“There!” a man yelled from the window above him.
Pittman scrambled to his feet and raced toward the cover of the rear of the next building. Something kicked up grass next to him. He heard the muffled, fist-into-a-pillow report from a sound-suppressed gunshot.
Adrenaline made his stomach seem on fire. Needing to discourage them from shooting again, he spun, raised his.45, and fired. In the silence of the night, the roar of the shot was deafening. His bullet struck the upper part of the window, shattering glass.
“Jesus!”
“Get down!”
“Outside! He can’t go far on foot! Stop him!”
Pittman fired again, not expecting to hit anybody but wanting anxiously to make a commotion. The more confusion, the better. Already lights were going on in dormitory windows.
He raced past bushes, rounded the back corner of the next building, and tried to orient himself in the darkness. How the hell do I get out of here? He left the cover of the building, running toward the murky open meadow. A bullet whizzed past him from behind. He ran harder. Suddenly a shadow darted to his left, someone running parallel to him. He fired. In response, another bullet whizzed past, from his left. A car engine roared. Headlights gleamed, speeding toward the meadow ahead of him.
With no other direction available, Pittman veered sharply to his right. He zigzagged and veered again as a third bullet parted air near his head. In the darkness, he’d become disoriented. Dismayed, he found that he was running back toward the school. The rear of the buildings was still in shadow, but the commotion was causing more lights to come on all the time. Feeling boxed in, he took the only course available, charged up to the back door of the nearest building, prayed that its lock hadn’t been engaged, yanked at the door, and felt a surge of hope as it opened. He darted in, shut and locked the door, felt the impact of a bullet against it, and turned to sprint along a hallway.
But he’d bought only a few moments of protection. When he showed himself outside the front of the building…
Can’t hide in here. They’ll search until they…
What am I going to do?
This building was evidently a dormitory. He heard students on the upper floors, their voices distressed.
Witnesses. Need more witnesses. Need more commotion.
He swung toward a fire-alarm switch behind a glass plate and hammered the butt of his.45 against the glass. The plate shattered with surprising ease. Trembling, he reached in past shards and pulled the switch.
The alarm was shrill, reverberating off walls, causing picture frames to tremble. Despite its intensity, Pittman sensed the greater commotion on the floors above him, urgent footsteps, frightened voices, a lot of them. A welter of shadows in the stairway became students in pajamas scurrying to get outside.
Pittman hid his weapon and waved his right arm in fierce encouragement, as if he was their benefactor, his only interest their safety.
“Hurry up! The place is on fire!”
The students surged past, and Pittman went with them, storming into the arc lights that blazed in the night. He saw gunmen to his right but knew that they didn’t dare shoot with so many students in the way, and as the students dispersed in turmoil, Pittman darted toward the next building on the left, lunging inside.
There, he again broke the glass that shielded the fire-alarm switch. Activating the alarm, wincing from the ferocity of the noise, he rushed back in the direction he had come, toward the front door.
They’ll expect me to go out the back. They’ll try to cut me off, some of them coming through here while the others wait in the darkness behind the building.
He pressed himself against the wall next to the front door, and at once it was banged open, gunmen charging into the building. In the same instant, students came scurrying down the stairwell. Amid the confusion as the gunmen and the students collided and tried to pass one another, Pittman scrambled out the front door, students swirling around him. But instead of continuing the pattern he’d established to race toward the next building on this side of the square, he took what he felt was his best chance and sprinted directly across the square, veering among students who milled sleepily, their bare feet obviously cold, frost coming out of their mouths in the glare from the arc lights. He heard the fire alarms and students swarming out of adjacent buildings and gunmen shouting, chasing him.
Even allowing for his being out of condition, he didn’t think he’d ever run so fast. His jogging shoes hit the ground perfectly, his legs stretched, his sweat suit clung to his movements as it had so many mornings when he had gone jogging before heading to work-before Jeremy had gotten sick. He felt as if his increasing effort was the distillation of every race he had ever entered, every marathon he had ever endured. Inhaling deep lungfuls of air, pumping his legs faster, stretching them farther, he surged between buildings on the opposite side of the square and kept racing into the darkness behind them.
This was the direction from which he had initially come down off the ridge and across the meadow, approaching the campus. In a frenzy of exertion, he managed to increase speed, spurred by the buzz of another bullet parting air near his side. They’ve crossed the square, he thought. They saw where I went and followed me.
From the square, he heard the roar of cars. They’ll soon drive behind these buildings. There’s no way I can outrun…
He changed direction just in time, almost banging into the side of a building. His eyes, stung by the glare of the arc lights in the square, were only now adjusting to the darkness, and in confusion, he took a moment to realize that he’d reached the stables.
Men shouted behind him. A bullet struck the stone side of the building. Pittman whirled, went down on his left knee, propped his right arm on his other knee to steady his trembling aim, and fired toward the men pursuing him. They cursed and dove to the ground. A car fishtailed around a building, its headlights blazing, and Pittman fired toward them, missing the headlights but shattering the windshield.
Immediately he ducked back, knowing that the muzzle flashes from his pistol had made him a target. More bullets struck the side of the building, splintering stone. From somewhere on the other side, horses whinnied in panic. Pittman swung around a corner, approaching them. He reached a fence and opened its gate, scrambling back as horses charged through, escaping into the night. The more confusion, the better. He had to keep distracting his pursuers.
Then racing across the horse pen toward the opposite fence, he heard the roar of the cars speeding toward the stables. Have to get ahead of them.
A horse had stopped on the other side of the fence. With no other choice, Pittman clambered onto the rails. He’d once written a story about the stables near Central Park. He’d taken a few lessons. His instructor had emphasized: “When afraid of falling, keep your legs squeezed as tightly as you can around the horse’s sides and clamp your arms around the horse’s neck.”
Pittman did exactly that now, leaping off the fence, landing on the horse, startling it, clinging as it reared, but he was prepared and the horse wasn’t. Compacting his muscles in desperation, he managed to stay on, and now the horse wasn’t rearing. It was galloping, hoping to throw off its burden. Pittman clung harder, jolted by the horse’s rapid hoofbeats. He leaned so severely forward, clutching the horse’s bobbing neck, that he didn’t think he provided a silhouette for the gunmen.
From behind, the headlights of several rapidly approaching cars lit up the meadow around and ahead of him. The roar of the engines and the noise of the galloping horse were too great for Pittman to be able to hear if bullets whizzed past him, but he had to assume that his pursuers were shooting at him, and he furiously hoped that the uneven meadow, its bumps and rises and dips, would throw off the gunmen’s aim in the darkness.