Jackknife

by Johnstone, William W.

  She made noises and started trying to thrash around. McCabe put the barrel of a machine pistol against the back of her head. She must have recognized the feel of it, because she got still in a hurry.

  That wouldn’t last long, though, and he knew it. She would figure out that he couldn’t afford to shoot her. So he rolled her onto her side and let her see the razor-sharp blade of the pocketknife. He held the index finger of his other hand to his lips.

  She lay still. He saw in her eyes the realization that he would kill her if he had to, and she had to have figured out by now that he could probably do it quietly, too.

  McCabe leaned over her and put his mouth close to one of her ears. “Here’s the deal,” he said. “I know you’re not afraid to die. I know you got up this morning planning to die before the day was over. But I don’t think you really want to.”

  Hatred blazed from her eyes.

  “You’re coming with me, and you’re not going to struggle,” McCabe went on. “If you do, I’ll just knock you out again. I can do it with one little pinch here.” He rested his fingers on her neck, at the spot where several vital nerves joined. “So cooperate with me, and maybe you’ll get your chance for Armageddon later.”

  Wrong word, he thought. Armageddon was a Jewish thing. Jihad was probably closer. But he didn’t waste time correcting himself.

  Instead, he picked her up and draped her over his shoulder, aware as he did so that she was heavier than she looked. Aware as well that he had an armful of firmly packed female flesh, because even under these dire circumstances he was still a guy. A happily married guy, to be sure, which meant he wouldn’t be grabbing a young woman like this unless it was in the line of duty—which this was, of course.

  She cooperated. There wasn’t much else she could do. McCabe got the feeling that she hadn’t been highly trained in hand-to-hand combat or self-defense. Probably hadn’t figured on needing any of that stuff. He retraced his steps to the swinging doors that led to the stockroom, again without seeing anyone else along the way, and shouldered through them.

  He didn’t see Stackhouse and the other men at first, but then they appeared, coming out of the places where they had been hiding behind stacks of merchandise. Stackhouse looked surprised at the sight of the woman, but then he grinned and asked, “Been doin’ some shoppin’, McCabe?”

  “Yeah,” McCabe grunted. “Maybe I was able to pick up a secret weapon for us.”

  Hamed knew something was wrong when he saw the worried look on Sheikh al-Mukhari’s face.

  “Have you seen Shalla?” the sheikh demanded.

  “Why would I have seen her?” Hamed asked. “I thought she was with you.”

  Mukhari shook his head. “She was going around the store checking with all our men, making sure that everything is all right.”

  That didn’t surprise Hamed. The woman had been serving as an extra pair of eyes and ears for the sheikh, running errands for him and delivering his orders to the other members of the group who were scattered around the sprawling store.

  “Perhaps she, ah, needed to tend to personal business,” Hamed suggested, embarrassed to be speaking even vaguely of such female things.

  Mukhari nodded. “Perhaps. We should have had radios of some sort. I did not really think about how large this place is.”

  “There are probably walkie-talkies in the electronics area,” Hamed said.

  “An excellent idea—but it does not tell me what happened to Shalla.”

  “I’m sure she’s around somewhere. Would you like for me to go and look for her? You could watch these infidels while I do.”

  The sheikh looked slightly offended that Hamed would suggest he lower himself to something as menial as guarding prisoners, and Hamed quickly backtracked from the idea, hoping as he did so that Allah would forgive him for speaking so to a holy man.

  “I will find her,” Mukhari snapped. “Continue to keep your eye on these godless ones.”

  “Of course,” Hamed said.

  He turned his attention back to the prisoners as the sheikh stalked off. The conversation had been carried out in Arabic, so of course the infidels had no idea what he and Mukhari had been talking about.

  That was good, because Hamed didn’t want them to get the idea that anything might be going wrong with the plan. He wanted them to continue being cowed and demoralized, because they weren’t as much of a threat that way.

  That older blond woman was watching him with keen interest, though, and Hamed didn’t care for the look in her eyes. It seemed almost like she knew what he and Mukhari had been saying.

  But that was impossible, of course. She was just a stupid American bitch. She knew nothing.

  “Something’s wrong,” Terry whispered to her daughter, Allison Sawyer, and Ellis Burke.

  “Of course something’s wrong,” Burke muttered. “We’re being held prisoner by a bunch of bloodthirsty lunatics.”

  Terry was glad that the lawyer had finally come to understand that, but she said, “No, I mean they’re upset about something. The older man was asking Hamed if he’d seen a woman named Shalla, or something like that.”

  Allison stared at her. “You understand that jabbering they were doing?”

  “It’s Arabic. My husband speaks it. He taught me a little of it.” Terry shrugged. “I’m good with languages, and I enjoy learning new things.”

  Burke said, “Wait a minute. Your last name is McCabe. That’s not an Arabic name, by any means. How come your husband knows…the language?”

  “He speaks several different languages. He used to travel internationally a lot for his work.”

  That was putting it mildly. Terry couldn’t think of many places that Jack hadn’t been when he was an operator. Most of them had been backward corners of the world where he was always in danger.

  But she wasn’t sure he had ever been in any more peril than he was now, somewhere in this sprawling discount store less than fifteen miles from home.

  She sure as hell hadn’t been.

  “So one of them has gone missing,” Burke said. “What does that mean? And what good does it do for us?”

  Terry tried to guard against the hope that had sprung up inside her. “It means something has happened to the woman,” she explained, keeping her voice low enough so that Hamed couldn’t overhear the conversation. The bearded terrorist was stalking back and forth, looking worried and glaring at the prisoners as he paced. “Maybe they didn’t capture everyone in the store. Maybe some people are still free, and they grabbed the woman.”

  Allison caught her breath and then said, “If that’s true, they could use her as a hostage to make the others release us.”

  “Never happen,” Burke said with a shake of his head. “I know about trade-offs. You gotta have something the other guy really wants. These people all want to die. They won’t care about one woman, even if she’s one of them.”

  Terry knew that the lawyer was right, but she still dared to hope.

  She hoped that Shalla’s disappearance meant that Jack was somewhere in the store, loose and working to free the hostages. The odds against him would be overwhelming, of course…

  But she clung to that hope anyway, because for the first time since this nightmare began, she began to feel that there was a real chance she and her daughter and the rest of the prisoners might get out of here alive.

  CHAPTER 52

  The woman tried to scream as soon as McCabe removed the gag, but once again he was too quick for her. His hand clamped over her mouth, stifling any outcry. He wasn’t too gentle about it either.

  Being a gentleman sort of went out the window when somebody wanted you and your loved ones and a bunch of other innocent folks dead.

  She strained against the belt he had used to tie her. McCabe shook his head and said, “Might as well give that up. You’re not getting loose.”

  The hatred he saw in her eyes would have curdled milk. He couldn’t understand that. This woman didn’t know him, didn’t know anything ab
out him.

  How could she hate him so much?

  He didn’t hate her, or the men with her who were trying to carry out this great atrocity. He would kill them if he could, sure, but only to preserve innocent lives, not out of the sort of crazed fanaticism he saw in her eyes when she looked at him and the other men in the stockroom.

  All any of them had done to make a deadly enemy out of her and her kind was to live in America. Didn’t even matter if they had been born here or just raised here.

  “I’m going to take my hand away from your mouth,” McCabe told her, “but don’t try to yell. If I have to, I’ll just knock you out again. Understand?”

  The woman glared at him for a couple of seconds, but then her head moved in a grudging nod.

  McCabe lifted his hand, ready to grab her again if she tried to make a peep. She just grimaced, turned her head to the side, and spat onto the concrete floor as if trying to get the taste of his hand out of her mouth.

  She was propped up on some cardboard cartons that contained small microwave ovens. McCabe stood in front of her, and Stackhouse and the rest of the men formed a rough half circle around them.

  “Go ahead,” she said through clenched teeth. “Go ahead and rape me, you dogs! See if I care!”

  McCabe shook his head. He showed her the pistol in his hand, which he had taken away from her, and said, “You’ve got it all wrong, miss. I’ll put a bullet through your head if I have to, but nobody’s going to rape you.”

  She didn’t look like she believed him.

  “All we want is information,” McCabe went on.

  She spat again. “You’ll get nothing from me.”

  McCabe ignored her defiance and said in a quiet but determined voice, “How many of you are there?”

  “Enough to make all of you infidels sorry.”

  “Do you have explosives?”

  “Go to hell.”

  In Arabic, McCabe said, “You are a disgrace to Allah, uncovering your head and exposing your body. You should be taken back into the house of your father and beaten for your sins.”

  The woman’s mouth sagged open in shock. McCabe knew what she was thinking: How was it that this godless American was speaking her language?

  “Your mission is doomed because you do not truly serve the will of Allah,” McCabe continued. “You bring shame and dishonor to the Prophet. You soil the holy cause of jihad with your iniquity. Speak now! How many misguided souls like yours have come to this place?”

  For a second, he thought it was going to work. He saw the resolve in her gaze wavering.

  But then her eyes hardened again and she said in English, “Go fuck yourself, American.”

  McCabe sighed. He knew he could break her if he devoted enough time to the effort.

  But that was time he didn’t have.

  McCabe shoved the gag back into her mouth, despite her best efforts to bite his hand, and tied it into place.

  “Reckon she told you, McCabe,” Stackhouse said.

  “Yeah,” McCabe said with a nod. “We’ll continue with the original plan. But somebody will have to stay back here and keep an eye on her to make sure she doesn’t get loose and warn the others, and in case we need her later.” He looked at the billionaire. “That’ll be your job, Mr. Stackhouse.”

  Bushy white eyebrows lifting in surprise, Stackhouse said, “Why me? I was plannin’ on goin’ out there with you boys!”

  “I know that, but I need somebody I can trust back here.” McCabe hoped that explanation would mollify Stackhouse. There was some truth to it. He wanted somebody competent standing guard over the woman.

  But mainly, he didn’t want to risk the life of such an important man any more than he had to. Philosophically, each man’s life was as important as any other man’s. But realistically, the American economy could stand to lose a truck driver like McCabe a lot more easily than it could a billionaire entrepreneur like Hiram Stackhouse.

  “Well, all right,” Stackhouse agreed, although McCabe could tell that he was quite reluctant to do so. “If you need me, though, just holler and I’ll come a-runnin’.”

  “Sure,” McCabe said with a nod. He turned to the other men. “The rest of you follow me.”

  He had figured out what to do about the locked cabinets and cases in sporting goods that contained the guns and ammunition. What he needed was a distraction so that he could break them open while the terrorists were worried about something else. While thinking about that problem, he had remembered the smoke detectors and the sprinkler system that covered the entire store.

  If he could start a small fire underneath one of the smoke detectors, and the smoke from the fire wasn’t noticed by the terrorists until it reached the sensor, that would set off the sprinklers and all sorts of alarms. With that racket going on, the bastards wouldn’t be able to hear the glass fronts of the cabinets being shattered, or the cases that contained ammo being wrenched open.

  The plan would require a certain amount of luck, but McCabe thought it was workable.

  He led the men to the swinging doors, checked through the Plexiglas windows, and saw that the coast was still clear. It might not stay that way for long, though.

  The woman would be missed sooner or later, if she hadn’t been already, and then the terrorists would start looking for her. McCabe wanted to put his plan into operation while the enemy was still fairly stationary, guarding the hostages.

  “Once we get our hands on the guns, spread out,” McCabe told the men in low tones as they crouched at the swinging doors. “Kill every terrorist you see. They may be wearing body armor, so take head shots if you can. But even if they’re wearing armor, a slug from a high-powered rifle to the body ought to put them down and incapacitate them for a few seconds. That’ll give you a chance to finish them off.” He looked around at his “army.” “Can you do it?”

  All of them nodded, but he saw a lot of pale, frightened faces.

  He knew that most of the men would come through despite their fear. They would rise to the occasion, as America’s civilian soldiers had been doing for more than two centuries. As a country, the rot of liberalism and defeatism might have set in, but as individuals the people were still strong when they had to be. When they were backed into a corner and forced to fight for what was right. It was a shame that things had come to that, McCabe thought, but he still believed in his fellow Americans.

  He still had hope.

  “Let’s go,” he said with a nod as he pushed one of the doors open.

  CHAPTER 53

  At first, everything seemed to be going all right. The MegaMart employees moved fairly quietly for men who had never been trained to be stealthy. Several of them had stuffed wads of packing paper under their shirts that McCabe planned to use to start the fire. He had borrowed a cigarette lighter from one of the men. As he slipped along the narrow aisle that ran beside the rear wall of the store’s retail area, he kept glancing up, looking for one of the smoke detectors attached to the ceiling.

  He could have pulled a fire alarm and set off a racket that way, of course, but that wouldn’t turn the sprinklers on. Smoke was required for that. McCabe thought the terrorists would be more disoriented with water pouring down on them, and that would make it more difficult for them to see as well.

  He ran the risk of the bastards detonating a bomb, if they had one, at the first sign of trouble, but his hope was that they wouldn’t do that. He was counting on their arrogance and their desire to milk this situation for all the drama it was worth. By now, the whole world would be watching.

  McCabe and his men didn’t run into any of the terrorists before they got to the sporting-goods section. McCabe spotted a smoke detector on the ceiling above the arts and crafts area. He paused and motioned for the men who had the packing paper to hand it over.

  That was when everything went wrong.

  McCabe suddenly heard glass shatter, and an American voice yelled, “Grab the guns! Hurry! Hurry!”

  Instantly, McCabe’s brai
n grasped the situation. Some of the other hostages had either gotten loose somehow, or had hidden from the terrorists and hadn’t been rounded up in the first place. The idea of going for the guns in sporting goods had occurred to them, too.

  But they were making a hurried grab, out in the open, with no distraction to keep the lunatics off their backs. It was a valiant try, but doomed to fail.

  McCabe twisted around and motioned urgently to the men with him. “Down!” he ordered. “Get down and make yourselves as inconspicuous as possible!”

  They hit the floor, crawled behind displays, plastered themselves against the bottom of shelves, did everything they could to make themselves difficult to see. McCabe bellied down and crawled along the aisle, past a long set of shelves to a place where he could see part of the sporting-goods area.

  He saw half-a-dozen men breaking into the gun cabinets and the cases where the ammunition was kept. They were hurrying, fumbling with the weapons in an attempt to get them loaded, and McCabe knew they weren’t going to make it in time because he also heard running footsteps and angry foreign voices.

  Several of the terrorists skidded into view, carrying automatic weapons like the ones McCabe had taken off the men in the stockroom. One of the Americans behind the counter had finished loading the shotgun in his hands. He swung it up and fired. Even in the cavernous store, the blast was deafening. The charge of buckshot tore into one of the terrorists and flung him backward.

  But then, before any of the other men could bring their guns into play or the shotgunner could pump the weapon and fire again, the killers opened up with their machine pistols.

  Death spewed from the automatic weapons in a veritable storm of lead. The counter behind which the Americans crouched blew apart in a spray of splintered wood and glass. Bullets smashed into their bodies and drove them back against the gun cabinets they had broken into a few minutes earlier. They hung there, unable to fall because the devastating impact of the slugs held them up. Their faces disappeared in a crimson flood. When the guns finally fell silent and the Americans pitched forward, they barely resembled anything human.