There was only one, but it had been called several times.
Tobey was willing to bet it belonged to Habib.
He could maybe do something about that later. Right now he had something else in mind. Carefully, he removed both suicide belts from the dead terrorists.
“We’re not takin’ those things with us, are we?” Aaron asked.
“They might come in handy,” Tobey said.
Aaron looked at him like he was crazy, too.
Maybe he was.
* * *
Tobey left Aaron and the bombs at the eyeglass store and went scouting toward the center of the mall. He was being more daring now, but his instincts told him the risk was justified because they might be running out of time.
He reached the bend in the mall and carefully looked around it. The children’s play area was about fifty yards away. Hostages were packed into it, sitting shoulder to shoulder on the floor. Guards with machine pistols stood around the perimeter of the group. Tobey counted eight men, but there were probably more nearby that he couldn’t see.
As he looked around, his gaze fell on some plush, motorized, wheeled toys in the shape of giraffes, kangaroos, lions, and other exotic animals. They stood about four feet tall and three feet long, and they had handlebars with throttle controls on them, as well as built-in seats and places for a kid’s feet to go. There were about a dozen of them inside a plastic corral.
Parents could rent those animals for their children to ride while they were shopping. Tobey figured they couldn’t go very fast, since the kids controlled the speed by squeezing the handlebars. It was a weird deal, he thought, but maybe he could make use of it.
And someday, when he and Ashley had kids of their own, they could bring them here and they could ride the animals and laugh and it would be a great day.
Yeah, someday. Tobey wasn’t going to allow himself to consider any other possibility.
The corral was located right where the mall made its little turn. Tobey knew he would be taking a big chance if he went out there, but he waited until none of the guards were looking in this direction and then moved as fast as he could, sprinting across the open space and then ducking down behind the dozen or so animals.
Nobody shot at him, so after a minute he figured he hadn’t been spotted.
The plastic corral wasn’t meant to keep anybody out. It was mostly for show. Tobey moved a section aside, being careful not to make any noise. Then he reached in and took hold of the nearest animal, a lion.
It wheeled backward without any trouble. When Tobey had it clear of the corral, he continued backing, keeping the group of animals between him and the play area where the hostages and the terrorists were. He could only hope no other patrols would spot him.
Suddenly he heard footsteps and voices above him. Some of the terrorists were on the upper level, too. Going flat on the floor, he left the animal where it was and rolled under one of the mall benches set at intervals for weary shoppers. He froze and stayed there until the terrorists above him were gone.
Then he rolled out, got hold of the lion again, and rolled it back another twenty feet or so before the angle was good enough for him to surge to his feet, grab the thing up into his arms, and trot toward the store where Aaron was waiting, his eyes big with confusion.
“What the hell, man?” Aaron asked as Tobey set the lion down.
Tobey didn’t explain. He just said, “Go tell Herb you need to find a place that sells sewing materials. I need some sturdy gray thread.”
Fishing line might have been even better, but he didn’t want to go all the way back to the sporting goods store.
“Thread?” Aaron repeated.
“Yeah. And hurry up. We don’t know how much time we have left.”
“Okay, dude. Whatever you say.”
Aaron disappeared through the narrow door to the maintenance corridors. Tobey went to work. He used his knife to cut a slit in the plush covering over the lion’s framework.
Time seemed to pass maddeningly slowly while Aaron was gone, but Tobey stayed busy with his part of the task, and eventually Aaron showed up with several spools of gray thread clutched in his hand.
“Will this work?” he asked. “I didn’t know exactly how much you’d need.”
“Yeah, I’ll tie some of it together to make it longer if I have to.” Tobey took one of the spools, unwrapped some of the thread, and pulled back the padding he had cut loose on the lion.
“Oh, hell,” Aaron breathed. “You put those bombs in there?”
“Yep.” Tobey tied the thread to the wire that would trigger one of the bombs. “I figure if this one goes off, the other one will, too.”
“Be careful, man. If this goes wrong, you’ll blow us both sky-high.”
“It won’t go wrong,” Tobey said. He started unwinding more of the thread, being careful to keep it from tangling. Then he handed the spool to Aaron. “Here, hold this. Keep playing it out. Just don’t pull on it until I give you the signal.”
Aaron took the spool of thread, but he looked at it like Tobey had just handed him a live rattlesnake.
Tobey rolled the lion to the bend, then put his leg over it and stood so that his legs blocked the two footrests and kept the animal from moving as he held down the control on the handlebar. The motor made it push against the back of his calves.
He took a length of thread he had snapped off from the spool and used it to tie the control in place, gauging the tension so the lion wouldn’t move too fast. He wanted the toy just barely rolling along. When he was satisfied, he stepped back.
Slowly, the lion trundled past the corner and started toward the play area.
Tobey stayed where he was. Somebody had to watch the blasted thing. He couldn’t let it get too close to the hostages.
Looked like that wouldn’t be a problem. One of the guards spotted the lion almost right away and let out a yell. Tobey heard the swift rataplan of running footsteps, and as he risked a look around the corner, he saw at least half a dozen terrorists swarming around the lion and pointing their machine pistols as they babbled questions at each other. As far as he could tell, none of them noticed the dark gray thread played out along the floor behind the animal.
Idiots, Tobey thought.
He raised a fist where Aaron could see it and made a sharp tugging motion.
Aaron nodded, wrapped the thread around his hand, and pulled hard.
The blast shook the floor under Tobey’s feet.
Chapter 36
The explosion made Habib jerk around and stare wide eyed along the mall in the direction of the blast. That had sounded like at least one of the suicide belts had gone off, maybe two.
Bashir ran up to him and asked, “What was that?”
“I don’t know,” Habib answered honestly. “None of the men were supposed to detonate their devices yet.”
Only about a third of the members of the Sword of the Prophet wore the explosive belts under their clothing. Only the most trusted men had gotten them, the men who could be relied on not to hesitate when the moment came to strike the ultimate blow for Allah.
Although these bombs weren’t as powerful as the one that Mahmoud Assouri had set off to destroy the central escalators, they packed enough punch to do tremendous damage to the mall and perhaps even cause the building to collapse. Although Habib would have liked to leave only a huge, smoking crater where the American Way Mall had been, he simply didn’t have the resources to manage that. He had been able to funnel off only so much money from the network funded by Saudi oil riches.
Now, in the wake of the blast, he heard screams, shouts, and the sudden chatter of automatic weapons. Something had gone wrong, and he had to act before events spiraled out of his control.
“Tell the men to take that sporting goods store,” he snapped at Bashir. “No holding back this time. Take it and slaughter every infidel in there like the pigs they are!”
As Bashir ran off to follow those orders, Habib reached for the phone in
his pocket. He was going to tell the men standing guard on the hostages to go ahead and open fire on them. The killing season had begun.
Before he could grasp the phone, it began to vibrate. One of the men was calling him, maybe to report on what was happening. Habib grabbed it, thumbed the button to answer, and practically yelled, “What the hell is going on down there?”
“Hey, Habib,” an unmistakably American voice said in a mocking tone. “Things not going according to plan anymore?”
* * *
Before the smoke from the explosion that had blown apart the six terrorists had cleared, Tobey charged through it with a Steyr in each hand. He saw two Middle Eastern men in their twenties, armed with machine pistols, gaping at him. He skidded to a stop, and as they started to raise the weapons, he fired both guns and put a burst into each man’s open mouth.
Their heads blew apart like blood bags as they flew backward.
To his right, a gun hammered a deadly staccato. Tobey whirled in that direction and triggered both Steyrs again. The slugs punched a line of bullet holes up the charging terrorist’s torso from groin to breastbone, opening him up in grisly fashion.
Tobey heard another machine pistol to his left and pivoted that way, holding off on the triggers as he saw that Aaron had joined in the fight. The long burst from the kid’s Steyr sent two more terrorists spinning off their feet as blood sprayed from their wounds.
The hostages were all gaping at Tobey, but some of them had already leaped to their feet and looked ready to run or fight, whichever they needed to do. Tobey waved an arm toward the opening to a now deserted department store.
“Out that way!” he bellowed. “There won’t be more than two or three guys guarding the exit! Run them over!”
He knew that some of the hostages would probably be killed in the escape, but the terrorists couldn’t hope to stop a fear-crazed horde of a thousand or more. The prisoners surged toward freedom and safety like a herd of maddened buffalo fleeing from a prairie fire.
Tobey motioned Aaron over to him and told him, “Go get Dupont and Lockhart and the rest! Send one man back to the sporting goods store to tell them to go on the attack! We’re gonna fight our way toward them and try to catch the rest of those bastards in a crossfire. We’ve got to take them down before they start blowing themselves up!”
“What about the rest of the prisoners?” Aaron asked.
“I hope when they hear hell breaking loose again, they’ll decide it’s time to fight!”
Aaron jerked his head in a nod and turned to race back toward the eyeglasses store where the others were waiting. Tobey stepped behind a pillar supporting the upper level of the mall and reached into his pocket for the phone he had taken from the dead terrorist a few minutes earlier. He thumbed the redial button.
When a frantic voice answered and demanded to know what the hell was going on down there, Tobey grinned and said, “Hey, Habib. Things not going according to plan anymore?”
* * *
Walt Graham was seething with frustration as Zimmer and Crimmens argued about who was going to carry out the rooftop assault on the mall. Zimmer wanted to use a special FBI strike team that would have to be called in from the East Coast. Crimmens insisted that Homeland Security personnel be used. Graham wanted to ask them if maybe they ought to call in Delta Force, Seal Team Six, the British SAS, or maybe even the freakin’ Boy Scouts. That would accomplish just as much as their blasted wrangling was.
Didn’t they realize that time was growing short?
Maybe even shorter than he’d thought, because he heard a dull boom from inside the mall. The others heard it, too, and Agent Shaw even let out a surprised gasp.
“That was another bomb going off,” the young woman said.
Graham thought that was pretty obvious but didn’t waste time pointing that out. Instead he snapped at Zimmer and Crimmens, “Better make up your mind, or those terrorists are going to make it up for you.”
That warning didn’t really make sense, he realized as soon as he said it, but the others seemed to catch his drift. Before either Zimmer or Crimmens could say anything, though, Shaw pointed at the mall and exclaimed, “Look!”
Several people had burst out through the doors at one of the entrances. Shots popped inside, but the stampede continued and strengthened. Then the shots stopped abruptly.
“The hostages are breaking out!” Graham said. “If they can get out that way, it means we can get in!”
The chief of police was already barking orders.
“Get those people to safety!” he said into the microphone attached to his collar. “Deploy the SWAT teams! Get in there now, while we have the chance!”
Graham wanted to charge into the mall himself. He could tell from the eager expression on Shaw’s face that she did, too. But he caught her eye and shook his head.
“We need to grab some of those hostages as soon as they’re clear and question them,” he told the young woman. “We have to find out what’s going on in there.”
“Whatever it is, it’s going to keep happening without us,” Shaw said with an impatient look on her face.
Graham nodded and said, “Yeah, I know. Once the lid comes off a pressure cooker like that, there’s no putting it on again.”
* * *
Habib started screaming curses in Tobey’s ear. Tobey cut him off by saying, “I’m coming for you. Count on it.”
“Who are you?” Habib shouted.
“The man who’s going to kill you.”
It was a brazen attempt to get in the terrorist’s head, and judging by the way Habib started yelling almost incoherently again, it worked.
“I’ll be here, infidel!” Habib screamed. “I’ll bury my hands in your guts and rip out your heart!”
Tobey didn’t point out that Habib seemed to be getting his human anatomy mixed up a little. He just broke the connection and shoved the phone back in his pocket.
As he did so, he touched the ring box and thought about Ashley again. He didn’t know where in the mall she had been when the attack started, so he couldn’t even guess which bunch of hostages she was with. He had tried to spot her in the group that had just fled from the mall, but he hadn’t seen her in the hundreds of people. Maybe she had been among them . . . but if she had been, she should have been able to see him and surely she would have tried to catch his attention.
He couldn’t think too much about that now. At the moment, it was more important that he had succeeded in angering Habib and making it personal between him and the terrorist leader. Tobey hoped that would make Habib hold off on giving the order to detonate the suicide bombs. He wanted to kill Tobey himself, not blow him up from a distance.
If at all possible, Tobey was going to give him that chance.
“Mr. Lanning! Mr. Lanning!”
That was Charles Lockhart’s voice. Tobey swung around to see the teacher, Herb Dupont, and the other men from his group, other than Aaron Ellis. He asked, “Where’s Aaron?”
“He went back to the sporting goods store to order that attack you wanted,” Lockhart replied. “He said his sister was there and he was going to keep her safe if he could.”
Tobey had expected Aaron to use one of the other men as a runner, but he couldn’t fault the kid for wanting to protect his sister. If he had known where Ashley was, he would have battled his way to her side by now.
“Fine,” he said with a nod. “We’re going to fight our way toward the center of the mall and then on to the sporting goods store from there. We’re going to drive the terrorists into a crossfire.”
“Do we have enough men to do that?” Dupont asked.
“We’ll have to fight bigger than our numbers, that’s all. There are dead terrorists scattered around. Grab their machine pistols. We need as much firepower as we can get.” Tobey turned to Lockhart. “I’ve got a special job for you, Charles.”
Lockhart was clearly terrified, but he nodded anyway and said, “Whatever it is, I’ll do my best.”
&nbs
p; “Get an arrow nocked on that bow. You’re our rear guard. If you see any hostiles coming up behind us, you let us know. And if any of the bastards get past us, it’ll be your job to put an arrow in them.”
“I’ll do my best,” Lockhart said again.
Tobey nodded to the other men and said, “Let’s go.”
* * *
Calvin was glad Captain Vasquez was there to take charge, but the woman didn’t really do anything different than Calvin had been doing during the defense of the sporting goods store. She just put herself and Mr. Connelly and the young foreign woman Calvin had noticed earlier in the day on the frontlines.
The woman’s name was Irina, and she seemed to handle a machine pistol with as much confidence as she had the buffer when Calvin had first seen her. She was a little older than him, a couple of years maybe, but from the way she was smiling now, Calvin was sure she recognized him from the food court.
Calvin felt surprisingly pleased by that. With all of their lives in danger, the last thing he should have been worried about was whether some pretty girl smiled at him, but he supposed some human instincts were so strong it was difficult to ignore them forever.
If he was going to die here today, it might make that fate a little easier to take.
Or maybe make it worse, because he couldn’t help but think about what he might be missing.
A sudden explosion from somewhere in the mall forced those thoughts out of Calvin’s head. The blast was followed by a babble of nervous speculation from the store’s defenders. Calvin didn’t know what had happened, but he figured it wasn’t anything good.
Less than two minutes later, he knew he’d been right, when the terrorists launched another attack on the store. The shooting from outside picked up, sending volley after volley of lead crashing and ricocheting through the place. The defenders couldn’t do anything except keep their heads down and hope none of the flying bullets found them.
Then, in an abrupt lull in the gun-thunder, Captain Vasquez called, “Get ready! Here they come!”
Calvin raised up and saw at least a dozen terrorists charging the store, leaping through the entrance and the blasted-out windows and firing their machine pistols as they rushed the defenders. Calvin thrust out the two semi-automatic pistols he held and started pulling the triggers. He heard slugs whining past his ears, or maybe he just imagined he did, since it would be almost impossible to hear anything in this savage combat.
Black Friday Page 24