A fraction of a second after the shotgun blast, Jake pulled the trigger on his rifle. A quick succession of pops followed and three bullets exploded the thin guy’s chest. The sticky collision caused the man to crumple over the auditorium chairs. His legs bent at an unnatural angle, and his feet pointed skyward but didn’t move.
Now that he could see where to shoot and what to avoid, Jake laid down heavy suppressive fire. Bullets spit from his rifle barrel like hornets fleeing an aggravated nest. Gas-operated weapons were efficient at ejecting spent cartridges and loading another. Jake could get off about forty rounds a minute, including time to change magazines, chamber the first round, and clear any jams.
Unfortunately, so could the other guys, and they had more guns. Eventually one of them would get lucky. Then again, they didn’t know how many people had infiltrated the auditorium, so they were shooting everywhere. For now, the kids were safe as long as they stayed on the floor. The bullets were going way over their heads, so the kids were in the best possible location.
Movement drew Jake’s gaze to the auditorium doors on his right. Somebody was trying to get out. Through the optics, Jake targeted a heavyset man as he pushed against the doors with his substantial weight.
Jake rolled onto his stomach and took aim. He let go a burst. One bullet struck the back of the man’s head, splitting it open like a watermelon dropped from a height. Two other bullets pierced him in the back near the shoulder blades. The rifle in the man’s hand dropped to the floor and landed just before his lifeless body did the same.
At the back of the auditorium, Jake spotted two other targets pushing against the emergency exit doors. One had long, frizzy hair; the other guy’s hair was short. Both had thin builds, a little harder to hit. But they were less than forty-five meters away. Jake was a fine shot at twice that distance. He pulled the trigger, and a fraction of a second later, there were no guys at that door.
Four hostiles down in less than thirty seconds.
“Get up here!” Jake screamed at the kids between shots. “Get up here now.”
The remainder of the crew had spread out and took up cover behind different seats in different rows. Jake saw them come up from time to time like prairie dogs out to have a look around. They didn’t stay up for long. Jake sighted them quickly and decorated their seats with bullets. Maybe he struck gold. Probably not. The goal wasn’t annihilation. It was rescue.
Jake’s constant stream of bullets pinned the hostage takers down and kept them from returning fire. This gave the kids a short window to make their move, but Jake wanted them fully concealed from view. From a prone position, he unclipped one of the four smoke grenades on his chest rig. He fired the AK-47 without aiming, using one hand. With his teeth, he pulled the pin on the grenade and gave it a toss. The projectile flew with a tall arc and a smoky tail. As soon as it hit, thick smoke billowed into the pitch-black room.
“Move! Move!” Jake shouted.
Grenade two was up and away. Bullets whizzed by Jake’s head, and he returned fire with his rifle. The smoke was doing its job, but Jake launched one more grenade for good measure and went back to two-handed firing.
Pixie was the first kid to take initiative. He commando-crawled across the gap between the first row of seats and the stage. With the smoke and the dark, the flash of Jake’s gun barrel would help navigate him to the stage like airport runway lights.
A thick curtain of smoke rose up behind Pixie. Only Jake could see the boy on the move. Pixie reached the front of the stage and hauled himself up. Jake never let up with the gunfire. He shifted position several times to make targeting him even harder. First he rolled right, then to the left, and back right again.
When his ammo ran low, Jake took out a new magazine from his battle belt and activated the rifle’s magazine catch with his thumb. He rotated the new magazine forward to the correct angle for insertion. Total time without shooting never went more than a couple of seconds. He thought he had enough bullets with him to get all six kids through the trapdoor.
By this point, the kids’ ears must have been ringing, but Jake kept his finger on the trigger. They could sustain worse injuries than hearing loss. Return fire came at Jake through the fog in spurts, and some of it splintered the stage floor, not more than five feet away. A little too close for comfort.
Jake sighted a target through his optics and fired at him through the haze. His bullets turned the auditorium chairs into Swiss cheese and flushed a shooter out of hiding. Jake tracked the man to the front door, where another man’s body already lay. The smoke was still pretty thin over there and Jake had no trouble tracking him. It looked to Jake like the man at the door had a claw for a hand. He could have ten clawed hands. That door wasn’t going to budge.
Jake let a burst of bullets fly that put plenty of holes into his target. Liquid exploded from the man’s midsection and blended with the gathering smoke.
Jake kept up the suppressive fire. At some point, someone would shoot blindly at the front of the stage and hit one of the slow-moving kids. Jake had to hurry them along. He yelled, “Move now or you’ll be shot.”
Hilary had her hands over her eyes, and a scream fell from her mouth, which was mostly drowned out by gunfire. At least she was on the move. David and Rafa followed, and next came Andy, who looked a bit disoriented. Solomon brought up the rear. All of them crawled toward the stage. Ten feet felt more like ten miles. They were going too slow. Jake screamed, “Move it! Move it!”
The kids needed better protection, so Jake stood up. It put him in a vulnerable position, but he improved his vantage point. He peppered the auditorium seats with as many bullets as his gun could spit out, sweeping the barrel from right to left and back again. He changed magazines three times. This happened as more smoke poured out of the canisters and turned the visibility nearly to zero. Return gunfire came at Jake through the smog, but it was way off the mark.
One by one, the kids crawled onto the stage. He kept up the gunfire until he again ran out of ammo. This time, he changed magazines, using the new cartridge to release the old. It was a skill Ellie had taught him at the range.
“Down in the hole!” Jake yelled. “The pit door is open. Get down in it!”
Jake turned his head in time to see Pixie feel his way across the stage in the dark and drop into the pit. One by one, like lemmings on the march, they all went down into the hole. Andy said nothing as he crept along. Chances were, he didn’t even know it was Jake doing the shooting.
As Jake had calculated, the return fire was nonexistent. In this environment, he had all the advantage. He could target better than they could. He had won the first round. But this wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
Whoever had taken the kids hostage would follow them into the tunnels.
CHAPTER 43
Three Javiers had connections to the schooclass="underline" one was a student and two were parents.
Ellie found the student huddled on the auditorium bleachers with a group of his friends. He was a tall and thin boy, with tousled dark hair and a handsome face. Ellie asked him some basic questions to determine whether he had any connection to Andy Dent or his missing friends.
Javier was pleasant enough, and not the least bit nervous to speak with her. He answered politely and confirmed what she initially suspected: Javier Ortega was just another displaced student from Pepperell Academy caught up in the chaos. Javier gave Kibo some much-appreciated affection, and Ellie returned to her cruiser. This time, Ellie opened the door for her dog, and Kibo climbed in the front passenger seat, where he sat patiently while Ellie got the second Javier on the phone.
Javier number two lived in Orange County, California, and was a father of a student named Willow. Naturally, he had heard all about the incident at the school where his daughter boarded and answered the phone almost as soon as it rang. Ellie introduced herself as a member of the Winston PD and asked the same questions of this Javier as she did the other. There was nothing here, either. Javier said he hadn’t heard of any of the kids she mentioned, and Ellie was inclined to believe him. His biggest concern was for Willow, to whom he had spoken just moments ago. Ellie assured him the local high school was a safe environment for his daughter and ended the call after offering a few more assurances.