by Sam Fisher
'I need to stop,' Dave said. His breathing was laboured.
Foreman could feel the dust and smoke in his own throat. He leaned against the wall beside the kid. Two hunched shapes came out of the gloom, and Foreman and Dave saw they were an elderly couple. The woman was limping, and the man was supporting her and helping her along. Their clothes were shredded and blackened, faces cut and bloodied, and their white hair was flecked with purple from the glow of the fire.
As they reached the wall, the woman stumbled and fell forward into Foreman's arms. He and the elderly man managed to break her fall. The blood on her face was streaked with tears.
A few yards away, the wall had collapsed. There was a pile of smouldering rubble spread in a great jagged semicircle across the room. Underneath lay scores – perhaps hundreds – of bodies. From beyond the wall they could hear the sound of falling masonry, more moans, a gushing sound, water, steam. Looking down, Foreman noticed a small stream of water running from outside the room. It was pouring through the collapsed wall. At the edge of the rubble lay an industrial-sized water heater, its side ripped open. There was a terrible stink of burning rubber, charred hair and incinerated flesh.
The elderly woman looked up into Foreman's face and there was the sudden light of recognition in her eyes. She had a huge bruise on her left temple and small cuts all over her cheeks and under her eyes. He could see a sliver of glass protruding from the soft skin to one side of her nose.
'I think her leg is broken,' the elderly man said, his voice little more than a rasp.
'We've got to get out,' Foreman replied. 'There could be more bombs.'
The dread thought seemed to jolt the other three. Dave pushed away from the wall. 'Here,' he said, and took the old lady's arm and slung it over his shoulder. Foreman took the man's arm as gently as possible. 'Let me do this,' he said. He let the woman rest her weight on his shoulder.
They edged their way along the remains of the wall. 'Don't touch the water,' Foreman warned. 'It could be in contact with live wires.'
Picking through the rubble, they reached a point where the wall disappeared completely. They could see some of the Main Concourse. It was lit up from outside, and a few neon strips were still functioning. They hung from their wires and swung precariously, throwing wild shapes across the scene of devastation.
It was a massive space, at least 200 feet from end to end and almost as wide. It was obvious that the epicentre of one blast lay somewhere behind Reception. This area was completely obliterated, a ghastly black hole, strewn with rubble, girders, piles of wood and plastic, pieces of bodies. Clothing had been torn from victims and lay burning.
The air was a little clearer here but the fires were worse. Flames ran along the wall all the way to the auditorium and flickered up to the ceiling. Towards the main doors, whose frames were now twisted into jagged columns of metal, there were more lumps of charred flesh. A pair of jeans lay a few feet in front of them. Just visible in the flickering shadows were two red and white circles, stumps encased in skin-tight denim. The top half of the body was nowhere to be seen.
They saw movement ahead. Shapes formed out of the smoke and the irregular patterns of light. A young man and a young woman were leaning over two figures in the rubble. Dave and the senator lowered the elderly woman to the floor, and Foreman crouched beside her. 'What's your name, my dear?' he asked.
She looked up at his face and muttered something. He leaned closer. Her husband crouched on her other side. 'Her name's Nancy. I'm Marty Gardiner, Mr Foreman.' His voice was shaky.
'Nancy. You wait here a minute with Marty. We'll check out the main entrance.' He looked to Marty, who nodded. Foreman glanced down and realised his jacket was still wrapped around his hand. He unwound it, rolled it up and lifted Nancy's head, gently, placing the jacket under her.
Dave was walking towards the group of people a few yards ahead. Foreman went after him across the smouldering piles of rubble.
'Steve!' Dave exclaimed as he reached one of the figures. He looked down and saw Todd Evans on the floor.
'Todd!'
Todd's face was lined with pain. He nodded towards his arm and Dave could see it was covered with blood. A bone was protruding from the flesh midway between elbow and wrist, and his shirt was soaked with blood. Next to him lay a teenage girl. Her dress was ripped to ribbons and the front of it was crimson. Another young woman was crouched beside her, crying desperately.
Steve straightened up just as Foreman arrived. He did a double-take as he noticed the senator, but Foreman was already leaning over the young girl in the debris. She looked up at him, her eyes slightly unfocused. He took her pulse. Glancing at the other young woman, he said, 'Is she a friend of yours?'
'She's my sister, Jenny.'
'We have to get her out.'
Dave was at Foreman's side. 'Can you stand?' he asked Jenny.
She nodded weakly. 'I think so.'
'What's your name?' Foreman asked the other girl.
'Martina.'
'Okay, Martina. Stand back a second. Dave, you get Jenny's left side. On three.'
They lifted the girl and she swayed.
At that moment they heard a cry from behind them. Marty Gardiner screamed a terrible 'No!'
Foreman snapped back to Steve and Martina. 'You two – get a shoulder under each of Jenny's and find a way to the main doors. She'll die if she doesn't get attention immediately. Todd, you go with them.'
Foreman turned back towards the Gardiners, and Dave helped Todd to his feet. He stood up unsteadily and the pitiful little group staggered towards the doors.
It was slow going. The Main Concourse resembled a battlefield. Rubble was strewn across the expanse of marble floor. Concrete slabs lay beside jagged shards of glass, some sticking up like stalagmites. Others lay in treacherous sheets on the ground. Martina and Steve led the way with Jenny, and Dave followed with Todd.
Jenny stumbled and fell. Steve and Martina caught her just before she reached the ground, but as they dropped to save her, Steve gashed his side on a protruding metal rod partly encased in concrete. He screamed with pain and clutched at the wound, letting Jenny go. Dave dashed forward and just broke the girl's fall.
It took them a few moments to pull themselves together. Steve was crying with pain. They could see a red circle of blood spreading across his Led Zeppelin T-shirt. He could barely breathe, but somehow they all managed to reach the Main Concourse.
The framework of the main doors was almost completely obliterated. Only daggers of glass pointing at weird angles remained in the metal frames. Outside, they could see more fires burning. Debris peppered the broad stone steps that led down from the doors to a large plaza and a tree-lined street beyond. A huge jet of water from a burst pipe was drenching the floor near the doors, splattering across massive chunks of concrete and marble. One of the main supports close to the doors had collapsed and smashed to pieces. Several corpses lay pinned under the fragments.
'Come on!' Dave shouted. He stepped ahead, picking a way through the mess. Todd came up behind Steve and the two girls. Reaching the doors, they could feel the cool air of night.
Dave took a step back and went to help Todd move out through the doors. He felt a strange movement to his left, a jerking, a spasm. Turning, he saw blood spray into the air, and acting on pure, animal instinct, he dived to the floor. As he fell, he saw Steve and the two girls shudder. Martina and Steve slipped away from the injured girl, who stood erect for a strange, timeless moment, her arms outstretched, beseeching. Then her legs gave way and she fell backwards in a pathetic heap.
Dave scrambled back, away from the doors, miraculously avoiding the bullets spraying the area, and pulled Todd down. 'Fuck!' he bellowed.
Todd landed heavily and screamed in agony, but Dave was oblivious to it. He dragged his friend back into the Main Concourse and out of the line of fire. Looking back towards the doors, Dave could see the three youths in their death throes, laying horribly contorted in a puddle of red that c
rawled outwards across the marble floor.
40
There were shards of glass and pieces of twisted metal a hundred yards from the CCC. Freddie Bantelli negotiated carefully. The road was covered with debris and slick with oil and water, and the air was filled with smoke and dust.
McNally instructed Bantelli to pull up ten yards from the mangled remains of the main entrance to the CCC. The captain opened his door. 'Wait here a second,' he yelled into the cabin. But Bantelli was already out of the truck and running around the front.
'Shit!' McNally hissed. Then he took a deep breath. 'Okay, Bantelli,' he called back. 'As you're out, check the main entrance. I'll guide the other trucks in. Don't – I repeat, do not – go beyond the doors. You got that?'
'Got it.'
'Fucking kid,' McNally hissed to the other three firemen. Two of them were adjusting the settings on their oxygen tanks, and Raul Burgos was reaching for the door handle. McNally looked over their heads towards the back of the truck. He had a torch in his hand and his helmet light on. He could see the first of the other Station 9 trucks slowing a few yards away. It was then he heard a burst of gunfire ripping through the sounds of destruction and mayhem.
Some sixth sense told McNally what was happening, no matter how unbelievable it might be. He heard one of the guys in the back scream, and he threw himself to the floor, gashing his knee on a sharp piece of metal. It sliced through his suit and he felt a surge of pain shudder up his leg.
'Stay here!' he yelled into the back, and ignoring the pain he crawled beneath the fire truck, quickly pulling his legs under the vehicle. He spun round on the ground to face the wreckage of the main entrance, and saw the soles of Bantelli's boots. He scrambled closer and crawled into a stream of fresh blood trailing away from Bantelli's body. The boy was shaking. McNally reached him a few inches beyond the undercarriage of the truck. The young fireman stopped moving.
Crawling out from under the rig, McNally managed to pull Bantelli's body into deep shadow between the fire truck and the shattered building, a gap of about three feet. He ripped off Bantelli's mask. The kid's face was white. He turned him slightly and saw that his back was ripped open from the nape of his neck to the middle of his spine, a mass of blood and bone protruding from under the remnants of his jacket.
McNally sat still, the ruined body of the kid draped across his lap. He closed Bantelli's sightless eyes. Only then did he hear the operator's voice. She was trying to keep calm but gradually losing it. '9-Alpha. Status, please? 9-Alpha, please respond!'
'McNally,' the captain said robotically. 'We have a shooter.'
41
'Connor!' McNally yelled into his radio. 'Get into the driver's seat and reverse out – slowly.'
The crew in the back of the rig had all heard the radio exchange with the operator. The shooter was high up somewhere on the near side of the fire truck. Engineer Gene Connor crawled to the front seat, keeping as low as possible, out of the line of fire.
The engine was still running. Connor slid into the seat and moved the shift into reverse with his body bent almost double, his head half under the steering wheel. The fire truck started to crawl backwards. Then a dozen rounds shattered the driver's side window. Following bullets passed through nothing but air until they arrived at the passenger's window, sending beads of safety glass outward onto the concrete. But two bullets hit Gene Connor's helmet, passed through it like hot pokers through butter and smashed into the door, taking large chunks of the fireman's brain with them. Blood cascaded down Connor's face and he fell forward, his foot jamming down on the accelerator.
The fire truck roared, its rear wheels screeching on the concrete. Then it suddenly jolted backwards and ploughed into a police car that was drawing to a halt immediately behind it. It kept going as if it had hit a toy car, gaining speed as it went. The police vehicle spun around 180 degrees, slammed through the mangled doors of the building and smashed into a girder dangling from the ceiling. The metal tore from the concrete above the car, and the upper end of the girder came loose at the joist. Twisting for a second on its single remaining bolt, the girder came down like a felled tree. The two cops in the car could see it all happen as if in slow motion. One of them reached the door handle and had even opened the door a fraction of an inch when the girder landed on the car, crushing the roof.
Outside the building, the fire truck had collided with the front of a companion rig. The engine of Connor's truck squealed like a spiked pig, its wheels spinning, sending up smoke and the stench of incinerated rubber.
Fifty feet from the truck, Captain James McNally was crouching beside his dead colleague and completely exposed to the shooter. Bullets ripped through the gaping windows and sent up sparks as they shattered their way through rubble and ricocheted from metal girders and posts. Keeping low, he crawled as fast as he could towards the stricken fire truck. The rat-tat-tat of shells hitting the floor and the remains of the wall of the devastated building followed him.
But McNally, it seemed, had nine lives. He reached the truck and was finally shielded from the shooter. Pulling on the door, he pushed Connor's corpse across the seat letting it fall into the space between the front seats. He killed the engine and the dreadful churning of wheels on concrete stopped. Keeping low, he looked into the back of the truck. Raul Burgos, who had been closest to the door, was obviously dead – a ricocheted bullet had hit him in the chest and ripped it open. Maney Steinberg appeared to be alive but unconscious – he had been thrown across the back seats and collided with an oxygen tank.
McNally crawled into the back as more bullets ripped through the cabin. He checked Steinberg's pulse and shook the unconscious fireman, slapping his face. 'Maney!' he shouted, and shook him again. 'We've gotta get out!'
McNally went out first, dragging the semi-conscious Steinberg with him. His biggest fear was that the shooter would hit the truck's gas tank. He was just trying to figure out how he could get away from the rig and reach cover when he heard fresh gunfire. 'Jesus Christ!' he exclaimed.
It was coming from the second rig. Moving to the back of the truck, between it and the building, McNally could just see three cops shielded behind a patrol car. They were taking turns to release a few rounds in the direction of the shooter before ducking down as the return fire came searing through the rancid night air. The cops were providing cover for the crew from the other truck to crawl out through the cabin.
The shooter unleashed a few more rounds towards the cops, then he sprayed the fire truck before flicking back to the cops again. But he was over-stretched. All four firemen made it safely behind the patrol car. McNally dashed towards the car, dragging Steinberg with him.
Three more patrol cars screeched to a stop behind the first one. Six officers scrambled out under the first car's cover and started firing in the direction of the sniper.
McNally was about to direct the firemen out of the shooter's line of sight and into the CCC when there was an incredibly loud roar from the plaza between the main road and the steps leading down from the entrance of the gutted CCC. It sounded like nothing on earth. They all spun round to see what had caused the noise, and for a second the gunfire ceased completely.
'What in the name of fuck is that?' McNally gasped.
42
Nine minutes after leaving Base One, Josh Thompson slowed the Silverback as he flew over the Californian coast at 60,000 feet. He brought the plane down to 20,000 feet, still a long way above the commercial air traffic coming into LAX, and checked in with Cyber Control at Tintara.
'You have airspace clearance,' a technician at Base One told him. 'All commercial flights across the country have been diverted or grounded. Emergency services have been notified.'
The devastated shell of the CCC lay directly below. Josh put on the close-range scanners, sweeping all electromagnetic frequencies, from radio waves in the low-frequency range, around 10 MHz, to gamma radiation with frequencies upward of 10 ExHz. Next he instructed the computer to filter out anything unrelat
ed to the current situation at the CCC and its environs. The computer profiled the scene as a holographic image in his visor. Josh could see the fire trucks and police cars and the shootout taking place 20,000 feet below. It was all accompanied by the radio exchanges and live sound. He focused in on the shooter, who was located on the roof of a gas station directly across from the entrance to the CCC. But even with the technology aboard the Silverback, all he could make out was a hooded figure crouched over a machine gun.
Taking the Silverback down, Josh found a suitable landing site in the plaza close to the main doors of the ripped-open building. At the same time, he monitored the gunman on the roof. As the craft came down to land, he saw the shooter shift position, but he could still see almost nothing that might ID the man. A few dozen feet above the ground, the Silverback drew parallel with the roof of the gas station. The figure moved away from the gun, grabbed a bag and vanished from sight.
Josh decided to turn away from the assassin. His first priority was to get into the CCC and assess the situation. With a great roar from the engines, the Silverback touched down on the debris-covered concrete of the plaza. He shut down the engines and suddenly the aircraft was silent and still, sitting outside the CCC like Klaatu's flying saucer in The Day the Earth Stood Still.
He was removing his helmet and about to tell the computer to open the canopy when a voice broke through on 506 MHz, the radio frequency most commonly used by the LAPD. 'This is a designated emergency scene. Exit the aircraft with your hands up.'
'What?' Josh said aloud. Then he pulled his helmet back into place and tapped the virtual keyboard. 'Mark,' he intoned into his mic. 'I think I have a problem here. It seems the natives didn't know I was coming after all.'