“A full boat to a degree and a commission. What else, man? That’s what everybody here came in for.”
“Not me, Booth. I believed all that stuff about duty, honor, country.”
“Nobody believes that shit, Jim. All we have to do is watch how the Dark Side behaves. Hell, they knew the Dell thing wasn’t right, but they were willing to hold sweepers on it.”
Another shadow. Keep it going. “And you wanted to be a Marine?”
“Damn straight. At least the Marines are up-front about what they’re all about. Shock troops. Stone killers. Kill a Commie for mommy. The light green machine. Pure. Simple. Hell, you know.”
“I know you’d have never made it through Quantico, that’s what I know.”
“The fuck you mean? Look at me, man. I could eat all that platoon commander shit up for breakfast.”
Jim realized that he was approaching the break point here. He needed to get Booth angry enough so that the guy focused exclusively on him, but without getting himself shot. The TAC team could listen to him talking, and hopefully know when to move. “Wrong, Booth, because the Corps’s always on the lookout for psychos like you. For sick puppies who like to dress up and paint their faces. Who get young boys to do nasty things. They’d Section-Eight your ass in a heartbeat.”
“Fuck that noise, man. Nobody here got wise. Why would they catch on now?”
“Because the Marines are the real deal, Booth. The grunts might fancy themselves Hollywood stone killers, but they expect their officers to have some personal standards beyond being physically fit. They’d catch on to you on the first day in the barracks. Hell, troops’d see you do that thing with your teeth and know you were bent.”
“So how come I got through four years here, huh, smart guy?”
“Because they weren’t looking, Booth. That’s the problem when the Navy does social engineering instead of maintaining their standards. I still don’t understand how a whacko like you even got in.”
Booth laughed that nasty laugh again, waving the big pistol around. “Blame it on the nuns, man. They wanted to score an Academy appointment. I was the only dude in the school who could do the math at the eight hundred SAT level.” He turned in his chair to check the bulge under the window shade, then turned back just as another shadow flicked across the shade.
“So what’s the plan, Stan?” Booth asked. “You gonna make a scene, try to keep me from doing what I have to do?”
“Nope,” Jim said. “Markham lied to us from day one. Between you and me, she shouldn’t graduate, either. I assume you’re gonna open the window, drop her ass on the bricks, and then do the right thing?”
“Not quite, smart guy. Julie’s just window dressing, so to speak. But you know, since I’ve got nothing to lose, why not take your ass with me?”
“Because you only have one round left, Booth. Like I said, I’m not going to interfere. Although there may be SWAT snipers up on the seventh wing waiting for you to check the window shade. But me? I’m your testimonial, Booth. I’m going to be the only one knows how you stood up and did it like a man. Because otherwise, the Dark Side here is going to tell a very different story, right?”
Booth looked at him for a long moment. He had the gun pointed in Jim’s general direction. He’s probably counting rounds, Jim thought. At that moment, Booth twitched his right wrist and the magazine dropped out of the. 45; with his left hand, he jammed a new one into the weapon so quickly that Jim almost couldn’t even see it happen. He watched Booth rack the slide back and chamber a fresh round, ejecting the lone remaining round into the room.
“Guess what, Jim?” He said. “Got lots of rounds left now.”
Jim shook his head in wonder. “I have to admit, that was the fastest combat reload I’ve ever seen, Booth. You must have been practicing.” As in, Hello, TAC squad. He’s back in business.
“Betcher ass I practiced. And now,” he said slowly, leveling the big gun at Jim again. “Now I think we’ll see how much of a man you are, Mr. See-cure-it-tee.” Aiming carefully, he fired once, blasting one past Jim’s right ear, so close that he could feel it. The window behind him exploded in a rain of glass. Jim hadn’t moved, not because he was brave, but because it had happened so fast.
“Well, that was close,” Jim said, letting the listeners know he was still alive. And now would be a great time to make your move, guys, he thought.
Booth nodded approvingly and fired again, this time past the other ear. More glass. Jim began to sweat. He tried to calculate how quickly he could duck down behind the desk. Dyle fired again, the shock wave hurting Jim’s ears as the round raised the hair on the top of his head and whacked into the wall behind him, ricocheting around inside the plaster after it hit the granite facade outside.
At that instant, a small dark shape crashed through the window behind Booth, followed by another. There was a blinding flash and a huge booming explosion, at which point Jim submarined in his chair, dropping out of sight behind the steel desk even as another round came howling right through the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, knocking it over. There was a second huge blast from the room across the way as a second flash-bang let go, and then a third. Then a rattling noise, followed by another big blast, but this one out in the passageway, then a howl of pain from the room where the Yard cop had been hiding. Silence ensued, punctuated only by noises from the roof. Jim was barely able to hear anything except the ringing in his ears. The entire area was full of smoke. As he very carefully peered around the corner of the desk, shapes in blue jumpsuits appeared out of the smoky gloom across the way, pointing guns at everything, including Jim. Then he thought he heard a couple of shots way down the hall, and another window’s worth of glass crashed into a room. As Jim, still behind the desk, got to his feet, hands in full view, the roar of the . 45 came booming down the hallway, dropping the TAC guys to the deck en masse while bullets whacked all around them.
“The roof! He’s going for the roof,” someone shouted, and Jim whirled, jumped over to the window, and looked outside. To his amazement, there was Booth, about ten windows down the hall, hanging by his fingertips from the fourth-deck ledge. Then he dropped like a cat, landing on the next ledge and grabbing the wall for an instant before letting go again and dropping to the next ledge. A TAC cop brushed Jim aside and leaned out to take a shot, but by then Booth had levered himself through a window on the second deck and disappeared. The TAC cop swore and made his report into a shoulder mike.
Jim brushed himself off, checked to make sure he hadn’t peed his own pants, and went out into the hallway, where everyone was getting back up. It was hard to see or even breathe in all the gun smoke. Shoulder radios were chattering away everywhere. A big cop in full tactical gear, wearing a sergeant’s shield, walked up to Jim.
“Nice going, Mr. Hall. You gave us all the time we needed. Got the girl. She’s up on the roof with Branner.”
“She okay?”
“Yes, sir, she is,” the sergeant said, taking off his face mask and turning down the volume on his tactical radio. The other cops had fanned out down the passageway and were checking rooms. Jim’s Yard cop came out of his room, obviously dazed, bleeding from the ears and nose. The TAC guys got him to sit down on the floor and sent for medical assistance. “One of our flash-bangs went slow fuse on us. Fucker picked it up and threw it back out the window just as we hauled the girl up onto the roof. Scared us all to death. Then he caught the next one, and apparently pitched it out here, got your guy. That’s how he got away.”
“No help from me,” Jim said. “I was trying for China after he combed my hair with that forty-five.”
“China’s good,” the sergeant said with a grin. “Ah, and here comes Ms. Branner now.”
Jim turned, to see Branner’s bottom easing backward through the window in the room where he’d been. Behind her were two TAC cops, who held a white-faced Julie Markham between them on the ledge until she, too, could climb through the window. One of the medics who had come up from the third floor took her in tow and wrapped a blanket around her. Branner turned to Jim and blew out her cheeks. “Some guys do all the work; some guys just sit and flap their jaws,” she said. The cops grinned.