Teeth of the Tiger

'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.

'Oh, shit. Oh, shit, man,' Brian whispered. With that, all the adrenaline evaporated from his bloodstream. His body became a vacuum, and his muscles slack.

The first firefighters raced in, wearing khaki turnout coats and carrying boxes of what had to be medical gear. One of them took command, directing his people into various directions. Two headed to where Brian was. The first of them took the body from his arms and looked at it briefly, then set it on the floor, and then he moved away without a word to anyone, leaving Brian standing there, with a dead child's blood on his shirt.

Enzo was nearby, just standing and looking, now that professionals — mainly volunteer firefighters, actually, but proficient for all that — were assuming control of the area. Together they walked out the nearest exit into the clear noontime air. The entire engagement had lasted less than ten minutes.

Just like real combat, Brian realized. A lifetime — no, many lifetimes had come to their premature ends in what was relatively a blink of time. His pistol was back in his fanny pack. The expended magazine was probably back in Sam Goody. What he'd just experienced was the nearest thing to being Dorothy, sucked into a Kansas tornado. But he hadn't emerged into the Land of Oz. It was still central Virginia, and a bunch of people were dead and wounded behind them.

'Who are you guys?' It was a police captain.

Dominic held up his FBI ID, and that was enough for the moment.

'What happened?'

'Looks like terrorists, four of them, came in and shot up the place. They're all dead. We got 'em, all four of them,' Dominic told him.

'You hurt?' the captain asked Brian, gesturing to the blood on his shirt.

Aldo shook his head. 'Not a scratch. Cap'n, you got a lot of hurt civilians in there.'

'What were you guys doing here?' the captain asked next.

'Buying shoes,' Brian answered, a bitter edge on his voice.

'No shit…' the police captain observed, looking at the mall entrance, and standing still only because he was afraid of what he was going to see inside. 'Any ideas?'

'Get your perimeter set up,' Dominic said. 'Check every license plate. Check the dead bad guys for ID. You know the drill, right? Who's the local SAC?'

'Just a Resident Agent here. Nearest real office is Richmond. Called there already. The SAC's a guy named