He walked right in now, straight at the bastard.
FOR HIS part, Zuhayr stopped fighting the suddenly massive weight on his weapon, and stood as straight as he could, looking in the eyes of his killer. “Allabu Ackbar,” he said.
“THAT’S NICE,” Brian replied, and fired right into his forehead. “I hope you like it in hell” Then he bent down and picked up the Ingram, slinging it over his back.
“Clear it and leave it, Aldo,” Dominic commanded. Brian did just that. “Jesus, I hope somebody called 911,” he observed.
“Okay, follow me upstairs,” Dominic said next.
“What—why?”
“What if there’s more’n four of ’em?” The reply-question was like a punch in Brian’s mouth.
“Okay, I got your six, bro.”
It struck both of them as incredible that the escalator was still working, but they rode it up, both crouching and scanning all around. There were women all over the place—all over meaning as far from the escalator as possible—
“FBI!” Dominic called. “Is everybody okay here?”
“Yes,” came multiple, separate, and equivocal replies from around the second floor.
Enzo’s professional identity came back into full command: “Okay, we have it under control. The police will be here shortly. Until they get here, just sit tight.”
The twins walked from the top of the “up” escalator to the top of the “down” one. It was immediately clear that the shooters hadn’t come up here.
The ride down was dreadful beyond words. Again, there were pools of blood on a straight line from perfume to handbags, and now the lucky ones who were merely wounded were crying out for help. And, again, the twins had more important things to do. Dominic led his brother out into the main concourse. He turned left to check the first one he’d shot.
This one was dead beyond question. His last ten-millimeter bullet had exploded out through his right eye.
On reflection, that left only one, if he was still alive.
HE WAS, despite all of his hits. Mustafa was trying to move, but his muscles were drained of blood and oxygen, and were not listening to the commands that came through the central nervous system. He found himself looking up, somewhat dreamily it seemed, even to him.
“You have a name?” one of them asked.
Dominic had only halfway expected an answer. The man was clearly dying, and not slowly, either. He turned to look for his brother—not there. “Hey, Aldo!” he called, to no immediate response.
BRIAN WAS in Legends, a sporting-goods shop, taking a quick look. His initiative was rewarded, and he took it back to the mall corridor.
Dominic was there, talking to his “suspect,” but without getting much of a response.
“Hey, raghead,” Brian said, returning. Then he knelt down in the blood beside the dying terrorist. “I got something for you.”
Mustafa looked up in some puzzlement. He knew that death was close, and while he didn’t exactly welcome it, he was content in his own mind that he’d done his duty to his Faith, and to Allah’s Law.
Brian grabbed the terrorist’s hands and crossed them on his bleeding chest. “I want you to carry this to hell with you. It’s a pigskin, asshole, made from the skin of a real Iowa pig.” And Brian held his hands on the football as he looked into the bastard’s eyes.
The eyes went wide with recognition—and horror at the moment’s transgression. He willed his arms to move away, but the infidel’s hands overpowered his efforts.
“Yeah, that’s right. I am Iblis himself, and you’re going to my place.” Brian smiled until the eyes went lifeless.
“What’s that about?”
“Save it,” Brian responded. “Come on.”
They headed for where it had all started. A lot of women were on the floor, most of them moving some. All of them bleeding, and some quite a lot— “Find a drugstore. I need bandages, and make sure somebody called 911.”
“Right.” Dominic ran off, looking, while Brian knelt next to a woman of about thirty, shot in the chest. Like most Marines, and all marine officers, he knew rudimentary first aid. First he checked her airway. Okay, she was breathing. She was bleeding from two bullet holes in her upper left chest. There was a little pink froth on her lips. Lung shot, but not a bad one. “Can you hear me?”
A nod, and a rasp: “Yes.”
“Okay, you’re going to be okay. I know it hurts, but you are going to be okay.”
“Who are you?”
“Brian Caruso, ma’am, United States Marines. You’re going to be fine. Now I have to try’n help some others.”
“No, no—I—” She grasped his arm.
“Ma’am, there’s other people here hurt worse than you. You will be fine.” And with that he pulled away.
The next one was pretty bad. A child, maybe, five years old, a boy, with three hits in his back, and bleeding like an overturned bucket. Brian turned him over. The eyes were open.
“What’s your name, kid?”
“David,” came the reply, surprisingly coherent.
“Okay, David, we’re going to get you fixed up. Where’s your mom?”
“I don’t know” He was worried about his mother, more fearful for her than for himself, as any child would be.
“Okay, I’ll take care of her, but let me look after you first, okay?” He looked up to see Dominic running toward him.
“There ain’t no drugstore!” Dominic half-shouted.
“Get something, T-shirts, anything!” he ordered his cop brother. And Dominic raced into the outfitters store where Brian had gotten his boots. He came out a few seconds later with an arm full of sweatshirts with various logos on the front.
And just then the first cop arrived, his service automatic out in both hands.
“Police!” the cop shouted.
“Over here, God damn it!” Brian roared in return. It took perhaps ten seconds for the officer to make it over. “Leather that pistol, trooper. The bad guys are all down,” Brian told him in a more measured voice. “We need every damned ambulance you have in this town, and tell the hospital that they got a shitload of casualties coming. You got a first-aid kit in your car?”
“Who are you?” the cop demanded, without holstering his pistol.
“FBI,” Dominic answered from behind the cop, holding his credentials up in his left hand. “The shooting part is over, but we got a lot of people down here. Call everybody. Call the local FBI office and everybody else. Now get on that radio, Officer, and right the hell now!” Like most American cops, Officer Steve Barlow had a portable Motorola radio, with a microphone/speaker clipped to the epaulet of his uniform shirt, and he made a frantic call for backup and medical assistance.
Brian turned his attention to the little boy in his arms. At this moment, David Prentiss was the entire world for Captain Brian Caruso. But all the damage was internal. The kid had more than one sucking chest wound, and this was not good.
“Okay, David, let’s take it real easy. How bad does it hurt?”
“Bad,” the little boy replied after half a breath. His face was going pale. Brian set him on the countertop of the Piercing Pagoda, then realized there might be something there to help—but he found nothing more than cotton balls. He crammed two of them into each of the three holes in the child’s back, then rolled him back over. But the little boy was bleeding on the inside. He was bleeding so much internally that his lungs would collapse, and he’d go to sleep and die from asphyxiation in minutes unless somebody sucked his chest out, and there was not a single thing that Brian could do about it.
“Christ!” Of all people, it was Michelle Peters, holding the hand of a ten-year-old girl whose face was as aghast as a child could manage.
“Michelle, if you know anything about first aid, pick somebody and get your ass to work,” Brian ordered.
But she didn’t, really. She took a handful of cotton balls from the ear-piercing place and wandered off.
“Hey, David, you know what I am?” Brian asked.
“No,” the child answered, with some curiosity peering past the pain he was feeling in his chest.
“I’m a Marine. You know what that is?”
“Like a soldier?”
The boy was dying right in his arms, Brian realized. Please, God, not this one, not this little boy.
“No, we’re a lot better than soldiers. A Marine’s about the best thing a man can be. Maybe someday when you grow up, maybe you can be a Marine like me. What do you think?”
“Shoot bad guys?” David Prentiss asked. “You bet, Dave,” Brian assured him.
“Cool,” David thought, and then his eyes closed.
“David? Stay with me, David. Come on, Dave, open those eyes back up. We need to talk some more.” He gently set the body back on the counter and felt for a carotid pulse.
But there wasn’t any.