Constant Fear
Page 29
Jake ran toward those footsteps. Solomon watched him go. As soon as Jake vanished, the boy’s panic escalated. It sounded to Jake as if Solomon was screaming in his ear.
Jake backtracked a good distance and dropped to his knees to fire his AK-47 blindly down the corridor. Without night vision, it was pitch black. He sent round after round screaming into the darkness, firing in three-shot sequences to conserve ammunition. Flashes of gunfire briefly lit him like a strobe light. In the interludes, Jake listened for footsteps. What he heard was Solomon’s desperate pleas.
“Come back! Come back! Help me get out!”
Shots rang out at Jake from the darkness, sharp against his exposed eardrums. The bullets struck concrete. Jake was thankful again that this particular section of tunnel angled in such a way that kept him out of any direct lines of fire. It was a temporary sanctuary from the bullets, at best. In no time, the men would reach a point where the angles played in their favor. As long as Jake kept shooting, he could hold them at bay until Solomon freed himself.
That was his big strategy anyway.
Part two of his plan wasn’t much better. Once Solomon was free, Jake would keep shooting long enough for the boy to get away. Then it would be two against one, and Jake understood his odds.
But there was a problem with this plan, which Jake reasoned as soon as his thoughts had time to gel. One former pitching coach nicknamed this interlude “the gathering,” which accurately described the process Jake used to pull himself together during a game. The gathering helped him focus and visualize the task at hand. In all instances, it heightened his mental acuity; and in this situation, it helped Jake see the obvious fault of his thinking.
He would run out of ammo long before Solomon got free.
The only way to dislodge Solomon, Jake believed, was to pull him from behind. Maybe Andy had gotten to Haggar by now. Maybe help was on its way. Maybe. But Jake’s ammunition would be gone long before that theory proved out.
For the time being, Jake couldn’t shoot them and they couldn’t shoot him. As long as they heard gunfire, they wouldn’t advance. Once he stopped shooting, they would come, guns blazing, for sure. And eventually they’d hit him or Solomon. One of them, or both, would die.
Jake settled on his best option: take out the two men at the exact same time. But how? Charge them? That seemed reckless at best. Wait for them to come to him? In these close quarters, a stray bullet had a good chance of becoming lethal.
And then it came to Jake, a plan formed during another miniature gathering episode. Jake knew how and where to set up an ambush, but it required Solomon to become invisible. For his plan to work, Jake would have to lure the cartel into this section of tunnel. That was the easy part. All he had to do was stop shooting.
The problem was Solomon. If the cartel men heard the boy, they’d shoot, even if they couldn’t see their target. Jake needed it completely silent for his ambush to work.
Walking backward, taking hurried steps, Jake returned to Solomon. As he went, Jake fired at regular intervals—ineffective, he knew, but he hoped it would be enough to stave off an assault. He had to get in position. Had to get ready.
At the hole, Jake bent down and gave Solomon his headlamp—the power of light. He brushed aside the boy’s tears and set a comforting hand on Solomon’s flushed cheek. With his free hand, Jake fired off a couple more rounds from the rifle.
“Listen, buddy, listen. I need you to go silent now.”
Solomon was having none of it. He was in the midst of a full-on panic attack.
“Can you get quiet?” Jake asked again. “We’ve got to be silent. Right now. Starting now. I know you’re scared, but you’ve got to do this.”
Jake had talked long enough. The men might already have advanced their position. He set off another burst of gunfire, and that made Solomon jump, but it didn’t get him free from that blasted hole. Jake pulled the trigger once more, but the magazine was empty. He changed it. And that was the last one.
“I’m so scared!” Solomon hollered.
Jake gazed down into the void. Somewhere in that darkness, two men waited for their opportunity to strike.
Calm the boy. Calm him.
“Fear is in the mind,” Jake said. He spoke slowly so Solomon could hear his words clearly, and he got close to reveal his serious expression. “Just get those negative thoughts out of there.”
Jake shot off a few more rounds.
“I can’t do it. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t calm down.”
He had to reach the boy. But he couldn’t rush him, couldn’t force it. Reach him. Connect with him. Jake went to the one subject he knew best besides prepping.
“You play any sports?” Jake asked in a soothing voice. “Baseball? Football? Anything like that?”
Jake fired off a couple more shots. He was down to maybe twenty bullets. With one hand, Jake undid his battle belt and let it fall to the ground.
“Bowling,” Solomon whimpered.
“Bowling,” Jake repeated as he worked quickly to get his chest rig removed. “Fine. Fine. That’s a good one. Bowling. I like that. Okay, okay, so do you scream at the bowling alley?” Jake fired some more bullets at nothing.
“‘Scream’? No,” Solomon said.
“Do you get all nervous when you bowl?”
The chest rig came off and fell to the ground, near to the battle belt.
“Never,” Solomon said.
It was working. Solomon needed the distraction. His breathing was already less ragged, his panic less pervasive.
“Never,” Jake repeated, sounding pleased. “Well, then, imagine we’re just bowling right now. I know it doesn’t seem like it, but think of this corridor here as nothing but an alley. Get yourself into a quiet space. Concentrate on it. See it in your mind. The pins. The lane. The feel of the ball. The smells. The noise. Everything. Think about every detail until it’s like you’re there. You understand?”
“No,” Solomon said in a panicky voice.
“Right, of course you don’t. Of course not. You see, nervousness, that’s just your worry all pent up with no place to go. That’s where the anxiety comes from. You’ve got to have a release valve for that, get it?” Jake’s voice came out breathless from a combination of dread and exertion.
He took three more shots. Jake was down to the last ten bullets in his rifle. Solomon had that many bullets left to get calm and quiet. Jake removed his shirt and revealed the Kevlar he wore underneath.
“You’re feeling anxious, right?” Jake asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well, your anxiety is making that fear happen. Like a little fear factory working overtime inside you. And that fear, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy,” Jake said. “Do you know what I mean by that?”
Jake’s last baseball coach had said something similar to him a week or so before the car crash that ended his career. Lance had said something similar as well, right before Jake agreed to take the job at Pepperell Academy.
“You can’t live your life like a scared little animal,” Lance had said. “You’ve got a son to raise. Man up, Jake, and take the damn job.”
Jake had done what Lance asked of him: he “manned up” and took the job. Jake had spent a lifetime trying to overcome his fear, and poor Solomon would have to do it in just a matter of minutes.
“Do you understand what a ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’ is?” Jake asked. He worked to loosen straps on his Kevlar.
“I think so,” Solomon replied in a shaky voice. “If I think it, I make it happen.”
“That’s right,” Jake said, energized. “What you think, you make happen. So this is a challenge, buddy. Nothing more. A really awful challenge that you got to face, and you can’t give in to the pressure.” Jake fired off two more shots. Eight bullets remained. “You might be stuck in that hole, but you’re still in control. You understand? You have the power. We don’t want them to know they’re close to you. If they do, they’ll shoot. And they’ll hit you.”
Jake was down to his last five bullets.
“Think about what you want to have happen, not what might happen. What do you want to have happen, Solomon?” Jake fired off another shot and the Kevlar came free from his body.
“I want to get out,” Solomon said, his voice shaky and on the verge of tears.
“What else? When those men come, what else do you want to have happen? Remember, you make it happen.”
“I want you to knock ’em down like pins,” Solomon said.
“Yeah. I want to do that, too. But what I need is for you to stay quiet as can be,” Jake said as he fired off two more shots.
Two bullets left.
“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked.
“They called me a pig,” Solomon said, sobbing. Jake could hear him sniffling. The tears were flowing again. “They pretended to cut me like I was a pig.”
Jake propped his Kevlar vest in front of Solomon, positioning it in such a way as to completely cover the boy’s face and head. He took the headlamp from Solomon’s hand. It wouldn’t do him any good now.
“This Kevlar is like a shield,” Jake said as he slipped his shirt back on. “It’ll hide you from them and protect you if a bullet comes. You can hold on to it with your hands if you like, but don’t let it fall down. Keep it in front of your head and face at all times. Understand?”
“Okay,” Solomon said.
“Are you a fighter?” Jake asked again in a voice that commanded attention and respect.
“I’m a fighter,” Solomon said. His voice came out softened behind the bullet-resistant fabric, but that wasn’t why his words lacked conviction. “I am a fighter,” he repeated.
That time, Jake believed him.
Jake cut the light from the headlamp, casting them both into an impenetrable darkness.
“I thought so,” Jake said. He fired a bullet from the rifle.
His last one.
CHAPTER 47
Navigating the darkness like an experienced spelunker, Jake returned to the intersection where the tunnel’s distinct sections converged. From his ankle holster, he removed the Glock and pulled the tang of the firing pin toward the rear of the slide to make sure the gun was ready to shoot. He holstered the Glock. The gun would come out later. Above his head, Jake was aware of the sturdy, insulated electrical and communication cables that ran along the ceiling.
The ceiling here was about eight feet high, and Jake’s outstretched arms acted as an antenna of sorts that helped him to feel where to grab. His fingers were soon wrapped around a bundle of thick, industrial-strength cables from which he now dangled.
He gave a solid tug, testing to see if it could hold his body weight. Satisfied, Jake engaged his upper-body strength to hoist himself up. He swung his legs behind him, so he was facing the floor, and wrapped his ankles around the cables to secure him in place. If Solomon could see him, Jake would look like a fly caught in a monster spider’s web.
To his credit, Solomon was quiet as a church mouse. Everything was perfectly still down here. The silence would eventually lure these men toward his ambush. Sure enough, Jake’s ears picked up the sound of feet scuffing across the concrete floor. The pace of footsteps quickened, less cautious, more brazen. They were coming, and coming fast.
Jake retrieved the Glock from its holster. That fraction of movement was enough to cause the cables supporting his weight to go slack. He dropped maybe half a foot. He heard a groaning sound, an indication the fasteners holding the cables were starting to give.
Ahead of him, not too far away, Jake saw the first flash of light bounce off the tunnel walls. Without warning, Jake felt a second sensation of falling before the slack cables became taut again. Jake’s body jolted violently at the end of his free fall.
Though he had dropped another several inches, Jake was still high off the ground and would be able to take his pursuers by surprise. But the fasteners that held him suspended in midair were one big breath away from becoming completely dislodged. The sound of footsteps rumbled in Jake’s ears. For the first time, he heard a man speak.
“¡Ven! ¡Ven! ¡Por aquí!”
Two men emerged directly in front of Jake, no more than ten feet away. In one hand, they held flashlights; in the other, they carried large-caliber handguns—Glocks as well, 37s, super-advanced, big-bore technology, power-packed firearms in a compact frame. They slung rifles over their shoulders.
These men were clearly prepared to take over the school by force, so it was no surprise to Jake they came equipped and carried flashlights. Those lights illuminated a thin and muscular man, with a horribly scarred face, in the lead, followed by a tank of a man in the rear. As they approached the intersection where the tunnel angles changed, they moved with caution—the way a marine might cut through a jungle stitched with trip wire. Something had put them on guard. Those flashlights canvassed the tunnel area, the walls, but not the ceiling, and soon settled on the Kevlar some sixty feet away.
Jake took aim with his Glock, when the cables sagged again. The groan of those fasteners coming loose sent his nerves crackling. He couldn’t move, certainly couldn’t shoot without dislodging the cables supporting him.
“¿Qué es eso, Efren?” the scar-faced man said.
Efren.
Jake had heard the name before.
Scar Face fired an indiscriminate shot down the tunnel at the Kevlar. The blast was earsplitting at such close range. Gunpowder scented the air.
Oh, God! Jake thought. Was Solomon hit? Did the Kevlar protect him? Impossible to say. But Jake couldn’t let them shoot again, so he fired off a single shot, which entered Scar Face’s skull and never came out. The now-dead man’s eyes rolled back into his head as his knees gave out. At the same instant, the already-brittle concrete holding those fasteners in place broke loose from the ceiling with a sharp crack. Entangled in cables, Jake plummeted straight to the ground and landed with a loud sound. It was the sound that flesh makes when it smacks concrete. The gun dislodged from Jake’s hand upon impact.
Efren froze. Shock. Surprise. Both. Jake fought to get air into his lungs. The flashlight that had been in Scar Face’s hand was now on the ground and lit the tunnel enough for Jake to see his remaining opponent.
Efren’s white tank top had collected so much grime it looked like something dragged out of a fireplace, but it showed off arms with muscles that protruded like baseballs sewn under the skin. The big man had a head like an anvil, and Jake figured he’d shatter the bones of his hand if he hit him wrong. But Jake wasn’t about to punch his face. This monster sweated aggression and his expression was that of a rabid dog’s.
Jake’s Glock had skirted out of reach; so without fully recovering, he unsheathed his knife and sprung from the ground. His swipe was aimed for Efren’s gun hand. Had he got there a split second sooner, it would have found flesh. Instead, Efren yanked his hand away, and twisted at the waist as if executing some advanced dance move.
A fraction of a second later, Efren unleashed two quick strikes, which rattled Jake’s kidneys and produced the kind of lightning pain that turned vision white. Close-quarters combat was not ideal for gunplay, but the butt of the Glock worked fine as a club, and Efren brought the weapon down hard against the side of Jake’s head.
Jake could do little but hit the ground face-first; and thanks to the stunning blow, his arms didn’t get the message from his brain to brace for impact. Jake’s chin smacked against the concrete floor and snapped his jaws together with enough force to crack several teeth. At least he managed to keep hold of the knife. A heavy boot came down against Jake’s ribs and something went haywire inside. The boot found his side again, and it was a repeat of the earlier earthquake to his body.
Mustering his remaining strength, Jake flipped onto his back and flung the knife at his attacker. He’d h
ad enough knife-throwing practice to hit pay dirt, but the blade sank into the meatiest part of Efren’s thigh. To Jake’s dismay, the huge man’s face showed not the slightest indication of pain. But the contact provided enough of a distraction for Jake to reach his Glock.
No sooner had Jake produced his weapon than the hulk fired his gun.
At first, Jake didn’t know what to feel. When he tried to squeeze off a shot of his own, nothing happened. Then the pain came with the intensity of a speeding train. Warm blood oozed out a sizable hole in Jake’s hand, where a bullet had gone through.
Efren fired again, but Jake rolled to his right, just in time, and that bullet missed by inches. Jake’s Glock didn’t roll with him. No way to hold on to the gun with most of the bones in his hand shattered.
Jake was on his back, scrambling to get away. Efren lurched forward and took aim with his weapon. He straddled Jake, but he didn’t shoot. Instead, he set his boot down hard on Jake’s bloodied hand and applied tremendous pressure. The screams that blew out of Jake’s throat were hardly human. Efren grinned.
With his right hand still pinned under Efren’s boot, Jake ignored the pain as he lifted part of his body off the ground. Reaching with his left hand, he seized the handle of the knife protruding from the Goliath’s leg and gave a hard yank. The razor-sharp blade sliced through muscle and tendon as if cutting air. Jake opened a gash that extended the length of the thigh. Efren fired his weapon, but the discharge went toward the ceiling as his big body fell toward the ground.
With his hand freed from the boot, Jake scrambled to his feet and jumped onto Efren’s back to try and pin him down. The monster bucked and thrashed beneath him, but could not get Jake dislodged. Reaching with his left hand, his good hand, Jake yanked down a slack portion of cable and wrapped it like a noose around the man’s beefy neck. With the cable secured, Jake pushed his knees into Efren’s back as he pulled with his arm.
Underneath him, the hulking man went wild. His enormous body thrashed in every conceivable direction. With each thrust, each twist, Jake tightened his grip on the cable, and through gritted teeth pulled on it like a horse’s reins. Maybe it was thirty seconds. Maybe a minute. But at some point, all that bucking, and thrashing, and moving about just stopped.