Jackknife

by Johnstone, William W.

It would have been better if their numbers were larger, of course; they were a mere twenty believers against a horde of infidels, twenty-two if you counted Sheikh al-Mukhari and Shalla Sahi, who had made good on her insistence that she participate in their holy mission.

  But those twenty-two were warriors in a holy cause, and they were opposed by American sheep who were too cowardly to fight back. If the events of the past decade had demonstrated anything, it was that American resolve was weak and would crumble at the first sign of danger or difficulty. That was why the minions of the Great Satan were destined to lose every conflict.

  Not only were the Americans godless, they were cowards. They had proven it again and again.

  A few among them were aberrations, however…like the man who suddenly rushed toward Hamed from behind. The fool moved like a water buffalo, and courage was not enough to protect him. Hamed heard him coming in plenty of time to swing halfway around, heft his left-hand gun, and send a burst of lead ripping into the man’s body.

  The American shrieked in agony as the steel-jacketed slugs punched into him and stopped his charge. He went over backward instead, blood spraying from a dozen wounds as he fell. His bullet-riddled body landed on several people who were trying frantically to get out of the way. They started screaming louder and even more hysterically as the infidel’s corpse crashed down on top of them.

  “You see what will happen if anyone tries to oppose us!” Hamed cried. The Americans were disoriented; now it was time to demoralize them even more than they already were. “Anyone who disobeys will die! Allahu akbar!”

  Now Hamed heard something even more satisfying than screams of fear—weeping. Despair was spreading among the captives. That meant most of the battle was won, at least in this section of the store. The Americans were giving up in hopes that their pathetic lives would be spared.

  They had no idea that they were all doomed. Hamed, Mukhari, Shalla…they all knew they would never leave the UltraMegaMart alive. In the end, it would not even matter whether the American President agreed to Hizb ut-Tahrir’s demands.

  No, the real victory would come in a moment of searing nuclear bliss that would take the lives of hundreds of Americans and leave a gaping, radioactive crater in the North Texas prairie as an eternal monument to the ultimate fate of all infidels.

  That would be the final legacy of this day, the death and destruction that would haunt the Americans for all time.

  And there was nothing they could do to prevent it, Hamed told himself triumphantly. Nothing…

  CHAPTER 38

  McCabe pressed his back against the wall of the cavernous, high-ceilinged stockroom that ran along the rear of the UltraMegaMart from one end of the store to the other. His knees were bent, so that he hunkered low behind a stack of big-screen televisions in their thick cardboard cartons.

  The terrorist machine-gunner had missed him in the initial sweep through the stockroom, as the guy herded all the employees who were back here into the far end, so he could keep them contained. The terrorist had no idea McCabe was here.

  McCabe intended to keep it that way—for now at least.

  He had to take stock of the situation. Gather some intel. Figure out just how bad things were.

  Decide what to do about them.

  His mind began replaying everything that had happened in the past few minutes, the interminably long time since he’d first heard the gunfire through the cell phone. His first reaction had been that of a husband, fear for his wife’s safety. He didn’t know where Terry was, only that she was somewhere in the store. He wanted to hurry to her side and make sure she was all right.

  But he couldn’t do that because he had no idea of her location, and after a second the connection had been broken, as if she’d snapped the phone shut.

  McCabe hadn’t needed the phone to hear the shots then. They were sounding all over the store, along with shouted commands and cries of fear. His training and years of experience had kicked in as he listened to that unholy racket. He knew what he was hearing. Gunmen were taking over the store, taking everyone in here hostage.

  The automatic-weapons fire came in short bursts designed to terrify and force compliance, not the continuous, unholy roar of a massacre in progress. McCabe was moving even as that realization came into his mind. Here in the electronics section, nobody was shooting yet, so he still had time to act. Probably just a matter of seconds, though.

  As everybody else who had been watching the horrible news on TV began shouting frightened questions and milling around, McCabe moved toward the wall and slid along the display of television sets until he reached a small door.

  Even though he had never been inside this store until today, he had been around enough MegaMarts to know that the door would lead to a short corridor running back to the stockroom. Large merchandise such as the TVs themselves had to be brought out through one of the sets of swinging double doors between the main room and the stockroom, but smaller items could be retrieved by this access hallway.

  Nobody saw him duck through the door, and it had barely swung closed behind him when he heard shots on the other side of it, not far away. Whoever had been assigned to take over this part of the store had been just a little slow getting into action. Maybe the guns the bastard had hidden under his coat had snagged or something. The reason didn’t matter.

  What was important was that McCabe wasn’t a prisoner—yet. He had to stay free as long as he could.

  Otherwise, he couldn’t do anything to save his wife and daughter and all the other innocent people in the store.

  The civilian, the truck driver, was gone now, vanished in those bursts of gunfire. Jackknife was back.

  People thought that was just his nickname, because his name was Jack and he drove a truck. Jackknife was also his handle. Only a handful of people—Terry and the surviving members of his unit, the men he had worked with for so long—knew that it was also his call sign, the only name he had used when he and the team were operating behind enemy lines, in dangerous situations.

  The first step in beating the enemy was to think like the enemy. If he was a terrorist, how would he go about taking over a store as big as the UltraMegaMart? How many people would he need, and how would they be armed?

  He knew he had heard automatic-weapons fire, so that gave him a partial answer. If they were homegrown terrorists, which was possible even though the fringe militia and white-supremacist movements had died down in recent years, chances were all they had were the guns.

  But if they were Islamic, they probably had bombs, too, maybe even strapped to their bodies. Islamic terrorists loved it when stuff blew up real good, McCabe recalled. He wasn’t sure what that said about them psychologically.

  He didn’t give a crap either, except as for how their psychology related to their mission—and his. Islamic terrorists would be much more likely to go to any lengths to achieve their goals, even to the point of blowing themselves up. That fanaticism made them more dangerous, but sometimes it could also be turned against them.

  McCabe put the question of their identity aside for a moment as he tried to figure the odds. Even a well-trained group, operating with military precision, would require quite a few members to take over a target as big as this store. Say, two dozen, give or take, McCabe decided. More would be better, but they might have to make do with what they had.

  Sleeper agents, he thought. Possibly smuggled into the United States illegally, although it was certainly possible that some of them had legal work or student visas. Despite its best efforts, a free country couldn’t keep all of its enemies out—although that effort had been anything but the best these past few years.

  So he was looking at odds of twenty to one, at a bare minimum, McCabe decided. Not good, but if he could whittle them down a little…

  If he could, they might get to the point where they were simply ridiculous, rather than utterly overwhelming.

  But what choice did he have except to try? Terry and Ronnie were in here somewhere, prob
ably scared out of their wits. Not to mention hundreds of other innocent folks who had gotten up from their beds today with nothing more on their minds than doing some shopping at the grand opening of the new UltraMegaMart.

  All those thoughts had gone through his head in the mere seconds that it took him to reach the door at the other end of the corridor. Instead of grasping the knob, he pressed his ear against the steel panel and listened intently.

  He had hoped that the terrorists hadn’t gotten back here yet, so he’d maybe have a chance to organize some resistance among the guys working in the stockroom.

  But he heard shouting in faintly accented voices, followed by the rattling rumble of the big doors on the back of the store going down, and he knew he was too late for that. Shots rang out, a machine pistol firing with the sound of heavy cloth ripping. The shouting moved off to McCabe’s left.

  At least one of the terrorists had gotten into the stockroom somehow and now was rounding up the workers. McCabe remembered the guy he had passed as he was leaving the stockroom a few minutes earlier. At the time, McCabe hadn’t paid much attention to him, but now his memory was able to bring up the man’s image in his mind.

  Stocky, a little below medium height, with a broad, swarthy face, dark curly hair, and a mustache. Hispanic? Middle Eastern?

  Definitely Middle Eastern, McCabe decided. Not as common in this part of the country as someone of Hispanic origin, but certainly not uncommon. Some of them belonged to families that had been in this country for generations, while others were more recent immigrants. But many were naturalized citizens and were honest, hardworking, law-abiding Americans.

  But not that particular guy, McCabe was willing to wager. He had even been wearing a thick, fairly long jacket, just the sort of garment that weapons could be hidden underneath.

  What were you gonna do? Set up metal detectors at every entrance? Pat down all the shoppers as they came in? Yeah, that would be really good for business.

  Running risks was part of being free. McCabe knew that. At this moment, though, he wished something could have been done to stop those sons of bitches before they ever got in here. He was sure the guy he had seen had hung around back in the stockroom for a few minutes, stalling for time by asking dumb questions of the supervisor or something, until the terrorists inside the main store made their move.

  Since the shouts were all coming from the far end of the stockroom now, McCabe eased the door open an inch or so and peered out. Nobody was moving in his line of sight. He saw heavy metal shelves with stacks of boxed DVD players, boom boxes, and other electronics gear. He opened the door a little wider and saw stacks of boxed-up big-screen TVs. There was a small gap between the crates and the wall. McCabe slipped into it, intending to move along the space until he might be able to get a look at the terrorist and the hostages.

  Then he heard a footstep nearby and slid down into the deeper shadow that obscured part of this narrow gap. One of the boxes hadn’t been shoved over completely against the one next to it, so he was able to peer through that tiny opening.

  He saw a man walk past, a machine pistol in each hand. McCabe didn’t get a good look at his face, just enough to see the short, dark beard and the piercing black eyes.

  “We have them all,” the guy called toward the other end of the stockroom. “I did not see anyone else.”

  It took McCabe a second to realize that the man had spoken in Arabic. His mind had translated the words automatically.

  Well, that settled the question of the terrorists’ identity. He was dealing with Islamic fanatics, the sort of men who would go to any lengths to get what they wanted, because they had been sold a bill of goods by the crazed sheikhs and mullahs and ayatollahs who led them. They believed they were doing the will of their god and were willing, even eager, to die as martyrs for their cause.

  In a true war, such single-minded devotion to duty was admirable, even on the part of the enemy. But these so-called “freedom fighters” didn’t make war on other soldiers. They made war on women and children and the elderly. They targeted the most helpless in society.

  McCabe recalled the news bulletin he had seen a few minutes earlier—God, only a few minutes? It seemed longer—about the bombing of the day-care center. That was a perfect example of the evil perpetuated by these monsters. That was why they had to be stopped—

  McCabe’s instinct warned him and he turned, twisting in the narrow space, trying to get some room somehow to fight, but he was too late. Too rusty from the years of soft living.

  Even in the dim light, he saw that he was staring into the barrel of a gun.

  CHAPTER 39

  Terry felt her daughter trembling as she lay on the floor next to her with an arm around Ronnie. The maternal instinct to protect her child was irresistible even though Terry knew that her arm wouldn’t shield Ronnie if that madman decided to shoot them.

  Her mind was half-stunned by the shocking, sudden developments inside the UltraMegaMart. Like most Americans in these perilous times, Terry McCabe had thought about what it might be like if she was caught in the middle of a terrorist attack.

  But even so, also like most Americans, she hadn’t really expected that it would ever happen. She was lulled by the knowledge that she was in her own homeland and that it had been attacked only on rare occasions in the past.

  So she had been taken by surprise and was still struggling to cope with what had happened, to accept the terrible, dangerous situation in which she and Ronnie found themselves, along with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of other innocent shoppers.

  The part of her brain that wasn’t stunned was filled with anger. As she listened to the whimpering of the people who lay there with the bloody corpse sprawled on top of them, she thought, How dare that man come in here and start waving guns around and shooting? What gives him the right?

  His own twisted, fanatic beliefs gave him that right in his diseased mind, Terry realized. What the terrorists were doing made perfect sense to them.

  That was why you couldn’t negotiate with people like them. They lived in a universe that was stuck in a primitive, millennia-old barbarism. They had no common frame of reference with normal, rational people. They might as well have lived in a world where the sky was a different color, like green or purple.

  So if you couldn’t talk to them, couldn’t reason with them, couldn’t even communicate with them, really, what did that leave?

  Terry knew the answer to that, and if she’d had a gun right now, she would have given it loud and clear. She had learned how to shoot when she was a girl, and long sessions with Jack at the firing range had just improved her skill. Put a gun in her hand and she could plant a bullet right between that bastard’s eyes, no problem.

  That is, if she could bring herself to pull the trigger, knowing that to do so would end another human being’s life. She thankfully had never been put in the position to have to make that decision.

  So as she lay there on the cool tiles of the floor, she took a second to consider the question. Could she kill in order to save her daughter, herself, or any of those other innocent folks?

  Damn right she could.

  There was not an ounce of doubt in Terry McCabe’s mind.

  But she didn’t have a gun, and she couldn’t fight the guy bare-handed, not while he had those two machine pistols. She’d worked out enough on self-defense moves with Jack—he had taught her a lot of what he had learned from his Special Forces training—so that she figured she would stand a good chance against the terrorist in a hand-to-hand fight. But only if he was unarmed.

  So, how was she going to get those pistols out of his hands?

  “Mom,” Ronnie whispered, “what are we gonna do?”

  Terry heard the ragged strain in her daughter’s voice and tried to keep her own voice calm and level as she replied, “Right now we’ll just do what that man says and wait to see what happens.”

  “Do you think Dad’s all right?”

  Terry was about to answer whe
n the terrorist swung one of the guns toward them. “No talking!” he shouted.

  Terry swallowed and tightened her arm around Ronnie. She gave the man a curt nod to show that she understood the command and would follow it.

  Ronnie’s question had started more wheels clicking over in Terry’s brain, though. Since she hadn’t gotten to talk to Jack during their brief phone connection, she didn’t know if he was inside the store somewhere or still outside.

  If he was outside, he was probably aware by now of what was happening, and he would be going crazy knowing that she and Ronnie were in here and in danger. He would want to get in, but surely the authorities would prevent him from doing so.

  But if he was inside, if he had been taken hostage, too, then it was only a matter of time before he did something to try to turn the tables on his captors. She knew her husband. She knew him better than anyone else on the face of the earth.

  There was no way that Jackknife McCabe would allow himself to be held prisoner by a bunch of terrorists for very long. He would fight back.

  And then he would probably get killed.

  Terry closed her eyes for a second and told herself not to think like that. As she did, yet another possibility occurred to her.

  What if Jack was inside the store—but hadn’t been taken prisoner?

  If he was loose and had somehow managed to escape the terrorists’ notice, then he would be a wild card in their plans. A big wild card, because he had spent years of his life battling their kind. He knew how to beat them. He knew how to kill them. Because he had done it, time and again—

  “Everyone together!” the man with the machine pistols ordered. He waved the automatic weapons to emphasize the command. “Crawl over to each other. Huddle together as closely as you can.”

  He didn’t want them spread out, Terry realized. He wanted them grouped so that it would be easier for him to watch them. It must have occurred to him that if they charged him from several directions at once, he wouldn’t be able to stop all of them. Many of the hostages would die, but in the end he would be overwhelmed.