That was when he noticed the funny-looking gun in the other guard’s hands. That didn’t look right at all.
But for all Calvin knew, some of the guards were armed with automatic weapons. This man could need his help.
Before anything else could happen, a huge explosion rocked the mall. Smoke roiled out from the center of the building. Calvin couldn’t see much, but he knew a blast that big must have killed a lot of people. The thought made him sick to his stomach.
He forced that reaction to the back of his mind and started again toward where he had noticed the other guard. He couldn’t see the man anymore but knew he was probably still over there. In this mob, nobody could go very far in a hurry.
Calvin had taken one step in that direction when he saw a big man in a denim jacket pull out a smaller pistol and raise it, using a two-handed grip that made him look like he knew what he was doing.
To Calvin’s horror, he realized the man was trying to aim at the other security guard.
Calvin didn’t stop to think. If he had, he might have considered the fact that the guy was considerably taller and heavier than he was.
However, during football practice Calvin had tackled guys who were bigger than he was. He hadn’t always brought them down, but sometimes he had. Anyway, this gun-wielding man was facing away from him, so Calvin could take him by surprise.
Calvin lowered his head, darted through an opening in the panicked crowd, built up some steam, and rammed his shoulder into the guy’s back.
The impact knocked the man forward, off his feet. He went down hard with Calvin on top of him. Calvin had hoped the tackle would jolt the gun out of the man’s hand, but the guy hung on to it.
Scrambling for an advantage, Calvin tried to slide an arm around the man’s neck so he could get a chokehold on him. Before he could manage to do that, the man’s right elbow came shooting back and slammed into his jaw. The blow made Calvin roll to the side.
That hurt worse than any hit he had ever taken in practice or a game, but he tried to shake it off. He pawed at the man’s muscular arm, which felt as big around as the trunk of a small tree.
The man rolled toward Calvin, clamped his free hand around the smaller man’s neck, and pinned him to the floor.
“Stop that!” he snapped. “What the hell are you doing, kid?”
Calvin couldn’t answer. He was having enough trouble just breathing with that big hand squeezing his neck.
The man seemed to understand that. He went on, “If you think I’m one of the bastards doing this, you’re wrong. I think the mall’s under attack by terrorists. Do I look like a terrorist to you?”
Actually, he didn’t. He had a pleasantly homely face, ears that stuck out a little, and close-cropped dark hair. He looked about as American as anybody could be.
Of course, Americans could still be terrorists, Calvin supposed, but something about this man told him that wasn’t the case.
When the guy eased up on his grip, Calvin said, “I . . . I’m sorry. You’ve got a gun . . . I thought—”
“That’s okay.” The man rose to his feet in a single smooth surge of muscles. He reached down, and when Calvin automatically grasped his hand, he pulled him upright with little or no effort. “Understandable mistake.”
“You . . . you were aiming at another guard.”
Both of them were shouting to be heard over the bedlam going on around them, but the big man exuded a sort of calm that made Calvin relax a little, too. He said, “I don’t think he’s a real guard. He’s got some kind of machine pistol and is shooting people.”
“My God!”
“Yeah.” The man looked back and forth. “Sounds like multiple shooters. We need to get somewhere there’ll be some cover.” He gave Calvin a push back toward the sporting goods store. “Get in there and try to get everybody calmed down. Tell them to find cover and stay low. Anybody who knows how to use a gun better arm themselves, too, including you. Plenty of weapons and ammo in there.” He paused. “I’m Tobey Lanning, by the way.”
“Calvin Marshall.” Calvin started to turn toward the sporting goods store. Tobey had the sort of presence that made people tend to do what he told them, and it wasn’t just his size, either.
But Calvin paused and asked, “What are you going to do?”
“See if I can find out what’s going on here,” Tobey said grimly.
Chapter 20
Aaron didn’t know what was going on, but when the madness started, his first thought was for his sister Jennie.
He was turning to look toward the kiosk where her friend worked, but before he could locate her, some sort of explosion rocked the mall. Then some big guy grabbed another man, shoved him into Aaron’s face, and yelled at them to get in the store. He seemed to be used to giving orders, so Aaron figured he was a cop.
Aaron got all tangled up with the skinny nerd who stumbled into him. For several long, maddening seconds, they both struggled to stay on their feet as each tried to disengage from the other. Aaron finally shoved the guy away and caught his balance.
The air was full of smoke from the blast. The mall’s ventilation system was still working, circulating smoke that stung the eyes and nose. People ran everywhere, and Aaron couldn’t take a step without somebody bumping into him.
He was about to start trying to fight his way toward the place he had last seen his sister when the skinny guy clutched at his arm and babbled, “We’ve got to hide, we’ve got to hide! They’re killing everybody!”
Frustrated and angry—and scared, really scared, no point in denying it—Aaron pushed the guy away and said, “Leave me alone, dude!”
“They’re shooting!” the guy wailed.
Something about the man was vaguely familiar, but Aaron couldn’t place him and didn’t care.
“Hide if you want,” he snapped. “I gotta find Jennie!”
Then the mob surged against Aaron and pushed him in the opposite direction from the way he wanted to go. The skinny guy grabbed his arm and dragged him toward the sporting goods store. It was like trying to fight an ocean of panic. The wave pushed him into the store.
Feet tangled with his and he started to fall. He reached out for whatever he could grab, suddenly afraid that if he fell, these crazy people would trample him to death. That was a very real danger in situations like this. Aaron had been at rock concerts where people had almost been killed that way.
The thing he grabbed to hold himself up as he half-fell was the arm of a wheelchair. As Aaron braced himself, he was shocked to find himself looking into the buzzard-like face of the old man who had nearly shot him the day before.
* * *
Pete wanted to yell at the crazy priest to stop, but he couldn’t find the breath. Maddened shoppers banged into them as Father Steve pushed the wheelchair toward the sporting goods store. Pete was afraid the chair was going to turn over, and if it did he would spill out of it and be dead meat. The mob would stomp the life out of him.
Father Steve somehow kept the wheelchair upright and moving, though. It was like riding the bumper cars at an old-fashioned state fair midway.
Pete didn’t know what was going on, but obviously it was bad. He hadn’t heard shooting like that since the Battle of the Bulge, and when the explosion went off, it was like an artillery shell landing nearby. For a second Pete felt like he was back in France or Germany, fighting the Nazis.
Then he snapped back to the present. It sounded like there was a war going on, all right, but it wasn’t his war. That one had been over for more than seventy years.
Father Steve pushed the wheelchair into the sporting goods store. The craziness still swirled around them, but Father Steve stopped behind a display of camping equipment just inside the entrance.
That stuff won’t stop a bullet, Pete thought. He didn’t know if the priest would be able to hear him over all the yelling and shooting, but he opened his mouth to say, “You need to . . . find some better—”
Before he could finish the warning, some
body bumped into the chair and grabbed its arm to steady himself. The guy almost fell into Pete’s lap. Pete looked at him.
The punk!
With all the hell breaking loose in the mall, Pete had almost forgotten about spotting the kid who’d busted down his door a day earlier. Pete’s outrage boiled up until he couldn’t contain it. The world might be going mad around them, but fate had provided him with an opportunity to see that this punk got what was coming to him.
He clawed at the pocket on the side of the wheelchair and dragged out the Browning Hi-Power. As he brought it up, he gasped, “Don’t . . . move! Father . . . This guy . . . is a thief!”
The punk’s eyes bulged out at the sight of the 9mm. He reacted with the speed of youth, reaching down and clamping his hand around the BHP’s barrel. That kept the slide from working. Pete tried to pull the trigger anyway, but the punk easily wrenched the gun out of his hand.
“Are you crazy, old man?” the punk yelled. “Try to shoot me again, will you?”
“Stop it!” Father Steve shouted. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but just stop it, both of you! The mall is under attack!”
The punk straightened and took a step back, still holding the Browning. He said to the priest, “Are you with this crazy old coot?”
“Yes, but there’s no need to—”
“Push him back farther into the store,” the punk went on. “Somebody’s shootin’ out there. You need to get him out of the line of fire.”
Pete said, “He’s . . . a thief!” but Father Steve ignored him.
Instead the priest asked the punk, “What about you?”
The kid turned the gun around so he was holding the grip. He said, “I gotta find my sister,” and turned toward the store’s entrance.
“Hey!” Pete yelped. “He’s stealin’ . . . my gun!”
The protest was too late. Father Steve was already turning the wheelchair away from the entrance and pushing it toward the rear of the store.
* * *
Jennie’s brother Aaron had been right. Holly Stevens looked embarrassed when she caught sight of Jennie coming toward her. But then Holly laughed and shook her head.
“I was hoping nobody who knew me would see me in this outfit,” she said as Jennie came up to her. “I should have known better.”
“Surely I’m not the first one from our school to come by.”
“Well, no,” Holly admitted. “I’ve seen quite a few people I know, but well . . . you know how it is. Just because I know who they are doesn’t mean they know who I am.”
“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jennie said. She was well aware that to the kids who were even borderline popular in their school, the outsiders and the misfits might as well not even exist. She went on, “You really don’t have to worry, though. You look fine.”
“In this?” Holly waved her hand to indicate the German milkmaid’s costume she wore. “I look like a lunatic!”
“No, you don’t. It’s sort of . . . cute?”
Holly rolled her eyes so hard they threatened to come out of their sockets. She changed the subject of her appearance by asking, “What are you doing here today?”
“Shopping, of course. Why else would somebody be at the mall on Black Friday?”
“In my case . . . trying to earn money.” Holly paused. “You know, I’ll bet they could use a couple more girls part-time through Christmas, if you want me to put in a word for you.”
That actually wasn’t a bad idea. If Jennie was going to make it to college next year, she would need quite a bit more money than her scholarships would provide, unless she was lucky and happened to get a full ride from one of the schools she’d applied to. She didn’t expect that to happen, though. Her grades were very good, but not at the absolute top. And her extracurriculars . . .
Well, it was hard to come up with impressive extracurriculars when your father was a drunk, your brother was an ex-con, and your family was struggling just to barely get by.
Jennie wasn’t going to say that to anybody, though, even her best friend, so she just nodded and told Holly, “Yeah, that’d be gre—”
The sudden, unexpected sound of gunshots interrupted her, followed instantly by screaming and yelling.
Holly let out a startled cry and looked around, wide-eyed with fear. So did Jennie. She searched for Aaron in the crowd, which began to swell back and forth in panic. Sure, he was a petty criminal and stayed high way too much of the time, but he was her big brother. Instinctively, she looked to him for protection.
She didn’t see him, though, and then Holly grabbed her hand and jerked her away from the kiosk.
“Let’s get out of here!” she said. “We’ll be safer outside!”
Jennie didn’t know about that. In school, they’d had it drilled into their heads that if there was ever a shooting, it was best to lock the door and stay right where they were.
That idea had never fully made sense to Jennie. It seemed logical to her that if somebody was shooting inside the school, it would be safer outside.
Maybe the same thing was true of a mall.
And there was a lot of shooting going on. She could hear the swift reports hammering above the tumult of the panicked crowd. She really wanted to know where Aaron was, but as Holly tugged at her, Jennie gave up and let her friend pull her away from the kiosk.
Just then, something blew up. Both girls stumbled and went to their knees. The jeans Jennie wore protected her, but Holly’s legs were bare under the milkmaid’s skirt and she cried out in pain as the floor scraped her knees.
Jennie helped her up. There was an exit not far from there, and they joined the shoppers headed in that direction.
Before they could get there, a couple of men moved to block the doors. Both of them held guns of some sort. The weapons looked odd to Jennie, but dangerous at the same time.
One of the men yelled, “Stay back! Stay back!” while the other ordered, “Everyone down on the floor!”
The second man punctuated his order with a burst of gunfire over the heads of the crazed shoppers. Most of them stopped in their tracks, but a few continued charging toward the doors.
The two gunmen opened fire for real. No more warning shots.
Jennie was horrified as she saw men and women jerked to a sudden stop by the impact of the bullets pounding into them. Skin burst and crimson sprays of blood flew around them. It was like something from a movie, just special effects, Jennie thought, but at the same time, she knew it was real. Hideously real.
The people who’d been shot began to crumple. The men kept firing, and slugs zipped past the first targets to smash into the people who had been behind them. More screams added to the chaos. Even as the gunmen continued firing, they shouted, “Get down! Get down!”
Jennie practically tackled Holly and dragged her off her feet. Both girls sprawled on the floor. Staying on their feet was asking to be killed.
She kept an arm around Holly as they huddled there with terrified people pressed against them all around. Her heart slugged so hard in her chest that it felt like it was going to burst right through her ribs and out of her body.
She expected the killers to start moving through the crowd and shooting them one by one. That was what mass murderers did, wasn’t it? Like everybody else, she had read about those bloody incidents and seen the news reports on TV.
This didn’t seem to be the usual spree killing, though. Shots were coming from all over the mall, on both levels. That bomb had gone off. This was something different. This was . . . an attack.
A terrorist attack.
Jennie knew she was right as soon as that phrase went through her head. She had gotten a good enough look at the gunmen wielding the automatic weapons before she and Holly dived for the floor to know that they were both men in their twenties, with dark skin, dark hair, and beard stubble. Young men from the Middle East.
They stopped shooting. One of them dropped the empty magazine from his weapon and replaced it with a full one, then the seco
nd man did likewise. Jennie recognized what they were doing from action movies she’d seen.
“Stay down!” one of them called to the shoppers who had stretched out on the floor. “Stay down and no one else will be hurt!”
Jennie looked at the bloody shapes sprawled on the floor closer to the doors, the figures that had been chopped up so much by bullets that they barely looked human anymore, and she knew the men were lying.
The killing wasn’t over.
It had barely gotten started.
Jennie wept silently for herself and her brother and hoped that Aaron was all right and then wished that he was here to hold her hand, the same way he had when they were little and she was scared.
But he wasn’t, so she clung to her friend instead and waited to see what was going to happen and how long they were going to live.
Chapter 21
All the department stores that anchored the mall had wide entrances into the mall itself, plus at least two entrances/exits that opened onto the parking lot.
When the shooting started, Jamie heard gunfire from enough different directions at once, including the store’s second floor, that she knew instantly this was a coordinated attack. She’d heard enough talk about Taliban ambushes to recognize what was going on. Those were insurgents doing the firing.
No. They were insurgents in their own country.
Here in America they were terrorists, plain and simple.
She dropped the pair of driving gloves she’d been considering buying for Tom and turned swiftly toward the nearest doors that opened onto the parking lot. She didn’t want to be trapped in there. The terrorists would have posted guards at the exits to keep everybody inside, but Jamie thought if there was only one man she might be able to get past him.
If she could put him down, then maybe some of the other shoppers and mall employees could escape, too.
Everybody in the place was panicked in one way or another. Some people ran around aimlessly, shouting questions. Others huddled behind store displays as if that would save them. Some just stood and stared, apparently frozen by fear.
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