by CJ Lyons
“Need to get home,” Andre choked the words out as he fought for air.
“You’re not going anywhere. Not until you do the job.” Darius’ tone was final.
Eyes tearing as the coughing spasm continued, Andre gasped, “Bathroom?”
Darius waved his hand at Mad Dog who took Andre’s arm, then flinched as if Andre was contagious. “This way.”
Andre got his breathing under control once the albuterol hit his system, but he continued to make fake wheezy gasps as MD led him up the stairs to a bathroom off the landing. Best if they didn’t know he was okay.
At least the bathroom had a door. He rushed inside, retching, leaning over the sink like he was going to be sick and MD shut the door with a bang. Andre started the water running to drown out any sounds, and calmed his breathing. The champagne really had irritated his lungs. He still felt its burn, so he took another hit from the inhaler.
The room was all black and white tile, tiny little octagonal ones that fit together like a puzzle. One of those old-fashioned claw tubs, no shower, tiny window above the tub too small for him to even dream of fitting through.
He grabbed his phone. “You hear all that, Doc?” he whispered.
“I did. Who was that man? Andre—”
“I know, I know. It was the only way I could get away without someone getting hurt.” Liar. Part of him wanted to do what Darius asked. Nothing would give him more pleasure on this earth than to see Raziq suffer the way Andre’s men had.
“Where are you now?”
“In the bathroom. They won’t let me leave. Something’s going down, something big. And it’s happening tonight.”
“I’m trying to call the police, but I’m having a hard time getting through,” Callahan said.
“I’m all right for now. Just have to figure a way out of this so the Rippers don’t come after my grams.”
“Or you.”
Andre made a grunting noise. “Let them try.”
“You need to get out of there, Andre.”
“Not sure that’s an option. Not without a firefight. Doc, if you’re serious about helping, I need you to get Grams.” The first thing Darius would do if he thought Andre was double-crossing him would be to grab her. “She knows you, she’ll listen to you. Take her someplace safe. Can you do that for me?”
“Yes, but—”
Silence filled the line. “Doc, you still there?”
Nothing. The call was dropped, the Doc gone. Probably for the best.
“Andre, you fall in or what?” Mad Dog shouted, pounding the door.
Andre took his time, flushed the toilet, washed his hands, then opened the door and glowered. Mad Dog backed up. Fast.
Still got it, Sarge. Just had to play along long enough to see what their plan was, try to stop it if he could. Now that he knew the Doc would get Grams to safety, he had nothing to worry about.
Except getting out of here alive.
At least that’s what the Doc would want him to focus on. But Andre couldn’t stop thinking about Raziq. About wrapping his hands around the man’s neck, tightening slowly, watching his eyes bulge as Raziq realized he was dying… If Darius gave him the chance to do that, Andre wasn’t sure he’d be able to refuse.
Ooh-rah, the voices of his dead squad cheered.
<><><>
Operator 17: 911, what’s your emergency?
Caller 234518: There’s a fire at the hockey rink. Smoke everywhere. Oh my god, Jason, hold my hand.
Operator 17: Ma’am, which hockey rink?
Caller 234518: Schenley Academy. The holiday tournament.
Operator 17: Stay calm, help is on the way. Please evacuate the building as calmly and quickly as possible.
Caller 234518: Which way? I can’t see. What if we’re running into the fire?
Operator 17: Do you see flames?
Caller 234518: No, no, just a lot of smoke. Hey, don’t shove. Jason, stay close. Which way should we go? Hello? Are you still there? Hello? That’s funny. The line went dead.
Chapter 13
“Where is he?” Haddad shouted at Jenna, ignoring the bullets flying above them. He craned his neck, trying to spot Raziq.
“I don’t know,” Jenna yelled back.
The gunfire stopped, but echoes kept drumming through Lucy’s head in time with the blasted car alarms. Thankfully a breeze had started to clear some of the smoke so she could at least breathe. She crawled between the cars, meeting Walden on the near side of the Tahoe. He'd grabbed one of the tactical medic kits and was bandaging his calf. Blood spattered the floor around the Tahoe.
“I spotted Raziq over there, third row from the entrance,” he pointed a bloody finger towards where the Escalade and Zapata were. Lucy looked but couldn’t spot Raziq.
“How bad is it?” Lucy took over bandaging his wound.
He grunted as she tightened the pressure dressing. “Not bad. Ricochet off the floor. I told Jenna to keep her head down.”
A high-pitched whine of feedback from Zapata’s bullhorn shrieked through the air. Jenna and Haddad joined them at the Tahoe.
“Give me the Arab or everyone in the 911 Center dies,” Zapata announced. “Listen to your colleagues.”
He held a radio to the bullhorn. Gunfire, sounding tinny and faraway as it echoed through the bullhorn, followed by a man shouting: “Down, down, everyone down!”
There were screams, a few more shots then a woman’s voice. “Active shooter, repeat, we have an active shooter in the Lexington Avenue 911 Center. Two—no, three gunmen, carrying machine guns, wearing body armor.” Her voice was calm although hushed. Dispatchers were trained to deal with chaos. There was the sound of a scuffle and then the smack of a fist striking flesh.
“Tell them we have bombs,” a man demanded. “Tell them if they come near, you all die.”
“They-they say they have bombs,” she repeated. The sound of a muffled blow was followed by a scream choked short. Lucy flinched as if she’d been the one struck instead of the anonymous 911 operator.
“No one is to approach,” the operator said with a gasp.
A single gun shot. Then silence.
Lucy exchanged glances with Walden. She swallowed hard, her mouth dry. “Think that was for real?”
He nodded grimly, his grip tightening on his M4. Now they had more than just one civilian to protect—they were the 911 operators’ only hope. No other responders could get close, not with the streets blocked by Zapata’s men and the Rippers. She marveled again at the degree of planning and coordination that had gone into the blitz attacks.
But no matter what, there was no way in hell she’d give them Raziq. She waved Jenna and Haddad over to the Tahoe then craned her neck trying to see if there was a place where they could use Jenna’s AR-15 to get a clear shot at Zapata. Two rows over, if she could climb up onto the exit ramp, might work. But she’d be exposed—
Over near the entrance to the garage, Raziq rolled out from between two cars and stood, hands in the air. His expression was grim, but determined.
“Don’t shoot. I surrender,” he called out as he walked toward where Victor Zapata waited. “Just let my wife and son go free.”
Haddad moved as if to rush after Raziq, but Walden grabbed his arm. Lucy craned her head around the Tahoe’s bumper in time to see Zapata’s men shove Raziq into the back of the Escalade. Zapata climbed down from the running board and into the passenger seat.
Haddad shook Walden free and stood to fire at the Escalade as it sped away. Return gunfire shook the air around them. Lucy yanked him down so hard his helmet flew into the aisle where it was hit by a bullet, skittering beneath a car.
“We have to go after Rashid. We’ll go out on foot, find a car. They don’t have that much of a lead on us,” Haddad told Lucy, his voice hoarse from shouting above the car alarms and gunfire.
The gunfire stopped. Bad news. It meant the bad guys would be closing in. Now that Lucy's team had lost their only bargaining chip, there was nothing to slow Zapata's m
en.
“One man or a building filled with civilians?” Lucy shook her head. “Sorry, your man has to wait.”
“Don’t forget his wife and son.” Haddad sounded as frustrated as she felt.
“Believe me, I’m not.” How could she? Her team would be the only ones even thinking about Fatima and the baby. But they had to wait as well. She couldn’t abandon the 911 operators.
“They got Raziq,” Jenna protested. “Why aren’t they just leaving?”
No one wasted time explaining the obvious to her.
“Change of plans,” Lucy said. She knelt at the Tahoe’s rear hatch and collected the rest of the gear. She distributed spare ammo for the two M4’s to Haddad and Walden, stuffed the pockets on her vest and parka with shotgun shells, found two flash bangs and a night vision monocular that she kept.
“You any good with that?” Lucy asked Jenna, nodding to the AR-15 rifle Jenna clutched.
Jenna opened her mouth, ready to ask another question, but instead closed it, and nodded. “Yes.”
Lucy debated. Decided to take Jenna at her word. “Head up to the roof, we’ll need sniper cover.”
“Zapata will have a man up there already,” Haddad said. “To cover the 911 Center entrance on Lexington. Maybe another to cover Thomas Street.”
“Right. Jenna, wait by the door until you hear us. We’ll distract them and you can take them down.” She turned to Walden who was monitoring the radio frequencies. “Anything?”
“Nothing out of the 911 Center. The locals are on their tac channel, trying to get their SWAT teams across the city, but they’re tied up at the Fort Pitt Tunnel and dealing with an active shooter over at the Cathedral of Learning.”
Christ, what a mess. Okay. No reason to wait for back up that wasn’t coming anytime soon. “Think you can find some cover up high, hold them off down here?”
Walden pushed himself upright and nodded toward an old van parked nose out two rows in. He and Haddad made their way over to it, then Haddad helped him climb to the van’s roof via a rusty metal ladder on the rear door. A polycarbonate luggage case was strapped to the top, giving him a bit of concealment, although it wouldn’t give him much protection.
Lucy cursed Raziq for taking their last ballistic vest with him. Walden’s blood smeared against the van’s white paint, almost making her think twice. They could just cut and run, abandon the 911 operators. She shook her head. Of course they couldn’t. By the time Haddad returned, she had the Tahoe’s engine running.
“Where to?” he asked.
“The roof. It’s the only exit they won’t have covered.”
The Tahoe’s tires screamed as she gunned it past Walden’s perch and up the ramp, spinning the wheel hard, barely keeping the tires on the ground as she circled the parking levels. She wasn’t worried about the noise—she wanted the men on the roof to know they were coming. That would give Jenna a chance to move into position.
It was all up to Jenna. Which could be the riskiest part of Lucy’s plan.
<><><>
Adrenalin spiked through Morgan’s veins. This was the moment she lived for, stepping into the dark unknown. Exhilarating. Intoxicating. Liberating.
Everything could go right—in which case, she’d end the night with blood on her hands—or everything could go wrong and she’d end up worse than dead: boxed up in a steel cage. Like her father.
Finally Nick’s Ford Explorer pulled out of the VA parking lot and turned her way. She tore a few strands of blonde hair loose from the wig’s braid, glanced down at her torn jeans, rubbed the scrape on her knee until fresh blood seeped from it, pulled her fleece jacket so it hung crooked. Perfect damsel in distress. No way he’d be able to resist.
His headlights came closer. She squinted, trying to preserve as much of her night vision as possible. Just as he began to accelerate, she stepped out from the guardrail and into the path of his oncoming car.
Chapter 14
Jenna jogged up the concrete steps to the roof as quietly as possible. Not that she could hear her own footsteps over the alarms echoing through the concrete structure, the ringing in her ears, and the roar of her pulse.
Typical Saint Lucy. Planning a suicide mission, not worrying if the rest of the team was ready to get themselves killed. Duty, honor… all those fancy words Lucy loved to wave around meant nothing when it was your ass on the line.
She paused to change hands holding her rifle. Shook feeling back into the hand that had been gripping it so hard it’d gone numb. It wasn’t exactly standard issue for a Postal Inspector, but what her bosses didn’t know… Besides, after what happened last month when Morgan almost killed her, she wasn’t worrying about rules, not when it came to survival.
She had to live. Otherwise Morgan won.
And she had to save Lucy.
Not out of any sense of duty or heroics. Lucy was her one shot at getting Morgan. Lose Lucy and Morgan would cut and run and Jenna would never have another chance at catching the psychopathic bitch.
Sick, sick, sick, she knew. But it was all she could think about. Painful and addictive like worrying a loose tooth or picking at a scab.
She forced her thoughts in another direction: Raziq’s surrender.
Idiot. “Let my wife and son go free,” Raziq had shouted, calm as if he was in charge. Like he’d been during every conversation with Jenna. Smug, superior, condescending with that slightly British accent that she just knew had to be faked. She didn’t understand why David liked the guy so much, was willing to go the extra mile and put his career on the line for Raziq.
Was Raziq so confident he really thought the cartel would let his family go, much less let him live?
What would they do to him?
What would they do to her?
She arrived at the roof. Paused and listened. Pushed the steel door open a crack. The top of the elevator housing was beside the door, giving her some cover. She sidled out, peered around the corner. One man at the far corner, manning a rifle aimed at Lexington Avenue toward the entrance to the communications center beside the garage. He’d left his back totally exposed.
Jenna sighted her rifle. She could take him right now. Everything over before Saint Lucy arrived.
She could hear the Tahoe racing up through the garage. The man didn’t turn around. No way he couldn’t hear that unless he was deaf.
She hugged the wall and carefully stepped around the corner so she could see the rest of the roof. Her target wasn't deaf. He was protected by a second man standing in the shadows, ready to ambush the Tahoe as soon as it reached the roof.
Jenna shifted her aim, using her ACOG 6x sight. The man wore body armor but his head was unprotected. She exhaled, pulled the trigger, and he was down.
The sniper spun around. She shifted to aim at him. The Tahoe roared into sight. Jenna’s shot took him in the neck, above his body armor. He crumpled to the ground as Lucy and David jumped out of the Tahoe, Lucy pausing to pick up the AK-47 and ammo from the first shooter.
“Nice work,” David told her.
His words made her flush with pride, remembering when her grandfather had taught her to shoot clay pigeons. She’d practiced hard, wanting to earn his praise—he was the only adult who’d ever given a damn about her and she’d do anything for the man. Including growing up to take a job she was totally unsuited for. Funny thing, what love made you do.
She shook free of the memory and bent to examine the cartel sniper’s rifle. Two guns and ammo for both, that should hold off the bad guys for a while, buy her some time. Plus she had her service weapon, a SIG Sauer forty caliber.
“I still don’t understand how you guys are getting into the 911 Center,” she said, looking dubiously at the gap between the roof of the garage and the roof of the Comm Center. “You’re not thinking of jumping that in the Tahoe?” If so, Lucy had watched way too many James Bond films.
“No. Not the Tahoe. Just us.” Lucy joined them, the first shooter’s radio held to her ear as she listened to the chatter
from Zapata’s men. “I don’t speak Spanish. Do you?”
“No,” David answered. “Urdu, Farsi, Arabic.”
“Give it to me.” Growing up in LA, Jenna was fluent in Spanish. She took the radio and listened. “They’re getting ready to storm the garage. You guys better get going while I get into position.” She placed her AR-15 on the ledge and sighted through it. She had a good angle on the garage exit where Zapata’s men were assembled behind the cover of an SUV. Couldn’t see past the smoke and flames of the tanker fire to the south. She’d have to set up the second rifle a little farther down the wall, facing the other direction, to aim at anyone coming through the garage entrance.
David carried the cartel sniper’s rifle across the roof and helped her set up her second position. “Do you have your service weapon?”
She pulled back her jacket to show him the SIG Sauer holstered at her hip. “Why?”
“Save a bullet for the end. Don’t let them take you alive.” He squeezed her shoulder and left to join Lucy.
Jenna’s sight blurred, her gut heaving, her mind filled with images of what the cartel would do to a female federal agent. She’d read about DEA agents caught south of the border, the way they were tortured. The cartel delighted in sending their families videos and body parts.
The sound of gunfire coming from below shook her back into the here and now. She sighted her rifle on her first target and pulled the trigger. For some reason the memory of the first man she’d killed filled her vision for a brief moment. That first kill. Last month. Never would have happened except for Saint Lucy.
She blew her breath out and focused on her next target.
<><><>
Pittsburgh Radio Patrol Car Unit 3435: Dispatch, dispatch do you copy? I repeat we have an active shooter at the Schenley Academy ice rink. Civilians fleeing a fire inside the rink, coming under gunfire from an unknown sniper at the east entrance. I need back up. Dispatch are you there? Where are you, you sonofabitch? I see him, he’s on the hill, east side. Oh shit, oh shit, I’ve been hit. Code 3, Code 3. Officer down, officer down. Dispatch, where are you, dispatch?
