by Sam Sisavath
The head. The only way to kill them is to shoot for the head!
“Quinn!” The woman, shouting her name from—where? Not very far away from the sound of it. Maybe just a half dozen cars farther up the row. “Forget the gun! Just run!”
There was a moment of annoyance—who the hell was this woman to tell her what to do?—but also clarity. The gun was there for the taking, but there were also two more men on the other side of the Chevy still on their feet. Except they were too busy exchanging fire with the woman to notice—
Another one of the men on the other side of the bullet-riddled car glanced into his open door and across the vehicle’s front seats at her, and Quinn thought, Or not.
“Quinn!” The woman again. “Get the hell out of there, before more of them show up!”
Okay, she’s got a point this time.
Quinn broke eye contact with the man and pirouetted, and while still in a slight crouch, retreated down the length of the Ford. More gunfire thundered behind her, and she winced, waiting for some of those rounds to knock her off her feet, but instead she made it to the trunk without a single bullet landing anywhere in her vicinity. Either both the woman and the men wanted her alive, or they were too busy trying to kill each other to focus on her.
Either way works for me!
As she rounded the car, Quinn tried to get her bearings. The woman was somewhere up ahead—maybe two or three cars away, but the gun was still back there. There was no way she was going to reach her car and the SIG Sauer hidden underneath the seat, and running around without a weapon was like missing a limb.
So decide—go for the car or go back for the gun!
The car. The car was the better option—
Strong hands grabbed her arms from behind and jerked her backward and almost off her feet.
What the hell?
She swung back instinctively with her right elbow, hit something fleshy but also hard, and heard a surprised grunt just before one of the hands that had grabbed her let go. But the other one didn’t, and Quinn was about to do the same to its owner what she had do to the other one, when a few thousand volts of electricity coursed through her.
She let out a pained scream—but didn’t go down.
Instead, she grabbed onto the trunk of the car and thought, Not again!
“Hit her a second time!” someone shouted. A man’s voice, close enough that it sliced through the pain.
She struggled, frantic to get her feet back under her, when another round of electricity shot through her, and it felt as if her toes would explode from the currents. Her body went limp, but she was still fighting, refusing to go down, when a pungent smell hit her, just before wetness covered her mouth and nostrils.
Chloroform. They were using chloroform on her.
More hands (or the same ones?) grabbed her, keeping her slackening body from hitting the hard ground, and began dragging her backward. Quinn was only partially aware of the smell of burning tires as they screamed to a stop somewhere behind her, followed by the loud kra-chank! of a door sliding open before snapping back into place.
“Careful!” someone shouted. A woman. It sounded awfully like the same woman who had tried (?) to kill her. “Watch her head!”
Somewhere between being struck with the Taser the second time and the chloroform, then being lifted into the air and deposited unceremoniously onto a hard (carpeted?) surface, Quinn noticed that the gunfire had stopped and there was now just the ragged breathing of people above and around her (Where did all these people come from?). And there, somewhere in the background, the very faint sound of police sirens slowly growing.
Quinn struggled to stay awake, but her eyes were too heavy and her eyelids had a life of their own, and her body refused to do anything other than wobble like jelly. Then she was moving, except not under her own power. She was inside something that was moving very fast.
“You’re right; she’s a tough one,” a man said. His voice sounded muffled, like he was chewing marbles. “That first shot would have put down an elephant. And she took two. Look at her; she’s still conscious.”
Quinn couldn’t open her eyes, but she could feel…barely. It was enough to know that someone was touching her face, that a stranger’s hand was brushing her hair out of her eyes and wiping at the sweat on her forehead…
Chapter 6
Xiao
“This is not good.”
“You can say that again.”
“This is not good.”
Trevor rolled his eyes. “I sometimes forget you have a bad sense of humor, kid.”
“Only compared to present company,” Aaron said. “If you think this is bad, you should see Xiao’s attempts at humor.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Atrocious. But she’s English, so you know, they’re weird on that side of the pond.”
Trevor glanced over at her and smiled.
Xiao smirked back at him. “Oh, please. We’ve been in worse situations.”
“Really?” Aaron said.
“They tried to kill us with a missile, remember?”
“Oh, right. That.”
“A missile?” Trevor said.
“I think it was a missile. Felt like a missile.”
“Right,” Xiao said. “Compared to that, this is child’s play.”
“Mega Chucky?” Aaron said.
“I don’t know who that is.”
“From that horror movie franchise.”
“I still don’t know who that is.”
“We watched one of the sequels outside of Hamburg.”
“The only thing I remember about Hamburg was that the hamburgers were awful.”
“Whatever,” Aaron said. “So how are we going to get out of here?”
“You’re the man with the plan. Haven’t you figured it out yet?”
“Me?”
“You got us out of Wilshire.”
“Yeah, but I had days to come up with that. It’s only been”—he glanced at his watch—“definitely not days.”
Too bad Porter’s not here, Xiao thought, turning around and peeking out the blinds. Not that the view outside had changed any since the last time she looked. Well, that wasn’t entirely true. The number of law enforcement had definitely increased; a variety of uniforms, some in black pants and blue shirts and others in dark navy blue. The ones in suits had shown up about ten minutes earlier.
The more the merrier, as Porter likes to say.
Trevor walked over and leaned against the wall across the same window from her. He sneaked a very quick look outside, as if he were afraid someone out there might recognize him. “The ones in suits—Rhim?”
“Does it matter?” Xiao said.
“It sort of does.”
“How’s that?”
“HPD and my old buddies at Harris County Sheriff’s Office won’t storm the building while we’re in here—at least not before they try everything possible to get us out without shots fired. The other guys, on the other hand…”
“Good point.”
She looked through the blinds again, paying special attention to the ones in suits. They were gathered near the center of the parking lot on the other side of the school’s front lawn. Fifty meters of open space separated them, not that she was under any delusions there weren’t already commandos closer to the classroom. She had glimpsed them earlier when they crossed the grounds to take up positions alongside the front of the building. There was a very good chance there were a dozen or more of them on the other side of the wall right this second, waiting for orders to breach.
The suits were talking among themselves, creating a clear distinction between them and the locals. They glanced in her direction every now and then, but she didn’t recognize any of the faces. For some reason, she expected to see one familiar face in particular, but he wasn’t there.
So what does that mean, exactly? I guess we’ll find out soon enough.
“They’re definitely FBI,” Xiao said. “Whether they’re also Rhim,
that remains to be seen.”
Someone in the back of the classroom coughed, then someone else joined them. Xiao glanced over at where their hostages were cowering. Aaron had counted twenty-two kids (sixteen and seventeen-year-old teenagers) and one adult—the female teacher.
This is not what I wanted to be doing with my afternoon.
And the day started off so promising, too.
She thought about the woman who called herself “Joan” and how close they had come to finding Porter. Or at least getting their first whiff of his location after nearly a week of fruitless searching.
So close, Porter. So damn close.
She turned to Aaron, leaning next to the door. The teenager had his ears pressed against the concrete block, trying to listen to what was happening outside. Ever since they had backed their way into the classroom and barricaded themselves inside, they had lost all sight of what was happening beyond the walls. It was probably a mistake to come in here, and maybe Trevor had recognized it too, but neither one of them had brought it up, mostly because there was no point.
Who are you kidding? All of this on you. Shit.
She wondered if Porter would have made the same mistakes she had. Would he have gone out there to meet with Joan alone? Then when exposed, made a straight line back to the safe house to endanger the others?
See, Porter? I told you this leadership stuff isn’t my forte. This was your job. It was always your job. So why aren’t you here doing your goddamn job, you bastard?
What were the chances Porter was even still alive somewhere out there? It had been days (weeks, if she wanted to include the last time he was captured) since they put him in the spew. Could even Porter hold out that long? Could anyone?
Dammit, Porter. Damn you for not being here.
“Anything?” she asked Aaron.
The teenager shook his head. “I can’t hear anything through the concrete.”
“I heard something,” Trevor said.
“You must have bionic ears, then, cause I can’t hear squat.”
“They’re out there. SWAT. Their first priority will be to isolate us so they can clear the other classrooms. Coming in here was…” He stopped and didn’t finish.
Don’t sweat it, Trevor. You aren’t the only one who fucked up today.
“Is that what you’d do?” Xiao asked Trevor instead. “Isolate us first, then try to clear the other rooms?”
Trevor nodded. “It’s the safest play, knowing what they know—that we’re stuck in here with no escape routes.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been on this side of a hostage situation before.” He sneaked a peek at the bodies huddled on the other side of the room. “It’s…a new experience.”
“Are you regretting it yet?”
Trevor chuckled. “Yet? I’ve been regretting it ever since the Wilshire.”
Xiao grinned. “Honesty. I like that.”
The ex-commando might have something else to say, except Aaron interrupted him with, “I hear something.”
Trevor hurried across the room and pressed his ear against the wall. He listened silently, as did Aaron next to him, and neither said a word for a while.
“Well?” Xiao said after about twenty seconds.
“They’re clearing the rooms,” Trevor said.
“How do you know that?” Aaron asked. He sounded slightly irritated.
“You can’t hear it?”
“I just hear a lot of shuffling around.”
“Voices.”
“I don’t hear any voices.”
“You need to get your ears checked, kid.”
“Whatever.”
Xiao turned around and did another quick scan of the parking lot outside. There might have been activity in the hallway, but she wouldn’t have known it from the gathered masses. There was nothing out there to indicate an assault was imminent. Then again, there hadn’t been any when they blasted their way into the Wilshire office building last week, either. The most dangerous thing about the Rhim, in her experience, wasn’t their vast resources or seemingly unending manpower, but their unpredictability. You never knew when they would show up and what they would do once they got there.
WWPD, she thought to herself. What Would Porter Do?
She didn’t know how long she stood there letting the question bounce around in her head, before the answer finally came to her.
The data.
The answer was the data stored inside the laptop in Aaron’s backpack. Porter had come home and risked everything to steal it. He would now try to protect it at all costs.
And Aaron…
She looked back at the lanky teenager, leaning against the wall across the classroom next to Trevor. In another place and time, the kid would be stuck in a classroom very much like this one. He would likely be bored out of his mind, because someone like Aaron, who could be too smart for his own good sometimes (Oh, who are you kidding? It’s most of the time.) wouldn’t have managed very well in a school that didn’t appreciate his full potential. In many ways, Porter had brought that out of Aaron, though at the cost of a normal life.
And now Porter would do everything in his power to keep Aaron safe, to secure the data, because Red Sky is in there somewhere.
“But what if it isn’t?” a nagging voice asked. “What if all of this is for nothing?”
It’s in there. It has to be in there. Porter was sure enough that he risked coming back just to steal it.
“Aaron,” Xiao said. When the teenager looked over, “Get over here.”
Aaron rushed over to her, the pack with the laptop thumping against his back. He was slightly hunched over for some reason, as if he expected a sniper to take a shot at him.
“What’s up?” Aaron said.
“We need a way out of here.”
“Tell me something I don’t already know.”
“I hate croissants.”
“Huh?”
“You said to tell you something you didn’t already know.”
Aaron rolled his eyes. “Great time for jokes, Xiao. Real great time.”
She grinned. “Wanna hear more?”
“I’d rather you come up with a plan to get us out of here.”
“I got that, too.”
“Is it a good plan?”
“It’s a plan.”
“That doesn’t fill me with confidence, Xiao.”
“Don’t be so negative. You just have to do what I tell you.”
“So what, like always?”
She chuckled, and he smiled.
“So what is it?” he asked.
She shot a quick look over at the figures huddled in the back of the classroom, and Aaron followed her gaze.
When he looked back at her, she said, “Do you trust me?”
Aaron sighed but didn’t answer.
“Do you trust me?” she asked again.
“Do I have a choice?”
“Yes. This time, you do have a choice.”
Aaron pursed his lips and his face darkened, but he didn’t look away from her.
Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Let’s hear it…”
“You’re crazy,” Trevor said.
That’s exactly what I would have said to Porter if this was his plan, Xiao thought.
But she said to Trevor, “It’s the only way.”
“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”
“I like to think we’re two people sharing the same mind.”
“I wouldn’t have come up with something this…insane.”
Porter would have.
“This is the only way out that I can see,” Xiao said. “Unless you have a better idea.”
He shook his head and looked toward the back of the classroom for the fifth time in the last two minutes. “Not right now.”
“It can’t fall back into Rhim hands. Too many people have risked too much to get it.”
“You’re talking about Porter?”
“
Not just Porter.”
Trevor nodded. “Mack and Abbie, and the others at the Wilshire.”
“Yeah…”
“And it’s in there. This Red Sky everyone’s concerned about?”
God, I hope it’s in there, Xiao thought, but said, “Yes. It’s in there.” Then, as convincing as she could muster, “I’m sure of it.”
“All right.” Trevor nodded. Then, sighing, “What the hell. I always knew this whole thing was going to end up with me shot dead by the same guys I used to lead, anyway.”
“You think they’re out there? Your old comrades?”
He took a moment to think about the question before finally answering: “If they know I’m in here, they’d probably send one of the other units. That is, if it’s even Harris County SWAT out there and not HPD. For all we know, the feds might have already replaced everyone with their own guys. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is the best-case scenario right now.”
“It is?”
“For me. I don’t wanna shoot my guys, Xiao,” Trevor said, and she could see the pained look on his face just thinking about that possibility.
“You won’t be. It’ll definitely be HRT out there. Rhim operatives, every single one of them. They wouldn’t let the locals come in here after us. It’ll be just like it was at the Wilshire. They’ll control the situation from the outside and inside, so when the smoke clears, the only ones left to answer questions will be them. Then they’ll be able to sell any story they come up with. It’s how they operate. It’s how they’ve always operated.”
He stared back at her, and even though she knew he didn’t believe her—not completely, anyway—he said, “Rhim operatives. Not locals.”
“Exactly. So don’t hesitate, because they won’t.”