But now there was nowhere to go.
Sandy Carmichael saw Main duck the next burst and knew she had to shoot. She inhaled deeply, got both hands around the Kimber, and popped up, looking for her sights.
She found them.
The .45-caliber rounds left the three-inch barrel at 800 fps. Both struck within four inches of one another. The AK gunner reeled visibly from the impact but kept his feet.
Sandy was stunned. She knew where the rounds went: mid torso. She could not know that Ahmed wore a typical AK chest pack with extra magazines beneath his windbreaker. They were almost as good as Kevlar.
Then she noticed her slide had locked back.
David Main could stand it no longer. He saw Sandy’s slide locked open, leaving only one choice. Hunching low, he swung right, cleared the cubicle, and charged.
The green shape entered Sandy’s vision as she prepared to fire her seventh round. Ahmed, aware of the closer threat, stepped back, giving himself time to engage the army officer. The muzzle brake came up and around. The 7.62mm bore looked huge. Main leapt from his feet, hands extended.
A gunshot went off. He did not feel any pain.
Main and Ahmed went down together in a tangle, Main grasping for the rifle. Sandy left the cubicle, knowing she had to get close to avoid hitting David.
Main intended to bash in the assailant’s head with the rifle, but it was unnecessary. Finally the colonel noticed the hole below the corpse’s right ear. The last shot was Sandy’s. He heard her exclaim, “My thumb must’ve hit the slide lock! I’ve got one round left.”
Main looked up, saw Sandy wide-eyed, mouth agape, sucking air. He found his feet, reached for her and took her in both hands. “Honey, are you alright?”
She shook her head as if clearing cobwebs. “David…” Then she handed him the pistol and ran down the hall.
The Arlington police and sheriff’s departments responded quickly but too late to intervene in the shootout at Strategic Solutions. The sirens had convinced Marcus’s driver to stop circling the block and seek employment elsewhere. At least he had the five-hundred-dollar advance. He drove away from the plaza, being careful to obey all traffic regulations.
The backup driver, in a rented station wagon, was not so circumspect. He busted a stop sign and drew the immediate attention of Arlington’s finest. They had no reason to detain the Pakistani until it was realized that he had a forged driver’s license and Immigration was interested in him.
“Where’s Sandy?” Derringer asked his niece.
Sallie Kline said, “Oh, I think she’s still in the restroom. She keeps throwing up.”
“What about you?”
She took a swig of mineral water. “I’m fine, Uncle Mike. Trust me.” The faint tremor in her arms belied the words.
Derringer realized that the young woman was riding the peak of an adrenaline high. Eventually she would crash, but for the moment she was surprisingly composed.
He put an arm around her shoulders. “What do you want to do now, honey?”
Sallie Ann Kline leveled her gaze at SSI’s founder. “Well, this week I’m going to call some numbers Sandy gave me in Arizona. Apparently most of the top instructors are there, including the best pistol shooter who ever lived. I’m going to sign up for a class with Firebase Phoenix or Morrigan Consulting. But for now I’m going home and screw Harold’s wheels off.”
With that, she kissed her uncle and walked to the parking lot. As she left, Derringer heard the detectives talking.
Sergeant Leo Forbus checked his notes. “Well, there were three shooters, all dead. Looks like they were pros: two of ‘em had body armor. Six SSI people dead and four wounded, one critical.”
His partner looked at the last body bag as it trundled out the door. “It would’ve been lots worse. If that Carmichael gal hadn’t been here…”
“Man, she is something else. You know she was an oak leaf colonel?”
“I can believe it. A deputy told her he’d never known a woman who carried a gun, except female cops. You know what she said?”
“What?” asked Forbus.
“She said, ‘Hey, if most women don’t want to defend themselves, it’s no skin off my vagina.’”
David Main sat down beside Sandra Carmichael, who had stopped shaking almost two hours after the climax. He nodded at her right arm in a sling. “How you feeling?”
“Oh, I’ll be alright. There’s a big-ass bruise and contusion but the bullet hit the metal stanchion in the cubicle before it hit me.” She looked at his bandaged neck. “How about you?”
“I got cut by some glass. No big deal.” He looked at the floor, then turned back to her. “Sandy, we need to talk.”
She looked at him through eyes still moist with fear and emotion. “You called me ‘honey.’ You never did that since…”
“Since I got married.” He touched her left hand and she gripped his, hard.
“That’s right.” The Alabama inflection came out “raaaht.” He still liked to hear it.
“Sandy, I love my wife and I adore my kids. But I love you, too. I knew that all along, but today when I thought you would be killed…”
“My god, David, that was the bravest thing I ever saw. Twenty years in the army and I never saw anything like it, how you charged that AK bare-handed.”
“Honey”—he gave her an ironic smile—”what’re we going to do?”
She had no answer, so she rested her head on his shoulder.
13
As SSI’s resident rappelling authority, Jason Boscombe drew the not unpleasant duty of instructing Dr. Padgett-Smith in military techniques. Holding a tactical harness, he pointed out the features.
“The main difference from what you probably use is location of the carabiner,” he began. “I think most sport climbers use a waist-level attachment but we put it higher, at the chest or shoulder. That way…”
“You can’t fall backwards with your feet above your head,” she interjected.
“Right.” He liked the way she said
She gave him an indulgent smile. “Surely, Mr. Boscombe.” She couldn’t blame him; the operators had to satisfy themselves that their medical charge really did know something about climbing.
Taking the 11mm line and a steel figure eight, she talked her way through the process. “I pull a bight of the rope through the big hole and loop it around the stem; then clip the small hole to my harness with a locking carabiner or two opposing standard ‘biners.” Deftly completing the motion, she pulled the line tight to demonstrate it was safe.
“Good, ma’am. Now…”
