by By Jon Land
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Chapter 95
B
en emerged from the office and fell in step alongside the twin lines of students moving in silence down the hallway. He had tucked his pistol far back on his hip, undiscernible beneath his jacket. He knew the eventual need for the gun outweighed the risk of it being found on his person. Hassan Tariq’s men would have no reason to expect any of the school’s teachers or administrative personnel to be armed, almost certainly eliminating the need to search them.
A few of the students glanced his way, noting the oddity of his presence. They didn’t recognize him, but he could easily be a substitute teacher, visiting administrator, even a parent.
The twin lines swung right down a long straight hall that dipped slightly at the outset en route to the far end of the building where the gymnasium was located. During his months working for a private security firm, Ben had become well acquainted with the procedures schools had enacted in the post—September 11 world. Depending on the nature of the danger, anything from a classroom lockdown to an all-out evacuation could be ordered. Central gathering points were selected specifically for catastrophic events like bioterror attacks. Mandated drills occurred regularly, and Ben guessed students and teachers alike assumed this was just another of those.
He could see a twin parade of students being marched down a parallel hallway on the other side of a courtyard that formed the center of the building. Once clustered in the gymnasium, it would take only a small number of terrorist gunmen to watch over the entire school population, in addition to complicating the logistics for any attempted rescue. But Ben also knew the terrorists behind this seizure had no intention of giving the authorities enough time to respond. This wasn’t about negotiation, or making a political point. It was about achieving a horrific result that, when taken among forty-nine others, would change American society forever, the wounds so deep they’d never heal.
Ben intended to make the logistics the enemy was relying on for success work in his favor. Neutralize the small number of terrorists who would be in the gym, and he could focus all his attention on evacuating the school from a single central location. This while Danielle dealt with the remainder of the terrorists. Surprise was their greatest ally, their presence being the one factor the opposition’s plan could not possibly have accounted for.
The hallway ended adjacent to a second cafeteria at the far end of the building. From there the trek wound left through a foyer and into the gymnasium that was already packed with children arranged in tight circles by classroom.
Ben moved off to the side, apart from the other teachers, pretending to herd the students along. A man standing similarly apart from everyone else, and making no effort to direct students, was speaking into a walkie-talkie.
The first terrorist.
Ben continued to gaze around the room, found another two men standing by themselves near the gym’s rear, each stationed near one of the double-door exits that opened onto the school’s outdoor basketball courts and playing fields.
Terrorists two and three.
Ben contemplated striking now, drawing his gun and opening fire while the restrained chaos of the stream of arriving students remained his ally. The two terrorists at the gymnasium’s rear, though, were an uncomfortably far distance away to trust to his aim with a pistol and a gunfight would surely claim innocent lives in the panic that resulted. Ben considered the risk against the potential gain, decided he couldn’t chance it.
The terrorist who’d been talking into the walkie-talkie moments before closed the double doors after the last students had entered. Ben watched him ease a chain out from a jacket pocket and twist it through the latches, locking the doors in place. Across the gym, the other two terrorists took this as their cue to do likewise to the doors near which they had been posted.
“Hey,” a casually dressed male teacher called out, moving away from his assigned class, “what do you think you’re doing?”
The terrorist with the walkie-talkie whipped a submachine gun out from under his jacket and fired a deafening burst into the ceiling. Screams rang out. Middle school students lurched to their feet, backing into what quickly became an indistinguishable mass of humanity.
“Sit down!” the terrorist ordered, his two cohorts on the other end of the gymnasium tearing identical weapons free. Like the other former Special Republican Guardsmen recruited for Black Sands, they all boasted a Western appearance and the speaker, anyway, spoke with no detectable accent. “Sit down where you were and don’t move! Don’t speak!”
The students hesitated until another submachine gun burst into the ceiling sent them scampering back to their places on the floor. One of the terrorists in the rear of the gym added his fire to the mix, and the spent shells rattled against the polished floor, the din echoing through the newly entrenched silence.
Ben fell in amidst a grouping of students that lacked a teacher. He began to question his strategy of not launching an attack when the opportunity had been there, of out-thinking himself. Hesitation was the difference between the cop and the soldier, between him and Danielle, and he wondered if that hesitation would now prove costly indeed. Then again, at least two of the terrorists had expended a hefty measure of their magazines, turning the odds a bit more in his favor once he did strike.
Fearful of losing the element of surprise, Ben knew his best chances lay in acting now. Seizing these moments of ultimate chaos and fear to do the last thing the terrorists could possibly be expecting. He pretended to scratch at his chest, lowered his hand to his belt and then snaked it back for his pistol.
The door to one of the locker rooms burst open suddenly and a fourth terrorist emerged, herding a line of boys harshly before him. The first few stumbled over each other, nearly tripping. The Iraqi with the walkie-talkie approached, began placing the emerging boys amidst individual class groupings.
And then Ben saw why, his breath catching in his throat.
A belt had been tied around each of the boy’s waists. Thick and bulky, rising up toward their chests. All too recognizable. Suicide belts, they were called in the Middle East. Packed with explosives laden with nails and shrapnel, likely wired to a single detonator.
Ben watched the boys, nearly thirty of them, being positioned and then pushed down throughout the gymnasium by the lead terrorist. Thirty human bombs, each with the potential to kill anyone within a twenty-foot radius.
Ben shivered, tried not to think of the potential carnage, focused instead on the gun tucked back on his hip and the walkie-talkie still clipped to his belt. Was there a way he could contact Danielle, alert her to the scope of the plot confronting them?
“You!” one of the terrorists yelled, angling toward Ben with submachine gun lowered. “Stay right where you are!”
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Chapter 96
D
anielle knew the television cameras were probably still several minutes, perhaps even a half hour, away. The plot called for maximum effect and exposure. And Hassan Tariq would be following it to the letter, his cell’s action destined to start a murderous chain reaction that defined the Iraqi plot known as Al Awdah.
She eased the office door open a crack and peered out into the main foyer. A set of stairs climbed upward toward the second floor directly before her, empty now. The cafeteria lay down a short extension of the foyer, also empty. Hearing no footsteps, Danielle emerged from the office and sealed the door quietly behind her.
A rattling sound froze her. Danielle pressed her shoulders against the wall and skirted to the cover of a corner occupied by a pay phone. The rattling gave way to a soft clanging sound, and she slid along the exposed brick wall to the edge where it merged into the school entry hall. One of the terrorists had just finished lashing one set of glass doors closed with a chain and was moving onto the second.
He had started to fasten another chain into place when Danielle sprang. He heard her at the last, too late to do anything but relinquish his hold on the chain and go
for a weapon inside his jacket instead. Not wanting to chance shots that would surely draw attention to the area, Danielle grabbed the chain the terrorist had left dangling from the door latch instead. Before he could draw his weapon, she had looped it around his throat and pulled hard with both hands, taking up the slack.
Danielle could feel the air catch in the man’s chest. His hands flailed wildly, groping behind him in hope of finding some stray purchase upon her. She yanked him backward and the man’s boots kicked out, cracking the glass of one of the entry doors. Finally Danielle felt his resistance ebb, his body slackening, and she dragged him across the floor into a nearby lavatory. He was dead by the time she tucked him inside a stall and closed the door behind her.
Danielle paused briefly before exiting the lavatory to catch her breath. Her plan was now to work her way across the school toward the gymnasium eliminating any terrorists between her and Ben on the way. That would leave only the terrorists in the gym for the two of them to contend with. If she worked fast, the element of surprise, or at least confusion, would remain on their side.
She hugged the wall, sliding her feet across the tile floor to avoid any noise her footsteps might make. This hallway ran perpendicular to the twin longer ones that ran the entire length of the school. Signs with directional arrows indicated she was heading for the science wing, and a set of chained exit doors ahead told her one of the terrorists had already covered this area.
Outside she could hear the screaming of more sirens, announcing the arrival of additional state and local authorities who would find themselves utterly helpless against the forces that had taken the school. Sure enough, as she neared the end of the hall, she gazed back and saw a pair of cops approaching the front doors, pistols drawn. One started to yank back on the latch while the other provided cover.
Danielle almost lunged out to signal them away, but it was too late. As soon as the latch gave, the tiny explosive charge affixed to the door exploded, blowing the first cop into the second and showering both of them with glass. A single scream rang out, then nothing.
The clatter of footsteps and sudden burst of voices sounded along the science wing. Danielle rounded the corner to find a pair of boys and girls, two couples who had been hiding in a room marked terrarium, surging into the hallway. They held their ground, uncertain what to do next, when their eyes fell on Danielle.
“Get down!” she screamed, an instant after seeing the shadowy figure of another of the terrorists appear at the other end of the hall.
The man opened fire with a submachine gun, just as Danielle dove to the floor, steadying her pistol. She angled her fire upward over the students now hugging the linoleum. Her bullets punched the terrorist backward into a steel doorjamb where he slumped downward, eyes glazing over.
Danielle bounded back to her feet, discarding that pistol in favor of another she had stripped off the dead terrorist whose body lay in the lavatory stall. The four students remained prone on the floor and her heart hammered with fear they had been hit in the crossfire. But all four stirred as she approached them.
“Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
They seemed briefly unsure themselves, until she urged them back inside the terrarium, immediately bathed in sunlight pouring through a glass atrium roof. The room was lined with display cases exhibiting various reptile and insect species. Danielle glimpsed snakes slithering about along with colonies of huge fire ants, spiders, and black beetles.
“Hide in that closet,” she ordered the students. “Don’t move until-—”
The heavy pounding of gunfire cut off her words. Fired from above, it punctured the atrium roof and sent glass spraying in all directions. Danielle felt it gouge her scalp and pierce her arms and legs through her clothing.
“Get away!” she managed to scream at the students before she lost her footing and hit the tile floor hard, the side of her skull slamming against a table leg.
Above her, an entire section of the glass gave way and Hassan Tariq plunged downward.
* * * *
Chapter 97
I
t had taken Jake Fleming all of two minutes to find the computer lab located on the school’s second floor. Shiny black Dells ran off a master server somewhere else in the building, giving him the power he needed to pull off his plan.
The machines were all whirring quietly. But a password was needed to get into the system. Jake smiled to himself, wondering if the school tech teachers really thought that would keep someone like him out.
He was logged on and on-line in less than a minute, the sheet containing the confirmation codes from all fifty terrorist cells unfolded and smoothed out atop the Formica table just to his right. It took another four minutes to crack through the school’s security firewall and then he began entering the addresses the terrorists had provided. Jake was under no illusion that those e-mail accounts were anything more than dummy sites that would reroute the message elsewhere. Nor did he believe there was any chance he could possibly trace them back to their actual source.
Nope, he had something else in mind entirely.
Jake finished keying in the addresses and began to type out the message he had composed in his mind. Had just finished when he heard the echo of heavy footsteps approaching the computer lab.
* * * *
Chapter 98
T
he explosion echoing from the other side of the building had taken the terrorist leader’s attention off Ben. The man stopped halfway to him and snapped a small walkie-talkie to his ear and jabbered into it. He waited for a response and when none came, spoke into the microphone again.
Danielle, Ben thought. Thanks to her, he guessed no response would be coming. He watched some of the hundreds of students begin to stir, shifting about.
“Stay where you are!” the terrorist leader ordered, kicking a few of those closest to him out of the way to clear a path.
Maybe it was the sight of the children doubling over in pain. Or the realization that this was all going to end soon and badly. Or maybe the sudden burst of echoing spits that could only be distant gunfire providing the final impetus for action he needed. Whatever the case, Ben yanked the pistol from inside his jacket and shot the terrorist leader in the center of the forehead.
The two terrorists in the gym’s rear twisted their weapons toward him. Ben stood his ground, no time to angle himself for a crouching shot. He fired off a half dozen shots toward each man, even as their fire burned the air toward him. But a few students had lunged to their feet in panic to flee, distracting the terrorists enough to confuse their aim.
Ben’s bullets dropped one of the men to his knees. He flopped forward while the second keeled over like a felled tree. The final terrorist had been rechecking suicide belts, distracted long enough for Ben to get off his final two shots before the Iraqi could unshoulder his weapon. One of the bullets took him high in the shoulder near the neck. He staggered briefly, then collapsed.
Chaos erupted. Students rushed in all directions. They packed the exits only to be turned back by the heavy chains. Some of the students who’d had the suicide belts strapped to their waists began groping about, trying to free themselves.
Ben shuddered, grabbed the first teacher he saw. “Help me stop them!”
“What?”
“The suicide belts! They have to be removed a certain way! Otherwise, they’ll detonate!”
Ben had recognized the construction of the belt from his last days as a cop in the West Bank. Designed to prevent volunteers from weakening and changing their minds, the explosives would go off if the belt was tampered with by anyone without intimate knowledge of exactly how to remove it.
“What do we do?” the teacher asked.
“Bring the students wearing the belts to the center of the gym! Then get those chains off and evacuate everyone from the building!”
The teacher narrowed his gaze questioningly.
“I know how to deactivate the explosives,” Ben told him.
Tariq landed in a tuck two yards from Danielle and bounced quickly back to his feet. He held a detonator in his right hand and submachine gun in his left, his glare the same as it had been when their eyes had locked briefly nine days before in Mogadishu. Around Danielle the force of the ceiling’s implosion had toppled glass display cases to the floor where they smashed into hundreds of pieces, freeing the creatures trapped within. She felt a small rodent pass lightly over her wrist as she groped for the pistol still in her belt. Danielle managed to free it, but Tariq launched a booted foot toward her as she started to fire and her shot flew wildly high into a still-whole section of the atrium roof above.
Tariq steadied the submachine gun upon her but didn’t fire, choosing instead to hold his detonator out for Danielle to see. She watched him ease his thumb toward the button that would surely destroy the gymnasium where the school’s students had been gathered and where Ben undoubtedly was. He grinned, savoring the moment, until they both heard a crackling sound from above an instant before a fresh section of the roof gave way and a blanket of glass rained down upon Tariq.
