The rent-a-cops stood with the pistols extended in two-handed shooter’s grips, their muzzles aimed straight at Kealey and Allison.
“Toss the ID over.”
Kealey kept his gun lowered. He was trying to decide what to do next when he saw Allison bend and slide her own ID across the floor. Without lowering his gun or taking his eyes off Kealey, the guard squatted and picked it up.
“Drop the kerchief and come over here,” he said, rising.
Kealey and Allison did as he asked. As they approached, he compared the photo to the woman standing before him. He seemed satisfied, and Kealey folded away his own ID. The guard didn’t ask to examine it.
“Go ahead,” the man told him.
“Thanks. You have any intel, Officer Goldstein?” Kealey asked, reading his name tag.
“Not much,” the beefy man replied. “Three explosions-ballroom, food court, and hotel lobby. Emergency personnel having a tough time getting through traffic.”
“Some son of a bitch did their homework,” Kealey remarked.
The two moved on, leaving the scarves hanging around their necks.
“Nice move,” Kealey said.
Allison didn’t answer.
“Do you know how to get where we’re going from here?” he asked.
“Upstairs. Then double back,” she said.
Kealey grasped her hand again, saw a sign that said FIRE EXIT, and led her through the door. They hurried up the stairs, pausing behind the closed fire door. Kealey looked through its wired glass panel before he pushed into a wide public corridor. A misty film hung in the air, thicker at the bottom than at the top.
“Better put your mask back on,” he said.
Glancing back and forth, he saw separate signs for the administrative offices and the walkway to the center’s newer wing, the latter pointing around a bend in the corridor to his right. They moved in that direction at a full-tilt run.
No sooner had they rounded the corner than they saw the dead man. He was sprawled on the floor, faceup, wearing the same uniform as the guards downstairs in the lobby.
Allison stopped short an instant before she would have barreled over the corpse’s legs, horror dawning over her features, her eyes jumping from his grotesquely mutilated face to the overturned electric scooter beside him. It was splashed all over with blood.
“My God,” she said, gasping.
Even as Kealey moved between her and the dead man, his eyes snapped to where a second guard lay several feet to the right, also dead, his shirtfront soaked with blood. He’d fallen with his head propped against the wall, one knee upraised, the other leg extended, his arms spread loosely to either side. A long dripping red skid mark ran down on the wall where he must have fallen back against it before sliding to the floor.
Kealey studied the body near the scooter. The head was tilted sideways to the left, a large puddle of blood under the cheek and blown-out skull; the eye on that side rolled lazily up in its socket so only its white was visible. The right eye socket was a swamp of red.
“Shot at close range,” he said, noticing that the dead guard’s hand was wrapped around the butt of his half- drawn sidearm. “Executed.”
“What do you mean?”
“He was beaten to the draw,” Kealey said. “It doesn’t look like they ordered him to surrender.”
“They were probably making sure the offices were evacuated.”
Kealey nodded. “And then someone came up the stairs, the same as we did.” He shook his head, looked up toward the juncture of the wall and the ceiling. A camera was mounted there, but the red light was dark. It hadn’t been shot out by the killers, because someone on their team was using it. Whoever it was, they were watching him now.
The long black box reminded him of a vulture on a tree branch, patiently waiting for him to die.
Allison was breathing rapidly. “Ryan, what kind of madness is this?”
“I don’t know,” Kealey told her. “Let’s go.”
Raising the barrel of his Sig, he grabbed her right hand with his left and continued toward the walkway.
The gunfire erupted as they reached its entrance-a staccato burst from the far end of the span, then another overlapping volley.
Kealey dropped to his belly, simultaneously pulling Allison down and gathering her against him with his left arm. He used his body to cushion her fall. The bullets rapped into the glass panels to their right and left, sending an explosion of jagged shards over their backs.
He pushed her head closer to the floor, growled through the mask, “Stay low!”
Kealey felt her stiffen against his side, heard her shallow, frightened breaths. The walkway represented the only access to the extension. It could also be a perfect place of ambush, closing them in, offering no cover from fire.
Keeping his hand protectively on her head, Kealey raised his eyes to look across the walkway. He saw two gunmen through the thin, hovering veil of smoke. They were just beyond the entry, one on each side, using the outer walls for partial cover. Kealey noticed that they were clad entirely in black, wearing black bandannas over their mouths and grasping semiautomatic weapons. The firearms looked like sound-suppressed MP5K variants. Whoever they were, they didn’t want the authorities to hear them. Presumably, the dead bodies would be attributed to the bombers or accomplices.
Whatever this part of the operation was-and whoever was running it-the plan had been orchestrated according to classic guerrilla techniques. The main objective reached, a raid force had been inserted, a trap laid for whoever might try to follow them.
Kealey realized that he and Allison couldn’t just stay out in the open. Even if they didn’t reach Colin right away, they had to get out of here.
“Listen to me,” he said, pressing his lips to Allison’s ear. “Stay flat, and move to your left. We need to get closer to the wall.”
She made a small sound of acknowledgment and wriggled toward the wall on her stomach. Kealey moved along with her, his gun fully extended in his right hand. Their movement prompted another barrage of fire from the other side of the walkway. More glass popped and sprayed around them. They slid a little farther and stopped, Allison having gone as far as she could, pressed between his body and the passage’s wall.
Better, Kealey thought. Propping himself up slightly on his elbows, he pulled his left hand away from her, shifted it to his pistol grip so both hands were folded around the weapon. He was breathing heavily, and the smoke was pungent enough to sting his nostrils. But the haze itself wasn’t too bad. He could see the shooters if they moved.
He stared over his sight, waiting. Then he glimpsed the snub-nosed barrel of an assault weapon poking from behind the wall to his right, fingers in cutoff gloves wrapped around its forestock. A poor target, but his goal was not necessarily to score a hit with his first shots.
Taking a steadying breath and exhaling quickly, Kealey squeezed off a round. He missed the gunman, as expected, but the killer went for the bait. He leaned around to return fire and this time exposed himself enough for Kealey to get a clear shot. He pulled the trigger, and the pistol discharged with two sharp cracks, his arm jolting with recoil. The masked man fell back silently, clutching his throat, the MP5K dropping from his grasp.
Kealey quickly rolled onto his left side, saw the second gunman lean through the entrance from the right, his weapon spurting. Bullets splattered where Kealey had been just moments before, pecking into the low walls and fallen glass to the left of Allison. Kealey took aim over the nub of his sight and fired three rounds in rapid succession. His shirt puffing at his chest, the shooter jerked violently and then sagged forward onto the floor of the walkway.
Kealey didn’t waste an instant pushing to his feet. It bothered him for a moment that he might have just killed two Americans, possibly brothers in arms with the Company. For all he knew, the rent-a-cops had been part of an enemy plot and these guys were just cleaning up.
In which case they should have identified themselves, he told himself.
