“Get down to the war room! Coordinate the search from down there. Have Benson’s security teams report directly to you there. We’ve got another helluva mess breaking loose.”
Ronisha fled down the back stairs, squawky in hand. La-La Land’s station manager faced the expectant hush from the crowd in his office. The silence in the glass-walled office was as unbearable as the sound of fingernails on a blackboard.
Bull said heavily, “There’s been a shooting at the day care center. Two construction workers messily dead, dozens of children in hysterics. Marcus and his little girls vanished in the middle of the shooting.” Nausea bit Skeeter’s throat. He forced himself not to bolt for the elevator, forced himself to wait, to hear the rest of it. “A couple of Scheherazade construction workers were trying to take his daughters out at gunpoint when Marcus showed up with someone Harriet didn’t recognize. Whoever it was, they shot both construction workers dead and took Marcus and the girls out of there.” Bull craned to peer through the crowd of white-faced, furious residents. “Is Dr. Feroz here yet?”
Shahdi Feroz pushed through the throng to the front of Bull’s office. “Yes, Mr. Morgan, I am here. How may I help?”
“I want to know what we’re up against. Kit Carson told security the bastards who’ve attacked Ianira and her family are members of the Ansar Majlis Brotherhood. He’s not here yet, or I’d ask him to brief us.”
Shahdi Feroz moved sharply at the mention of the Brotherhood, as though wanting to deny what he’d just said. Then she sighed, tiredly. “Ansar Majlis . . . This is very bad, very dangerous. The Ansar Majlis Brotherhood began when Islamic fundamentalist soldiers began recruiting down-time Islamic warriors for jihad through the gates where TT-66 used to be. The station is destroyed, but the gates still function, of course.”