by Stephen Frey
Doctors and nurses did that a lot, Troy had noticed. They pointed to body parts as they spoke. It seemed like they were constantly reminding themselves of the human anatomy as much as they were showing others what was going on. It was probably something they picked up in medical school. He’d been stitched up enough times to recognize the habit, and maybe that was another reason he hated hospitals—because he’d been in them so often. Sometimes to heal his own wounds but more often to visit others who’d fallen victim to something he’d been able to avoid.
“She’s lucky,” the older man continued. “It’s a one-in-a-million wound.”
The doctor was tall and silver-haired. He reminded Troy a little of Bill, but his tone was more amiable. So was his manner. “What do you mean?” he asked as he moved close to where Jennie lay.
“She’ll live despite the bullet she took in her back. Somehow no vital organs were hit. She was very lucky.” The doctor grimaced. “The shooter didn’t know what he was doing.”
“I doubt the shooter was actually aiming,” Troy countered. “If I’ve read the preliminary reports on these attacks correctly, it was a spray-and-get-away deal. It was like that with all eleven attacks, from what I understand. I doubt any of the death squads were in the malls for more than fifteen to twenty seconds before they split.”
“I think they were on the scene for longer than that at Tysons.”
“Was there a witness who said that?” Troy asked. “I didn’t hear about one.”
“No.”
“And the cameras set up to watch the entrance were shot out early, so those tapes are worthless.”
The doctor held his hands up. “Believe me, I agree with the spray-and-get-away theory as far as her shoulder wound goes. But it doesn’t jibe with the one in her back.”
“Why not?”
“There was gunpowder on her jacket.”
Troy glanced at Jennie, then back at the doctor. “Are you saying the assassin put the gun right up against her body with that shot?”
“Yes. And she was lying thirty feet inside the entrance when the EMTs got to her. Whoever shot her in the back would have had to run into the mall where she was lying. You know, after she’d been hit in the shoulder from the initial burst. That alone probably would have taken longer than fifteen seconds.”
“Are you saying the shooter was making sure she was dead?”
“When the authorities get the ballistics report back from the lab concerning the bullets that were found at the scene, I think the evidence will show that at least several of the rounds were fired from a pistol. Probably a twenty-two, judging by the wound. I’ve seen enough of them to recognize it,” he added ruefully.
“A twenty-two? Are you saying these guys used pistols to carry out the attack, Doctor?”
The doctor shook his head. “No, I’m saying they used automatic weapons initially, probably small machine guns. Most of the wounds in the other victims are consistent with those kinds of bullets.” He nodded down at Jennie. “However, the one in her back isn’t. And two other victims at Tysons had wounds that I believe were inflicted by the same pistol.”
“So after they mowed people down, at least one of the guys went farther into the mall and executed people he thought were still alive.”
“Yes. He was making absolutely certain those people were dead.”
“Because they didn’t want to be identified.”
“I assume.”
“But there were others who were wounded and weren’t executed.”
“They were farther from the entrance, much farther. Maybe whoever it was got nervous. Maybe he knew there were other survivors, but he realized he needed to get away and figured the ones farther in couldn’t ID him anyway.”
“Right,” Troy agreed. “It just seems so crazy that the wound in her back didn’t kill her, that it didn’t hit anything vital.”
The doctor shrugged as if he couldn’t believe it, either. “Like I said, it’s a one-in-a-million wound. Now let’s get out of here before she—”
“Did the assassin shoot the others the same way from close range?” Troy reached around his back and pointed to the spot the doctor had. “Did he put the pistol barrel in the same spot on the other two?”
The doctor hesitated. “Um…yes, I believe that’s right.”
“And those victims died.”
“Uh, yes.”
Something didn’t sound right. “Is that strange? Does that—”
“She’s a real hero,” the doctor interrupted, smiling wanly.
“Why?”
“She saved a six-year-old girl’s life.”
“How do you know?”
“The little girl told us. She lost her father in the attack, and Jennie saved her after he was shot right in front of her. Fortunately her mother wasn’t at the mall at the time, and the little girl’s with her now.”
Troy glanced down at Jennie. The more he looked at her, the more she reminded him of Lisa. “How long do you think until I can talk to her?”
The doctor bit down softly on his lower lip as he thought about it. “I’d say a couple of days. Probably,” he cautioned after a few moments. “She’s coming around really well so far. But it might be more.”
“Okay, well, I’m going to have a team of bodyguards up here in fifteen minutes.” Troy was worried that if the word got out she’d lived, someone might try to finish her off. She’d been closer to the attackers than any other survivor, and if he could jog her memory effectively, he might get something vital out of her. “They’ll be with her around the clock,” he continued, “until I say so. If you need to move her to a quieter area of the hospital, Doctor, I fully understand. In fact, I recommend it.” Troy pulled his pistol from the shoulder holster beneath his jacket and chambered the first round. “But let’s wait until the team gets here to do that,” he added, slipping the now-battle-ready gun back into its leather cave and then pulling out his cell phone and pressing the number of a contact on his list. “Until then, I’ll stay with her.”
The doctor’s eyes narrowed. “Who are you, son?”
“I’m with the National Intel—”
“I know what they told me before you got here. I got the official story.” He paused. “But who are you really with?”
CHAPTER 13
SHANE MADDUX moved down the basement steps quietly. Even though she knew he was close, he still wanted surprise on his side. He always wanted surprise on his side.
But what he really wanted was shock. Shock had the power to paralyze, mentally and physically. That paralysis made his victims weak and engendered honest responses. And in this case, he could get that shock because she had no idea who he had with him.
At five-six and 140 pounds, Maddux was a small man. But he wasn’t bitter about it. He had been, as a kid, when the class studs smacked him around for kicks in the hallways of his public high school, then ran all over him on the athletic fields in the afternoon. He could admit it now that his place in the world was rock solid and he couldn’t be more certain of himself and his objectives.
In fact, at this point he regarded his lack of size as an advantage. Being slight enabled him to slip through life undetected, like a specter sliding through the shadows. His uncanny ability to do that had done nothing but bolster his reputation as a coldly efficient killer—which he’d become over the last decade. To mythical proportions in some circles of the intel community, he knew.
His natural stealth convinced others he was close when he was far away. It scared them to death even when they swore it didn’t, which gave him an advantage at the moment of truth. They were already so terrified of him by the time he was actually upon them that they froze like deer in the headlights. For Maddux, for anyone in this line of work, success was all about having as many advantages as possible.
He was the ultimate survivor, too—which ran his spoo
k reputation even farther up the flagpole. Intel people everywhere swore up and down they’d seen him die in a hail of bullets or pushed from a plane at twenty thousand feet without a parachute or go below the surface of the water somewhere and not come back up. But then they swore they’d seen him alive after that. So he was like a cat, they’d rant. Except that it seemed he had a hundred lives, not nine.
Maddux knew all this from personal experience, not just from hearsay. He’d been sitting in the back room of a Paris café one night a year ago with two Russians he’d recognized as low-level intelligence officers. They kept telling him about an American Special Forces agent they referred to as “the Ghost” or “Le Fantôme” over and over as he conversed with them in perfect French. And he kept buying them vodka, getting them drunker and drunker and convincing them he was only a boring avocat from the town of Angers who had come to Paris for holiday to enjoy time away from a nagging wife. He told them he was fascinated to hear as much as they would tell him about the wild world of international intrigue. So they’d told him all about Le Fantôme as he’d gotten them drunk. Very quickly he’d recognized that the man they were talking about was him.
When he grew tired of talking, he’d shot each of them in the heart with a twenty-two pistol from point-blank range. He’d done it during a particularly loud song being played by a band out in the main room, after wrapping a thick cloth napkin around the barrel of the gun to make certain no one heard. After shooting them, he’d slipped out the back without anyone knowing.
He’d read about the murders in Le Monde the next morning. And he’d realized from the article that he was completely insulated from discovery. The inspectors were appealing to anyone who might have any information about the killings to come forward. So they obviously had no leads. No one did.
Not even the waitress who’d served them. She hadn’t because she couldn’t. Maddux had killed her later that night as she was walking home, just to be safe. He’d strangled her in an alley and enjoyed it. He was self-aware enough to realize that he was a psychopath. But he believed that sickness only gave him another advantage. He’d justified her murder as simply a necessity for keeping him, and therefore the United States, safe.
Maddux moved into the bathroom at the bottom of the stairs and glanced into the mirror above the sink. He grimaced and looked away quickly. This was the only part he didn’t like. His was a face only a mother could love. He’d gotten over his small stature—but never that face. It was twisted and ugly.
He washed his hands, slipped into a pair of rubber gloves, then moved back out of the bathroom and approached her. She was in her mid-thirties, slightly overweight, and had light brown wavy hair. Two hours ago he’d lashed her to an uncomfortable wooden chair in the middle of this room and left her here to soften up. Apparently it had worked. She was already sobbing beneath the gag and the blindfold.
He ran the backs of his gloved fingers gently down her cheek, and she jumped at the unexpected touch, shocked by his presence—exactly as he wanted. She hadn’t heard him coming, and now he knew that her heart rate had spiked into the stratosphere. And the major shock was still to come.
It was eerie how good he was at sneaking up on people. It was a natural talent he’d possessed ever since he could remember. Since even before high school when, only a few days prior to graduation, he’d snuck up on this one stud who’d been particularly evil to him in the hallways—and killed him at dusk with a knife in the dimly lit parking lot after baseball practice.
That wasn’t his first murder. And even then, he knew it wouldn’t be his last. He liked killing bad people, and that was the key. They had to be evil. As long as they were, he had no conflict. He couldn’t admit to himself in high school how much he enjoyed killing, but he could now.
Maddux moved behind the chair and untied the knot of the bootlace at the back of the woman’s head that secured the gag—an orange practice golf ball. It was made of hollow plastic and had holes in it so it resembled Swiss cheese. He’d run the long lace through two of the ball’s holes that were opposite each other, and the combination had made a perfect gag. The lace had left two raw marks at the corners of her mouth that were probably causing her great discomfort. But that was none of his concern.
“Where will the next attacks come?” he demanded as he put his hands on the arms of the chair, leaned down close, and stared into her almond-shaped eyes from close range. “Tell me, Imelda Smith. Don’t make me ask twice.”
“How do you know my name?”
“Answer my question.”
Tears spilled from Imelda’s eyes as she looked up at him helplessly. “What attacks are you talking about? I don’t know anything.”
Maddux had been torturing people for more than two decades, and at this point he quickly recognized the veracity of the responses—or lack thereof. Based on what he saw in her eyes and what he heard in her tone, she was lying. This woman was directly involved in what was already the worst terrorist attack the United States had ever suffered. And it was still going on.
He’d snatched Imelda yesterday afternoon from the kitchen of her small home in Manassas, Virginia—less than thirty miles from the attack in Tysons Corner. Then he’d transported her two hundred miles to this beautiful, remote home built in the hills of central Pennsylvania. So far she seemed to be quite the actress, and incredibly committed to the cause.
Imelda was going to have that commitment tested this afternoon. She was about to face a sacrifice far more excruciating than her own death.
“Don’t lie to me,” he warned. “I’ll go easier on you if you tell me the truth and you do it quickly. Time is important to me.”
“I’m not lying,” she sobbed. “I swear.”
“Are you telling me you don’t know anything about what happened yesterday?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about. What happened yesterday?”
Maddux rose up slowly. “All right, if that’s the way you want to play it.”
“I’m not playing anything. Please let me go,” she begged. “What are you going to do to me?”
Maddux walked out of the room and into the next without answering. When he returned he was clutching the hand of Imelda’s five-year-old son. This was the shock factor Maddux had been waiting to spring.
He wasn’t disappointed with her reaction.
PARKVIEW ELEMENTARY SCHOOL was nestled into a quiet, blue-collar suburb of Springfield, Missouri, in the south-central part of the state about two hundred miles from St. Louis. The school was attended mostly by the sons and daughters of parents who worked at the Chrysler plant a few miles from the school. Or for the Union Pacific Railroad, which operated a large freight yard close to the Chrysler factory.
It was a few minutes after noon, central time, and the cafeteria was filling with kids. Kindergarten classes let out for the day before lunch, but the first and second graders were in the big room enjoying their brown-bag meals or the hot lunches that had been prepared by the cafeteria staff. Third and fourth graders would be coming in at twelve-thirty to eat, thirty minutes after the younger children, as they always did. It was the next-to-last day of classes before school let out for the holidays.
Today’s hot lunch was pizza and fries along with a packet of sliced apples and a pint of whole milk. It was a popular lunch, and many of the kids had convinced their parents last night to give them money to buy it when it was posted at five p.m. yesterday on the school website.
The room was noisy. Kids were happy because they were at lunch. It was always a highlight of the day. And they were looking forward to their vacation and the toys they were hoping to get.
As the joy of the season rolled through the cafeteria, three men slipped through a side door of the building that opened onto the playground. Once inside, they pulled gray ski masks down over their faces as they hesitated in a short, narrow hallway just outside the big room. When they were ready,
they drew their automatic weapons from beneath their coats, burst through the hallway door, and sprayed the room with bullets.
Thirty seconds later they were sprinting across the playground to their initial escape vehicle and its waiting driver. Three minutes later they’d switched vehicles at a nearby strip mall, ten minutes after that they’d switched again, and within half an hour they’d made it back to the apartment complex on the other side of town where they had been holing up for the last three months.
Yesterday the team had opened fire on an unsuspecting crowd at a huge mall in the suburbs of St. Louis and thrown the city into chaos as part of the initial, coordinated attack at that and ten other malls around the country. Now the team was independent, as were the other nine death squads still operating. They were much like a wolf pack roaming the landscape for the next kill—which they’d found in the elementary school. There were so many “soft” targets to choose from, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. But they had to be careful, too. They wanted to remain free to kill for as long as possible. So, for the next few days they’d be eating fast food and playing video games at the apartment complex. Then they’d hunt again.
Sixteen people at Parkview Elementary had died immediately in the terrible attack. The body count included twelve children, two teachers, a cafeteria staff member, and a security guard who was armed with a 9mm pistol. Forty-two had been wounded—seven critically.
One young couple had lost both of their children in the attack—a boy in the second grade and a little girl in first.
IMELDA’S FACE drained of color when she saw her little boy, and she began straining wildly at the ropes securing her to the chair. “If you touch him, if you so much as scratch him, I’ll kill you!” she shouted as despair morphed into rage. “I swear to God I’ll kill you!”
Unaffected, Maddux handcuffed the little boy to a vertical pipe leading to the house’s water heater, and he began to cry. “You won’t have that chance.”
