by DL Barbur
Most of the shooting seemed to come from near the snack bar to the north. We passed dull gray lacquered steel shell casings on the pavement. There was no organized evacuation. People were just running in random directions. Some were just standing in one spot and screaming. I was in the lead, Dalton was behind and to my left, with Alex behind and to my right. Eddie completed the diamond by covering our rear, somehow managing to trot while looking backward.
We ran by the primate exhibit, where one wise looking old orangutan sat watching us pass with wise eyes, unfazed by the noise. There was another burst of gunfire, this time much closer, to our right. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a man holding a rifle. I pivoted, bringing my rifle up.
Alex shot first. She fired two rounds in rapid succession, while still moving forward, just like her dad had taught her. The shooter dropped, firing a shot from his AK in the air as he went down. He hit the ground and the rifle fell out of his hand. He lay there, wide-eyed, gasping for air with bloody froth on his lips.
Alex froze, her carbine not quite pointed at him.
“What do I do? Do I help him?”
“No,” I said. I aimed carefully, putting the red dot of my sight right on the wounded man’s ear and squeezed the trigger. The little carbine had negligible recoil, and as I looked through the sight, I saw the top of his head fly off.
Dalton and I ran forward, trying not to step in the mess but getting some on our boots anyway. Dalton grabbed the man’s AK while I ran my hands over him. He had a spare magazine stuffed in his waistband but nothing else, not even a wallet. He was a virtual twin to the guy we’d dug up out at Curtis’s compound. Early twenties, Middle Eastern. Dead.
“No bombs,” I said.
“OK,” Dalton said. He popped the dust cover off the AK and pulled out the bolt carrier. He dropped the now useless gun on the pavement and tucked the bolt inside his vest.
“Let’s go find the next one,” he said.
Ahead of us, an elderly man lay in a fan of blood, not moving. His broken eyeglasses lay on the ground next to him. Farther down, a crowd of people was gathered around a screaming little girl.
I looked back at Alex, who still stood frozen.
“Good work,” I said. “Now go be a doctor.”
I pointed where the girl lay on the ground and that seemed to break the spell. She put the carbine on safe, let it hang on the sling and ran to the girl.
“I’m a doctor,” I heard her say just as there was another rattle of gunfire. Then the Little Bird was overhead, flying sideways. I heard the thump of Dale’s rifle and a spent .308 case fell out of the sky and bounced off the pavement by my foot.
“Got one,” Dale said. “Over by the carousel.”
“Is that four?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Dalton said. “One left.”
“And Todd,” I said.
“And Todd,” he agreed. “And his buddy.”
“One by the snack bar,” Jack said. “Shit, he just ducked under cover.”
“Where is that?” I said, trying to picture the zoo in my head.
“This way.” Dalton seemed to know where he was going, so I let him be the point of the triangle. I took the right. Eddie took the left. Now the two of us would have to share responsibility for covering our backs.
Alex was kneeling over the girl, digging into her pack with gloved hands. I wanted to ask Eddie to stay behind to cover her while she worked, or do it myself, but it would be wrong.
I heard the pop of a gunshot from up ahead. It sounded like it was from a pistol. Then I heard the heavier knocking sound of the AK-47.
Ahead of us the Little Bird dipped down so low the skids were at almost head height. The rotor blades were dangerously close to a dozen different obstructions. Jack had somehow found a pocket exactly the right size to stick the helicopter into without shearing the blades off.
“Looks like you’ve got a civilian with a pistol duking it out with the active shooter,” Jack said.
“Got it,” Dalton said. We passed a woman in her twenties sitting on the ground crying. Her arm was laid open by a rifle round and several people were clustered around her pressing clothes and even cloth napkins against her wound. I saw a guy start to pull out his belt and hoped he knew how to apply a tourniquet.
Ahead of us, in the open-air seating area by the snack bar, we saw a woman with a pistol. She was young, maybe thirty. She had a nose ring and one of those emo haircuts that looked like it had been done with a bowl and a pair of shears. The pistol was tiny, maybe a little .380 or .32. The shooter ducked out of the hallway leading to the bathrooms and cranked off a couple rounds at her. One missed. The other dug a chunk out of the concrete flower planter she was hiding behind, throwing chunks of dirt and concrete in her face, but she was game. She fired a round at the guy. I couldn’t tell if she hit him, but he popped back out of view.
“Hey,” I yelled, not quite pointing my carbine at her.
She whirled and fortunately didn’t point the gun at us. She blinked at the sight of us standing there in jeans and workout clothes, while wearing the big tactical vests with “POLICE” stenciled on the front, then very carefully pointed the gun at the ground.
“It’s ok that I have this!” she yelled. “I have a concealed handgun license.”
She started to dig into a pocket.
“It’s ok,” I yelled. “Just get out of here.”
She hesitated. I jumped when Dalton fired two shots right next to my ear. That was apparently the impetus she needed to run off, gun still in her hand. I hoped she had the sense to put it away before she ran into a wall of Portland cops descending on the zoo. I could hear dozens of sirens in the distance.
“He poked his head out but I didn’t get him,” Dalton said. “What do you say we do two bangs, about a second apart, and then enter.”
That was a really shitty plan. There was a long, narrow hallway that led back to the bathrooms. Flashbangs or no, we would be rushing into a fatal funnel, with a guy waiting on the other side with an AK-47. Normal law enforcement strategy would be to surround this guy and wait him out, maybe throw in some tear gas. But that could take hours that we didn’t have. He was likely the last shooter, but we weren’t sure, plus Todd was still somewhere in the vicinity.
“You guys bang. I’ll be first through,” Eddie said. He’d handled the flash bangs like a live rattlesnake. Apparently, he preferred being the first through the door to throwing one.
“I wish I had my demo kit,” Dalton said as he pulled a bang out of his vest. I wished he did too. We could throw half a block of plastic explosives through the door, and settle this once and for all.
I pulled out a grenade too. “I’ll bang second. Whenever you’re ready.”
Eddie covered the doorway as we both pulled the pins on our grenades. Dalton threw first, and as the grenade sailed through the air, the muzzle of an AK-47 poked around the corner and spit flame. The guy was firing blindly. The rounds came nowhere near us.
The grenade sailed into the opening. I looked away and closed my eyes when it detonated, but I could still see the bright flash through my closed eyelids and the sharp crack was like an icepick into my already abused eardrums. I opened my eyes and chucked my own grenade through the opening. I had enough time to see that the muzzle of the rifle had vanished and that the grenade was on target, then I shut my eyes again.
There was another bright flash, but this time, the blast didn’t seem as loud. All I could hear was a high whine. My ears were shutting down. Eddie was already in motion as I opened my eyes. I followed his broad back towards the doorway. He turned towards the opening of the hallway and I heard muffled shots.
Eddie hit the ground right in front of me, and I almost tripped over him. He stuck his carbine out in front of him like a big pistol and blasted away one-handed. I leaned over so I could see into the hallway. The shooter was lying on his back, shooting wildly. There was a giant scorch mark on his shirt where at least one of the grenades had caught him, and his fa
ce was burned. It looked like he was shooting blind.
I let loose a barrage of fire, busting off a third of a magazine. Between me and Eddie, the guy practically came apart. I stopped shooting, flipped my safety on and looked down at Eddie. He was sitting on his butt, blinking.
“Ahhhh…” he said. Blood was running down his face. I saw a neat little white hole in the front of his helmet, near the top.
“Check the shooter,” I yelled to Dalton.
Velcroed to the front of our vests, each of us had a nylon pouch called a “blow out kit.” I ripped Eddie’s off his vest and pulled out a trauma dressing. I unsnapped the chin strap of his helmet and then hesitated. Eddie had a far away, unfocused look in his eyes and I wondered if the helmet was the only thing holding his head together.
I took a deep breath and pulled the helmet off. There was a big gash on the crown of his head, and a copious amount of blood flowed through his dark curly hair, but his skull looked intact.
I looked at the inside of his helmet. The bullet had curved between the layers of bullet resistant material, and the tip was poking out of the inside of the helmet.
“You are one lucky bastard,” I said.
He looked at me with unfocused eyes. “I don’t feel lucky.”
I started winding the bandage around his head.
“That really fucking hurts,” Eddie said through gritted teeth.
“I bet,” I replied, and checked the rest of him out. There were two holes in the nylon cover of his vest. I stuck a finger in both. The ceramic plates of his armor had stopped the rounds from penetrating. Either could have easily been a lethal wound.
“Does your chest hurt?” I asked.
He took a deep breath.
“Yeah,” he said, and frowned as if he realized it hurt for the first time. Multiple injuries were like that. Sometimes you got so focused on one thing, you didn’t realize all the other things hurt.
“Excuse me?”
Eddie and I both turned. Standing in the doorway was the woman who’d been shooting at the terrorist. She was pulling on a pair of bright purple nitrile gloves.
“I’m an emergency room nurse?”
“Outstanding,” I said as I stood up. “Can you help him out? He’s not as scary as he looks.”
She knelt down beside Eddie.
“Hi,” he said, looking a little confused, then gave her a big goofy grin. Shock did weird things to people.
Dalton walked out of the hallway, tucking another AK-47 bolt carrier into his vest. He took in the nurse kneeling by Eddie wordlessly.
“You guys sure shot the shit out of him. Now what?”
Over the whine in my ears, I listened. I could hear screaming, sirens, and the sound of the Little Bird’s rotors, but no more shooting.
I keyed my radio.
“Jack, I think we dumped the last shooter by the snack bar. What do you have?”
“We haven’t seen any more shooting,” Jack said. “We’ve been flying orbits. I can’t pick Todd out of the crowd. Dale shot the tires out of the truck they were trying to get into, so we shut down his escape route. Most of the crowd is headed toward the main exit. You’ve got a wall of cops headed your way.”
I stood there for a minute thinking. There were thousands of people milling around. All Todd had to do was blend in and he could work his way out of the perimeter.
“Let’s head for the entrance,” Dalton said. “We’ve got nothing to lose.”
I looked at Eddie.
“I’m good, bro. Go get ‘em,” he said.
I looked at Dalton.
“All right. Let’s go hunting.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
I was exhausted, but we ran anyway. The path to the exit sloped uphill and I lowered my head and charged. Dalton took off at a ground eating pace that I found hard to match. We passed two more dead people, a man and a woman, but thankfully no children. We passed more people who were wounded, and I was glad to see that every one of them was being helped by someone. It was good to see ordinary people stepping up and helping out. Plus, selfishly, I was glad I didn’t have to make the choice between looking for Todd and leaving somebody to bleed out alone.
I was breathing hard, and there was a stitch in my side. I was fighting the urge to ask Dalton to slow down, and on the verge of losing when he stopped so fast I nearly bowled him over.
“Look,” he said. He pointed over towards a cotton candy stand. There was a golf cart there. He sprinted over to it and slid behind the wheel while I bent over with my hands on my knees and hyperventilated.
“It works!” he said, backing the cart up next to me.
With my armor on, I barely fit. My butt had no sooner touched the cushion than Dalton stomped on the accelerator and my head snapped back. Dalton weaved among the fleeing zoo attendees while I tried to catch my breath.
I caught my breath and keyed my mic.
“Alex? You there? You ok?”
“I’m fine,” she snapped. “Busy.”
Well, that was good to hear.
We weren’t seeing any more wounded people. The shooters hadn’t penetrated this far into the zoo. The crowd was now mostly older folks, and people trying to tote small kids up the hill. They all looked scared and confused. One woman saw my rifle and screamed.
“It’s ok,” I said. “We’re cops.”
The Little Bird passed overhead.
“You’re about to run into a bunch of Portland Cops, by the mountain goat exhibit,” Jack said on the radio.
Dalton let up on the accelerator a little and then we were confronted with a phalanx of a dozen Portland cops in groups of three or four. They weren’t trying to stop anybody, just eyeballing everyone who was trying to leave, to make sure they weren’t carrying weapons. Behind them groups of SWAT operators were forming up with Portland Fire and Rescue medics, forming teams to go in and look for the wounded.
“Federal Agents!” I yelled and kept my hands away from my rifle.
A bald sergeant nodded and waved us forward.
“Most of the wounded are down around the primate area and the concert lawn,” Dalton said. “Where’s your command post?”
“Mall security office,” the sergeant said.
Dalton nodded and drove forward. It was the right move. The sergeant didn’t try to stop us, and we didn’t get bogged down trying to establish our bona-fides.
Soon the crush of people was too heavy and we abandoned the golf cart. The zoo exit was in sight.
“The command post is liable to be a cluster fuck,” Dalton said. “Todd will be gone by the time we convince them to listen to us. We just need to John Wayne this.”
I nodded in agreement. We forced our way forward through the crowd, and out the turnstiles. The parking lot in front of the zoo was a sea of flashing lights and people. A bunch of cops and zoo security people were trying to do their best to create some kind of order. I dashed into the parking lot and found a minivan. I climbed up the hood and onto the roof, trying to look through the sea of faces.
“Good idea,” Dalton said. He ran over to a pickup a few rows over and climbed up on top of the cab.
This was hopeless. There were thousands of people in my view. The cops were telling everyone to run to the Children’s Museum on the other side of the parking lot. Some people were obeying. Others had gotten into their cars and were trying to flee, only to add to the congestion in the parking lot. As I watched, two Subarus backed into each other with the thump and crunch of metal and plastic.
More people were thronging towards the elevators to the MAX station. A tunnel for the city passenger rail system ran under the street level here, and people were lining up to take the ride down. Others were just walking towards the park.
Then I saw him. The crowd parted for an instant and I locked eyes with Rickson Todd. There was another, younger man next to him with a high and tight haircut. They both looked like sharks swimming in a sea of fish. They were both carrying those trendy sling bags that hipsters used to
carry their laptop computers. I was willing to bet there was something other than computers in them though.
Our eyes locked for an instant, then he was gone, swallowed up by the crowd of people.
“I just saw him,” I said on the radio as I climbed down off the mini-van. “He’s headed north, towards the elevators.”
Dalton caught up with me as I started running through the parking lot. We weaved between cars snarled in a traffic jam and people on foot milling around aimlessly. Jack hovered low overhead.
We managed to work our way through the parking lot, one row at a time. A woman in a Volvo nearly backed over me. I climbed on top of a Honda and the owner started yelling at me to get down.
“I see him. Over by the elevators,” Dale said. “I don’t have a shot.”
I stood up on the roof of the Honda, ignoring the owner who was screaming at me that he was going to sue me. I didn’t see Todd but I did see his buddy. He was standing in a clear space, as if the fleeing civilians sensed he was bad news. I brought my gun up, but there were too many people passing behind him and between us for me to get a clear shot.
As I watched, he reached into the bag and pulled out a stubby little machine pistol. In one fluid motion, he extended the stock and shouldered the weapon, sighting in on the Little Bird.
“Jack…” was all I had time to say before he mashed down on the trigger. The gun spit fire as Jake banked the Little Bird to the left. For a second I was sure the rotor blades were going to hit some of the parked cars. Then Jacked saved it and pulled the collective up, gaining altitude.
“Caught some rounds,” he said over the radio. He sounded shaky.
I scrambled down the hood of the Honda. The owner had wisely made himself scarce at the sound of the gunshots. Dalton and I ran.
In some ways, the gunfire had made this easier. People had scattered away from the elevators at the sound of the shots. I saw Todd’s buddy running towards the elevators, stuffing a fresh magazine into the machine pistol as he ran. I stopped running, put the red dot of my sight between his shoulder blades and put my finger on the trigger, but a screaming woman ran between us. I jerked my finger off the trigger like it was burning hot, and swallowed hard. I’d very nearly shot her.
