Teeth of the Tiger

that, and what training they'd had took over completely. The first target in view was the one standing there hosing the jewelry store.

'Going right,' Brian said, darting that way with his head down but looking in the direction of his target.

* * *

Brian almost died that way. Zuhayr was standing at Claire's Boutique, having just turned away from dumping a full magazine into it. Suddenly unsure of which way to go next, he turned left and saw a man with a pistol in his hand. He carefully shouldered his weapon and squeezed the trigger—

— two rounds fired off uselessly, then nothing. His first magazine had been expended, and it took two or three seconds for him to realize it. Then he ejected and reversed it, ramming it back into the bottom of his machine gun and looking back up—

— but the man was gone. Where? Without targets, he reversed direction and walked with a measured pace into the Belk's women's store.

* * *

Brian crouched by the Sunglass Hut, peeking around the right side.

There, moving to the left. He brought his Beretta into his right hand and squeezed off one round—

— but it missed the head by a whisker when the man ducked.

'Fuck!' Brian then stood and put both hands on the pistol, leading just a hair and firing off four rounds. All four went into the thorax, below the shoulders.

* * *

Mustafa heard the noise but didn't feel the impacts. His body was full of adrenaline, and, under such circumstances, the body simply does not feel pain. Just a second later, he coughed up blood, which came as quite a surprise. More so, when he tried to turn to his left, his body didn't do what his mind commanded. The puzzlement lasted just another second or two when—

* * *

— Dominic was facing the second one, gun up and aimed. Again, he fired, as trained, for center-of-mass, and the Smith was on single-action, barking twice.

So good was his aim that the first round hit the target's weapon—

* * *

— The Ingram jumped in Mustafa's hands. He barely held on to it, but then he saw who'd attacked him and took careful aim and squeezed — but nothing happened. On looking down, he saw a bullet hole in the steel side of the Ingram, just where the bolt was. He took another second or two to realize that he was now disarmed. But his enemy was still before him and he raced toward him, hoping to use his gun as a club if nothing else.

* * *

Dominic was amazed. He'd seen at least one of his rounds take him in the chest — and the other one had broken his weapon. For some reason, he did not fire again. Instead he clubbed the bastard in the face with his Smith and headed forward, where there was more gunfire.

* * *

Mustafa felt his legs weaken. The blow in the face did hurt, even though the five bullets had not. He tried to turn again, but his left leg would bear no weight, and he fell, turning to land on his back, where, suddenly, breathing came very hard indeed. He tried to sit up, even to roll, but as his legs had failed him, so the left side of his body was useless.

* * *

'That's two down,' Brian said. 'Now what?'

The screaming had abated, but not by much. But the gunfire was still there, and it had changed character…

* * *

Abdullah blessed fate for putting the suppressor on his weapon. His shooting was more accurate than he'd ever hoped.

He was in the Sam Goody music store, which was filled with students. It was also a store with no rear exit, because it was so close to the westernmost entrance. Abdullah's face was grinning broadly as he walked into the store, firing as he went. The faces he saw were full of disbelief — and for an amused moment he told himself that disbelief was the reason he was killing them. He emptied his first magazine quickly, and indeed the suppressor allowed him to hit with half his shots. Men and women — boys and girls — screamed, stood still and staring for a few precious, deadly seconds, and then started running away. But at less than ten meters, it was just as easy to hit them in the back, and they really had nowhere to run. He just stood there, hosing the room, letting the targets select themselves. Some ran up the other side of the CD racks, trying to escape out the main door. These he shot as they passed, hardly two meters away. In seconds, he'd emptied his first magazine pair, and dumped it, pulling another from his pants pocket and slamming it home and cocking the bolt. But there was a mirror on the store's back wall, and in it he saw—

* * *

'Jesus, another one!' Dominic said.

'Okay.' Brian darted to the other side of the entrance and took position against the wall, bringing his Beretta up. This put him on the same pseudo-corridor as the terrorist, but the setup didn't benefit a right-handed shooter worth a damn. He had to choose between shooting weak-hand — something he didn't practice as much as he should have done — or exposing his body to return fire. But something in his Marine mind just said Fuck it and he stepped to his left, pistol up in both hands.

Abdullah saw him and smiled, bringing his weapon to his shoulder — or trying to.

Aldo fired off two aimed shots into the target's chest, saw no effect, and then emptied his magazine. More than twelve rounds entered the man's body—

* * *

— Abdullah felt them all, and he felt his body jerk with each impact. He tried firing his own weapon, but he missed with all of his shots, and then his body was no longer under his control. He fell forward, trying to recover his balance.

* * *

Brian ejected his empty magazine and pulled the other one from his fanny pack, slapping it in and dropping the slide-release lever. He was going on autopilot now. The bastard was still moving! Time to fix that. He walked over to the prone body, kicked the gun aside, and fired one round right into the back of his head. The skull split open — blood and brains exploded out onto the floor.

* * *

'Jesus, Aldo!' Dominic said, coming to his brother's side.

'Fuck that! We got at least one more out there. I'm down to one clip, Enzo.'

'Me, too, bro.'

Amazingly, most of the people on the floor, including the shot ones, were still alive. The blood on the floor could have been rain in a thunderstorm. But both brothers were too wired to be sickened by what they saw. They moved back out into the mall and headed east.

The carnage was just as bad here. The floor was defiled by numerous pools of blood. There were screams and whimpers. Brian passed a little girl, perhaps three years old, standing over the body of her mother, her arms fluttering like a baby bird's. No time, no damned time to do anything about it. He wished Pete Randall were close. He was a good corpsman. But even Petty Officer Randall would be overwhelmed by this mess.

There was still more chatter from a suppressed submachine gun. It was in the Belk's women's store, off to their left. Not all that far off by the sound of it. The sound of automatic-weapons fire is distinctive. Nothing else sounds quite the same. They split up, each taking one side of the short corridor leading past the Coffee Beanery and Bostonian Shoes into the next combat area.

The first floor of Belk's started off with perfumes and makeup. As before, they ran to the sound of the guns. There were six women down at perfume, and three more in makeup. Some were obviously dead. Others were just as obviously alive. Some called out for help, but there was no time for that. The twins split up again. The noise had just stopped. It had been off to their left front, but it wasn't there now. Had the terrorist run away? Was he just out of ammo?