A crackle on the police scanner seemed promising for a moment but it turned out to be only a hit-and-run with no fatalities.
Then the phone rang. “Newsroom.”
A pause, then a voice. Low, modulated, cultivated: a grownup’s voice.
“To whom am I speaking?” There was a hint of an English accent, although truth to tell Rhonda probably couldn’t distinguish among English, Australian, New Zealand, or South African if she had a gun at her head. Foreign, in any case.
“Rhonda Gaines-Solomon.”
“You will do.” A pause. “Do you know what’s going on at the school?”
This might be promising. She grabbed a pen, knocked some junk on her desk out of the way, and found a scrap of paper. “What school?”
“Edwardsville Middle School. Jefferson. Do you know what’s going on there?”
She glanced at the monitors to see if any of their rivals had anything about Edwardsville: nothing. A glance at the local AP wire on her laptop screen: nothing. “Far as I know, there’s nothing going on at the Jefferson Middle School.”
A short pause, then a challenge—“What do you know?”
Suddenly, she realized that she’d misunderstood the question. The tipster wasn’t asking her for information. He was giving her information. Rhonda’s mind kicked into high gear as the import of what he was saying sank in. Frantically, she waved at Mr. Dunkirk behind the glass, but he was sipping his coffee and reading the paper.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice rising “A school shooting? What is it you’re telling me?”
“How fast can you get over here?”
She was out the door so fast that Mr. Dunkirk never even saw her leave. One moment she was there—
And the next moment she was gone.
Chapter Four
EDWARDSVILLE — JEFFERSON MIDDLE SCHOOL
The hallway was silent. Unless you looked carefully, you couldn’t really tell there was anything wrong, except that the lights were out.
Charles led the children as noiselessly as possible. Rory thought they’d be heading for the front door, but when he pointed in its direction, Charles just shook his head and gestured toward the gym. Rory understood immediately — the gym lay at the rear of the main hallway, and behind it was the loading dock. They’d be able to sneak out that way.
They were about halfway down when a man stepped out of one of the classrooms. He was carrying a gun. Rory didn’t know exactly what kind of gun, but it was one of those that you gripped with both hands and shot tons of bullets really fast.
Charles went right after him. They struggled for a bit, but then the man hit Charles with the butt — at least, that’s what it looked like — and Charles went down hard.
This man was quite different. He was funny looking and foreign looking and he was wearing mostly black clothes, like he was some kind of ninja without the sashes and pointed stars. He looked at the children, still standing dutifully in line, and said, “Okay, we go now.”
As they walked toward the gym, several other men came out of the shadows. These men were also semi-ninjas, except their faces were covered by ski masks. The man with the rifle barked at them in some strange language — Rory could tell he was the Top Dog, because his face was uncovered and he was holding a cell phone in one hand, and had a pistol stuffed down the front of his pants — and they picked up Charles by the armpits and dragged him along.
The first person Rory spotted upon entering the gym, because he was looking for her, was his sister. Emma was with the other eighth graders, sitting on the bottom bench of the stands. There were tears running down her face. But she was all right; she was alive.
Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was not all right. He was hogtied, lying in the middle of the basketball court, right on the school logo. He was bleeding from his nose and one of his legs was bent back at an impossible angle. He was trying to scream, but there was a dirty, bloody rag stuffed in his mouth.
Rory’s eyes drifted from the prone figure of the principal to the nets at either side of the gym. There was something weird hanging from each of them, something heavy and ominous with wires running out of it.
He followed the wires and saw that they ran to one man, another stranger, who was off to the side, near the double fire doors. The wires ran into a doohickey connected to a laptop that was balancing on one of the footstools the cheerleaders used to practice with.
It looked like the whole school was in the gym. Teachers, students, the custodial staff, even Mr. Hebert, the cook, whose family had been in the St. Louis area since it was a French Jesuit trading post and once had owned most of Creve Coeur, or so the story went.
And then there were the strangers, about a dozen, all men, wearing ski masks, all of them armed.
The teachers had already been tied up; the only teacher who wasn’t tied up was Charles, but he was still knocked out, and so he lay on one of the benches, unconscious.
But that wasn’t the worst part. Several teachers had shotguns wired to their hands, which were bound in front of them, and both their index fingers taped to the triggers. Rory didn’t know much about physics yet, but he knew enough to realize that they had to hold their elbows up, the guns pointing directly at their faces. If they got tired, and the guns slipped a bit, the pressure on the triggers would blow their heads off.
Nurse Haskell, he noticed, was having an especially hard time holding her gun up.
Rory submitted without a fuss as one of the bad men — he had already begun to think of them as “cannibals”—roughly bound his hands behind his back with some of that white wire stuff the cops were using now instead of handcuffs and shoved him toward one of the rigged nets.
The Top Dog stepped forward. “Listen to me!” he shouted. He also had a funny accent, but this one was more like what Mr. Nasir-Nassaad should have had but didn’t, weird and guttural and scary. “You are all prisoners of war.”
Rory expected one of the teachers, maybe Mr. Treadway, who was widely regarded as the meanest man in the school, to say something back. Mr. Treadway was always going on about how America was the worst country in history, which made most people in Edwardsville plenty mad, and how the white man was the worst man in history, but since he taught social studies it was more or less okay. Indeed, Rory had wanted to go find some black people to apologize to, but there weren’t all that many of them in Edwardsville, and his parents wouldn’t let him go to East St. Louis, where apparently they were pretty easy to find.
With a shotgun taped beneath his chin, though, Mr. Treadway wasn’t quite as brave as his reputation.
Rory tried to catch his sister’s eye, but as he turned to look her way a blow to the side of his head got his full attention. When the stars stopped shooting, he could see that it was the Top Dog, who had just hit him a glancing blow with the butt of his rifle.
“You don’t move! You don’t move unless I say so! You hear me?”—he was addressing his remarks to the assembly now. “None of you sons of bitches moves unless I say so. Eyes straight ahead! Eyes straight ahead! Or else!”
Everybody froze. The Top Dog turned away from Rory.
Now an unusual emotion began to well up inside him. Practically from birth, Rory had been taught to hide his emotions, to conceal them, suppress them, be afraid of them. It wasn’t nice to feel bad things, and it was even less nice to express them. Boys, his teachers told him, were different now: they didn’t yell, they didn’t fight, even when they wanted to, they got along, even when they didn’t want to. Not to conform was to risk a trip to Mr. Nasty-Nosy’s office or, worse, to the Infirmary, where Nurse Haskell gave you a couple of those pills that supposedly settled you down.
Be nice, they told you. But he didn’t want to be nice any more. He didn’t want to be afraid any more. He wanted to fight, the way Charles had fought.
“Please, please.” It was Nurse Haskell. She was crying, which was making it difficult for her to keep her arms in the right position.
The Top Dog saw her struggles, hea
rd her entreaties. He came over. He took her by the arm and led her toward the center of the gym floor, where Mr. Nasir-Nassaad was lying. He slipped his arms around her waist, propping up her elbows, and waltzed her around a bit.
Then he laughed in her face and released her.
Unsupported, her elbows dropped. She twisted her head just in time — so instead of blowing off the top of her skull, the force of the blast took off the lower half of Nurse Haskell’s jaw, sending her teeth showering over those unlucky enough to be close by.
She fell across Mr. Nasir-Nassaad, writhing. Several of the female teachers screamed. But the children were stock-still, as they had been ordered.
The terrorists just laughed. And nobody laughed louder or longer than the Top Dog.
“Okay, okay,” he shouted. “Now you see. You see what happens when you fuck with me. Nothing good. But, still — I can be merciful.”
Nurse Haskell was still alive, trying to move, trying to moan, even without a mouth. It was hideous. The Top Dog watched her agony for a few moments, then shot her in what remained of her head.
Rory looked across the gym at Emma, who was staring back at him with fear in her eyes. He wanted to rush to her, to protect her. He couldn’t do that. But he did know one thing: there was no fear in the glance he shot back at her. Just anger.
The Top Dog put away his gun and looked at his watch. “Okay, something to do now,” he said. “I’ll be back.”
Chapter Five
ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE
“Mr. President, I think you’d better look at this.”
Augie Willson, the head of President Jeb Tyler’s Secret Service detail, was standing in the doorway of the command section with a concerned look on his face. Even at the best of times, Augie had a concerned look on his face, but this look was different. It was even more concerned.
“What is it, Augie?” Tyler and a few other men in suits were sitting around a table, obviously in the middle of an unpleasant conference. “Senator Hartley is trying to explain to me how I could lose the next election, and I’m telling them that’s just not going to be possible. You know what a popular guy I am.”
President John Edward Bilodeau Tyler smiled that dazzling smile of his, the one that had narrowly won him the presidency the last time out over an older and more experienced opponent, the sitting vice president. A fabulously wealthy trial lawyer, Tyler’s political genius was to maintain his image as the champion of the little guy by putting doctors out of business in his home state of Louisiana. Women, especially prochoice women, loved him for his ready wit, his fabulous hair, and the way he could look into their eyes and, as he put it, see their souls. Prolife women, on the other hand, did not exactly appreciate the dearth of ob-gyns that had followed in his meteoric wake.
Men assumed he got laid a lot; there hadn’t been a bachelor in the White House since James Buchanan.
Tyler shot a glance at Hartley to see how he was taking the gibe. Despite their many differences, over the years they had bonded over a shared fondness for Maker’s Mark bourbon, the novels of John Gregory Dunne and James Ellroy, and the paramount importance of absolute discretion in their personal lives. Often, they got drunk together, swapped stories together, confided in each other. They had few secrets from each other; Bob Hartley was the only man Jeb Tyler could really trust. Even if, given the nature of his office, he couldn’t really trust him.
Hartley returned the glance. “I’m just trying to help, Mr. President,” he said, but his tone let Tyler know the barb stung a little. “If you don’t want to continue to occupy the Oval Office after the next election, there are plenty of people in Washington who would happily take over for you.”
Tyler gave Hartley a shot of the famous teeth. “Starting with you, Bob, I imagine,” he said, then turned to Augie Willson. Willson didn’t much like Hartley, and even with a Secret Service poker face, he was somehow always able to let his personal disdain for the man shine through. “Go ahead, Augie,” he said.
“It all started a few minutes ago,” the Secret Service man explained, switching on the video screen. The big type at the bottom of the screen was all too familiar:
SCHOOL HOSTAGE SITUATION.
Illinois middle school crisis.
Senator Robert Hartley glanced briefly at the screen, then returned his attention to notes. He was trying to explain to Tyler that his poll numbers were dropping precisely because he was seen as a weak leader by a majority of Americans. The liberal social agenda he had campaigned on — universal health care, hate-crimes legislation, state-sponsored day care for all working mothers — had been largely enacted, and so a fickle country had become restless, which is why it was so difficult to be a two-term president these days: the country craved change, even when it didn’t need it. America was an entire nation suffering from attention deficit disorder.
As far as Hartley was concerned, President Tyler was the one who really needed a change: a change of attitude, a change of image. Tyler needed to “rebrand” himself, as the ad men said, as a strong, masculine leader; even the women who had voted him into office and supported his social programs had tired of his metrosexual persona, and were craving something more along the lines of a lumberjack, a biker, or a serial killer.
Truth to tell, Hartley found his own emotions mixed. If Tyler’s popularity sank any further, his bid for reelection was going to be in serious trouble, and that left Hartley with both a problem and an opportunity. For President Tyler and Senator Hartley were members of opposite parties, thrown together in an unholy but productive marriage of convenience thanks to Hartley’s overweening ambition and Tyler’s fetish for bipartisanship. Hartley was intensely disliked within his own party, widely viewed as a weasel who would sell out anybody at any time, and he knew it. Not that it bothered him.
But as Tyler’s popularity sank, the chances that Hartley’s party had a real shot at the White House increased in lockstep. Like every other senator who looked in the mirror in the morning, Hartley saw a potential president staring back, and as the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, he made sure he was in front of the cameras as often as possible. Indeed, he was so cozy with the media, so happy to leak certain things if it could help his career, that he was known as “Senator Sieve.”
So Hartley at first ignored the television. Hostage situations usually played themselves out fairly quickly — half a dozen or so people dead and then the gunman ate his own weapon and that was that. There followed the inevitable suicide note, the video game type revenge You Tube fantasy, the grief counselors, the calls for more gun control, the national navel-gazing about the root causes of violence, etc., etc. Just another day in the USA, especially in the yahoo rural heartland. He was about to urge the president to concentrate on the poll numbers when Tyler turned to Augie Willson and said, “Turn it up, Augie.”
Even though the station was a national cable network, the correspondent in front of the locked-down school building was local talent: “Rhonda Gaines-Solomon/KXQQ/St. Louis.”
“She’s hot,” someone said as Willson cranked up the volume:
“…happened between eight and nine o’clock this morning, when KXQQ exclusively learned that several armed men, perhaps as many as a dozen, took over the school and have barricaded themselves inside.”
The reporter looked both earnest and slightly scared. She kept glancing back over her shoulder, as if expecting someone to emerge from the building at any moment. Overhead, helicopters whirred and there were police cars with flashing lights everywhere. Some of the cops had formed a line, holding back anxious parents from rushing the school.
“The cops can handle this, Jeb,” said Hartley. “You’ve got to look at these polls.”
“Shut up, Bob,” said the president, irritably. “You know, sometimes you’re a real asshole.”
“Sometimes?” somebody said.
Hartley looked down at the sheaf of papers he was holding in his hand. If the president wasn’t going to pay attention to him
at a time like this, then when was he? The election was less than a year away, the Iowa caucuses weren’t far off, New Hampshire was looming, and Hartley didn’t like the looks of his party’s guys, not one bit. Even a blow-dried pretty boy like Tyler could lose if he set his mind to it.
“Where are all the other reporters?” asked the man sitting at the president’s right hand. He was Lieutenant General Armond “Army” Seelye, the director of the National Security Agency. Hartley despised him, and he knew the feeling was mutual. By law, the DIRNSA had to be at least a three-star flag officer, and although Hartley and others in his party had argued passionately that the nation’s most sensitive electronic eavesdropping and communications should not be in the hands of the military, even Tyler had not had the courage to propose any changes in the law. Besides, Hartley suspected, the president probably got a kick out of bossing around the fruit salad.
“What do you mean, Army?” asked Tyler
Seelye shook his head: something was wrong. “Usually there’s half a dozen parasites on the scene by now. Local, national. Why just her?”
On the screen, Rhonda answered the question: “…have given strict instruction that they will only deal with one representative of the media. Otherwise, they threaten to start killing the hostages, including the children.” Rhonda gave a little smile that she hoped came off as concerned, but this was her moment and she was going to milk it for all it was worth. She’d have an offer from a national network before the day was out.
The camera swept the scene — there were plenty of reporters, along with anxious parents, all held back by police SWAT teams and other officials. In the background, an FBI team was moving into place, but nobody dared to approach the school too closely.
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