The plastic carbine chattering in his upraised hands, Matous took out one of the remaining two cops before he could fire a shot.
That left just a single officer crouched beside the ramp with his handgun, hollering for the civilians on the pavement around him to move, move, move, trying to get a bead on their attackers without hitting anyone else.
Having no such compunctions, Matous turned his weapon on the cop as he came within three or four feet of the ramp. Hastening forward, the ghost gun’s stock against his shoulder, he took fast aim and prepared to cut loose at him through the crowd.
If not for the gunshot from his left, he would have killed the cop and everyone around him on the spot. Instead, he saw Davit’s head jerk sideways as he fell to the pavement beside him, then turned abruptly toward the sound of the gun, and saw the man in a blue windbreaker with the words NCIS on its front, a semiautomatic pistol wrapped in his hands.
“Let’s go!” he shouted to Gaspar and Narem.
And plunged ahead onto the foot ramp, swinging the ghost gun around toward their attacker.
* * *
Callen moved toward the ramp from the left in a shooter’s stance, leaning slightly forward on the balls of his feet, ready to get his momentum going if he needed to break into a full running pursuit.
The carnage had erupted just as he exited the Challenger, the van slamming into the crowd, the men with the 3D printed carbines hammering the cops and civilians with automatic fire.
After that his actions were almost reflexive. He saw the threat and reacted, drawing his SIG from under his jacket, getting into the stance, his eyes picking the bad guys out of the crowd.
He’d known he would need to find momentary shooting lanes between the bystanders. Aim high or low—for their heads or legs. Their satchels were in the middle, and based on the evidence at the safehouse, they were very possibly loaded with explosive charges. The last thing he wanted was his fire detonating a bomb around hundreds of innocent people.
His first shot was thankfully clear, with people to the right and left but no one except his target in the line of fire. He aimed the gun barrel high and pulled the trigger and the bad guy spilled sideways to the pavement.
That left him with three of them, the one with the hipster beard closest to him, two more a yard or so over on the right.
People running around him in wild, frantic crosscurrents, Callen saw the bearded guy shout something to his companions and then go dashing onto the ramp. As his men hurried to join him another firing lane opened up, someone lifting a child into his arms, creating a gap in the human wall.
He squeezed the trigger again, low, the target’s legs presenting the best angle this time.
The man’s knees spurting blood, he sank down into the crowd.
Two left. But the van’s driver was out of sight now. He’d gone up the ramp to the platform, leaving Callen to deal with the guy who’d exited the van’s front passenger seat.
“Sam.” In his headset.
“Yeah.”
“The beard coming your way,” Callen said. “He’s armed and wired.”
“Got you.”
Callen broke off and scanned the crowd, his gaze jumping from person to person. He knew the passenger hadn’t yet reached the ramp. He would have seen him making his way up.
Then he heard a staccato burst of fire in front of him, the gun barrel jabbing out from behind some moving bodies. He sliced evasively to one side as the crowd parted, people pushing and shoving, running off in every direction…
And suddenly he was standing almost directly opposite the passenger. The guy was no more than ten or fifteen feet away, nothing and nobody between them. He held his ghost gun in one hand, and from the surprised look on his face must have briefly lost sight of Callen before finding himself exposed.
Callen knew he had a momentary jump on him. He aimed his pistol, high, ready to take him out—and then stopped cold.
In the split second before he would have pulled the trigger, the passenger had dropped his carbine, letting it fall to the pavement at his feet while raising both arms straight up in the air, the satchel hanging from his shoulder…
But there was something in his hand, his left hand, the one that hadn’t been gripping the carbine. An object shaped like a fat pen or pencil.
Callen breathed with his SIG still aimed at the guy, poised to fire.
He’d been around the block in his years as a federal agent, worked with the CIA, FBI, and DEA before Naval Investigations…
He knew a detonator when he saw one, and the passenger was holding just such a device over his head, his finger on the button.
* * *
Sam was waiting at the front of the platform, crouched behind a large public trash bin, when the bearded man came off the ramp to his left.
He’d spotted the bin moments ago and quickly decided to use it for cover, guessing the hijackers would have moved their prisoners into the cab car. They needed control of that same car to drive the train, and gathering all the hostages there would make it easier to keep an eye on them. Call them crazies, but it was obvious they knew their game. Sam thought they would do what was tactically sound.
It seemed a good bet, anyway… one he made knowing he represented the hostages’ best chance. LAPD and FBI rapid-response teams had set up a perimeter around the parking areas, and there were SWAT snipers atop the ARTIC station’s glass roof. But ARTIC was hundreds of yards east of the platform. While it might be possible for a crack shot to put a bullet through a window from that distance, Sam doubted only a single gunman was covering the prisoners. Take out one of them, and the others would react, practically guaranteeing a bloodbath aboard the car.
That couldn’t happen. He wouldn’t let it happen.
Granger had wrangled command of the operation, meaning no one would move unless NCIS made the call. And right now he and Callen were NCIS at the scene. Like it or not, everything was in their hands.
SOP, he thought.
As the train squealed to a halt, Sam leaned out slightly from behind the trash bin, trying to see through its windows. He glimpsed the seated hostages in the lead car, and their masked captors standing in the aisle with carbines. There were two of them, or two he could see. With the train moving so fast, he figured he could easily miss a few, and that there might be more hijackers elsewhere aboard.
Its doors opened about ten seconds later—but only the middle doors to the first, third, and last of the five cars.
Why those three was a question Sam couldn’t answer, not with absolute certainty. But he’d been an underwater demo man with the SEALS once upon a time and knew a little about distribution of energy. They would be the right cars to hit if somebody wanted to spread the force of explosive charges evenly throughout the train.
It was a disquieting thought, as if he needed another added to the nasty mix.
He took a deep breath. A few feet to his left, the bearded man was running toward the cab car’s open door, ready to get aboard with a gun in his hand and an even deadlier-looking satchel on his shoulder.
He needed to make his move.
Springing to his feet, Sam made a beeline for the car from the opposite direction, shooting up right behind the beard as he reached the door. The guy was about his height and build, but wasn’t nearly as wide at the shoulders. Sam was banking on that and the element of surprise as his advantages.
He hit him hard, slamming an elbow and forearm into his back, knocking the wind out of him. Stumbling forward, the beard managed to stay on his feet and spun around to face Sam, standing in the door to block his way.
“Get out of here,” he said, raising his carbine in one hand. “Or I’ll kill you.”
Sam saw the guy coldly size him up, noticing his baseball jersey and cap.
“Lemme on, man!” Sam yelled. “I forgot my ticket, gotta get home for it!”
The bearded man stared at him. Then Sam remembered a name. One of the few Isaak Dorani was able to give Kensi during his
interrogation.
“Yo, Matous,” he said. “How you doin’, killer?”
The guy hesitated for a split second, surprise and confusion on his face.
Move. Sam stepped in on him, locking a hand around his right wrist, his gun arm, twisting it sharply as he brought his knee up into his solar plexus.
Matous staggered back into the train, but again stayed upright, hanging onto his weapon.
Sam pushed forward. He heard hostages screaming inside, and knew the other hijackers would be on him any second, but his focus stayed on the man right in front of him, facing him from the door of the car. Their chests almost touching, Matous was raising his weapon again, about to fire it here on the crowded train.
Sam could not give him that chance. Yanking down on the hand with the gun, hoping to loosen its grasp, he snapped a close, crisp uppercut at his chin. But Matous had reflexes and was no slouch at hand to hand, dodging Sam’s fist so it only struck a glancing blow, he then thrust the heel of his own hand at his throat.
Sam deflected the jab with his forearm just before it would have connected with the vulnerable area below his Adam’s apple. But its force staggered him long enough to give Matous room to maneuver—and then suddenly the hijacker was bringing up his carbine again, the weapon a dark blur in his fist.
Sam needed some separation. Planting a hand on his chest, he shoved Matous backward with all his strength even as he reached under his jersey for his SIG, pulling it out fast, firing point blank into his midsection.
Matous stood there with a look of mute surprise on his face, his eyes fixed on Sam’s for a long moment. Then his features went slack, his mouth gaping open, his tongue awash in blood.
“Stay in your seats, EVERYBODY, heads down!” Sam hollered as a burst of ammunition rattled at him from down the aisle.
Dropping to his knees, he sighted down the barrel of his SIG and fired three rounds at the shooter. The man spun around like a top, his weapon clattering to the floor, but Sam again wasn’t about to make himself a stationary target.
He registered the second hijacker just in time, picking up his movement out the corner of his right eye. He was down at the end of the car, his weapon in front of him in firing position.
Still squatted down in the aisle, Sam pivoted on his heels and trigged another three from his pistol.
The shooter went down instantly in a spray of blood.
Sam gulped air, still facing the rear, gazing down the length of the compartment. He didn’t see any more hijackers in the car, and that was fine, that was cool, but somebody had been driving the train…
He would never be sure whether he moved on instinct, or heard the shooter step out of the cabin. The only thing he did know was that something made him launch forward off his knees an instant before the gunfire erupted from overhead, landing on his stomach as the rounds drilled into the floor of the train where he’d been crouched a split second before. Rolling onto his back and lifting the SIG in both hands with a single fluid movement, he aimed up the stairs leading to the operator’s cabin, and fired at the man with the carbine standing outside it.
The man lurched and grabbed his chest with one hand, his weapon falling loosely to his side in the other. Then he came toppling down into the aisle, his arms and legs striking dull metallic clanks on the stairs.
Sam jumped to his feet, passengers screaming behind him in the aisle.
“Stay put!” he urged, shooting his arm out at them like a traffic cop. “You’ll be okay!” and then scrambled over to where the man had fallen onto his back, pulled the ghost gun from his slackened fingers, and touched the side of his neck to check his pulse.
There was a faint throb, too faint. Sam knew he wasn’t going to last long.
The man stared up at him, his eyes glassy and unfocused, their pupils dilated. Sam saw his lips move a little, a dry groan escaping them. He was struggling to speak.
He put a hand under his head and tilted it up off the floor. The guy’s mouth worked, opening and closing, opening and closing.
Sam still couldn’t understand him.
“Go on,” he said, leaning closer. “Try again.”
He reached up, weakly clutching Sam’s elbow. Sam could see the effort on his face.
“Thank… you,” the guy rasped.
Then he took a series of rapid, shallow breaths and shuddered violently, his hand dropping from Sam’s arm to the floor.
A second passed. Sam checked his pulse again, felt nothing, let his head sink back down, and rose to his feet.
“You got it,” he said, turning quickly toward the hostages.
* * *
“The train’s secured, hostages are safe,” Sam said over the radio. “What’s your situation, G?”
Callen held his gun steady on the guy with the upraised detonator. He wasn’t exactly sure of the answer to what seemed a very simple question.
“Let me get back to you,” he said.
The guy stared at him in silence. The crowd of civilians had evaporated in a hurry, the police having tightened their perimeter around the station after the carnage broke out, guiding everyone in the area to safety across the parking lot.
Leaving Callen alone here with this crazed human bomb, and the bodies of the people who’d been killed.
He watched the guy over the SIG’s barrel. The hand that held the detonator was trembling above his head, which Callen supposed could mean he was having second thoughts about pushing the button, or might conversely indicate he was getting ready to do it.
It occurred to him, however, that he easily could have done it by now—and hadn’t.
Whether that was cause for optimism, or merely a desperate hope, he was taking it.
“I have a brilliant idea,” he said, watching him closely. “You drop the detonator, neither of us gets blown to pieces.”
The guy didn’t respond.
“Think about it,” Callen said. “Your people on the train already gave up…”
“No.” The guy looked at him. “You’re lying.”
Callen said nothing. Let him wonder, he thought.
He held the gun on him. Steady, steady, aiming for his heart. The guy facing him with his arms up in the air, his hand suddenly shaking hard around the detonator. How long had it been since he pulled it out? Three minutes? Four?
Maybe he really didn’t want to push the button.
Maybe.
Callen took a deep breath. He was thinking this was the second time in as many days someone was threatening to blow himself up in his presence. It wasn’t exactly the sort of thing he wanted to make a habit.
Not that anyone was confusing this homicidal maniac with Ron Valli.
“Listen, it’s just you and me here,” he said. “Why waste a perfectly good bomb?” He shrugged. “Two jamokes like us won’t even make the evening news.”
“Shut up,” the guy said. “Just shut up.”
Callen wanted to be careful not to push him over the brink, but the guy still hadn’t pressed the button, hinting at the possibility that he could be doing something right.
“Sure,” he said. “After I ask you one question.”
The guy stood there.
“You really want to die?” Callen said.
Silence.
“Seems your friends decided it wasn’t for them…”
“Stop,” the guy said. “I told you. Stop lying.”
Callen watched him, noticing the beads of perspiration on his face.
“The train’s still over there in one piece,” he went on, nodding toward the platform. “You know I’m telling the truth.”
The guy kept looking at him.
Callen stared into his eyes, trying to get a read on his thoughts. What was it trial lawyers always said? Never ask a question if you don’t already know the answer.
He hoped he was right about knowing the answer to his.
“So,” he asked. “Do you? Want to die, that is?”
The guy stood there dripping sweat, his face see
ming to pull apart as he grew increasingly upset. Then he lowered the detonator in his trembling fist, bringing it down where he could look at it.
His grip so tight his knuckles had paled.
Callen held the gun on him. Steady, steady. For whatever good that would do if he pushed the button.
A long moment passed. Callen heard pounding in his ears. The guy was just staring at the thing in his hand, not moving at all. Then, finally, he unclenched his fist so the detonator clattered to the ground, spreading his fingers apart to show Callen his empty hand.
“I don’t want to die,” he said. “I don’t, I don’t…”
Callen took two giant steps toward him, rushing forward, keeping his gun trained on his chest. Kicking the device across the pavement, he gestured for the cops waiting around them to move in.
They swarmed over the guy in an instant, pulling his arms around his back to slap on the cuffs.
“Yo, G, you all right…?”
It was Sam again over the headset, his voice anxious.
Callen expelled a deep sigh of relief, holstering his gun.
“Yeah,” he said. “Everything’s under control.”
* * *
Kensi dropped down off the ladder rung to the bottom of the tunnel, her SIG semi in one hand, the flash/laser attachment mounted beneath its barrel splashing light into the darkness around her.
Deeks followed a moment later, descending arduously as he hung onto the ladder with his uninjured arm, four members of a joint NCIS/FBI tac team lowering themselves into the venthole entrance behind him.
“I’m not sure your coming down here’s the brightest thing,” she said, looking at his arm. The ambulance techs who’d arrived at the transfer station had wrapped an elasticized emergency bandage over his wound, but she could see spots of blood seeping through the fabric. “That bullet left more than a nick.”
Deeks’s feet touched down on the concrete.
“Nick, schmick. Besides, we both know you’re the brightest thing down here.”
She shook her head.
“You’re nuts,” she said.
NCIS Los Angeles Page 30
