About midway through the crowd, a young Asian woman, wearing a dark gray business suit, stood quietly watching the speech. When the timer on her watch beeped three times, she calmly looked about the room and saw that everyone’s attention was fully on Miss Satomi. Looking as if she was searching for something, she reached into her expensive Guess purse and pressed a small button on a device concealed inside. On the other side of the lobby, another, identically attired woman did the same thing. Letting go of her purse, the woman turned on her heel and stepped back into the crowd. Soon gray smoke, like a genie escaping out of the bottle, began to rise up out of her purse.
“Fire,” yelled out a terrified voice from somewhere in the crowd. Within a second, another voice screamed fire, followed by several more panicked cries as the smoke began to fill the lobby. Someone pulled the fire alarm. Instantly, the room filled with the sound of a siren wailing, adding to the growing fear and confusion sweeping through the gallery.
“Damn, we’ve got trouble,” said Mitchell as he watched the crowd begin to panic and push away from the billowing smoke. Some of the people ran toward the lobby entrance, some for the stairs while others surged to the back of the lobby, pushing over those still in their seats. Screams of fear and panic quickly filled the air.
“Ryan, I don’t see any flames,” said Jackson calmly, from his position near the front entrance.
“Neither do I,” added Fahimah, from the side of the hall.
“Something’s up. Be alert,” said Mitchell. Jackson moved so he could see anyone coming or going from the gallery while Fahimah made her way to the tall staircase and started to descend down to the bottom floor, aiming to reach their vehicles, waiting below.
Already Matsuda and his men had encircled Atsuko and were trying to push their way through the smoke and the panicked crowd to the doors at the front of the lobby. Mitchell had told Matsuda to make for the stairs and their cars, but he could see that Matsuda had decided otherwise. Silently cursing the man for not listening, Mitchell could only follow them. He hoped that Fahimah would hear what was going on and bring their vehicles up onto the street as quick as she could.
A shot rang out, quickly followed by another. The fear and panic that gripped the crowd boiled over as people turned violent and began to push one another aside or simply stepped on those unfortunate souls who had fallen to the floor. Mitchell ducked as the shots rang through the lobby. He pulled out his Glock 9mm and pulled back on the slide, loading a round into the chamber before pushing his way through the mob, trying to join Matsuda before he lost sight of them in the teeming crowd.
The lead man in Matsuda’s detail could see the entrance to the lobby. Pushing his way as best he could through the frightened mob, he saw a woman staggering toward him, blood covering her slender face.
“Please help me,” she pleaded in Japanese to the bodyguard.
Momentarily turning his eyes away from the door and at the injured woman, the man never saw another woman in the crowd step out from behind a tall man, a small silenced pistol in her hand. Without hesitating, she fired one shot, killing the bodyguard, his head snapping back as his body tumbled to the ground.
“Down!” yelled Matsuda to Atsuko as he pushed her to the floor while he tried to bring up his pistol to shoot the attacker. Only he was too late. Two more women moved in for the kill from behind. In an instant, it was over. Matsuda and his men were all dead. With her eyes wide and terrified, Atsuko was grabbed from behind by two of the women and hauled toward the front door.
Mitchell heard the shots and the screams of the people in front of him as he fought to get closer to Matsuda. A second later, the crowd parted. Mitchell saw a blood-covered floor. Gritting his teeth, he grabbed the arm of a man blocking his way and threw him aside as he tried to reach Atsuko. With his heart racing in his chest, Mitchell moved beside her, his pistol in his hand, his eyes searching the crowd for the people who had killed Matsuda and his men. He saw nothing but the scared look in the eyes of the people in the crowd as they pushed one another out of the way, trying to get out of the smoke-filled room. Mitchell knew that he couldn’t waste time standing around. Reaching over for Atsuko, he went to pull her back into the crowd with him for safety when he realized that the woman standing beside the dead bodies of Matsuda and his men wasn’t Atsuko Satomi. She was dressed identically and had the same exact hairstyle, but she wasn’t Atsuko. Quickly stepping past the girl, Mitchell peered into the smoke and surging mass of people, but couldn’t see Atsuko anywhere. Instead, for the first time tonight, he saw three other women dressed identically as Miss Satomi looking over at him, a smug look of satisfaction on all of their faces.
“We’ve got a problem. I’ve lost Atsuko,” said Mitchell bitterly. “Also, be careful, there are a whole bunch of women running around in here, made up to look just like her.”
“I know, one just ran past me,” said Fahimah in Mitchell’s earpiece.
“I’m at the front entrance, and she hasn’t passed me yet,” said Jackson.
“Good, I’m coming to you,” said Mitchell as he turned his back on the Atsuko lookalike and tried making his way around a panicked couple who were trying not to step in the deep-red blood spilled all over the slippery granite floor. He had barely moved his feet when he felt something hard strike his back. Turning his head, he saw the doppelganger standing there with a dumbfounded look on her face. Mitchell saw a Taser held in her hand, the wires trailing to the darts lodged into his back, and he could smell the electricity in the air. He sent a right hook straight at the girl’s head, sending her flying backward onto the floor. Reaching behind him, he angrily pulled out the wires and the darts from his back and then looked down for the woman, only to see that, like a ghost, she had already vanished into the crowd. Shaking his head, Mitchell realized he was being toyed with. He was relieved that the liquid-armor vest he was wearing under his tuxedo jacket had performed magnificently. Built with sheer thickening fluid, a new and unique mixture of Polyethylene glycol and silica nanoparticles, it was liquid under normal conditions but instantly thickened and became as hard as ceramic when force was applied, forming body armor on demand around the spots where the darts had struck his back.
The cloud from what he assumed had to be two smoke grenades slowly began to dissipate, allowing Mitchell to see both the staircase and the entrance of the lobby. He saw that the crowd had now split in two. Some were pushing their way to the staircase while the majority were still heading for the exit, covered by Jackson. Mitchell had no doubt in his mind that Atsuko’s kidnappers would try to leave via the front door, mixed in with the surging mass.
Fahimah was nearing the third floor when she heard shots echo down from above. She thought about reaching for the pistol concealed in her purse, but quickly thought otherwise. A Muslim running about with a pistol in her hand will most likely draw fire instead of help. Besides, she knew that she was an analyst, not a real field agent like Mitchell and Jackson. Instead, she swiftly made her way down to the bottom floor and then called for the drivers of the limo and Hummer to be ready in a moment’s notice to leave, should Mitchell call for them. Her heart was racing in her chest. Pausing to catch her breath, Fahimah took a quick look around and saw one of the women dressed like Atsuko Satomi standing near the elevator, looking nervously over her shoulder while she waited for it to arrive. Taking a deep breath to calm her beating heart, Fahimah walked toward the woman, not really sure what she was going to do, only that she had to do something.