Hastings,” she said. “This is Josh Levine. We’re cops. Real ones, not the ones who are shooting. You said you know where he is?”
David pointed downrange. “One of them, yeah. He wanders around down there. Pacing, kind of. Like he’s got an assigned AO. Sorry, area of operation. I haven’t been able to get a clean shot, and with the discrepancy in firepower, I didn’t want to give my position away.”
There was no quibbling with his logic. It was a particularly strong argument since he thought he was all alone.
“So do you want to come with us on the hunt, or do you want to hunker down?”
“Hunkering is not all that it’s hyped up to be. I’ll come along.”
“How many rounds do you have for that thing?” Josh asked.
“Eight plus one.”
“Any spare mags?” Pam asked.
“The mall management doesn’t want me to carry a gun in here in the first place. Didn’t you see the sign on the door?”
Pam took that as a no. She looked to Josh. “Spares?”
He winced his answer.
She did the math aloud. “I’ve got eleven. Josh, you have sixteen, and David’s got nine. What is that, a total of thirty-six? Against a bunch of AR-fifteens. Oh, yeah. We’ve got this. Well, here we go. Stay low and shoot straight.”
“I’ve seen two of them,” David said. “Looks like they’ve got ballistic armor.”
Pam’s shoulders sagged. “Of course they do. Then go for pelvis and head shots.” Combined with center-of-mass, those were the most devastating locations to be shot.
She led the way closer to the shooter, who continued to pound away at targets she couldn’t see and from a location that was invisible. Her team advanced as a cluster of three, staying in physical contact with each other—another lesson from SWAT-lite, and apparently one that was taught to soldiers as well. By keeping the shops to their left, only half a world needed to be covered.
The rifle fire got louder, as if the shooter had turned a new direction, toward them instead of away.
Pam saw the muzzle flash before she saw the rifle, but only by a second or so. And there he was, wrapped in the uniform of her colleagues, committing murder at random. The uniform had its desired effect, trigging that hard-wired hesitation.
The gunman saw her. He swung his rifle to cover her. To kill her.
Pam settled her front sight on his head.
Two gunshots from inches away rattled her, and the distant gunman dropped, his brain circuitry fried by bullets from David Boone’s gun.
Pam was still trying to make sense of it when David said, “Weapons and ammo. Cover me.” And he was off.
“Holy shit,” Josh said, and he stood.
Pam stood, too. She watched in awe and terror as David Boone dashed into the open expanse of the mall and headed straight for the body.
From her new vantage point, Pam could see another shooter on the far side of the mall. He turned and aimed his weapon at David. Pam got the shooter in her sights and pressed the trigger. Again. Again and again.
At this range, snap-shot pistol fire had little chance of hitting its target, but it was guaranteed to break the concentration of the person being shot at. The shooter dropped out of sight behind a couple of faux beer barrels that anchored a faux hitching post that was supposed to entice people to buy leather goods from the store behind it. Pam didn’t know if he’d been hit or if he was just ducking out of the line of fire. On the one hand, it didn’t matter because he wasn’t shooting anymore. On the other, if he was alive he could get up and shoot again.
“I’m keeping an eye on that guy over there,” Pam said. “Josh, keep scanning for targets.”
“Gotcha,” he said.
Pam didn’t bother to see what he was doing or how he was doing it. She wasn’t his training officer, and now, in the thick of things, he either knew what he was doing or he didn’t. She kept her concentration on the spot where her target had dropped, but couldn’t resist the urge to watch through her peripheral vision as David stripped the dead shooter of his rifle.
Clearly working from muscle memory, David dropped the magazine out of the well, pulled another one from a pouch on the shooter’s vest, and slid it into place. He threw a glance over his shoulder, flashed a thumbs-up to Pam, then pointed to the spot where the other guy had dropped.
Pam didn’t know what he was trying to tell her.
He pointed again, then pointed at himself, and then pointed back at the man they couldn’t see. Surely, he was not going—
David spun away from Pam, brought his new rifle up to his shoulder, and then advanced on the hidden bad guy.
“The hell is he doing?” Josh asked. His voice squeaked an octave higher than normal.
Pam broke her aim lest she accidentally shoot David, and watched, stunned, as he charged the barrel at a crouch, firing single shots as he moved, launching 5.56 millimeter bullets through the barrel and through whatever lay behind it. A man in a police uniform—the shooter—slouched onto the floor from behind the barrel. When David was three feet away, he shot the dead man in the head.
With these two down, the sound of gunfire seemed distant. Still present, but concentrated at a different part of the mall.
“We need to help the wounded,” Josh said.
“Not yet.”
“But they’re dying!”
“What are you going to do?” Pam snapped. “You don’t have—”
“Hey!” David yelled from across the mall.
Pam’s head snapped around.
“Weapons and ammo! Jesus!”
Pam felt embarrassed. He was correct, of course. The fight wasn’t over yet, and they had a diminishing opportunity to level the odds for themselves. At least a little. “Cover me,” she said.
She holstered her Glock and ran to the first man David had killed. Her skin crawled with the certainty that she was being watched and that a bullet would pierce her at any minute. She arrived at the body. The fake cop’s sidearm was a Glock 19—standard department issue—and rather than deal with the firearm itself, she relieved him of his full magazines, sliding them out of their pouches on his gun belt, four in total, plus the full mag still in his pistol, bringing the total to five.
And she realized that she didn’t have enough hands. “Josh!” she called. “Come here!”
Five seconds later, he slid to a stop next to her.
“Take this guy’s mags. You’ve got what’s in the gun plus two more. The other two are for me.” One thing Glock had going for it was that all magazines of a given caliber fit into any other gun of a similar caliber. Thus, the fifteen-round mags from the dead guy’s Glock 19 fit perfectly in the grip of her own pistol, which was designed for only a ten-round mag.
“Don’t forget his vest!” David called from closer than he was before. He was a fast worker. Somehow, he’d already donned his guy’s vest and gun belt, and he carried two M4s.
“You look like Rambo,” Pam said.
“I don’t believe you just did that,” Josh said. His admiration was palpable.
“A sergeant major told me once that in a gunfight, the best way to live is to kill. Who gets the other vest?”
Pam pointed to Josh. “Him. The rifle, too.”
Josh looked stunned. “What about you?”
“I’ll get another one,” she said. She caught the look that passed between the two men, but she pretended not to. She was the senior cop, which meant that the junior cop got the be
tter gear. It sucked, but it was a better alternative than living with the grief and second-guessing that would follow if Josh got hurt and she was wearing the only set of body armor—that was obtained for them by a civilian, no less.
“Who do you want to be in charge?” David asked.
“That would be me,” Pam said. She felt a flash of anger. Defensiveness, maybe.
“Fine by me,” David said with a grin. “Lead, and I will follow. It’s been too long since I’ve been in a good shoot-out.”
Pam looked over her shoulder, and Josh was finishing with the last of the Velcro straps on his vest. They were ready to go hunting.
* * *
Ray Boyd considered cell phones to be simultaneously among the best and worst inventions ever created. And on a night like this, when the EOC was erupting in telephoned reports of a terrorist attack at Mason’s Corner, combined with the terrified reports from the wounded seeking medical assistance, the nonstop action made the building feel like a living organism.
In a way that no one outside of emergency services could ever understand, these were the moments he lived for, the moments that made the average days of routine drudgery seem every bit worth the cost. He sat at an elevated console surrounded by an arc of computer monitors from which he could keep track of the activity of each of the fourteen call taker/dispatchers, who themselves sat behind a computer console that fed to a master status screen that was mounted on the wall.
Right now, that master screen showed every police vehicle and ambulance from three counties converging on Mason’s Corner Shopping Center. Television monitors flanked the status screen, each of them tuned to a different local news station. In a far corner a college intern monitored Twitter and Facebook for postings there.
On a night like this, Ray Boyd did not field emergency calls himself, but rather dictated the order of dispatch, and coordinated the dispatch of fill-in units who would stage in the fire stations and cruise the police corridors that had been stripped of emergency responders. The public had no idea how exposed they were at times like this. With such a rush to the site of multiple active shooters, anyone who had a heart attack right now would either die or find a way to drive himself to a hospital. And good luck finding a bed when the emergency rooms were being flooded with trauma victims.
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