“He works for the CIA,” McCabe explained. “He found out that I was in here and thought he ought to touch base with me, so he could pass along any intel we didn’t already have.” He told Stackhouse about the bombs at the store entrances and the demands that the terrorists had made.
“The gov’ment’s liable to cave in, too,” Stackhouse snapped. “I never saw such a bunch o’ gutless folks as we got in Washington now.”
McCabe gave a weary shake of his head. “It doesn’t matter what they do. The terrorists plan on going out in what they consider a blaze of glory. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have been so casual about revealing their identities.”
“You mean they’re gonna kill everybody in here and themselves, too.”
“More than likely,” McCabe said.
“That means a big bomb.”
McCabe nodded. “Yep.”
Stackhouse scrubbed a gnarled hand over his face. “Then we got our work cut out for us, and we ain’t got a lot of time neither.”
“That’s right. I’m going out there, behind those shelves full of baby formula. Wait until I get in position, then make some sort of racket. One of them will have to come down here to investigate.”
“Then you’ll jump him and get his gun.”
“That’s the plan,” McCabe said.
“Then once we’re both armed, we go get the other fella.”
“Right.”
Stackhouse hefted his gun. “Why don’t I just shoot the sumbitch when he comes down here?”
“Because that would warn his partner and we wouldn’t be able to get him, too.” McCabe suppressed a feeling of exasperation. “Just do like I say, all right, Mr. Stackhouse?”
“Sure, sure,” the billionaire said. “You’re the boss, son.”
But McCabe wasn’t so sure about that as he began crawling out of the office. If anybody ever fit the description of a loose cannon, it was Hiram Stackhouse.
And in this case, if that cannon went off, it could wind up killing hundreds of people.
CHAPTER 47
Hamed’s breath hissed between his teeth and he lifted both machine pistols as the infidel stood up and shouted at him. He came close to sending a burst from each weapon into the red-faced man’s chest, but at the last second he held off on the triggers.
The man didn’t seem to realize how close he had just come to dying. He said, “Yeah, I’m talking to you, Omar. You gotta listen to me.”
The man started forward, stepping around some of the other hostages, as he ignored both blond women, the older one and the younger, who reached out to stop him.
Hamed thrust the guns at the man and shouted, “Do not move! Come any closer and I will shoot!”
The infidel stopped and raised both hands. “Take it easy, Omar,” he said. “I’m just trying to keep everything peaceful here, okay?”
“My name is Hamed.” Sheikh al-Mukhari had told all of them that it didn’t matter if the Americans found out who they were. Hamed understood the reasoning behind that decision perfectly well. “Do not call me Omar again!”
The American kept his hands up. “Sure, sure, whatever you say. All I wanted to tell you—”
“Burke, shut up.” That came from the lean blonde, the older one.
Hamed swung his left-hand pistol toward her. “Be quiet,” he ordered harshly. Then he looked at the red-faced infidel again. “What is it you wanted?”
That was when the other blonde spoke up. “Mr. Burke…Ellis…please don’t.”
Now the infidel hesitated. Obviously, the words of the younger woman meant more to him than those of the older one. That meant the woman herself was more important to him.
Hamed knew what to do.
“Back!” he shouted, gesturing with the machine pistols. “Back, all of you!”
The hostages began scooting backward on the floor.
“Except you!” Hamed stepped forward quickly and trained the right-hand pistol on the young blond woman. “Stay where you are!”
She froze, her blue eyes widening.
“Hey!” The startled exclamation came from the red-faced man called Burke. “Hey, there’s no need for that, Om—I mean, Hamed. We’re cooperating here. I understand why you and your people are so angry with us. We’ve been jacking around with you for years, always taking the side of the Israelis, starting wars for oil—”
“Stop lying, American,” Hamed said, his voice cold with hatred. “I know you do not truly feel this way. Do you think I haven’t been around the likes of you long enough to know when you are lying?” He looked back at the blonde. “On your feet.”
“There’s no need for that, I tell you!” Burke moved as if he were going to try to get between Hamed and the woman. “I’m trying to make you understand—”
“Get back, damn you!” Hamed slashed at Burke’s face with the left-hand gun. The weapon thudded heavily against flesh and bone, and Burke fell back with a startled cry of pain as the sight ripped a gash in his cheek.
At that second, while Hamed’s back was half-turned, one of the other men leaped to his feet. Hamed just caught a glimpse of the movement from the corner of his eye and started twisting in that direction. The sight of the gun in the second man’s hand jolted him.
Flame spurted from the little revolver’s muzzle as the man fired. Hamed felt the impact on his upper left arm. He was already turning toward the man, and the bullet finished the job of jerking him around. His left arm and hand suddenly didn’t want to work anymore, but his right functioned just fine.
He triggered the machine pistol in that hand.
The burst of lead ripped into the man with the pistol, stitching wounds across his body and driving him backward. He dropped the gun as he started to fold up.
Not all the bullets found their intended target. A teenage boy sitting near the man jerked and grunted as a black hole appeared in the center of his forehead. He sat there for a second as blood trickled from the wound and formed a red trail down his face.
Then he toppled over into the lap of the girl sitting next to him, who started to scream hysterically. Hamed’s already taut nerves began to fray at the sound.
“Make her be quiet!” he ordered. “Or I will kill her, too!”
Several people grabbed the girl. They surrounded her, as if to form a human shield. A man clapped his hand over her mouth to muffle her cries.
Hamed turned back to Burke, who had started this whole thing. He gestured again to the young blond woman and said, “You. On your feet. Stand next to him.”
She climbed unsteadily to her feet and shuffled over until she was next to Burke, where Hamed could cut down both of them with ease if he needed to.
“Now,” Hamed said to Burke. “Tell me what you wanted to tell me. But no tricks! If you lie to me, I will kill you and the woman both!”
Burke’s face was still flushed, but a terrified pallor had spread beneath the red. He swallowed hard as he looked at the bodies of the two people Hamed had just killed. Then he looked at the woman beside him for a second before looking back at Hamed, who knew that he would now tell the truth.
He was too frightened to even consider doing otherwise, Hamed thought.
Burke swallowed again. “I…I just…I just wanted to tell you…I’m, uh, a lawyer. An attorney-at-law.” He started to reach toward his coat, as if to delve into a pocket. “I can give you a card—”
Hamed jerked the barrel of the right-hand gun and shook his head.
Burke stopped the motion and went on. “That’s fine, that’s fine. I was just gonna say, I’m a lawyer, and when you guys get out of here, I think you’re going to need representation.” His voice was stronger now, as if he were on firmer ground. “I mean, there are bound to be some court cases arising from this whole thing, and you won’t find a better lawyer to handle them than me. I’d be glad to tell you about some of the cases I’ve handled and the judgments I’ve won—”
Hamed had listened in growing disbelief to what was Burke was saying. He knew th
e man was being truthful, but he had a hard time accepting the idea that anyone could be so venal and greedy, even a godless American infidel.
But Burke was a lawyer, Hamed reminded himself.
“Shut up!” Hamed screeched at him. “Sit down, you fool! Your courts, your whole American legal system, mean nothing! Nothing! There will be no trials!”
Burke held up his hands, palms out. “I’m sorry, I just don’t like to see anyone acting without legal counsel—”
“Shut up! Sit down!”
The blond woman was tugging on Burke’s arm by now. He allowed her to lead him back to where they had been sitting before, with the older blond woman and the teenage girl. They sat down. Burke looked vaguely confused and ashamed of himself. More confused than anything, though.
Hamed could not believe how crazy some of these Americans were. Had the lawyer really believed that he could—what was the expression—drum up some business in the middle of a hostage situation?
The distraction had almost proved fatal. Hamed’s arm throbbed where the other man’s bullet had struck it.
Had that been Burke’s aim all along? To distract Hamed so that the other man could shoot him?
Hamed’s eyes narrowed as that thought occurred to him. He considered killing Burke, just on the off chance that he was right about the lawyer.
But he didn’t think that was the case. Burke wasn’t that smart. He probably hadn’t even known that the other man had a gun.
“Hamed!”
That was Shalla Sahi’s voice. Hamed looked around and saw the young woman hurrying toward him, trailed by Sheikh al-Mukhari. Both had worried looks on their faces.
“We heard shooting,” Mukhari said. “Are you all right?”
“Of course he’s not all right,” Shalla said. “There’s blood on his arm. Let me take a look at it.”
Hamed knew she had taken nursing courses at the university in Arlington. She was as close to a doctor as they had among them. So he allowed Mukhari to take his left-hand machine pistol while Shalla pulled back his jacket and the sleeve of his shirt to reveal a raw gash in his upper arm.
“The bullet just creased you,” she told him. “I’ll get a first-aid kit from the sporting-goods section and clean and bandage the wound.”
Hamed shook his head. “No need to waste your time.”
Why bother to tend to a minor wound when they would all be perishing soon in the cleansing flame of nuclear fire?
Shalla blinked, then nodded in understanding. “It should be bound up anyway, so that you can use the arm better.”
Hamed considered the suggestion, then said, “In that case, go ahead.”
“I’ll be right back,” she said.
When she had gone toward the sporting-goods section, Sheikh al-Mukhari asked Hamed, “What happened here?”
“Nothing important. One of the infidels had a gun.” Hamed nodded toward the man and the boy he had killed.
“You missed it when you disarmed them,” Mukhari said with a stern look on his face. He looked and sounded like a professor chiding a wayward student.
“A thousand pardons,” Hamed said.
“Seek not my pardon, but that of Allah.”
Hamed bowed his head humbly.
He thought the sheikh was overreacting a bit, though. They were talking about only one gun, and one American.
How dangerous could that be?
CHAPTER 48
McCabe heard the shouts and the shooting from inside the store as he crouched behind the shelf full of cartons of baby food. A pang of worry throbbed through him. He couldn’t help it.
Terry and Ronnie were out there somewhere.
He forced his mind back onto the task at hand. He looked at the door of the office, saw Hiram Stackhouse peering around the jamb, and nodded to the elderly billionaire.
Stackhouse returned the nod. He drew back his arm and flung the heavy stapler that he held toward the rear of the stockroom.
The stapler hit a shelf with a loud metallic clang! then hit the floor and bounced several more yards with a clatter. McCabe thought the noises sounded like somebody had run into something and knocked it over.
That was just about perfect. The racket was loud enough that the terrorists must have heard it, and they would have to investigate. One man would come down here to the other end of the stockroom while the other remained where he was, guarding the hostages.
That was the plan anyway.
McCabe heard startled talking from the two gunmen. Breathing shallowly, he waited and listened for one of them to approach.
Stackhouse had withdrawn back into the office. If the terrorist got past McCabe, Stackhouse would be waiting with his revolver. A shot would warn the other bastard, but at least the odds would be cut down a little.
In the long run, though, killing one of the terrorists wouldn’t do any good, and McCabe knew it.
He had to get all of them, and before they could trigger any explosives they might have with them.
That was a tall order. But like all journeys, it started with a single step.
Like the one he heard as shoe leather brushed against the concrete floor somewhere close by.
The terrorists must have figured that one of the Americans was hiding in the office. That was really the only feasible explanation for the noise they had heard. The man who moved past the shelves where McCabe was hidden had his machine pistol trained on the partially open door, and his tense attitude told McCabe that he was ready, even eager, to pull the trigger.
McCabe had already taken off his belt and formed it into a loop. He had it in his left hand. His right held the pocketknife. Moving silently, he dropped the belt around the guy’s neck and yanked him backward.
At the same time, McCabe’s right hand flashed up and then drove down. He kept the pocketknife’s blade razor-sharp, and it went into the back of the terrorist’s neck without much trouble. McCabe put plenty of force behind the strike to make sure of that.
The terrorist spasmed as McCabe felt the blade grate against bone. He had hit the spine, just as he intended. It all happened so fast that the bastard didn’t even have time to jerk the trigger on the machine pistol before his spinal cord was severed. The weapon slipped out of suddenly nerveless fingers and thudded to the floor.
McCabe pulled the knife out and reached around the terrorist’s body. The guy was deadweight now, but he wasn’t actually dead yet.
That changed a second later when McCabe thrust the knife under his chin and into his throat, angling the blade up so that it went through the soft tissue and into the base of the brain. The terrorist’s body gave one more spasm as he died.
McCabe lowered the corpse to the concrete. Killing the terrorist had taken approximately three seconds, and except for the noise of the gun hitting the floor, it had been carried out in complete silence. McCabe checked under the guy’s jacket for explosives. Finding none, he wiped the blood from the pocketknife onto the garment.
Then he folded the knife’s blade and put it away. He picked up the machine pistol and checked it. It was a Heckler & Koch model with which he was intimately familiar. The clip was full. McCabe looked in the pockets of the dead guy’s jacket and found two more full clips. He stowed them in his own jacket.
Stackhouse was looking around the doorjamb again. McCabe smiled faintly and nodded to him. Stackhouse stood up and slipped out of the office and cat-footed over to join McCabe.
“Now what?” Stackhouse asked in a whisper.
“Now we to get the other guy.”
The second terrorist had quite a dilemma on his hands, McCabe thought over the next couple of minutes as he and Stackhouse worked their way silently along the narrow passage next to the wall. That time had to seem even longer to the killer at the other end of the stockroom.
The man called out in Arabic, asking Achmed what was going on down there. So the dead terrorist was named Achmed, McCabe told himself. Enjoy your stay in hell, Achmed. It’s just what you deserve.
&nbs
p; Meanwhile, Achmed’s partner had to be going nuts with worry. He couldn’t leave the prisoners and come down here to see what had happened to Achmed. If he turned his back on the MegaMart employees, they would either jump him or make a break for freedom.
So all he could do was get more and more nervous.
What if he had a radio? McCabe suddenly wondered. Then he could call some of the other terrorists for help. That would ruin everything. He needed to move a little quicker.
He left Stackhouse at a tiny opening between some stacks of crates, after whispering, “Give me to the count of thirty, then squeeze through there and step out where the guy can see you.”
“Puttin’ a target on me, eh?”
“I’ll move fast enough he won’t have a chance to do anything.”
Stackhouse grinned. “See that you do, son, or I’m liable to dock your pay next month.”
McCabe returned the grin and gave the old billionaire a nod. He slid along the wall, closer and closer to a large opening near the spot where the remaining terrorist was holding the hostages.
The numbers were running in his head. He was counting them down as Stackhouse was counting them up. Just as McCabe reached zero, he heard the terrorist’s startled exclamation, followed by a shouted order in heavily accented English.
“Do not move, or I kill!”
Stackhouse had stepped into the open, McCabe knew.
Even as the terrorist was yelling at the old man, McCabe came around a pile of cardboard cartons containing jugs of antifreeze. The gunman was half-turned away from him, but the man was alert enough to spot McCabe’s movement.
Just not fast enough to avoid the side-hand strike that McCabe smashed against his throat, crushing the windpipe. As the man’s eyes widened in shock and pain and he struggled to gasp for the next breath he would never draw, McCabe hit him again.
The force of the killing blow made the guy’s arms and legs flail around like he was doing an old-fashioned jitterbug. A sharp stench suddenly filled the chilly air as he shit himself. He folded up to lie in a stinking heap on the floor.
McCabe reached down and picked up the machine pistol the terrorist had dropped. As he straightened, he smiled at the group of MegaMart employees, who were staring at him in a mixture of shock and disbelief, obviously struggling to comprehend what they had just witnessed.
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