Shot Clock

by Mark Parragh

  Sixty seconds. All this in a short minute.

  Then someone grabbed his collar from behind and yanked him up. He whirled and found himself looking into Swift’s intense eyes inches from his own. Her blue hair flew around her face as she hauled him to his feet.

  “Help me!” she snapped. She dragged him from behind the table and across the back of the hall, and he saw the chaos, the shattered bodies, and the bright muzzle flashes.

  “We have to get him out!” Swift shouted, and Josh saw where she was taking him. She led him to the table where she’d been sitting, overturned for cover like his. And sitting on the floor, leaning back against the table and pressing the blood-soaked tablecloth to his chest, was Redpoll.

  Chapter 15

  The conference rooms were strung along a concourse that branched off the hotel’s main gallery. At first, Crane had to buck a flow of terrified guests fleeing toward the lobby, but by the time he reached the conference wing, he saw only an empty hallway. Everything looked normal except for an overturned potted plant.

  But the attack was still going on. Crane heard screams and gunfire from the main auditorium. He drew the Sig Sauer from its holster at the small of his back and advanced. He had seven rounds of nine-millimeter hollow point in the weapon. Compared to the autofire he was hearing, it wasn’t much.

  He noted other doors as he passed them. There were smaller conference rooms and a pair of frosted glass doors that Crane recalled from the hotel map. They led to a small event room with its own demonstration kitchen. The kitchen would have a first aid kit. He filed that bit of information away and edged down the far wall.

  As he stepped over the fallen plant, a set of doors down the hall burst open, and a figure lurched into the corridor. Crane fell into a crouch and leveled his pistol, but then quickly raised it as he recognized Scott Dauman, the former National Security Advisor. Dauman had lost his suit jacket somewhere, and his white shirt was spattered with blood. Not his own, Crane realized. He froze as he saw Crane’s weapon, but Crane beckoned him out. After a moment, Dauman emerged, leading another man who was half-carrying a wounded hotel waiter. Her white shirt was soaked in blood, and she looked pale.

  “This way,” Crane hissed as he gestured them over. “Move!” But they turned and headed away from him, toward the kitchens and support areas. Dauman looked back over his shoulder and nodded to Crane. Then he caught the slumping waiter, and they hurried away.

  Crane had been hoping for a report on what was happening inside the conference hall, but he would have to go in blind. He reached the nearest doorway and reached over with his left hand to pull it open.

  It was locked. He checked the top of the door and saw a second aluminum box mounted to the top, beside the closer arm. Magnetic lock. He looked for a card reader or keypad, but saw nothing. They must have overridden it from somewhere else, probably security. He knew they’d left at least one unlocked. He made his way to the door Dauman had come through, crouched beside the door, and pulled it open.

  There was no burst of bullets through the doorway, no charging attacker, so Crane edged around the door. Only dim emergency lights lit the chaos inside. As his eyes adjusted, Crane took in details to process later. Bodies lay strewn across each other, tangled up in overturned chairs and tables. The attackers had black tactical uniforms, body armor, and compact assault weapons on slings. They moved like soldiers. He counted at least six, and one more downed. Crane considered making for the fallen man’s weapon, but no, too far. One of his comrades was making for him.

  Josh was in the middle of this somewhere, hopefully hiding in a pool of darkness.

  He saw a flash of motion in the corner of his eye as a bodyguard in a suit broke from cover and ran for an exit, firing as he went.

  Then he saw Swift, her blue hair flying as she launched a kick. She wore a short skirt and a silk dress jacket, and she was locked in close combat with one of the soldiers. She thrust a knee hard into his groin, hanging onto his weapon sling to keep him close. Josh was at her feet, pressing a bloody napkin against a victim’s chest. Redpoll.

  As Crane ran toward them, he spotted another black uniform moving to assist his comrade.

  Swift’s opponent threw a punch that snapped her head back, but she kept her grip on his sling and swept his legs from beneath him. He went down hard and lost his grip on the gun. Crane recognized it now—an M4 carbine on a three-point sling with the close quarters receiver and a foregrip beneath the barrel. Swift grabbed the foregrip, and they fought to control the weapon.

  Swift seemed to realize the sling didn’t give her enough leeway to get the carbine turned around and pointed at the man wearing it. Instead, she suddenly thrust hard, slamming the receiver into his jaw. He rocked back, momentarily stunned, and Swift reached under her skirt and pulled out something Crane almost didn’t recognize as a pistol until she jammed it against his temple with a motion like a striking snake and pulled the trigger. The man collapsed at her feet.

  She hadn’t seen the second one yet. He was raising his weapon to fire at her from behind. Crane popped up, aimed the Sig, and took him down with two quick shots to the head.

  Swift whirled, and Crane was taken aback by the raw animal rage in her eyes. Then she recognized him.

  “Help me!” she snapped. “He’s hit!”

  Crane pointed to the doors he’d come in through. “Those are open! Get to the hallway. I’ll cover you.”

  Josh turned, still pressing his bloody hands against Redpoll’s upper torso. Crane saw the terror in his eyes. Then Swift grabbed Redpoll’s arm. Together, they lifted him to his feet and stumbled toward the doors.

  Crane dropped to his knees by the man Swift had shot and tried to detach the M4 from its sling. But a spray of bullets filled the air around him, and he went prone behind the body. He swung the weapon as far as the sling would let him and unloaded the clip back in the direction the shots had come from.

  Then he dropped the empty gun back onto its owner’s chest and crawled to the man he’d shot himself. That one carried an MP7 like the one they’d tried to smuggle in Josh’s luggage. It was smaller and lighter, with a single point sling and an extended forty-round magazine. Crane popped it off the sling and grabbed a second magazine from an open pouch on his belt. Then he headed for the doors. Innocent people were still dying behind him, but Crane couldn’t help them. It was going to be hard enough to save the people depending on him.

  When he reached the corridor, the others were already headed toward the demonstration kitchen.

  “The kitchen,” Swift called out. “Medkit.”

  “I know,” Crane answered, “I’m on it.”

  The lights came up with a flicker as they entered, and Crane instinctively checked the frosted glass doors and windows. They obscured what was happening inside, but someone in the concourse would see lights and moving shapes.

  “Stay low,” he hissed, “and quiet.”

  The decor was somewhere between corporate boardroom and high-end loft. At the near end, the heavy table and chairs were designed to move seamlessly from meeting space to banquet room. At the other end, the kitchen was all stainless steel and frosted glass cabinet doors. Crane vaulted onto the marble countertop and slid past the induction cooktop. He dropped to the floor in the kitchen and scanned the cabinets.

  “Where’s that goddamn medkit?” Swift snapped from the other side of the counter.

  “Got it,” said Crane. He opened a cabinet and unsnapped the first aid kit from brackets on one side, opposite the fire extinguisher. He stood up and slid it across the counter to Swift, and then swept the other cabinets for anything that seemed useful. They mostly contained glassware, china, and an expensive collection of All-Clad cookware. But a tall cabinet on the far side of the kitchen was stacked with linen napkins and tablecloths. He tossed several of them back across the counter. And a drawer was packed with knives and other sharp things. Crane found a stainless-steel ice pick in a bright blue plastic sheath and pocketed it. That might com
e in handy.

  He heard the rip of Velcro as he came back around the counter. Swift and Josh had Redpoll leaning back against the island. They’d removed his shirt and pulled away a lightweight Kevlar vest designed to not print through clothing. Swift was cleaning the wound with a bottle of mineral water from the counter.

  Josh looked on nearby. He fell back beside Crane. “I don’t understand,” he said. “He had a vest on.”

  Crane showed him the MP7 he’d taken. “Special ammunition,” he murmured, “heavier than a pistol round. They knew their targets would be armored.”

  “Is he going to make it?”

  Crane didn’t know. Swift looked as if she knew what she was doing, but Redpoll was an old man with a serious bullet wound in his upper chest. What he needed was a high-level trauma center, not a first aid kit from a hotel kitchen. Crane remembered his own first aid training at the Hurricane Group. A special forces medic had explained how the bullet’s velocity largely determined the seriousness of the wound. Most people shot with pistols survived, he’d said, and most people shot with rifles didn’t. Crane wasn’t sure where an MP7 fell on that scale, but it wasn’t good.

  Swift glanced up at Josh in annoyance. “Yes, he is,” she said. “He’s…”

  Redpoll coughed and looked up at Crane for the first time. “She won’t say it to my face, but I think the phrase she’s looking for is ‘tough old bastard.’”

  But his eyes said something different. It was bad, and Redpoll knew it.

  “Maybe next time you’ll stay on your damn stupid boat and let me send back a report,” she muttered as she worked. She was engaging him, Crane realized, trying to calm him. A faster heartbeat would speed blood loss and increase the odds of him going into shock.

  “Some things you have to see for yourself,” he said. He grimaced as her fingers probed the wound. “Besides, your reports aren’t always that reliable, are they?” He tried to laugh, but it hurt him and turned into a wet cough.

  “Still,” she murmured to him. “Be still.”

  Crane heard a shout outside and saw the murky shape of a figure running past the windows. They were still way too close to the battle for comfort.

  “We need to be ready to move him,” Crane said. “Be quick. I’ll check the back door.”

  He headed back through the kitchen. Between two storage cabinets, he found a narrow cutaway. It should connect to the network of back hallways and supply rooms, a whole secondary nervous system running alongside the public spaces, but meant to be overlooked by the guests. It would provide a safer route out.

  At the far end was an unmarked white door. He pressed his ear against it and heard nothing. He edged it open and peered out.

  A bland, institutional hallway stretched off in both directions, studded with metal doors and engraved signs. The black rubber tires of laundry carts had left scuff marks on the walls. Nothing moved.

  Crane returned to the kitchen. Swift and Josh had moved Redpoll around the island, and Swift was yanking the straps of his vest tight, using it to put pressure on the field dressing she’d improvised out of gauze and a cloth napkin.

  “Back door’s clear,” he said.

  “We’re a couple hours from anywhere,” she said, and Crane heard worry slip briefly into her voice. They couldn’t count on help arriving, and when it did, it would be quickly overwhelmed by victims. They needed to get out of there on their own.

  “Our car won’t be much use,” said Josh.

  “Shuttle van,” Swift answered. “From the hotel fleet. We’ll put him in the back.”

  At the other end of the room, the glass doors flew open. Crane whirled as a black man in a bloodstained suit stumbled through. He’d been shot in the shoulder, and he frantically tried to push the slow-moving doors shut behind him. Then the glass shattered in a rain of gunfire. The man fell in a heap.

  “Go!” Crane shouted. “Now!”

  A moment later, a soldier swept into the doorway, leading with his weapon. Crane fired three quick shots from his Sig to brush him back, and then glanced over his shoulder to confirm that the others had left.

  He ducked as an answering burst came through the doorway. Bullets spattered off the kitchen’s granite tile and scarred the stainless-steel appliances.

  Crane turned and hurried toward the cutaway. It was time to go.

  Chapter 16

  Crane shouldered his way through the door at the rear of the cutaway. Swift and Josh had turned right and headed toward the lobby with Redpoll stumbling between them. Swift was taking them toward the hotel’s fleet garage. He tried to remember the layout. They would have to go out to the main lobby, around the front desk, and down one of the two major hallways behind it. Crane knew one of those hallways led to the security section where he’d been interviewed by the RCMP. The other eventually led outside, to the least picturesque side of the hotel where the grounds keeping, maintenance, and other support functions were located. There was a garage there where they’d find the vehicle they needed.

  “We clear?” Swift called back as Crane caught up to them.

  The soldier Crane had traded fire with might have moved on, or he might be coming after them. The conference room and kitchen offered plenty of cover, and that would make him move carefully. But it would only hold him for so long. “No promises,” Crane replied.

  He took up position behind them, moving at Redpoll’s slow, stumbling pace. The more strenuous this became, the longer it took them to get Redpoll help, the worse his odds became. He might be tough, and he was certainly facing the situation bravely enough, but it was the young and fit who survived wounds like his, not the elderly.

  “Where do these go?” Josh grunted, nodding at a dimly lit side corridor. They were getting close to the end of the service hallway now, and Crane could hear distant shouting from the public spaces.

  “Keep moving,” Swift barked. “I’m not getting us trapped like rats in a maze back there.”

  Josh looked over his shoulder at Crane, but Crane just nodded. He didn’t like the idea of going through the lobby either. It was sure to be chaos, and there might well be more soldiers there. But he didn’t know the layout of the hotel well enough to find a safer route. He hadn’t been planning on having to escape from the building under fire.

  There were only two rounds left in Crane’s Sig. He ejected the MP7’s magazine and checked its remaining load. Twelve rounds, plus the fresh forty-round magazine. This should be enough, he thought, unless they got into a full-blown firefight—and that was a bad idea in any case with a civilian like Josh and a wounded old man in tow. Of course, he might not have a choice.

  “Check it,” Swift said suddenly as they approached the door to the main hallway.

  They eased Redpoll back against the wall, and Swift moved around him and Josh to kneel in front of them. She covered the hallway behind them with her strange small pistol. Crane noted Josh was breathing heavily, unused to this kind of effort. He gave Josh a questioning look as he passed, and Josh nodded and murmured, “I’m okay.”

  Crane leaned against the door and listened. He heard a single gunshot somewhere in the distance, and then two more from a different weapon. He pushed the door open and peered around the edge. He looked out into a darkened alcove, flanked by large potted plants, off the main hallway. Across the hallway were the windows of the hotel gift shop. Crane saw racks of clothing, but nothing moved.

  He gestured the others forward and slipped into the alcove to get a better view down the corridor.

  Then he heard Swift shout behind him and the pop of her pistol firing.

  “Go, go, go!” she shouted. The door flew open behind Crane, and Josh stumbled out with Redpoll slumped over his shoulder. Crane took two quick steps and fell into a diving roll that carried him across the hallway. He spun to press his back against the gift shop windows and raised the MP7, looking for targets. He saw bullet scars in the expensive wood paneling, blood trails crossing the carpet. Someone’s Palladino handbag had been dropped
and trampled in the rush.

  But no one was nearby. Far down the way, he saw someone dash across the corridor and into one of the restaurants. In the other direction, he heard shooting from the lobby. He didn’t like this.

  “He’s down!” Swift called out, and then backed through the door into the alcove. “Let’s move!”

  “Not sure this is a good idea,” said Crane with a gesture toward the lobby.

  Swift ignored him. She turned to Redpoll, and there was a softness in her voice as she murmured, “Hang on, I’ll get you out.”

  Then she gestured for Crane to take Redpoll’s other arm and defiantly stalked toward the lobby. Josh traded a look with Crane and shrugged. Then they helped the old man up and followed her.

  The sound system was still working here, and quiet instrumental jazz drifted through the sounds of screaming and gunshots that echoed from other parts of the ground floor. They passed an immaculately kept shoeshine stand and an overturned rack of global newspapers. But the closer they got, the more obvious it was to Crane that there was some kind of pitched battle being fought in the lobby. He heard someone shouting orders, bursts of weapons fire. Someone with military training reflexively screamed, “I’m hit! Medic!”

  “We need to find another way,” he called out, but Swift waved him down. “Stay back until I clear a path,” she ordered.

  “All right,” he muttered to Josh, “enough of this.” He was done trusting her judgement in this. They veered off into the elevator alcove and set Redpoll down gently between two sets of doors.

  “Be right back,” he said to Josh.

  Josh looked at him in disbelief. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m getting her out of there,” said Crane. He readied the MP7 and ran back out into the hallway.