“Calvin.”
Tobey nodded and said, “Get moving, Calvin.”
Calvin nodded and started to turn away, then paused and asked, “Are you a cop?”
“No,” Tobey said. “I’m just a guy. I used to be a soldier, but I was a grunt, not an officer or anything.”
“Maybe so,” Calvin said, “but I’m really glad you’re in charge here.”
Tobey grunted. He hadn’t actually given any thought to being in charge. He’d just started giving orders because somebody had to.
He dropped the empty magazine from the Steyr and seated a full one, then turned to the priest and the old man in the wheelchair and told them, “You guys need to get back away from the front of the store, too.”
“Yes,” the priest said, but as he started to turn the chair the old man told him to wait a minute.
“I can . . . shoot,” he said to Tobey. “During the war . . . I was in . . . the First Infantry.”
“The Big Red One,” Tobey said. He didn’t have to ask which war the man was talking about.
“Damn . . . straight.”
“Get him a gun,” Tobey told the priest. “And you’d better get one for yourself, too.”
The priest looked shocked and said, “I can’t . . . I’m not . . . I mean, I’m a man of God.”
“I believe in him, too, Father, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want us to just stand around and let ourselves be murdered in the name of religion.”
“I don’t know . . .”
The old man said, “I’ll handle . . . the shootin’ . . . for both of us.”
Tobey grinned and said, “You were a sergeant, right?”
“Corporal . . . Corporal Pete McCracken.”
“All right, Corporal McCracken. I’m counting on you.”
“I won’t . . . let you down,” the old man wheezed.
Tobey didn’t doubt him for a second.
Chapter 24
Jamie found a couple of loaded twenty-round magazines in the dead man’s pockets. As she yanked them out, the girl who had shot the terrorist crawled over to her and asked, “What kind of gun is that?”
“It’s a Steyr machine pistol,” Jamie answered. She looked around quickly, checking for any new threats. She figured all the shooting in this area of the store would bring somebody to check on it.
“I’m gonna get the one the other guy had!”
The girl started to stand up. Everybody else was still huddled on the floor or behind the jewelry counter. The girl’s mother looked over the counter and called in an urgent half whisper, “Kaitlyn, stay down!”
Jamie caught hold of the waistband of the girl’s jeans and kept her from rising.
“Your mom’s right,” she said. “You don’t want to make yourself a target.”
“But we killed both those guys,” Kaitlyn protested. “I don’t see any more, do you?” She looked back and forth hurriedly, then called to her mother, “Mom, come on! Let’s get out of here while we can!”
That idea spread instantly. Several people leaped up and charged toward the doors. Jamie wanted to yell at them to stop, but she knew it wouldn’t do any good. They were too panic-stricken to listen to her or anyone else.
The ones in the forefront of the stampede reached the doors and pushed outside. Jamie expected something to happen: an explosion, a burst of gunfire, something to spread more death and destruction.
But instead the people just charged out into the sunlight and ran wildly away from the mall.
Jamie’s jaw tightened. She had figured more terrorists would be waiting outside to stop any escape, but clearly that wasn’t the case. If the people who had just fled had listened to her and been more cautious, they might have been doomed. That knowledge was a bitter pill to swallow, but Jamie knew it was the truth.
Kaitlyn appeared to have forgotten about getting the gun that the other dead terrorist had dropped. Instead she pulled loose from Jamie’s grip, turned toward the jewelry counter, and waved a hand as she called, “Mom, come on!”
Her mother stood up and started to hurry out the opening in the counter, and at that moment shots blasted from somewhere else in the store. The pretty, middle-aged woman with brown hair arched her back as bullets tore into her.
Kaitlyn screamed, “Mommmm!”
Jamie shouted, “Everybody down!” as she twisted toward the new attack. She spotted a man charging through the store, shooting on the run, and dropped to one knee as she raised the Steyr. She fired a burst and saw the terrorist stumble. He didn’t go down, though, and he was able to keep shooting.
Kaitlyn’s mother fell forward with her body draped over the jewelry counter’s glass top as her arms hung limply in front of it. Kaitlyn was still screaming as she ran toward her. The terrorist swung his weapon in that direction. Bullets struck the counter and sprayed glass everywhere as the slugs tracked toward the girl.
Jamie fired again and saw blood fountain from the terrorist’s throat as lead stitched across it. The man’s gun fell silent as he crumpled into a bloody heap.
Kaitlyn reached her mother’s body and grabbed hold of it, shaking it as she cried, “Mom, wake up! Wake up! We’ve got to get out of here!”
It was too late for that, Jamie thought grimly as she stood up and moved toward the counter. Kaitlyn could still get out of here alive, though. Jamie took hold of the girl’s arm and tried to pull her away.
“Let’s go,” she said firmly, in the same tone she had always used to issue orders.
Kaitlyn wasn’t a soldier, though. She was a grieving girl, and she clung to her mother’s body.
“No! She’s gotta wake up! She’s just got to!”
“Kaitlyn. Kaitlyn!”
She turned a tear-streaked face toward Jamie.
“What’s your mother’s name?” Jamie asked, her voice a bit gentler now.
“Her . . . her name?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s . . . Vanessa.”
“I never knew Vanessa,” Jamie said, “but I know good and well she’d want you to get out of here and be safe. I have daughters of my own, and that’s what I’d want for them if they were in your place.”
“But . . . but she . . .”
“I know,” Jamie said. “I’m sorry. But there’s going to be more of those bastards coming, and this may be our only chance to get out of here.”
She glanced over her shoulder as she spoke. People were still fleeing unmolested out the doors and into the parking lot. So many of them were trying to escape, though, that they were jammed up a little in the openings. Despite that, the store looked like it was almost clear of shoppers and employees.
Kaitlyn drew in a deep, shuddery breath and said, “I’m all right now.”
Jamie didn’t really believe that—Kaitlyn was far from all right and probably wouldn’t be for a long time; none of them who had been trapped in this madhouse would be—but at least maybe she could get out alive. Jamie relaxed her grip on the girl’s arm . . .
With no warning, Kaitlyn rammed into her and knocked her back against the counter. Glass crunched under Jamie’s shoes. Kaitlyn twisted away and ran.
Toward the mall.
Toward the monsters who shared responsibility for her mother’s death.
Jamie bit back a curse and went after her, but running wasn’t that easy with her prosthesis. Despite being taller, she wasn’t gaining any ground. She didn’t know what Kaitlyn was thinking, maybe some crazy notion of getting revenge for her mother’s death, but all she was going to succeed in doing was getting herself killed.
Kaitlyn had almost reached the mall proper when a small door, almost unnoticeable behind a rack full of purses, flew open and a figure about the same size as her dashed out. Jamie watched in surprise as another girl, this one with black hair caught back in a ponytail, grabbed Kaitlyn, twisted an arm behind her back, and forced her toward the door.
Both girls disappeared through the opening. The door started to swing shut behind them, but Jamie
reached it in time to catch it, which was good because there was no handle on this side. It could only be opened from the other side. Jamie figured the door had something to do with mall maintenance. With the gun up, she went through and found the two girls in a dimly lit corridor, still struggling.
“Let me go!” Kaitlyn cried.
The other girl—who was older, probably in her early twenties—hung on to her and said sharply, “Stop it! Do you want to get killed, you fool?” She had some sort of accent, maybe eastern European.
Jamie caught hold of the push bar on this side of the door and pulled it closed behind them. It was dim and oppressive back here, with cinder-block walls and visible ductwork and bundles of electrical cables on the walls, and the whole thing made her feel a little claustrophobic, something the control cabin of her helicopter had never done.
But at the same time, she felt safer now than she had so far during this ordeal, which had lasted only a few minutes although it seemed much longer.
“Stop it!” she snapped at both girls. “And be quiet. You don’t want them to hear us and figure out we’re in here.”
“The lady is right,” the black-haired young woman said. She wore gray coveralls, some sort of uniform, and Jamie figured she might be a member of the mall’s custodial crew. She put both hands on Kaitlyn’s shoulders and hissed, “We must be silent!”
Kaitlyn stopped fighting but started to cry. The young woman embraced her, and Jamie stepped forward to put her arms around both of them, still holding the liberated Steyr as she did so.
The shock and anger she had felt started to fade. The wheels of her brain began to revolve quickly. For the moment the three of them were safe . . . but maybe they could be more than that.
Maybe they could be the worst nightmare for some damned Islamic terrorists.
American women, pissed off and ready to kick ass.
* * *
The blond woman was tall and lean, with a hardness around her eyes and mouth that told Irina she was a soldier. Irina had seen women like her, Russian women who were in the army and knew they had to be harder and tougher than their male counterparts just to survive. They were frightening.
So, too, was this American woman, although not as much so. When she spoke to the young one, there was compassion in her eyes and voice.
“I know how much you’re hurting right now, Kaitlyn—” the blonde began.
“No, you don’t,” the girl said, her voice shaking with both anger and grief. “You don’t know. My mother is dead.”
“How old are you?”
“What? I’m fourteen, but what—”
“My mother died when I was sixteen,” the blonde said. “Cancer.”
“That’s different. She wasn’t killed.”
“She was all right one week, and then she got sick, and then it was six weeks of pure hell for her before she died. You can’t say one is better or worse than another.” The older woman’s tone softened again. “So I know you’re hurting. I know you’re hurting bad.”
Kaitlyn started to cry again.
Since they were sharing things, Irina said, “Two years ago soldiers came for my mother and took her away. I never saw her again. Whether she is still alive, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “She had made me promise that I would leave and come to America if I could. I kept that promise.”
“Russia?” the blonde asked.
“Chechnya.”
“I’m sorry.”
“So I know the pain,” Irina went on. “And I know men like those out there. They live only to kill those who offend them.”
The blonde said, “It sounds like you’re well acquainted with them, all right.” She put out her hand. “I’m Jamie Vasquez.”
“Irina Dubrovna,” Irina said as she shook Jamie’s hand.
Sniffling, the girl said, “I’m Kaitlyn Hamilton.” “What are we gonna do? Where are we?”
“We are in bowls of the mall,” Irina said.
Jamie smiled and told her, “I think you mean the bowels of the mall.”
“Yes, bowels, that is right. Sometimes the English words, they are still not there for me in my head.”
“I think you speak just fine,” Kaitlyn said. “This is, like, where all the air-conditioning and heating and electrical cables are, right?”
Irina pointed along the narrow, dimly lit corridor.
“This comes out in service area. These passages are all over the mall, behind the stores and between some of them.”
“So you can get around without being seen,” Jamie said.
“This is true. I was in break room when I hear shooting and then a bomb goes off. Many times, I have heard the same sort of things where I am from. So I come here and hide. I hear more shooting and open the door just a crack so I can look out. I saw you going out there where you will be killed, Kaitlyn, so I stopped you.”
“You should have let me go,” Kaitlyn said dully. “I wanted to kill some of them.”
“How?” Jamie asked, her voice blunt and no-nonsense now. There was a time for coddling and this wasn’t it. “With your bare hands? You didn’t even grab that other Steyr before you tried to charge out there.”
“If you’d just let me—”
“That’s enough of that,” Jamie interrupted. Irina thought she must have children. She sounded like a mother. Or an officer. Or both. “We’re here now, and we’re safe for the moment. We can’t go back out there. More of those terrorists have probably shown up by now to see what happened.”
“So what do we do? Just hide in here until they all leave?”
“We can’t take a chance on that. They may rig the whole place to blow up.” Jamie smiled, but there was no warmth or humor in the expression. “That bunch, they’re big on suicide bombings. They don’t mind blowing themselves up if they can take enough infidels with them, and I’m betting they have plenty of hostages by now.”
“Then we’ll have to find some other way out—” Kaitlyn began.
“No,” Irina said.
The other two turned to look at her.
“You wanted to fight them,” she said to Kaitlyn. “You want to avenge your poor mother.”
“Yes.” Kaitlyn’s resolve stiffened visibly. “Yes, I want to fight them.”
Irina turned to Jamie and said, “And so do you. Men like that, they are your natural enemy.”
“You’re right.” Jamie’s smile was a little more genuine now as she added, “What did you have in mind?”
Irina waved a hand to indicate their surroundings and said, “I know this mall. I work here for more than a year. Anywhere you want to go, I can get us there.”
“Some place with guns?”
“Of course.”
“Then that’s where I want to go.” Jamie lifted the Steyr. “We’ll need more firepower than this.”
“We’re going to fight?” Kaitlyn asked with eagerness in her voice again.
“We’re going to do more than that,” Jamie said. “We’re going to win.”
Chapter 25
The entrance to the sporting goods store was about thirty feet wide, with a pillar on each side separating the opening from the big glass windows that took up the rest of the store frontage. Tobey had put the skinny guy with the bow and arrow behind the pillar to the left. The fellow was thin enough that the pillar actually did a pretty good job of concealing him.
“Any movement toward us out there?” Tobey asked quietly as he came up behind the guy.
The man jumped, but thankfully he didn’t let out a startled squawk that might attract attention. He caught his breath and said, “No. They’re not far off, though. I can hear them talking, and every so often there’s a shot.”
The area directly in front of the sporting goods store was clear. The prisoners had been herded away from it. More than likely, the terrorists were bunching them up into bigger groups so it would take fewer men to guard them.
The same thing would have happened to the people inside the store if Tobey and Calvin a
nd the man with the bow and arrow hadn’t intervened.
“What’s your name?” Tobey asked.
“Charles Lockhart,” the man answered without looking around. He was nervous and didn’t take his eyes off the main part of the mall, as much of it as he could see from here, anyway.
“You’ve done really good so far, Charles,” Tobey told him.
“I haven’t really done anything except try not to defecate in my pants.”
“That guy with an arrow through his throat would argue with you.”
Lockhart shuddered.
“I didn’t know that was going to happen. I mean, I was trying to shoot him with the arrow, of course, but I never dreamed that . . . that . . .”
“It’s okay,” Tobey said. “Our side needed some good luck. We sure haven’t had much so far.”
“More of those men will be coming to see why the ones who were here never showed up with their prisoners.”
“That’s right,” Tobey said with a nod. “And we need to be ready for them.”
“But how can we possibly fight them? They have guns and bombs and—”
Tobey heard the hysteria creeping into Lockhart’s voice and stopped him by saying, “We have guns.” He waved a hand toward the back of the store. “There are enough guns in here to arm everyone, and there’s plenty of ammunition, too.” He added under his breath, “Thank God for the Second Amendment.”
“But the bombs—”
“If we kill enough of them, they won’t be able to set off any more bombs,” Tobey interrupted him again.
“It only takes one man to set off a bomb!”
“So we kill all of them,” Tobey said.
Lockhart stared at him for a couple of heartbeats, then said in a hushed voice, “My God, you mean that, don’t you?”
“Those guys out there in the mall, forget about where they’re from or what their motivation is. They want to kill you. They want to kill all of us. They’ve said that over and over, and it’s damn well time we started believing them. So the question is pretty simple: Do we let them kill us . . . or do we fight?”
Lockhart’s back stiffened a little as he said, “We fight.”
“Good man. We need to close and lock the gates that separate this store from the rest of the mall.”
Black Friday Page 15