Black Friday (13 page)

Chapter 22

T
he attackers had done the smart thing by making everybody get down on the floor. That way anybody who was upright and moving around could be considered an enemy and a safe target.

For that reason, Tobey dropped to the floor as well, but he didn't remain still. Most of the shoppers were petrified by fear, but Tobey was able to crawl slowly and carefully among them, using their bodies to shield his own movements.

Several people noticed the Smith & Wesson 9mm in his hand, and as their eyes widened, he worried that they would call out to the terrorists and reveal that there was a man with a gun among them. They might try to curry favor among their captors in hopes of being spared.

In the long run, that wouldn't buy them a thing, Tobey knew. They would still be killed.

They must have realized that, too, because they remained quiet.

He came to a kiosk that rented small, motorized scooters in the shape of zoo animals. Little kids rode them through the mall on normal shopping days, when it wasn't as crowded. The kiosk was closed today, since mall management had anticipated that shoppers would be packed in too tightly for such an amusement. Somebody would get run into and be hurt. The ranks of scooters provided cover for Tobey now, though.

He eased around until he could see the man he had tried to draw a bead on earlier, before that security guard tackled him. The terrorist was pacing back and forth among the terrified shoppers huddling on the floor, ranting about how Allah and his followers were going to destroy the United States and all the godless infidels who lived here. Islam was going to spread across the world and only when it reigned supreme would there be peace.

Tobey could think of another, better way to achieve peace: kill all the lunatics. He was fine with anybody practicing their own religion however they wanted, as long as it didn't involve anybody else being hurt.

But once it crossed that line, it wasn't religion anymore. It was a sickness that had to be eradicated if humanity was going to survive.

He could hear the guy talking, saying, “By now this mall, this symbol of Satan, is under the complete control of the Sword of the Prophet.”

Cute. This nutjob even had a name for himself and his buddies.

“The world will soon know that we have struck a blow in the holy name of Islam against the sinful decadence of America. The rest of your evil nation will cower in fear at the realization that your time is done. Today is the beginning of the caliphate, and soon it will spread across the world!”

At this range, Tobey figured he could put a couple of rounds through the madman's head without much trouble. Whether the caliphate ever took over the world or not,
this murderer
would never know it, because he would be dead, as he deserved to be.

But as satisfying as that might be, it would also give away Tobey's position, and he wasn't sure he could afford to do that just yet. He didn't know how many of the terrorists there were or just how bad the situation was. It might be better to wait and get a better idea of what he was dealing with.

Then the guy paused in his ranting and pacing and swung around so Tobey got a good look at his face.

What he saw felt like a punch in his gut.

The guy was young, little more than a kid, and the sight of him knocked Tobey all the way back to Iraq. He was there again on that miserably hot, dusty day when his patrol had been ambushed and he was the only one to make it out alive. He carried souvenirs of it in the form of the scars on his leg and the memories of his dead buddies.

Tobey had heard plenty about survivor's guilt. The army shrinks were big on it. So he knew what it was but had never really suffered from it. He would have if he had abandoned the rest of the patrol and they'd died because of it, sure.

But it had been pure luck or fate or whatever you wanted to call it that he and Segers had dropped off the truck to take a piss at just the right time to save their lives. After that they had both fought with equal determination to save their lives, and again some power beyond their control had decreed that Tobey lived and Segers died. Tobey couldn't feel guilty about that.

The memories had stayed with him, though, as vivid as if the ambush and firefight had happened yesterday, and among those recollections was the kid whose life Tobey had spared because he looked young and scared and like he didn't want to be there.

That kid was now strutting around in the American Way Mall, waving a Steyr machine pistol, and evidently masterminding a terrorist attack that had cost the lives of many innocent people already.

Tobey's finger was outside the trigger guard on the Shield. He wanted so badly to slide it in there, aim the gun, and blow out that son of a bitch's lights.
Now
he felt guilt. Now he knew that if he had just killed the kid that day in Iraq, instead of taking pity on him, all those innocent folks who been gunned down or blown up when the bomb went off would still be alive, going happily about their Black Friday shopping.

All Tobey would have needed to do was pull a trigger . . .

He could pull a trigger now.

But it was the wrong thing to do, a stern voice in the back of his head warned him. Sure, he could kill the little bastard, but it wouldn't bring back any of the people who had died, nor would it prevent any more killing. If Tobey fired a shot, the guy's buddies would swarm him and cut him to pieces with those machine pistols. He would get a few of them, but ultimately he would lose.

As gut wrenching as the idea was, it made more sense to wait. Maybe he could figure out a way to save some of the people who had been taken hostage in the attack on the mall.

Because that's what they were, Tobey realized—hostages. If all the kid and his terrorist cohorts were interested in was wholesale slaughter, they wouldn't have stopped killing until everybody in the place was dead.

No, there had to be another reason, something else they wanted, even if it was just to draw things out and make the whole country suffer more, knowing that thousands of lives were hanging in the balance.

So he had a little time—how much, he had no idea—and a chance to use it to fight back more effectively. That kid might have a small army with him.

Tobey needed an army, too.

He thought he might know where to find one.

* * *

Aaron hadn't gone very far toward the area where he had last seen Jennie when he encountered a group of frightened people being herded out of a gift shop at gunpoint. It made sense that the guys who were behind this attack would have men posted in the stores to take them over as well.

In this case, the terrorist was a short, chunky guy in his thirties who waved a machine pistol around as he shouted orders. Aaron quickly tried to blend in with the people in the group, but the man spotted the Browning in his hand, yelled something that Aaron didn't understand, and jabbed the automatic weapon at him.

Aaron had never fired a gun like this before, but he knew enough to point and shoot. Video games had taught him that. He hurried too much, yanked the trigger on the first shot, and the bullet went high.

Luckily for him the terrorist's nerves must have been jumping around like crazy, too. The burst of slugs from the machine pistol went wide. Aaron settled his sights on center mass and fired three rounds. He tried to make the trigger pulls as smooth as he could.

The guy dropped his gun and doubled over as the slugs punched into his guts. They went a little low and left, Aaron saw, but they did the job. The terrorist folded up and went down.

“Scatter!” Aaron yelled at the people from the gift shop as he ran past them. “Find some cover!”

He didn't wait to see if they did what he said. He raced on toward the kiosk where Jennie's friend worked.

It was close by, right around a slight bend in the mall. Aaron skidded to a halt as he saw maybe a hundred people stretched out on the floor, being covered by two more guys with guns.

He had fired four rounds. He couldn't remember how many shots the Browning held. He lined the sights on one of the terrorists and fired a single shot. The man twisted as the bullet tore through his right shoulder and spun him halfway around. He dropped his gun, fell to his knees, grabbed the wounded shoulder, and howled in pain.

The other man laced bullets through the air at Aaron.

A desperate dive was all that saved him. The slugs went over him. He landed on his belly, slid up against a fat guy who was so afraid he was crying. Aaron fired over him, which made the guy yell as the sound of the shot pounded against his ears. Couldn't be helped.

Aaron knew he had missed. The guy with the machine pistol ran behind the kiosk. Aaron fired again but hit a cheese ball, splattering it all over the place. The terrorist raised up and sprayed more shots. Flame spewed from the weapon's muzzle. People screamed.

Aaron aimed and fired again.

The man lurched against a display of summer sausages and sent them flying. He flopped loosely onto his face among them. Aaron hoped the limp way he fell meant he was dead.

“Jennie!” he yelled as he stood up. “Jennie!”

“Aaron!”

Her scream came from his left. He wheeled in that direction and saw her scrambling to her feet. She reached out to help the girl who'd been lying beside her. That was probably her friend, he thought. He ran over to them, leaping over people who were still on the floor.

“The doors!” he cried. “Head for the doors! We gotta get outta here!”

That idea spread rapidly among the other people, now that the two gunmen were down. People jumped up and got in Aaron's way. He shouldered them aside and cursed as he struggled to reach Jennie and her friend. A stampede started toward the exit.

Suddenly, just as Aaron finally made it to Jennie's side and grasped her arm, two more gunmen appeared from outside, charging into the mall with machine pistols blazing. They must have been posted at the doors to watch for trouble outside, Aaron realized, and now they were retreating to cut off this potential escape.

Aaron didn't know how many bullets he had left, but not enough for a shoot-out with those killers. He hauled Jennie around, and since she still had hold of her friend's hand, that girl came along, too. Aaron fought against the crowd, which was now being hosed with lead from the two new shooters, and tried to get to the only place he knew that might offer shelter—that sporting goods store.

There would be ammo there, too, and he really wanted to reload so he could kill as many of the bastards as possible.

* * *

Charles Lockhart had never been this frightened in his life. Although he wouldn't have wanted to admit it, he had been scared in his classroom. High school kids had no respect for authority, and some of them were flat-out dangerous. There had been a few confrontations over disruptive behavior when Charles had believed that a student might attack him.

That was nothing, though, compared to all those gunshots and things blowing up and people screaming and dying right in front of him.

He hoped he had found a safe haven here in the sporting goods store, but that probably wouldn't last.

“That damn . . . punk . . . took my gun!” the old man in the wheelchair complained to the priest. “You didn't even . . . try to stop him!”

“I couldn't have stopped him, Mr. McCracken,” the priest said. “I didn't have time, anyway.”

“Well, find me . . . another one . . . and a box . . . of ammo.”

“I don't think I can—”

The old man interrupted the priest's tentativeness. He glared at Charles and said, “You there . . . Slats . . . we need . . . guns and ammo.”

Baffled, Charles asked, “Are you talking to me?”

“Don't see . . . anybody else around here . . . skinny enough . . . to be called Slats. We need . . . pistols . . . shotguns . . .”

At that moment, screams erupted elsewhere in the store. Charles's head jerked around toward the source of the disturbance.

His heart leaped into his throat at the sight of two men with guns herding frightened shoppers ahead of them toward the front of the store. Obviously they intended to force everyone in here out into the mall proper.

Back into that violent madhouse.

Charles didn't think he could stand that.

He looked around for anything he could use as a weapon. The concept of fighting back seemed utterly alien to him, but at the same time, he wasn't going to be herded out there into the mall and slaughtered. That was what this was like. Those horrible men were turning the mall into a slaughterhouse.

He didn't know anything about guns. He wouldn't even be able to load one.

But there was a display of bow-hunting equipment nearby. The crossbows, which he had seen pictures of so he knew what they were, looked too complicated for him to master.

Charles saw a regular, old-fashioned bow sitting there, however, although it appeared to be made of plastic instead of wood. Whatever. It was simple. Put an arrow on the string—“nock,” that's what it was called, he remembered from somewhere—just nock an arrow, pull it back, and let fly.

Doing that would probably get him killed, he thought, but he was too scared
not
to fight back. It seemed he had some survival instincts after all.

He grabbed one of the bows, as well as a box of arrows, and ducked behind the display. When he risked a glance around it, he saw that the old man in the wheelchair was watching him, as was the priest. The old man's face, one side of it sagging because of a stroke, was twisted in a grimace, and it took Charles a second to realize the man was grinning at him. The old man raised his right arm slightly and gave him a thumbs-up.