“I figured you’d be the one to ditch me.”
“I don’t care. We can hang if you want. I just thought you might want to see if any of your friends were here.”
“I don’t have that many friends,” Jennie said, and what was bad was the matter-of-fact way she said it. Aaron felt a pang of sympathy for her.
He’d had plenty of friends in high school, what little time he’d been there. There were always guys who wanted to hang around with him since his time behind bars had given him a reputation as a badass. Also, he knew where to find the best weed.
Jennie was a nerd, though, and despite the fact that nerds were a lot cooler than they used to be—Aaron didn’t understand how that was possible, but he’d witnessed it for himself—they still tended to be outsiders.
“I do know this one girl, though,” Jennie went on. “Her name’s Holly. She’s working at one of the seasonal stores in the mall. You know, the one that sells cheese balls and beef sticks. Maybe I’ll stop there and say hi to her. She could probably use some cheering up. They make her wear this silly costume.”
“She might not want her friends coming by to see her. She might be embarrassed.”
“Well, we’ll just go by and say hello. I don’t think she’ll mind.”
They had reached the doors. Aaron opened one of them and shrugged.
“Whatever you want to do,” he said.
He was just here to avoid the phantoms, and so far it had worked.
* * *
“What do you think?” Kaitlyn asked as she held a short, black dress in front of her.
“I think that’s way too old and revealing for you to wear,” Vanessa answered without hesitation. “Anyway, where would you wear it? It’s not appropriate for anywhere you go.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Kaitlyn said as she turned to study her reflection in a full-length mirror. “I think it might make a few eyes pop out at school.”
“You mean the junior high you go to?” Vanessa took the dress and hung it back on the nearby rack where it had come from. “None of this stuff is appropriate. We’re in the wrong section.”
“Yeah. The cool section,” Kaitlyn muttered as her mother turned away. Vanessa heard the comment but chose to ignore it.
Even the good kids had to be a little rebellious, she thought. In the long run, it wouldn’t do any harm.
* * *
He needed a hobby, Charles Lockhart told himself as he walked through the mall, trying not to bump into people. He’d never been very comfortable with human contact. He liked books and he liked the Internet, but people . . . not so much. Which made dealing with his students and fellow teachers difficult at times.
So maybe he needed to do something that would get him out of his comfort zone . . . although to be honest, that was a really stupid name for it, he thought, because he’d never actually been that comfortable, no matter what zone he was in. The socially awkward zone, that was a better name. He always seemed to be in that one.
But what sort of hobby could he get involved in? He thought about model railroading. That appealed to the old-fashioned side of his nature. But he could do that in his own apartment. A hobby, even if it wasn’t one that brought him in contact with other enthusiasts, ought to be something that would get him out.
He was looking around when he saw the sporting goods store. At first his gaze started to pass right over it. Camping didn’t appeal to him—as far as he was concerned, Roughing It was the title of a Mark Twain book, and that was all—and he knew he could never be a hunter.
But fishing . . . maybe. The idea of sitting on the bank of some slow-moving stream with a hook and a line in the water, waiting for a bite, wasn’t too bad. It sounded peaceful. Like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting.
And he wouldn’t actually kill the fish, of course. If he happened to catch one, he’d take the hook loose and throw it back into the river. That way he wouldn’t have all the mess and bother of cleaning and cooking it, two things he didn’t really know how to do, anyway. Having a hook in its mouth would still be painful for the fish, Charles supposed, but it would get over that.
He didn’t have to decide today. He could go over there to that store and look at the fishing poles and the tackle and think about it some more.
Every hobby had to start somewhere, he supposed.
* * *
Tom Vasquez was a hard man to shop for, Jamie thought. Her husband made good money, and if there was something he wanted, he was in the habit of getting it for himself most of the time. Her kids didn’t really want for anything, either.
Except maybe a mother.
She frowned and forced that thought out of her head. She had done the best she could for her kids, and that included doing her duty as a soldier.
Anyway, those days were over now. She was home, with an honorary discharge and some medals that were tucked away in a drawer, and she wouldn’t be going overseas to fight the enemy anymore.
Right now her job was to figure out what her husband might like for Christmas. She wandered through the men’s wear section of one of the department stores, looking at robes and pajamas. A man could always use a nice, comfortable robe, right? Especially when it got cold in the winter. Despite the nice weather outside, Jamie knew those days were coming soon.
* * *
Pete felt his heart pounding. He struggled to draw in a deep breath, something he couldn’t do very well these days. His good hand dropped to the little pocket inside the wheelchair’s right side where the Browning Hi-Power was hidden. His first impulse was to draw the gun, throw down on the punk, and yell for him to stay right where he was. Then Father Steve could call the cops.
Only the priest wouldn’t need to call the cops, Pete realized. The threat of some old geezer waving a gun around would be enough to bring them rushing to the scene. People would panic and rush around and trample each other. These days, most people went crazy just at the sight of a gun.
Something else made Pete stay his hand.
The punk was with a girl.
She was a few years younger, a teenager, from the looks of her. Pretty, in a girl-next-door sort of way, with chestnut hair that fell around her shoulders. Kinda skinny. She wore glasses, too, and reminded Pete of one of his granddaughters. Or was it one of his great-granddaughters? He had a little trouble keeping up with that.
This girl sure didn’t look like she ought to be hanging around with a punk who’d bust into people’s houses on Thanksgiving.
Then Pete thought he detected a faint resemblance between them. Hard to say, since his eyes weren’t what they once were, but that would explain things. They were brother and sister. Hell, even punks could have sisters, he supposed.
It wouldn’t do to shoot her brother right in front of her.
Then the two of them split up, with the girl veering off toward the place that sold cheese and sausage while the punk ambled toward the sporting goods store that was already Pete’s destination. Pete’s eagerness to confront the little son of a bitch was enough to make him lean forward a little.
“Are you all right, Mr. McCracken?” Father Steve asked.
“Just keep pushin’, Father,” Pete said.
* * *
As Tobey walked toward the sporting goods store, he scanned the crowd around him, searching for Ashley. If they ran into each other, they wouldn’t have to rendezvous at the food court. That would be okay with Tobey, since he had done what he came to do and the ring was resting securely in his pocket.
Whatever else Ash wanted to do here at the mall, however she wanted to spend the rest of the day, that was fine with him.
Without thinking about it, he did more than keep an eye open for Ashley. He studied the other people around him. He had gotten in the habit of doing that in Iraq, where the enemy looked just like everybody else on the streets, and the only way to spot them in time was to watch what they were doing. Noticing any suspicious behavior could easily mean the difference between life and death.
Tobey reminded himself that he was back home now and didn’t have to do that anymore. There were a few guys around who looked like they could have come from Fallujah or Tekrit or Baghdad, of course, and honestly, he paid more attention to them than anybody else.
They weren’t doing anything unusual, though. The guy walking along about a dozen feet in front of Tobey actually looked more dangerous, with his close-shaven head and the hoodie he wore and the way he kept turning his head from side to side so he could look around, like he was nervous and watching for something. The girl with him said something to him and then angled off.
Tobey watched her go, and then his eyes moved past her to the old man in a wheelchair who was being pushed in this direction by a priest. They struck Tobey as an unlikely pair. The old man had a really intense expression on his face, and he reminded Tobey of a vulture, the way he hunched forward a little in the chair.
There was a tall, skinny guy approaching the store, too, and he really looked out of place in his corduroy jacket with leather patches on the elbows. Tobey hadn’t seen a jacket like that in ages and didn’t know they even made them anymore.
A young black man wearing a security guard’s uniform came out of the store and paused in front of it. He pushed his jacket back and put his hands on his hips as he looked around with a baffled frown on his face. Whatever he was searching for, he hadn’t found it in the sporting goods store, and now he didn’t know what to do next. That was what his attitude told Tobey, anyway.
They were all there in front of the store, within twenty feet of each other, when Tobey heard a sound he’d never expected to hear again.
Cutting through the hubbub of the busiest shopping day of the year, blotting out the good cheer of the Christmas music playing over the mall’s PA system, a burst of automatic weapons fire stopped Tobey in his tracks.
Chapter 19
When the kid in the guard uniform started to raise the shopping bag, the alarm bells already going off in Jake Connelly’s head set up a real clamor. The way Ray Napoli stiffened and reached for his sidearm told Jake that the mall’s head of security was experiencing the same sensation.
Neither of them reacted fast enough, however, and with blank corridor walls on both sides of them, they had nowhere to go.
The noise was loud—a swift, deadly chatter as muzzle flame shredded the bottom of the shopping bag.
Napoli had taken a quick step to his right as he tried to draw his weapon. That was the only thing that saved Jake’s life. The kid swung the gun he was firing from left to right, stitching a line of bullets from one side of the corridor to the other. The slugs thudded into Napoli’s chest and drove him back against Jake. Napoli’s body shielded the former cop from the unexpected onslaught of lead.
Jake clawed under his jacket for the .357 holstered at his waist. He had been under fire before and knew not to panic. The impact of Napoli falling against him threw him off balance, though, and the gun stubbornly refused to come clear.
Jake’s feet slipped. He realized the floor was slick from the blood pouring out of the wounds in Napoli’s chest and midsection. With his free hand, he grabbed instinctively at the other man’s jacket. That just succeeded in getting him dragged down, too, when Napoli fell.
Only a handful of heartbeats had passed since the kid opened fire, but already the mall was full of screaming because of the sound of a gun going off. Jake heard it as if from a great distance. His ears rang like somebody was pounding on a giant drum right next to them.
Napoli was lying on top of him now, pinning Jake’s gun arm so he couldn’t use the .357 even if he could have gotten the weapon out of its holster.
The shooting stopped. The kid stalked forward along the corridor toward the chaos erupting out in the mall.
Jake stopped trying to get his gun out. Instead, acting purely on instinct, he stayed as still as possible, holding his breath so that not even his chest moved. If he had any chance, it lay in making the killer think that he was dead, too. With so much blood, it would be difficult to tell for certain.
The shooter fired another short burst into Napoli’s body as he strode past. Jake felt the corpse shudder as the bullets struck it, but the slugs didn’t go all the way through.
Jake knew without having to check that Napoli was dead. Nobody could absorb that much lead and live more than a second or two.
He expected the kid to slow down and make sure of both of them, but as he passed them he broke into a run. The adrenaline had to be pumping so hard in him that he might not be thinking straight. Jake stayed where he was until the kid had gone by, then he shoved hard against Napoli’s weight.
The security chief was a big guy. Jake had to grunt and strain to roll him to the side. Jake rolled, too, through the pool of blood that had already gathered, and finally succeeded in getting the short-barreled revolver out of the holster. He lifted the gun, hoping to get a shot off . . .
His head came up just in time for him to see the shooter vanish around a corner at the end of the corridor.
* * *
Mahmoud wasn’t supposed to start up the escalator until he saw that Habib was in position, but the shots changed everything, Habib knew. They had discussed the possibility of something going wrong and what to do if it did. Mahmoud was supposed to act on his own initiative if he could tell that everything wasn’t going according to the plan.
So when Habib emerged into the mall after gunning down the two Americans and looked toward the bank of escalators at the center of the building, he wasn’t surprised to see Mahmoud fighting his way up the middle of the three escalators that rose to the upper level.
Mahmoud grabbed the clothes of the people above him and slung them back and to the side, sending them tumbling over onto the flanking escalators. Screaming, yelling, and shrieks of agony as the escalators caught hold of flesh and chewed it like giant mechanized jaws filled the air. Mahmoud ignored all of it as he lunged higher on the moving steps.
When he neared the halfway point, he stopped and turned so he could look back toward the spot where Habib stood. Just for an instant, their eyes met across that distance, and then Mahmoud’s hand moved sharply to his chest.
He disappeared in a blinding burst of flame. The explosion shook the floor under Habib’s feet. He staggered.
When he caught himself, he saw that Mahmoud was gone. So were the escalators, except for small, twisted remnants at the top and bottom. Dozens of Americans had been blown to bits in the blast, as well. The righteous smoke of holy destruction rolled through the mall.
Habib’s heart leaped joyfully at the sight. With an incoherent yell, he pivoted around and pressed the Steyr’s trigger, exulting as the weapon leaped and pounded in his hands.
* * *
The sudden chaos, accompanied by screams and shots, was like being back in Iraq. Tobey twisted toward the chatter of an automatic weapon and at the same time reached into his jacket to close his hand around the solid grip of the 9mm Shield.
The action was purely a reflexive one. His muscles knew what to do.
His brain was shouting Ashley! Where’s Ashley?
He hoped she was at the far end of the mall, far away from whatever madman was doing this.
Then the huge blast rocked the very earth itself and almost knocked Tobey off his feet. He staggered and threw out his good arm to catch his balance. He knew an explosion that big, in a place this crowded, must have claimed dozens of lives, but there was nothing he could do for them now.
Instead he grabbed the arm of the closest man, who happened to be the tall, skinny guy who looked like a professor. Tobey practically threw him toward the sporting goods store and yelled, “Get in there! Find some cover!”
The guy stumbled right into the kid wearing the hoodie. They nearly fell down but held each other up.
“Go! Go!” Tobey shouted at them. He waved his arm to emphasize the words.
Suddenly he remembered the old man in the wheelchair and looked around to see what had become of him.
>
The priest was already heading for what he must have hoped was safety, pushing the wheelchair at a run in front of him. The old man looked like he was trying to yell but couldn’t find the breath.
More shots hammered in a full-auto staccato.
The worst part, though, was that they were coming from different directions.
Tobey could figure out what that meant. This was a coordinated attack involving multiple shooters. That, along with the explosion, said one thing to him.
Terrorists.
Again he thought about Ashley, but there was nothing he could do for her. He had no idea where she was, and searching for her in the madhouse that the mall had become in a matter of seconds would be useless. He would look for her later if he got a chance.
If he wasn’t dead.
He wasn’t going to just stand around and let the sons of bitches kill him. He raised the Shield, flicking off the safety with his thumb as he did so. Somebody was shooting about thirty yards away, fire licking from the muzzle of his weapon as he sprayed bullets into the screaming crowd.
Tobey caught only glimpses of the madman through gaps in the terrified throng of people, but he might have been able to draw a bead on the shooter anyway if he hadn’t hesitated when he realized the guy was wearing a security guard’s uniform. That confused Tobey for a second, so he kept his finger out of the trigger guard.
The next moment, somebody tackled him from behind.
* * *
This couldn’t be happening, Calvin thought as the violence and pandemonium spread around him.
Not after he had promised his mother that this job was going to be safe.
But all hell was definitely breaking loose in the American Way Mall.
He had just emerged from the sporting goods store, so far unsuccessful in his effort to locate Dave Dixon, when he heard the shots. That was bad enough, but then everybody started yelling and pushing and running, so it was impossible to tell what was going on.
Calvin looked back toward the center of the mall. He spotted somebody in a guard’s uniform standing near the entrance to one of the service corridors. Calvin’s first thought was to start toward the guy and link up with him so they could work together to put a stop to the trouble.
Black Friday Page 11