Working himself into a frenzy, Stretch stood taller. Spit flew from his lips as he shouted. “You will all be silent!”
She held Matt’s head against her chest, but he resisted. Gillian slid close, wrapped her arms around him, and whispered in his ear. Matt relaxed and turned his head away from the terrorist, refusing to look at him.
Stretch stayed beside them, pleased by Kelly’s admission of fear and the boy’s similar response. The bearded man stared at her breasts.
Refusing to lock onto his gaze, she nevertheless couldn’t help noticing a mole underneath his right nostril that she hadn’t noticed before. For some reason, the blemish identified him as even more sinister than before.
Pretending to get comfortable, Kelly adjusted Matt to help cover her chest while at the same time tugging her skirt over her knees, thankful she’d worn tall boots and heavy tights in the cold weather.
She held the youngster close, still scratching his scalp. Glancing up to see Stretch watching her, she attempted to reason with him. “Buddy, we’re doing the best we can, but these kids are scared and I am, too. We’ll do what you say. These are kids. Can’t you release a few of them?”
Stretch licked his lips again, his tongue protruding for far too long. It was a disgusting habit that was fast becoming repulsive. “You will do as I say, no matter what. You will go free when my commander says, you American bitch. Sit here and be silent.”
“Watch your mouth, buddy.”
Kelly’s stomach hit rock bottom at the sound of her son’s voice. Stretch spun toward the other students at the sound of a male voice. “Who said that?”
None of the kids raised their heads.
“It was me.” The new voice came from Mr. Beck Terrill, the elderly rancher who’d done his time in hell back in Korea. Kelly swelled with love for the old man she’d known since they moved to Ballard.
The woman terrorist rushed toward the adults on the opposite side of the room. “You will be silent!” She kicked between the barrister posts, striking Terrill hard in the thigh. “You shut up or I’ll kill you!”
Mr. Beck grunted and grabbed his leg, fire flashing from his eyes.
Another student voice rose from the opposite side of the room. “No, it was me.”
“That’s enough!” Kelly’s voice was sharp. She knew what they were doing and wanted to stop the dangerous game before Stretch or the woman torqued off. Kelly held up her free hand. “Please, mister. These are kids. This is what I have to do every day, listen to them talk without engaging their brains.” She was talking more to the students than to Stretch.
The air crackled with tension. “You listen, woman.” He spat the word, as if it left a bitter taste in his mouth. “I shoot you if you cause trouble. You hear? Anyone. Your lives belong to me and Allah!”
Kelly lowered her head in submission. “Students, you heard the man. Silence, please.”
“Do as he says.” Shorty was still beside the door. He had a wispy beard and appeared to be much younger. His voice seemed lighter, even nervous.
Kelly thought he looked like a very young college student. She met his gaze, but found it as empty as the woman’s. The sounds of sobbing were low as Stretch turned away.
A soft, quavering voice stopped him. “It’ll be me and you one of these days, buddy.”
The room went silent enough to hear the muffled vibrating and ringing of phones under thick coats stuffed in the wastebasket. Some of the students had neglected to turn them off. Like a mad dog slipping its leash, Stretch charged the hostages in a rage.
He jabbed at Mr. Terrill with his rifle, hitting his forehead with the muzzle and opening a gash. “You will be quiet!” Spittle flew from his lips. “No more talking or I will kill you all!”
The rancher met his gaze without flinching as blood ran down his face.
“Not one more sound!”
Matt leaned harder against Kelly, spoke in a normal tone of voice, and crossed his legs in that limber fashion of all children with Down syndrome. “I’m getting thirsty.”
“Ahhhhhh!” Stretch spun. His finger was tight on the trigger.
“Shhh. Me, too.” Her eyes pleading, Kelly held her hand toward the raging terrorist, hoping her voice was soft enough that Stretch would understand that she was doing her best. “Please, everyone.”
She rubbed Matt’s back. He squirmed. “I want to go home.”
Kelly wanted to scream, but bit it back. “Me, too, baby.” She caught Jerry’s attention and gave her head a shake. The white skin at the corners of his mouth told her that his temper was still up.
The female terrorist made a noise of disgust. “Forget him.” She pressed her earbud and listened. “I have to go. Watch them.” She stalked out of the room.
Stretch collected himself and gave Kelly another long look before taking up the woman’s position against the tall windows.
She prayed her son would maintain control and that her husband had made it out of the building. At least one of her family would be safe.
Chapter 27
“Sir.” Lorenzo DeVaca stared downward into the ragged hole chainsawed into the main rotunda floor and pressed the transmit button on his chest. Musty, sour dampness rose like steam from a fumarole. All he could see was dirt and rock in the crawlspace below, illuminated by his LED flashlight. “It’s ours.”
He wasn’t talking about the hole at his feet.
The voice in his ear came from Houston, Texas, and belonged to Marc Chavez, the OCD-driven leader of their operation. “I haven’t seen much of anything on television, and it’s been over an hour. They’re giving sketchy updates that are wrong. Where’s my media coverage?”
DeVaca pushed the horn-rim glasses higher on his nose and pressed the button again to speak. “It’s the weather. It’s a total whiteout here, and there’s no way the news media can come out until this lets up. This is perfect. We couldn’t have planned it any better.”
“All right.” Chavez sounded disappointed that the takeover wasn’t already the lead story on all news outlets. “Fine then . . . fine . . . fine . . . fine. They keep talking about how the roads are closed and they’re getting unformed reports of gunfire there, but little else. Make sure you stick to the schedule. Do you have the hostages secure, secure, secure?”
“Yes. There were casualties, but they rolled over as I expected.”
An edge crept into Chavez’s voice. “Anyone killed?”
“A couple of sheep.” DeVaca loved to think of common citizens as sheep, and himself a wolf.
The voice in his ear rang sharp, something DeVaca wasn’t expecting. “Don’t give me your political views. Tell me how many you have killed and their gender, their gender, I need their gender.”
The Demon inside DeVaca’s head shrieked like a human being skinned alive. That disembodied thing that escaped from the cage in the dark recesses of his mind was everything that drove him, and when it screamed, people died, or worse. DeVaca flinched like an electric shock was running through his body.
He wondered if anyone else could hear it and expected Chavez to shout back. His unlined brow puckered, the rare frown of a toddler and the only surface reaction he ever allowed. “My men reported at least two deputies and a civilian outside, an old man that I think was a judge, two civilians, and three secretaries inside. One had a gun in her desk drawer. Texans.”
“The women. What were their names?”
“I have the one you wanted.”
“Are you sure? Are you sure, are you—”
DeVaca interrupted, breaking Chavez’s obsessive-compulsive habit of repeating things three times. The disorder infested everything he did, from verbal communication to physical actions. “I have the one you want.”
“I still need the names of the dead women. What are they? Tell me tell me tell me.”
“How the hell do I know?”
“Find out. Now.”
Another silent scream lanced his skull. DeVaca closed his eyes to wrest control from the Demon. “N
ow? I have the one you wanted. You want names for the hombres, too?”
“No.”
DeVaca caught Dorothy’s attention. “Do you have a name on those women Carrera shot?”
“Un momento, and I will tell you.” She spun and trotted away.
Chavez was silent as DeVaca stared down into the hole and waited for her to return. The mastermind of the Ballard takeover had no idea that DeVaca had uncovered a secondary goal during the months of planning and rehearsal for the mission, a prize that lay somewhere under his feet.
Dorothy came back and read off a scrap of paper. “Henrietta Merriweather, Sally Gordon, and Carlita Mendoza.”
DeVaca repeated the names to Chavez.
Chavez grunted. “Good. Get back to me as soon as anything changes. I’ll have further instructions. Hold as long as you can.”
“That won’t be a problem. Doing it now. Out.” DeVaca released the comm button and again aimed the beam of his high-intensity flashlight into the hole in the floor.
“Tin Man.”
DeVaca’s right-hand man joined him. “Sí.”
“I need to know what’s down there.” DeVaca picked up a SCBA mask and tank and passed it over. The self-contained breathing apparatus probably wouldn’t protect Tin Man from what DeVaca hoped he would find, if it was leaking, but then again, it wouldn’t hurt.
“Jefe seguro.” Tin Man shrugged the straps over his shoulder with a worried look and adjusted the facemask over his head before crawling over the edge and lowering himself down. He squatted and flicked on a Maglite to survey the pier-and-beam foundation.
“Nothing but posts.”
DeVaca bit back his frustration. “Substructure. Look harder.”
“Bueno.”
A gust of foul air from below brought the smell of decayed rats to the courthouse rotunda. DeVaca turned his blank gaze onto Reddy Freddy, the old man who arrived with the Texas team, who raised both hands to the level of his potbelly in an “I don’t know” motion. “Hey, You didn’t expect that shit to be laying on top of the ground down there, did you? I done told you there’s a basement.”
The hair growing from the man’s ears disgusted DeVaca. “Tin Man. What do you see?”
“Mortared rock and concrete.”
“Keep going down. I want to know what’s underneath.”
Tin Man climbed out. “I need a hole in that ground.”
DeVaca’s number-one man from the American team, Richard Carver, took his place, ready to use his military training for the first time since leaving the army three years earlier. He surveyed the area and rose. “You got it. Billy, hand me some bang.”
Freddy held up a hand to caution him. “Don’t hit it too hard. Those tanks down there are old. If I remember right, they’re stacked on the south side somewhere over thataway.” He pointed.
Fresh inside from the northern entrance and radiating cold, Billy Koval opened a backpack and handed down a roll of thin explosive compound called det cord. Carver secured it to the rock foundation that resembled a patio floor. “I need some weight.”
The terrorists formed a fire-brigade line and passed down cases of paper and heavy files. When Carver was finished packing the det cord for optimum effectiveness, the large oval outline was the size of a bathtub. He attached a detonator and scrambled out.
“Back.” They retreated to the far end of the longest hallways. When he was sure the area was clear, Carver shouted. “Fire in the hole fire in the hole fire in the hole!”
He thumbed the detonator. Despite being directed downward, the explosion rattled the courthouse. Dust and dirt filled the air from hundreds of cracks and seams through the building. It combined with an interior snowstorm of paper fragments and whole pages blasted upward before drifting to the floor.
Screams from the hostages upstairs were followed by shouts from their captors.
Tin Man returned to the edge and directed his beam downward through the dust and settling shreds. A darker void gaped through the new cavity in the stone foundation. He flashed DeVaca a huge smile.
“Go!”
“Bien.” Tin Man squinted into the drop. He pointed at Carver and struggled for the right word. “Need that aprovechar.”
Even through Carver didn’t understand the word, he knew what Tin Man wanted.
While he waited for Tin Man to rig up, DeVaca checked on his prisoners. “California leader, report.”
Kahn’s accented voice came strong into DeVaca’s earpiece. “Prisoners all secure.”
Satisfied with the answer, DeVaca contacted the rest of those manning the perimeter and fulfilling their assignments. “Texas team.”
“North entrance secure. No movement, except for snow.”
“Don’t get cute.”
As the others reported in one by one, Tin Man settled the SCBA gear onto his shoulders and put the mask back into place. He walked to the edge of the hole and leaned back to put tension on the rope anchored to the thick post on the ornate staircase. He fed rope through the harness until he was parallel to the floor, then pushed off. The tension released seconds later.
One person failed to report in. His attention divided, DeVaca peered into the cavity and watched Tin Man flick on his flashlight. He pressed the transmit button. “Scarecrow?”
Scarecrow was assigned to access and disable the communications panel and all computer service before setting up a jamming device that would reach out for a radius of two hundred yards.
The fact he was still hearing the ring of office phones and abandoned cell phones told DeVaca something was wrong. “Scarecrow, report.”
Tin Man stepped back into view and gave DeVaca a thumbs-up. His smile through the mask was bright as his flashlight, and he pointed at Freddy. “It’s all there. Just like he said.”
The usually emotionless DeVaca felt joy. He would have danced a little jig had he been alone. Instead, he adjusted his glasses and spread his arms wide, forgetting that Scarecrow still hadn’t answered.
He swallowed the excitement. He’d achieved his assignment, and his own personal quest. It felt like an early Christmas present.
He couldn’t wait to use it, and to hell with the rest of those around him. Their plans weren’t his, but they would serve him well when the time came.
Chapter 28
Congressman Don Bright glowered at his desk phone when it emitted a soft beep. Ignoring it, he checked the iPhone lying at hand and went back to his laptop. Two sentences later, it beeped again.
He minimized the screen, and picked up the receiver. “What?”
“Are you in one of your moods?”
Willa Mae Dalyrumple was the only person who could talk to him like that. She’d been Congressman Bright’s secretary since he was a law clerk to Ralph Davidson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. She started out with him in the Dallas law office long before that.
Unlike most rising stars, Don Bright didn’t want to “break in” a new secretary every time he climbed the next political rung. Willa Mae went with him whenever he moved. On occasion, gossips and cynics suggested there was something going on between the middle-aged widower and his stern-faced, sensibly dressed secretary, other than professional achievement.
He often laughed at the accusations, explaining that his taste in women didn’t include hooked noses, East Texas “helmet hair,” and an inexplicable lack of humor.
“There’s a Mr. Desi Arnaz on the line.” He didn’t pay any attention to her soft Texas accent that was natural to his ear, but most people inside the Washington beltway smiled the first time they heard it. “He says y’all are friends, and he needs to visit for a minute.”
The congressman frowned. “Desi Arnaz played Ricky Ricardo on I Love Lucy. He’s been under the ground a long time.”
“That’s what I thought. I know you’re busy, and I told him so, but when he called your mama’s name, I figured he was all right.”
He checked the paper calendar on his desk and noted his mother’s birthda
y was in two days. “That reminds me. Don’t let me forget to call Florence. I haven’t talked to her in over a week.”
“I have it down.”
“All right, put him through.”
“Don’t forget you have a meeting in an hour.”
“That’s what I’m trying to work on.” He hung up and waited for the other line to light up, checking his cell to see how many emails and calls he’d missed while working on the details of his upcoming meeting.
There were thirty-two “Notifications” on his Facebook icon.
He thumbed through dozens of emails until the desk phone blinked as Willa Mae put the call through. He snatched up the receiver and kept scrolling with the other hand. “Don Bright.”
“Hey, hoss!”
“Hey . . . Desi?”
“Lucy, you got some ’splainin’ to do.”
The congressman winced at the painful impersonation. “Funny. Desi, or Ricky.” Still not interested, he checked a second, private email inbox. “If this is some kind of joke, then I don’t have time.”
The Desi Arnaz accent vanished. “This is not joke, amigo, and you’ll make time to talk with me.”
Don’s face reddened. He learned long ago not to get into arguments with strangers on the phone, political or otherwise. “All right. Good-bye.”
“I wouldn’t hang up, if I were you, Congressman. Katie wouldn’t like it.”
Don stopped when he heard his daughter’s name. “What about Katie?”
“I understand she really wants to talk to you.” He switched back to the Ricky Ricardo accent. “ ’Cause you’re in trouble.” He ended with a singsong voice.
“Knock it off. It’s not funny.”
“Aw, ma-un!” The inflection changed, this time to a pure East Texas redneck drawl. “I been workin’ on that ’un for a good long while . . . maybe five minutes, I reckon. A-ite, see, little Katie is with some friends of mine, and you’re fixin’ to do something for me.”
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