‘If you move,’ he said to Reaper, ‘I’m going to shoot you.’
Crossing to the windows, he peered out. There was a black van parked in the middle of the street, surrounded by several police cruisers. Hunched behind the doors of the cruisers were four police officers, their service weapons drawn and trained on the van.
‘What’s going on, Ryan?’ Carrie asked, stepping towards him.
Lock reached back with his left arm, pushing her away. ‘Stay away from the window. That goes for everyone.’
He narrowed his eyes, trying to get a bead on the driver. It was difficult. The storm that had been building through the afternoon was now in full effect. Rain lashed the street, pummeling the sidewalk with heavy bullets of water which shrapneled upwards in a thousand fragments or dug themselves into rapidly expanding pools of water.
The Marshal in charge handed Lock a pair of binoculars. He put them up to his eyes and racked the focus wheel between the two lenses with the pad of his thumb. It looked like a woman was in the van. Dark hair. Dark complexion. One of the cops was shouting instructions to her. Lock could just about guess from his body language and demeanor that he was ordering her to get out of the van with her hands up. But she wasn’t moving.
Lock turned back to the US Marshal, who was right behind him, his finger still at his earpiece. ‘What’s the situation down there?’
‘This van just ran the roadblock, then it stopped. Single occupant driving, as far as we can tell.’
‘It’s a woman?’
The Marshal met Lock’s gaze. His expression suggested he was holding something back.
‘Who is it?’
‘Raise your hands where we can see them!’
‘Toss the keys to the ground!’
‘Keep your hands up and exit the vehicle!’
A litany of instructions. None of which she could follow. She looked down at her hands, which had been secured to the steering wheel with cuffs. Heavy-duty gaffer tape bound her tightly to the seat. After a hell of a struggle she’d finally managed to extricate her feet from the tangle of tape securing them, at an angle, to the gas pedal. Thank God, or she would have ploughed straight into the police cruisers racing towards her.
Jalicia’s heart was pounding, and her shirt was soaked in sweat. She’d never been so terrified in her whole damn life.
Lock watched the van from the window of the makeshift TV interview room, then turned back to the Marshal and nodded in Reaper’s direction. ‘Let’s get him back in a cell. Get on the radio and tell the people down there to fall back to the building. Also, get on your cell phone. We’re going to need every single member of law enforcement we can round up down here. Tell them to bring every weapon they have, plus all their ammunition. I want every gun cabinet and rack within a ten-mile radius emptied.’
‘It’s Jalicia in the van, isn’t it?’ Carrie asked. ‘What’s going to happen to her?’
Lock took Carrie’s hand. ‘Dime to a dozen that van is rigged with explosives. There’s nothing we can do for her. Not right now anyway.’
‘But we can’t just leave her,’ she said, defiant.
‘We can and we will,’ Lock said, grimly. ‘It’s a come-on. The guys who’ve rigged the van plan on drawing everyone in. Then they’ll blow it up. That gives them a window to get to their real target, which is this asshole here.’ He hauled Reaper to his feet.
‘And if you’re wrong?’ Carrie asked him, clearly unused to seeing this side of Lock, his ability to choose life for some and death for others.
‘If there are no explosives then she’ll be fine.’
‘But what if they’re on a timer?’ Carrie pressed.
‘Listen to me,’ Lock said. ‘These are classic terrorist tactics. It sucks, but we have to leave her. We don’t leave her, a lot more people die.’
‘OK,’ Carrie said reluctantly.
‘Goddammit!’ the Marshal erupted, staring at his cell phone. ‘I can’t get a signal.’
‘Same here,’ said one of the cops standing at the door. ‘My radio won’t work either.’
‘They’re using a jammer.’
Lock could see the beginnings of panic in Carrie’s eyes.
‘They can do that?’
Before Lock could explain that pretty much anyone with a credit card and an internet connection could purchase the technology to block communications these days, he froze, aware of a sound beyond the keening of the wind and the splashing of the rain outside.
‘Listen,’ he said, and the room fell silent.
Lock concentrated hard, separating out first the atmosphere of the room, then the roar of the storm. What was left was a low, rhythmic thwump that was increasing in volume. Accompanying it in the skies above them was a point of light. The pinprick quickly expanded so that Lock was at first dazzled, then all but blinded by it.
He narrowed his eyes and brought up a hand to shade them from the worst of the glare, which allowed him a clearer view of a black helicopter turning so that it was side on to the building. A man was sitting on the floor of the cabin, his legs dangling out, his feet almost on the blade of the skid. He was clad in full body armor and holding an assault rifle. With his free hand he was feeding out ropes which twisted and dangled in the wind like tendrils of overcooked spaghetti.
Lock twisted round so that he was staring into the saucer-wide eyes of the Marshal, who’d joined him at the window.
‘They’re not our guys, are they?’ Lock asked.
All the Marshal could manage was a slow shake of his head.
Mid-shake, the missile pod mounted at the front of the helicopter lit up with a fiery roar, punching out what Lock guessed had to be an RPG. It whistled downwards, leaving a ghostly yellow blaze burning across Lock’s retina.
Less than a second later, the van holding Jalicia disintegrated in a fiery blaze of distended metal. The blast wave thumped so hard into Lock’s chest that he and the others in the room were momentarily lifted off their feet and deposited ass-first on to the floor. The walls of the courthouse vibrated.
Ears ringing, Lock stood back up and went over to Carrie.
‘You OK?’ he asked her as she struggled into a sitting position.
‘What the hell was that?’
‘RPG.’
She gave him her reporter’s stare. ‘In English please, Ryan.’
‘A rocket-propelled grenade.’
He looked back to the window. Down below, flames licked around the skeleton of the van, and he could see the charred outline of Jalicia’s corpse slumped over what was left of the steering column. He tore his eyes away. By the time he looked skywards again, the light was gone. But up above them, the thump of the helicopter’s blades slashing through the storm grew louder, drowning out the sirens below.
36
Lock moved fast. Dragging Reaper towards the door with his left hand, he unholstered his SIG Sauer 226 with his right. Carrie had kindly brought it to Medford for him, and it felt good in his hand. Solid. Reliable. Deadly. He pointed forward with it, motioning for the others to follow.
At the door, he turned to one of the younger Marshals who was toting an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle. ‘Give me your side arm.’
The Marshal hesitated.
‘Son, unless you can fire both of your weapons simultaneously, hand it over.’
The Marshal in charge shrugged a ‘go ahead’ and the younger man handed over his Glock 40 calibre. Lock
