Dead Simple

by Jon Land

  Blaine fought again to heave himself all the way inside, but the pain exploded anew, even worse.

  Rat-tat-tat …

  Johnny Wareagle had taken the fourth terrorist out with a submachine gun burst that slammed the man against the east wall.

  “Johnny!” Blaine called, and Wareagle rushed toward him, back pressed against the elevator shaft, with guns smoking and ready.

  Blaine tried to cry out that the leader was escaping, turn Johnny’s attention to the stairwell, which from this angle was blocked from his view. His words, though, were swallowed by a muffled gasp. And by the time Johnny reached him, Blaine couldn’t speak at all. Consciousness slipped away one frame at a time, the last one centered on the bald man disappearing toward the exit amidst the fleeing crowd.

  THREE

  “They ever find him?” Buck wondered.

  “No.”

  “Ain’t they never heard of a security net?”

  “They were too busy evacuating the area.”

  “So a man runs out of the Monument with a goddamn piton through his hand, dripping blood everywhere, and nobody thinks to stop him?”

  “I had the same question.”

  “God damn,” said Buck, genuinely upset. “And I don’t suppose anybody’s heard from him again.”

  “Not yet.”

  “Smart boy.”

  “Won’t be long, though: he hasn’t gone far.”

  Buck narrowed his gaze. “I ask you something, son?”

  “Sure.”

  “You fixing on going after him?”

  Blaine remembered being carried from the Washington Monument on a stretcher, fighting to sit up as the paramedics worked on him and straining to see the faces of those he passed in the hope of spotting the bald man who had somehow slipped away. He had almost broken the hand of a paramedic who tried to hold him down.

  “Soon as I leave here,” Blaine said, leaving it at that. “One way or another.”

  “Yeah,” Buck returned disapprovingly. “That’s what I figured.”

  He looked Blaine over in the same disparaging way he had looked over the Operation Phoenix recruits the first day they had met, nearly thirty years before, and shook his head. Then he climbed back to his feet on the dock and stretched comfortably, gazing out at the waters like he owned them. “What do you say we find out how good you really are?”

  Blaine stood up too, feeling better already. “Thanks, Buck.”

  Torrey flashed him a scolding look. “That’s Sergeant Major to you, son. That’s something you want to get straight ‘fore we get started.”

  FOUR

  Liz Halprin sat in the car outside her son’s elementary school with the cell phone pressed tight against her ear.

  “Are you holding for Mr. Levine?” a receptionist broke in.

  “Yes, I’m still holding.”

  Click.

  Damn, Liz thought. She didn’t want this call dragging on beyond the end of school, when Justin would appear with the other third graders at the front door of William T. Harris Elementary. The school was comfortably located on West Twenty-first Street between Eighth and Ninth Avenues. Thinking of how convenient it was to their apartment made Liz realize she might have to start looking for a new school for Justin to attend almost immediately. Somewhere in Virginia almost certainly, maybe even in the town of Quantico itself.

  Just hours before, a call had come that she’d been waiting for for years. The man had identified himself as Rooker, calling from Quantico, Virginia, where the FBI’s elite Hostage and Rescue Team was based. She had been scheduled for a final interview, having scored highest among all applicants wishing to join the squad. The final hurdle to achieving her greatest career goal was at last in reach.

  The Hostage and Rescue Team …

  Merely considering the possibility made her light-headed. The fact that the call had come the same day she had gotten a message from her lawyer, Arthur Levine, was a twist of fate meant either to bring her back down to earth or to take her to even greater heights.

  “Good afternoon, Liz,” Levine’s voice greeted finally.

  “How good is it really, Arthur?”

  “Your ex-husband has given up trying for joint custody. He’ll settle for standard visitation rights, so long as you don’t fight him on summer vacation. Can you live with that?”

  Liz could barely contain her exuberance. “I’ll force myself.”

  “Also, you accept the lower child support figure,” Levine added tactfully.

  “Done.”

  “You’re making my job awfully easy, Liz.”

  “It’s the least I can do.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Thank you, Arthur. For everything.”

  Trembling slightly, Liz pressed END on her cell phone. She leaned back in the Volvo’s driver’s seat and took a deep breath. It had been a tumultuous two years since the separation, to say the least, her dream of joining Hostage and Rescue on hold while her personal life festered. Now she could put all that behind her. She didn’t know which news she would share with Justin first: the fact that she would be moving to Quantico from New York City, or that he was now free to come with her. She turned toward the entrance to William T. Harris Elementary School, suddenly desperate for three o’clock to come so he would emerge.

  Liz leaned forward in her seat. A man with long oily hair, wearing an army-green overcoat, was approaching the middle set of double doors, something all wrong about him. Never mind the fact that parents were prohibited from entering the building to pick up their children; this man didn’t look like a father at all. His eyes darted about in squirrely fashion. He seemed to be breathing very hard, and his oily skin glowed with a fresh layer of sweat. As Liz watched, he reached under his overcoat and shifted something near his shoulder.

  A gun! He’s carrying a gun!

  The man rushed up the stairs to reach the entrance before it closed in the wake of a woman who’d been buzzed in. Liz retrieved her cell phone and hit 911.

  “911 Emergency.”

  “Response needed at P.S. 11, William T. Harris Elementary School, on West Twenty-first Street. Potential gunman has just entered the building.”

  “That’s a potential gunman at—”

  “How long?”

  “Ma’am?”

  “What’s the patrol’s ETA?”

  “I don’t—”

  “I’m an FBI agent on scene now.”

  “Cars are already rolling. ETA three minutes.”

  Three minutes, Liz thought, an eternity. And her son was in the building … .

  She was lunging out her door in the next instant, cell phone still clinging to her ear. “Please advise patrol en route that a female FBI agent has entered the building ahead of them and that I’m armed.”

  “Ma’am, I don’t think I—”

  “Just do it!”

  Liz dropped the cell phone in her pocket and sprinted for the entrance. It was two fifty-seven, three minutes from the end of the school day and from the expected arrival of the police. At this point, though, she heard no sirens.

  The front door clanged against the wall after she was buzzed in. The squirrely-looking man was nowhere to be seen. Liz swung right and headed toward the office. She charged in, nearly accosting a receptionist who had just finished stuffing teachers’ mailboxes.

  “A man in a long green coat—did you see him?”

  “Excuse me?”

  Liz flashed her ID. “He just entered the building! Did you see him!”

  “I saw … someone.”

  “Where?”

  “Through the window. Going down the hall that passes the office.”

  Liz twisted round for the door. Her mouth had gone bone dry and the pace of her heart had doubled. Back in the corridor, she drew the .380-caliber pistol from the holster concealed by her bulky sweater. She rushed down the hall, searching for some indication as to where the man had gone, eyes scanning each classroom she passed.

  There was no si
gn of him.

  Liz was beginning to wonder if she had overreacted. Maybe the squirrely man was just a custodian skulking back into the building after taking an illegal break, his long coat already off now and hanging in some closet to reveal his uniform. Still she kept moving, kept scanning.

  The second-to-last door on the right was closed, while all the others on the hall had been open. Liz slowed, not wanting the echo of her heels to give her away. A colorful sign over the door announced this to be the room of Mr. Vaughn.

  Her son Justin had a teacher named Vaughn.

  Liz crept up to the door, the vertical glass slab covered up by some kid’s drawing.

  Damn it!

  She pressed herself against the wood, trying to listen, pistol trembling a little in her hand. She could hear the sirens screaming toward the school now, hoped to God this would end in nothing worse than embarrassment.

  Thump …

  From inside the classroom, the sound out of place but maybe just a book toppling from a child’s desk. Then silence again. The class could be taking a quiz, having quiet time. The possibilities were endless.

  Liz’s hand closed on the knob, stopping just short of yanking the door open. What if she was wrong? Burst in with gun raised and scare the hell out of a bunch of kids for nothing. Laugh about it later, let Justin tell everyone it was just show-and-tell.

  Liz felt herself go cold. Justin had Mr. Vaughn for language arts last period of the day! He was in that room now!

  She heard a sound: a sob, maybe a whimper. Then another thud. The roaring sirens masked everything, as Liz tightened her grasp on the doorknob, turning it, ready to pull.

  “I said shut up!”

  The scream from inside came an instant before the dismissal bell rang, hundreds of kids seconds away from spilling outside when Liz yanked the door open.

  Her gun was raised and ready, clasped in both hands, as she burst into the classroom, barrel locking with her eyes on the squirrely man, who was holding Mr. Vaughn by the hair with one hand, a Mac-10 in the other.

  A submachine gun! It was worse than she thought … .

  “Drop it!” she screamed, .380 leveled on him.

  She saw his eyes when he backpedaled, nearly stumbling. Wild, half-glazed eyes, mad with some drug.

  “Fuck you!” he yelled back, shielding his body with the teacher’s, Mac-10 barrel pressed against his head.

  “Settle down. Just settle down,” she said, trying to sound conciliatory, calming, but she didn’t lower her pistol.

  “I’ll blow his fucking brains out!”

  “Easy now. Take it easy.”

  “I’ll blow all their fucking brains out!”

  That’s when Liz got her first glance at Justin, seated in the room’s center, hands locked onto his desk for dear life. The sirens whined down, the police cars squealing to a halt as the elementary students began spilling into the playground and moved toward their waiting parents or the line of yellow school buses.

  “You hear me, bitch? You hear me?”

  The gunman snapped his Mac-10 away from Mr. Vaughn’s head and twisted it toward the class as he spun round. The move put enough distance between the gunman and his hostage to create the space Liz had been waiting for. A tough shot she might never have taken if the Mac-10’s barrel hadn’t been sweeping toward Justin.

  Liz fired the .380 and kept firing, her bullets punching the squirrely man backwards toward a window covered on the outside by a steel grate. His gun hand jerked upward and emptied a burst into the ceiling and walls, which sent the children screaming and cowering.

  “Down! Down!” Liz ordered, angling to put herself between the gunman and the kids. He seemed to be trying to resteady his Mac-10 on them when Liz fired again, spraying the gunman’s blood this time against the window, an instant before he crashed through the glass. The force of his weight snapped the grate clean off and it tumbled with him to the cement playground below.

  “Stay down!” Liz wailed, lunging toward the shattered glass, breathlessly relieved to see Justin lying safe on the floor, staring up at her, and all the other kids apparently okay.

  But outside in the playground, the man sprayed bullets wildly in all directions as his own blood leaped out of him. High as he was on drugs, cocaine probably, the .380’s bullets hadn’t been enough to put him down. Liz hurdled through the window, to find the police frantically herding the panicked hordes of kids and parents to safety. Too many students were rushing past the gunman for the police to risk firing at him. Liz watched him dart through the open playground gates and rush toward the school buses double parked along the street. She gave chase as he lunged through the open door of the first one he came to.

  Liz watched him fling the bus driver down the steps and opened fire through the glass of the nearest windows, trying to draw a bead on the gunman. The glass crackled and popped, but the bus drew away from the curb and hammered into the one parked immediately before it, pushing it aside.

  From there the school bus smashed a number of cars parked on the north side of the street from its path, shoving them atop the sidewalk. Police return fire shattered the windshield, and in insane response, the squirrely man switched on the windshield wipers to sweep the broken glass aside.

  Liz crossed behind the bus the gunman had slammed from his path and sprinted up even with him as he tried to pick up speed, grinding the gears. He had grasped his machine gun again an instant before Liz reached the still-open door. He jerked the Mac-10 toward her and fired.

  Click.

  The sound of the hammer closing on an empty chamber sounded just before Liz emptied her remaining four shots into the man’s head and chest. He slumped over the wheel, and the bus ground to a halt against a long line of cars, crunching them together. The bus’s flashers turned on, stop signs extending like limbs from its sides.

  Liz watched it happen with the .380 still smoking in her hand. A swarm of people enclosed her. She realized a few of them were paramedics, asking if she was all right, suggesting that she sit down. Liz stopped long enough to see the blood staining her clothes. Her first thought was that the gunman had winged her with a bullet. Then she remembered the jagged window glass scraping at her clothes and flesh when she jumped through it.

  Justin!

  She turned and rushed off in the same motion, leaving the police and paramedics bewildered. She was out of breath, gasping, by the time she covered the short distance back into the playground, where police and parents were ushering the sobbing, terrified students away. All of them, thankfully, were alive and safe. Her desperate gamble had paid off.

  “Mom!”

  She swung toward the voice and saw Justin rushing to her across the asphalt. He struck Liz hard enough to stagger her, but she swallowed him in a hug nonetheless. He returned her grasp just as tightly, reluctant to let go.

  Then she saw the gurney being rushed down the building’s stairs, a pair of paramedics applying CPR to the man lying upon it.

  Oh my God …

  Liz eased Justin away, stiffening. The stretcher had passed close enough for her to get a good look at the bloodied form of the man lying upon it.

  The man was Justin’s language arts teacher, Mr. Vaughn.

  And he’d been shot.

  FIVE

  Jack Tyrell stood between a pair of trees, looking down at the grave site. He had found a shovel upon entering Crest Haven Memorial Park and was now leaning on it to make himself look like a workman rather than one of the mourners. He was dressed for the part, in jeans and a denim shirt, and his long tangle of hair fell limply to his shoulders. Not a single gaze had met his since the cortege had pulled in. He was good at melting into a scene, invisible while standing out in the open; he’d had lots of practice.

  Tyrell tightened his grip on the shovel’s handle, his knees trembling a little. He was too far away to hear the minister’s words and didn’t much care. The size of the crowd impressed him: almost exclusively young people, their lives mostly untouched by death. Tyr
ell, whose life had been ruled by it for as long as he could remember, envied them today.

  He wanted to get a better look at the front line of mourners seated in folding chairs by the grave site. He wondered who they were, what their connection was.

  The sound of car doors slamming made him turn to the right. An innocuous-looking dark sedan had squeezed into the drive, double-parking along the row of the procession’s cars. Two stiff-postured men had emerged and were making their way purposefully toward the crowd. They stopped just short of it and began scanning the faces of those gathered.

  “Mr. Tyrell?”

  Jack tensed, cursing himself for not paying more attention to his rear.

  “Please turn around. Slowly. And keep your hands where we can see them.”

  Tyrell did as he was told, still clutching the shovel, and found himself facing a second pair of men. Both their suit jackets were unbuttoned, but only one of them had dropped his hand toward the holster concealed inside. They were young men, about the same age as most of those standing near the grave site.

  “You’ll have to come with us, sir.”

  “I’m going to wait until the funeral’s over. You need to understand that’s what I have to do.”

  “Now, sir. Please,” the man said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “It’s almost done. Just a few more minutes.”

  “We have our orders, sir.”

  “I’m going to ask you again for those minutes. You can come up here, stand right next to me, if you want.”

  Now both men had their hands inside their jackets. “I’m sorry, sir.”

  “Yeah, so am I,” Tyrell said, and he started down the slight hill toward them.

  The men fell in alongside him, not seeming to notice he was still holding the shovel. Tyrell stopped in the shadow of a great oak tree not far from a freshly dug grave.