Into the anteroom, Marcus made straight for the door that Carlito had described. The gunman shoved his hostage through the portal, then brought her up short. “Where’s the computer room?” If he didn’t find living targets right away, he would destroy as many hard drives as possible.
Becky had been pushed over the brink. She collapsed in a heap at Marcus’s feet, sobbing loudly, uncontrollably. Without blinking, he shot her in the back of the head and moved on.
At the next door Marcus went left and Hakeem went right. It was the misfortune of a visiting consultant to encounter Hakeem, who shot the man in the chest. Struck by a 115-grain bullet, he staggered backwards, tripped over a wastebasket, and fell to the tile floor. Hakeem stepped over him and continued down the hall.
It was his misfortune to encounter Sandra Carmichael.
Hakeem made the tactical error of leading with his gun hand around the door sill, and the nickel plated Model 59 gave her all the warning she needed. Crouched behind a steel desk, Carmichael raised her sights to chest level and waited, finger on the Kimber’s trigger.
Hakeem Jefferson saw the open door and swung left into the room. He did not realize he had been shot until he found himself on his back, looking up at the fluorescent lights. Two 200-grain slugs had punched through his sternum into his heart; the second round of the double tap had clipped the aorta. He raised his head off the floor, trying to focus on whoever had decked him. He saw a light-haired woman behind a desk about twenty feet away. Then the world went fuzzy, gray, dark, black.
Sandy returned her focus to the door, expecting another shooter. When none appeared, she took stock of herself. She was mildly surprised to find her pulse only slightly elevated, breathing under control. She quickly tested her peripheral vision; little of the tunneling she had been told to expect.
Way down deep she felt a tiny electric thrill. Then she moved down the hall, trying to control her breathing. Her thoughts went to David Main, somewhere amid the shooting.
In the armory, Joe Wolf seized his Sig 228 and searched ravenously for a loaded magazine. Finding none, he dumped a box of 9mm cartridges on the bench. He scooped up several rounds, dropped a few, and loaded the others into the magazine. Working quickly, he forced himself to concentrate as he thumbed the ammunition into the double-column mag. He stopped at ten and put the others in his suit pocket. Then he chambered a round and flipped the decocker, rendering the Sig safe. He was acutely aware that he had not shot a pistol since retiring.
More gunfire. More screams. The sounds of panicked people running.
Wolf turned into the hallway leading to the financial offices. Two men dashed past him; he recognized them from the research division. More gunshots; a woman shrieked.
SSI’s domestic ops chief flipped off the safety and began checking each cubicle, “slicing the pie” as he methodically searched each wedge-shaped segment that came into view. It was slow going if done properly.
At the third cubicle he found a woman’s body. She was a fifty-two-year-old grandmother named Harriet. Wolf knew her as an excellent accountant. He choked down the anger he felt rising inside him and stepped into the hall.
Forty-five feet away, Marcus Jefferson walked calmly away, pistol raised, ready to shoot.
The cop in Joe Wolf urged him to issue a verbal challenge. Then he thought of Harriet. He put his front sight between the gunman’s shoulder blades and pressed the trigger. The eight-pound double action conspired with lack of practice to force the muzzle downward and left. The first round struck the wall at waist height.
Marcus jumped at the unexpected sound. He pivoted on one foot, turning to face the threat.
With the Sig now cocked, the second round was single action. Wolf stroked the four-pound trigger but the difference in pressure spoiled his aim. His next round went as he fought the recoil from the first. It missed Marcus’ right shoulder by two inches.
The raider’s Beretta came around, pointing at the white man’s chest. Wolf knew he had no time for a third shot and threw himself sideways into the right-hand cubicle. A 9mm round snapped past his left arm.
Rolling to an upright position, Wolf leaned toward the entrance, intending to steady himself on the corner when he heard more shooting. Multiple rounds — a prolonged exchange — then momentary silence.
As Marcus advanced on the latest defender, he sensed that he was winning. This dude, whoever he was, had flubbed a dead-meat setup.
Two blasts impacted Marcus’s back, lurching him forward. He caught himself on his right foot and spun to face the new threat.
Michael Derringer instantly knew his mistake. Dashing to the nearest shootout, he had caught a perpetrator from behind and fired both barrels of his 12-gauge, aiming at the man’s torso. Both patterns of birdshot struck where intended, but they were not lethal.
Derringer ducked behind the doorway. He thumbed the release, bent the barrels downward and saw the empties ejected. He reached for the reloads in his pocket and tried to control his hands. One cartridge slipped into the upper barrel; the other resisted his fumbling efforts. He looked up again. The shooter was still upright, turning toward the late arrival.
The shotgunner backpedalled, removing himself from view and temporarily stabilizing the fight. The damnable second round would not drop into the Browning’s lower barrel. Derringer let it go and closed the action, acutely aware of the fight-or-flight conflict raging behind his eyes. He wanted to turn and run.
Pride and survival fought for dominance of Michael Derringer’s brain while the gunfight continued apace.
Joe Wolf poked his head around the corner of the cubicle. The assailant had turned away from him, slowly advancing on the doorway down the hall. There had been other shots — somebody else had engaged the man — but Wolf saw only the masked intruder.
With a temporary advantage, the lawman in Joseph Matthew Wolf shouted the oft-used phrase. “Freeze! FBI!”
Marcus swiveled his head, saw the man behind the partition again, and realized a no-win situation. Fully exposed in the hallway, he ignored the challenge, lowered his head, and charged eight steps to the cover of the doorsill.
He made it. For whatever reason, the man with the pistol did not try to shoot him in the back again.
The man with the shotgun centered the bead sight on Marcus’s nose and, from eighteen feet away, mashed both triggers. One chamber emitted a soft
When Ahmed heard more shooting in the rooms behind him, he suspected the worst. With a parting glance at the double doors in the lobby, he went through the security door that Hakeem had kept open with a chair. The Saudi-American sprinted down the first corridor to the left, noting spent brass on the floor, and began hunting. He glimpsed movement farther down the hall: a man and a woman, a green uniform. He spun on the targets and triggered a quick burst from his AK. The rounds impacted a conference room, sending shards of glass tingling to the floor.
Behind the thin wall, Dave Main leapt on Sandy Carmichael. He covered her body with his own, taking some of the glass pieces on his back. Beneath him, his erstwhile classmate struggled against his weight. “Lemme up, goddammit!”
“Sandy, stay down!” Main raised his head, only then noticing her compact .45 Kimber. He reached for the pistol. “Gimme the gun! Gimme the gun!”
Lieutenant Colonel Sandra Carmichael, U.S. Army (retired), was in no mood to negotiate. She tightened her grip on the weapon and tried to elbow Colonel Main off her. Another burst of automatic fire stuttered across the wall, eighteen inches over their heads. The shooter knew they would be on the floor.
“Sandy, he’s coming!”
“Get off me then!”
The shooter had to be close. Main did the only thing he could. He rolled off Carmichael’s slender frame, low- crawled six feet and risked a peek over the ledge.
Ahmed saw the head pop up to his left front. He swung the muzzle and fired again. The Kalashnikov’s bark rang painfully off the walls, though he had inserted soft earplugs. Four rounds punched through the imitation wood paneling to Main’s left as he dived for cover again.
