“DOC!”
Cathy Ryan looked up from her desk. Roy had never called her that before. He’d never had his pistol out in her presence, either, knowing that she was not fond of firearms. Her reaction was probably instinctive. Cathy’s face went as white as her lab coat.
“Is it Jack or–”
“It’s Katie. That’s all I know, Doc. Please come with me right now.”
“No! Not again, not again!” Altman wrapped his arm
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around SURGEON to guide her out into the corridor. Four more agents were there, weapons out and faces grim. Hospital security people kept out of the way, though uniformed Baltimore City Police made up an outer perimeter, all of them trying to remember to look outward toward a possible threat, not inward toward a mother whose child was in peril.
RYAN STRETCHED OUT his arm, placed his hand against the wall of his office, looked down, and bit his lip for a second before speaking: “Tell me what you know, Jeff.”
“Two subjects are in the building. Don Russell is dead, so are four other agents, sir, but we have it contained, okay? Let us do the work,” Agent Raman said, touching the extended arm to steady the President.
“Why my kids, Jeff? I’m the one–here. If people get mad, it’s supposed to be at me. Why do people like this go after children, tell me that. . .'”
“It’s a hateful act, Mr. President, hateful to God and man,” Raman said, as three more agents came into the Oval Office. What was he doing now? the assassin asked himself. What in hell was he doing? Why had he said that?
THEY WERE TALKING in a language he didn’t understand. O’Day stayed down, sitting on the floor with his little girl, holding her in his lap with both arms and trying to look as harmless as she did. Dear God, all the years he’d trained for things like this–but never to be inside, never to be in the crime scene while the crime happened. Outside, you knew what to do. He knew exactly what was happening. If any Service people were left–probably some, yes, there had to be. Somebody had fired three or four bursts with an M-16–O’Day knew the distinctive chatter of that weapon. No more bad guys had entered. His mind added those facts up. Okay, there were good guys outside. First they’d establish a perimeter to make sure nobody got in or out. Next they’d call in–who? The Service probably had its own SWAT team, but also close by would be the FBI Hostage Rescue Team, with its own choppers to get
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them here. Almost on cue, he heard a helicopter overhead.
“THIS IS TROOPER three, we’re orbiting the area now,” a voice said over the radio. “Who’s in charge down there?”
“This is Special Agent Price, United States Secret Service. How long you with us, Trooper?” she asked over a state police radio.
“We have gas for ninety minutes, and then another chopper will relieve us. Looking down now, Agent Price,” the pilot reported. “I have one individual to the west, looks like a female behind a dead tree, looking into the scene. She one of yours?”
“Michaels, Price,” Andrea said over her personal radio system. “Wave to the chopper.”
“Just waved at us,” Trooper Three reported at once.
“Okay, that’s one of mine, covering the back.”
“All right. We have no movement around the building, and no other people within a hundred yards. We will continue to orbit and observe until you say otherwise.”
“Thank you. Out.”
THE MARINE VH-60 landed on the athletic field. Sally and Little Jack were fairly thrown aboard, and Colonel Goodman lifted off at once, heading east toward the water, which, the Coast Guard had told him moments before, was free of unknown craft. He rocketed the Black Hawk to altitude, going north over the water. To his left he could see the shape of a French-made police helicopter orbiting a few miles north of Annapolis. It didn’t require much insight to explain it, and behind calm eyes he wished for a couple of squads of recon Marines to deliver to the site. He’d once heard that criminals who hurt children faced a rough go in prison, but that wasn’t half of what Marines would do if they got the chance. His reverie ended there. He didn’t even look back to see how the other two kids were doing. He had an aircraft to fly. That was his function. He had to trust others to do theirs.
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THEY WERE LOOKING out the windows now. They were being careful about it. While the wounded one stood leaning against the wall–looked like a kneecap, O’Day saw; good–the other one allowed his eye to peer around the edge. It wasn’t too hard to guess what he saw. Sirens announced the arrival of police cars. Okay, they probably had the perimeter forming now. Mrs. Daggett and her three women helpers had the kids in a single bunch on the corner, while the two subjects traded words. Good, that was smart. They weren’t doing all that well, O’Day thought. One of them was always sweeping the room with eyes and muzzle, but they hadn’t–
Just then one of them reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a photo. He said something else in whatever tongue they spoke. Then he closed the shades. Damn. That would prevent scoped rifles from seeing inside. They were smart enough to know that people might just shoot. Few of the kids here were tall enough to look out and–
The one with the photo held it up again and walked toward the kids. He pointed.
“That one.”
Strangely, it was only now, it seemed, that they saw O’Day in the room. The knee-shot one blinked his eyes and aimed the AK right at him. The inspector took his arms from around his daughter’s chest and held them up.
“Enough people been hurt, pal,” he said. It didn’t require all that much effort to make his voice shake. He’d made a mistake, too, holding his Megan that way. That fuck might shoot through her to get to me, he realized, a sudden wave of nausea rippling through his stomach at the thought. Slowly, carefully, he lifted her and moved her off his lap, and onto the floor to his left.
“No!” It was Marlene Daggett’s voice.
“Bring her to me!” the man insisted.
Do it, do it, O’Day thought. Save your resistance for when it counts. It doesn’t change anything right now. But she couldn’t hear his thoughts.
“Bring her!” the shooter repeated.
“No!”
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The man shot Daggett in the chest from a range of three feet.
‘WHAT WAS THAT?” Price snapped. Ambulances were coming up Ritchie Highway now, their whooping sirens different from the monotonal screams of the police cars. Down to her left, state troopers were trying to get the road clear, shunting traffic away from the area while their hands rubbed on their holsters, wishing they were there to help. Their angry gestures conveyed their mental state to the puzzled drivers.
Closer to Giant Steps, those immediately outside heard a renewed wave of screams, little kids in terror, for what reason they could only guess.
THE LEATHER JACKET rode up when you were sitting down like this. If anyone had been behind him, he’d see the holster in the small of his back, the inspector knew. He’d never seen a murder before. He’d investigated his share of them, but to see one … a lady who worked with kids. The shock on his face was as real as any man’s, watching life vanish … innocent life, his mind added. So he really had no choice.
When he next looked at Marlene Daggett, he wished that he might tell her that her murderers would not be leaving this building alive.
It was miraculous that none of the kids were wounded as yet. All the shooting had gone high, and he realized that had Miss Anne not knocked him down, he might be dead beside his daughter now. There were holes in the wall, and the bullets that had made them would have transited the space he’d been in a second or two before. He looked down a second, to see his hands shaking. His hands knew what they had to do. They knew their task and they didn’t understand why they weren’t doing it, why the mind which commanded them hadn’t yet given them the release. But his hands had to be patient. This was a job of the mind.
The subject lifted Katie Ryan by her arm, wrenching it, making her cry out as he twisted it. O’Day thought
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about his first supervisor, working that first kidnapping case, Dom DiNapoli, that big, tough guinea who’d wept bringing the child back to her family: “Never forget, they’re all our kids.”
They might just as easily have selected Megan, they were so close–and that thought did cross from mind to mind as the one with SANDBOX looked at the photo again, and over toward Pat O’Day.