Constant Fear

by Daniel Palmer

  Hilary got to the auditorium door a few steps ahead of Whippet. She pushed on the door, but it wouldn’t budge. From somewhere down the hall, El Cortador bellowed, “¡Voy a matar a esa maldita puta!” He was closing in fast.

  In her panic, Hilary pushed again. Still, nothing. Whippet was close enough to reach out and grab her. A voice inside Hilary’s head screamed, “Pull, not push!” This time, Hilary gave the door a hard yank and she threw herself inside.

  Andy was slumped over in his chair. Is he breathing? Whippet came at her from behind, screaming something she couldn’t understand. He grabbed her by the shoulders and tossed her to the floor. Hilary’s feet left the air as if an invisible rug had been yanked from under her and she landed on her backside.

  The auditorium door opened and El Cortador staggered in, grunting. He charged at Hilary. Hilary could hear others shouting as they, too, entered the auditorium. It sounded as if Fausto had sent everyone to look for her.

  Whippet’s arm wrapped around Hilary’s throat, and he began to squeeze. She had gotten on her knees, basically kneeling in front of Andy, who was dying as well. Hilary gasped for air as her throat closed. She clawed at Whippet’s arm, to no avail. His grip around her neck only tightened. Hilary felt as though her eyes were going to pop out of the sockets from all the pressure building up.

  The faces of her family popped into Hilary’s head—Mom, Dad, her sisters—right before her world went black. But somewhere on a vast, endless horizon, Hilary heard a scream, more like a war cry. In the very next moment, the breath returned to her, the pressure fell from her eyes, and air flooded her lungs. Hilary fell to the floor, gasping, rubbing at her throat. Whippet spun around in erratic circles. It took a moment for Hilary to understand what had happened.

  Pixie had climbed on Whippet’s back and held on with one arm secured around the man’s neck. Pixie bit at Whippet’s head and neck like a blood-starved vampire, while using his free hand to claw at the man’s face. El Cortador rushed over to help, when a loud, piercing whistle that came from the stage told him to stop. Standing center stage, Fausto bellowed with laughter as he watched Pixie and Whippet do battle.

  Despite the pain and burning in her throat, Hilary took advantage of the tumult to crawl over to Andy. She fished out the glucagon kit from her pocket. From the stage, Fausto yelled, “The little one is kicking your ass, Inigo.” He unleashed another roll of laughter.

  Andy looked as sick as could be: pale, listless, drenched in sweat, his whole body shaking. Blocking out the noises in the room, Fausto’s hoots, Pixie’s war cries, Whippet’s rage, Hilary glanced at the instructions adhered to the inside cover of the emergency kit. Put the needle into the vial. Give it a shake. Fill the plunger. Stick into exposed flesh. Hilary’s hands trembled as she filled the syringe with glucagon.

  Then she pushed the needle into Andy’s upper arm and depressed the plunger. She held the syringe in place and counted to ten. Only then did Hilary check her surroundings, fearful that El Cortador might come for her, or Whippet, or one of the others. Nobody was moving. Everyone’s eyes were on Whippet and Pixie. From the stage, Fausto shouted insults in Spanish. He laughed and whistled with delight, more animated than Hilary had ever seen.

  Pixie grunted as he gouged Whippet’s face with his clawed hand. Whippet spun and twirled like a rodeo bull, but could not dislodge the boy, who continued to hold on with one arm wrapped around Whippet’s throat.

  Hilary did not know how long it would take for the medicine to kick in or if it would.

  Three loud bangs cut short Hilary’s thoughts. The air reeked of gunpowder. Fausto held his pistol above his head. Whippet stopped swirling and Pixie leapt off the man’s back. El Cortador turned to face Fausto. The auditorium fell into a heavy silence.

  Hilary sat down beside Andy, put her arm around him, and pulled him close. David and Rafa, both battered and bruised, huddled on the stage floor next to Solomon. Those three were flanked by Armando and Efren. Three other armed men were on the stage standing behind Fausto and his smoking gun.

  Eight cartel men.

  Six kids.

  Fausto said, “Everyone, get back in your seats, right now! I want the kids in the front row. The games, this fun, it is all over. I am going to tell you now why nobody is coming to your rescue. And why you are all about to die.”

  CHAPTER 37

  Jake couldn’t think, couldn’t move. Hidden below the stage, he listened, in agony, and tried to visualize what might be happening inside the auditorium. Andy was slipping into a diabetic coma. His son was dying. Pixie’s words replayed over and over in Jake’s mind.

  “Wake up, Andy! Wake up!”

  Jake felt utterly helpless, paralyzed by his choices. He had the glucagon. Conceivably, he could spring up through the trapdoor in the stage like some jack-in-the-box, guns blazing, and maybe get some of the hostage takers, or maybe not. More likely, they would kill some of the kids, or all, and then kill Jake, and then it would be over.

  To act out of urgency could be the worst mistake possible. While the situation was far removed from baseball, Jake knew the importance of impulse control. On the mound, urgency would cost him mechanics and control. Here it could cost lives. No other approach but patience would work. But holding still was pure torture. Jake was aggressive enough to go after these mongrels, and relentless enough to pursue them all to their graves, but what he needed right now was control.

  Jake knew the stages of diabetic crisis the way he knew his guns and his pitches. His son’s blood sugar level was below fifty. Maybe as low as thirty. Maybe lower. Andy was probably past the stage at which the liver released its stored glucose and various hormones started to activate.

  “Wake up, Andy!”

  It sounded to Jake like his son had lost consciousness only recently. Either way, Andy was in insulin shock now. His body systems were breaking down. How long could he hold on? Minutes? An hour? Jake came in here thinking there would be some way to get Andy his medicine. He had more thinking to do.

  There was time, but not much time.

  If Andy had anything, however, it was an indomitable spirit. What else had made his son stand up to confront the foremost expert on EMPs? What else gave him the courage to go head-to-head with Ryan Coventry? He had demanded that Jake dismantle his bug-out location. He had made his own arrangements to meet his estranged mother. These were signs of a boy becoming a man, and Andy had a strong will. Jake knew this about his son.

  Ultimately, Jake had no recourse left but to believe Andy could endure for a while longer. When the moment was right, Jake would strike. But not yet. No, it would endanger too many lives.

  Hidden belowground with his camo-painted face and a headlamp strapped to his forehead, Jake looked something like a bedraggled coal miner up on those movable stairs. He took in every scream, every shout, all the garbled chatter.

  A bellow rose above the other sounds, a holler of sorts, a true warrior’s cry. A cacophony of noises erupted again before a man’s voice cut through the din, loud and clear, chilling, almost gleeful.

  “The little one is kicking your ass, Inigo,” the man said.

  Laughter and grunts and other noises continued for a while longer until three loud claps, short bangs, put a stop to the bedlam. Jake knew a gunshot when he heard one. His throat seized and his vision went dark. They killed them, he thought. Somebody just got shot. Jake pressed his shoulder against the underside of the trapdoor, and made sure the safety on the AK-47 was off. This was it. Guns would blaze and he would do everything in his power to save these kids or die trying. No choice. He’d been shown his call to action, all right.

  Jake took in a deep, readying breath and he counted.

  Three . . . two . . . one . . .

  The man spoke again. Instead of charging, Jake held his ground.

  “Everyone, get back in your seats, right now! I want the kids in the front row. The games, this fun, it is all over. I am going to tell you now why nobody is coming to your rescue. And why you
are all about to die.”

  Every organ in Jake’s body seemed to deflate. They were alive—the kids, everyone, even Andy. For now. Those shots were meant to get their attention and nothing more.

  Jake slung his rifle over his shoulder to free his hands, and put his ear up against the trapdoor, not wanting to miss a word. For a few moments, all he heard were footsteps as orders were followed and people took their seats. How many people? How many good guys and how many bad? Couldn’t say. Right now, he suspected that Pixie, Andy, Rafa, David, and perhaps Hilary, the “chica” the man had mentioned, were all captives. Jake remembered another kid in that group, a boy named Solomon. Perhaps he was in the auditorium as well. As for the captors, Jake heard only one voice clearly, the rest hard to distinguish. Could be three, could be five, could be more.

  The sound of footsteps and creaking chairs gave way to a hollow silence. The familiar voice spoke. Jake believed he was the alpha.

  “What did you do to that boy?” “Alpha” asked.

  A girl said, “I gave him a glucagon injection. He was dying.”

  Relief washed over Jake. The girl who spoke had to be Hilary, he was certain. Jake didn’t know how she had done it, but he suspected whatever it was had taken tremendous courage. The injection would stabilize Andy.

  Jake would backtrack and alert Ellie to the location of the hostages. He could even give them the location of the kids inside the auditorium—“front row,” Alpha had said. It would be valuable intel for the police and rescue teams. Jake didn’t trust the police or the FBI at all, not one bit, but his options were limited. He was outmanned and heavily outgunned. The right thing to do was stand down, but he would not vacate the premises. No. Never. Jake would remain underground, and operate as an asset for the police to utilize as they saw fit. With the correct frequency and channel information, he could sneak aboveground to use his two-watt Motorola radio for communications.

  Alpha spoke again. “So fine, he’s not dead. Not yet. But listen. This was not how things should have gone. Este no era el plan. We should have been alone. This place should have been—what is the word in English—evacuado—”

  A different voice spoke up. “Evacuated.”

  The first man said, “Ah, yes, ‘evacuated.’ Good word. We should have been alone, in this evacuated school long enough to get the money you stole, or kill you all and we get away. Then we had the little problem. A woman shows up here and she’s the one who gets away.” Alpha sounded incredulous, as if meeting God would be a more conceivable outcome. “I lose my temper, and then I lose some men, and, well, here we are together in this big room. And maybe you think you stay quiet long enough, you get rescued. But nobody is coming to your rescue. Now, you may ask yourself, ‘Fausto, why is this? Why no rescue?’” A lengthy pause ensued, like a question posed to a classroom of students who did not know the answer. “The reason is because I have lied to them.”

  Jake had another new piece of information of potential importance to share with the authorities. He knew Alpha’s name.

  Fausto.

  A thought came to Jake. These blood-soaked corpses must have been killed over some failure on their part. Somehow they had caused the master plan to go awry; and for that, they had paid a dear price. The woman Fausto mentioned had to be Laura. Jake guessed that Laura had seen what was happening inside the auditorium. Perhaps she came looking for Andy and somehow managed to escape. During a pursuit, they shot her, but she had already reached the woods and they couldn’t confirm the kill.

  Listening to Fausto speak at length gave Jake a better sense of his accent, too, which he thought was from Latin America, maybe Mexico? His native tongue was Spanish, for sure.

  “Do you not believe me?” Fausto asked. “Do you think I lie to you?”

  There was no response. This was a lecture, not a conversation.

  “I promise they will wait and not come charging in,” Fausto said. “They will try to find the dirty bomb, but there is no dirty bomb. We will . . . vamos a darle atole con el dedo.” Fausto made a frustrated noise. “Oh, what is the meaning in English? To make them think . . . to lead . . . to . . . to . . .”

  “To string them along.”

  The sharp-edged voice that spoke was Hilary’s.

  Jake heard Fausto say, “Yes! That’s good. String them along while we torture you like Javier and kill you, unless you give me what I want. Even if I don’t live, which is a very good chance now, you see, I get my boss his money. I do my duty. Now you must do yours. Give me the money you took and maybe we come to some other arrangement. Maybe we just leave you here alive and we try to get away. Okay? But no money, no live. This, my young friends, is the choice you now face.” Fausto clapped his hands. “Now, who the fuck has my money?”

  The ensuing silence swallowed Jake.

  “None of us,” said a voice.

  Jake thought it was David, but it could have been another kid. Not Pixie. Not Andy.

  “None of you?” Fausto repeated.

  Jake heard footsteps that grew louder until they hammered right above his head. Fausto was on the stage, pacing directly over his head.

  “None of you has two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars. Two hundred million dollars! None of you has it? Really? The drill I put in Javier’s leg is nothing compared to what I’m going to do to you. You want to change that answer?”

  “We would give it to you. We promise.”

  The voice that spoke cracked with emotion. Something told Jake it was Solomon who had spoken. Jake’s head was spinning. What could Andy and his friends have to do with $200 million of missing money?

  “That’s the truth,” Solomon said. “Somebody must have stolen it from us.”

  “You better hope that it’s not true, piggy boy,” Fausto said. “Because if so, I will kill you first and do it slowly.”

  “Please just make an exchange,” a boy said. “Let us go, and get them to let you go.” Again, the voice sounded like David’s.

  Fausto snorted a laugh.

  “You think that will happen? No, hijo. No. They will—¿Cómo se dice en inglés? They will play with us, make us think they do this thing you say. But they will not. No. They will arrest us. Or shoot us. With or without the money, either way, we are as chingados as you. I’ve got to get something out of this mess. So it’s the money or your blood.”

  A different set of footsteps stomped onstage. “Debes darte prisa, Fausto,” somebody said. “No tenemos tiempo que perder.”

  “Yes, you’re right. We don’t have time to waste,” Fausto said. Jake heard footsteps walk off the stage and return to the auditorium floor. “I’m setting a timer starting now. I give you an hour. One hour. I’d make it less, but I understand technology can be hard. We have a laptop right here. The Internet. All that. If you can’t get me the money, I’m going to start killing, starting with you, big boy. Ready. Set. Go!”

  Jake heard those final words as he bounded down the rolling staircase. When he reached the pit floor, Jake set the timer on his watch to one hour. He moved the stairs back to where he found them without making a sound. Then he dragged the bodies close to their original landing spots. Valuable minutes off the clock, but he couldn’t risk someone going into the pit and seeing the contents disturbed in any way. Jake opened the tunnel door and unclipped the cell phone from his belt.

  Ellie had to know there wasn’t much time.

  CHAPTER 38

  Jake navigated back through the tunnels and returned to the janitor’s closet, where he could get a cell phone signal again. He checked his watch. The countdown on Fausto’s deadline continued to tick away.

  Jake made the call. Images of death came at him like wraiths in the dark.

  Ellie answered on the first ring. “Jake, where are you?”

  Jake noticed an edge to Ellie’s voice, a tone he had never heard her use.

  “I’m in the school. Listen, Ellie, there are at least six kids who have been taken hostage. I can confirm four of the hostage take
rs are dead, but I don’t know how many are left. One called himself Fausto. They may be from Mexico, I’m really not sure.”

  “Jake, you need to get out of there. You need to get out of there now.”

  Jake’s pulse spiked. “There’s a deadline on their lives, Ellie,” he snapped. “We’ve got less than an hour to rescue them before they start killing hostages.”

  “Jake, you should have told me.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “They don’t want you anywhere near that school.”

  “Who are ‘they’?”

  “They’ve been to your house. They know what you do. What you believe. They think you’re unstable.”

  “You should have told me.” He understood. “We don’t have time to bullshit about what I believe, Ellie.”

  In the background, Jake heard a gruff voice say, “Is that him?”

  “Yes,” Jake heard Ellie answer.

  A moment later, the gruff voice barked into Jake’s ear, “Listen to me, Jake. This is Special Agent Leo Haggar, with the FBI’s Hostage Rescue Team. I’m ordering you to evacuate the premises immediately.”

  Jake’s inner dialogue was rambling, but he silenced the noises in his head. His mind could work that way. Brain waves like an earthquake one second, flatlining like a corpse’s the next. It was the same mind control trick he used to shake off a home run and strike out the next batter. It was imperative he sound calm and composed. He already had a three-ball count against him. They knew he was a prepper. They would be biased. He was the only inside man, and they wouldn’t use him as an asset.

  “Agent Haggar, there is a hostage situation here at the school,” Jake said.

  “No shit, Detective,” Haggar said.

  Jake ignored the rebuke. “My son and his friends. Six kids. Four armed men are dead. I engaged with one myself. He’s in the second-floor boys’ bathroom of the Society Building. The other three were dead when I found them. I believe all of the kids are being held in the Feldman Auditorium on the first floor of the Academy Building.”