They sprang to their feet, Kealey sidling his MP5K with his right hand and gripping Allison’s forearm with the other as they launched themselves onto the mezzanine and went racing over the wide-open hell of the exhibition hall.
Colin Dearborn had scuttled to his right, still crouching, and thrust his phone deep in the pot of an artificial silk Ruscus tree. It was the nearest of the four trees that lined the wall. Then he scuttled back, putting as much distance between himself and the ceramic container as possible. He froze as soon as the guard at the door turned back to look across the room. It was a routine pass, nothing suspicious in the set of the man’s head, shoulders, or weapon.
No one had moved for as long as they had been here, not even when Colin made his little crab move. Most of the people were either sobbing or praying, aware of nothing but their own immediate space and the disposition of the guards at the door.
The first power chords of “London Calling” by the Clash chopped rhythmically from his cell phone, the bass line sliding into them as their volume swelled and the vocals broke through on a heavy, crashing downbeat:
London calling to the faraway towns,
Now that war is declared-and battle come down…
His assault weapon snapping upward in his hands, the guard inside the room vaulted from the door toward the mass of prisoners huddled toward the back of the room. There was a surprised, befuddled expression on his face. His gaze darted across the sea of mostly bowed heads, swept over them, settled on the tree even as the door flew wide open and a second masked killer came charging in from the hallway.
The music went on for thirty seconds before it cut off and his aunt’s incoming call was transferred to voice mail. By then the masked guards had pushed through the group and were pulling up the fake Spanish moss in the pots, flinging it madly across the room. It took them just seconds to find the phone-not long, but long enough he hoped. Kealey certainly couldn’t have expected more. He had to know Colin’s options were limited.
Now that he thought of it, though, Colin realized it was more than just the few seconds he’d bought. It was the time it took for the guards to come through the crowd, find the phone, look at it, and start to try and figure out who it belonged to. During that entire time, he, Colin, had taken four eyeballs off the corridor to help enable whatever Kealey was planning.
His heart was pounding hard. Sweat rolled down his pants legs. Each instant seemed stretched-not taut but loose, drooping, like Silly Putty-as he wondered if this… no, this… no this was going to be the last second of his life.
The first guard whipped around and held the cell phone aloft to show it to the gathered hostages.
“To who this belong?” he shouted in broken English. “Who?”
His stomach a band of tension, Colin remained squatting in fearful silence. His brain ticked off the added seconds he was buying Kealey.
“ Who? ” repeated the masked man. Gripping the phone hard, waving it in the air, shaking it furiously in the air. “ Tell me! ”
If anyone had a suspicion, they were too afraid to voice it. Or maybe it was courage, a last act of defiance. Colin didn’t know.
Jesus, he thought. You’re writing tweets in your head.
With a gruff oath, the other guard said something to the man with the phone. It was in a language Colin did not understand. He didn’t have to. He knew what they were doing. The men were to his right. Colin rolled his head slowly in that direction.
They were pressing buttons on the phone. The men might not be able to read the tweets or figure out real names from Twitter accounts, but there was one language he knew they would understand.
They were going through his photos. Colin estimated there were two dozen pictures of him stored in the album, shots in which he was posing with a smile, which might as well be a giant bull’s-eye.
More seconds were passing. Each one was a small triumph for Colin, but he knew they were running out. He pulled in a breath, hoping it would settle him, but he was beyond any semblance of calm. His legs were shaking, barely able to support him. He shifted to his knees. The men were so intent on the phone, they didn’t notice. He looked at the door, wondered what his chances were of getting there, over and around his fellow hostages, before the guards could fire. The likelihood was probably real small, but he knew he did not want to die here, doing nothing except perspiring into his Nikes.
He was wondering how much longer he could hold himself together when he heard the commotion, a sudden uproar in the corridor. The noise was like fresh air blowing into the room. He heard a radio crackle on one of the men, heard the masked men move, saw them step on hands and bags on their way to the door, bringing their guns around with them.
It was only as the shooting started that he realized he still hadn’t exhaled.
Kealey saw the stairs leading to the third floor as they emerged from the walkway. They were straight ahead. He ran with his shoulders rolled forward, his chin tucked into his chest, and his legs working like pistons, the way he’d once run through simulated cross fire on the training courses at Fort Bragg; the way he’d run through the war-blasted streets of Kosovo, loaded down with weapons and 150 pounds of combat gear, dodging sniper rounds from windows, rooftops, and doorways as he moved from one position to another; the way he’d run to avoid getting cut to ribbons or blown out of existence in burning deserts, steamy jungles, and urban hellholes around the bloody, violent world.
His hand still clutching Allison’s forearm, she kept her head low alongside him, a quick study, and it was a good thing, too. This was a natural kill zone, open, without concealment, but he’d had no time to spell out the risks, nor seen any upside to it. It was in or out, and she would not want to leave without trying to help her nephew.
Anyway, what would he have told her? Just keep moving so you weren’t a large, exposed target-survival could be that basic in a fight no matter how alert you were, how effective your weapons, how thorough your training.
Incredibly, most of the interior systems seemed to be on in this section of the building, the air-conditioning cycling to make it breathable in here, the large metal halides overhead merging with the brightness from whatever late-day sunlight was still pouring through the glass walls and ceiling. That made sense: whatever backup electrical system the facility had, this would be an area from whence the most people were leaving or, in an emergency, where the most would naturally congregate.
Glancing neither left nor right, his eyes on the stairway a few yards in front of him, Kealey still managed to scan both sides of the mezzanine with his peripheral vision and caught glimpses of the horrible scene down in the exhibition halclass="underline" fallen debris, blasted plywood booths, toppled signs, broken glass, bodies everywhere. Those still alive and able to move appeared to have been herded toward separate ends of the hall; Kealey supposed their captors’ next step would be to gather them into conference rooms with the other hostages or massacre them right there on the spot, an undeniable possibility.
It won’t come to that, Kealey thought. He wouldn’t let it.
They dashed across the last few feet to the stairs. Kealey figured they would need less than thirty seconds to make their way through the open mezzanine, and hoped the gunmen downstairs would be too preoccupied with the prisoner roundup and Colin’s cell phone to spot them immediately.
Reaching the stairs, they bounded up them, taking them as quickly as possible. They had gotten to within four steps of the mid-floor landing when Allison produced a kind of clipped, horrified gasp. They both snatched hold of the handrail as their feet nearly slipped on the blood. Slick and dark, it was everywhere, reflecting the overhead lights and streaming down the risers to puddle on the flat marble treads.