He was halfway there when he heard a voice behind him.
“Sir? Sir? Are you all right? Do you need any help?”
Torres ignored the voice and kept going. It was a trick. A trick to keep him from getting the help he needed.
“Sir?” The voice turned into a rasp. “I’m going to need you to stop so I can talk to you.”
Torres spun around—much faster than he meant to, considering the agonizing pain in his abdomen—and found himself looking at another goddamn insurgent. The man had his hand resting on a sidearm that was hanging from his belt. Torres couldn’t exactly make out what uniform the towelhead bastard was wearing, but whatever it was, he’d probably taken it from the body of a dead American soldier.
It was a trap.
They were going to take him hostage, torture him, and cut off his head. That’s what these sickos did. Torres’s eyes darted around. Thirty yards away—too great a distance for him to do anything other than shoot him—a younger man was holding a cell phone that was pointed straight at him. They were already filming their hostage video. He wanted to shoot the bastard, but his captain had told him not to use his weapon unless his life was in immediate danger. Or was it someone else who had said that? He couldn’t remember. But he knew he should obey his orders if he could.
He felt another presence and turned around. Another man—this one disguised in jeans, tennis shoes, and a polo shirt—was walking toward him. Jesus. They had sent a whole team for him.
He had to do something or he was screwed.
He put out one hand, palm upward, in a gesture of surrender, but at the same time took two steps to the left. Then, as the man in the polo shirt drew level, he grabbed him by the neck, pulled out his gun and pressed it against the insurgent’s head.
“Stay away,” he yelled. “Everyone stay the fuck away from me.”
The insurgent in the fake uniform had already pulled his sidearm and was pointing it at him, but Torres had the upper hand now. He backed away, toward the CVS, dragging his hostage with him, moving faster with every yard despite the pounding pain in his head and the burn in his gut. As he shot another look toward the insurgent— who was staying put for now—he saw the bastard’s eyes turn yellow and horns sprout from his head. He blinked and shook his head, but when he opened his eyes, the horns were still there, gleaming like black obsidian, sharp and menacing. Sweat was now streaming down his own face and he screamed, “No,” before shoving his hostage away. The man scurried off, but not before giving Torres a sideways glance—he too had yellow eyes and horns, only his mouth widened to reveal a horrific set of fangs and an angry, forked tongue.
Torres felt a surge of terror as he realized something was allowing him to see the motherfuckers for what they really were. Demons, agents of Satan, soldiers of the antichrist. He’d always known they were evil; he’d just never seen them show their true forms before. He needed to survive, to tell everyone about this. People needed to know. But first he had to deal with the agony ripping through his stomach.
He reached the CVS’s entrance, where another insurgent came out of the store and tried to grab him. Torres swung his elbow into the guy’s face, then kicked a boot right through his shin bone. The demon collapsed to the ground. He crouched down beside his groaning victim and grabbed his gun, then he spun around with a weapon in each hand, one pointed at the insurgent on the ground, the other one at the guy in the fake uniform, who was now standing twenty yards from the store entrance. He saw that more of them had appeared, a horde of snarling, clawing beasts closing in on him.
He felt light-headed, and his vision was swaying in and out of focus as he yelled to the fighter he’d just overpowered.
“Shut the doors. Now!”
At least if he were locked inside, they couldn’t get him. And maybe he could get the painkillers he was now really desperate for.
The store’s security guard got up, scurried over to the main doors—two big glass panels with chrome handles—and proceeded to close and lock them.
“Where’s the pharmacy?” Torres shouted.
The guy gestured into the back of the store.
“Give me the keys.”
The guard handed them over.
“And your radio.”
He complied.
Torres stuffed the keys into his pocket, then dropped the radio to the ground and smashed it under his boot. He looked around him. Several customers—or were they two-faced enemy combatants?—were backing away from him with their hands up, some of them crying and whimpering. For a moment he wondered what the hell he was doing. Wasn’t he supposed to be getting out of town? Away from the cops? How had he got himself locked into a mall? It didn’t matter right now. At least he was still alive. Yes, the fuckers hadn’t managed to get him. Not like the rest of his unit, who’d been blown to smithereens by that towelhead bitch. It was just him now. And he wasn’t going to let them fuck with him.
He needed a plan.
Step one: Deal with the pain.
Step two: Talk to the ranking officer and make a deal.
He knew something they needed to hear about. Maybe he was the only one who knew.
Covering the store with both guns, he crept slowly toward the pharmacy.
52
I was already halfway out of the SUV before Villaverde had thrown it into park. There were at least ten black-and-whites scattered across the main lot, plus a SWAT truck and two incident response vehicles parked off to one side. A couple of uniforms had already thrown up a tape barrier about fifty yards from the mall’s main entrance. On the other side of the lot were four local news trucks. A fifth pulled in as I jogged over to the command-and-control truck, Villaverde a few paces behind me.
I waved my creds and climbed into the truck. The SDPD incident commander was expecting us and introduced himself as Captain Jack Lupo. In turn, he introduced Sergeant Alan Schibl, who was the ranking SWAT officer, a civilian hostage negotiator by the name of Tim Edwards, and Belinda Zacharia, a sharp-suited lady from the sheriff’s office, which made sense considering Torres was a witness to the killing of their deputy. There were also a couple of uniforms and a comms technician.
Lupo brought us up to speed. As far as they knew, there were nineteen hostages in the CVS—seven staff and twelve customers—though they couldn’t be a hundred percent sure about the number of customers. No hostages seemed to have been harmed—yet. Torres seemed to be acting alone. The witness who had shot the camera-phone video had stated that Torres was acting bizarrely, obviously in pain, and had been sweating profusely. Edwards had tried calling the store’s fixed line, but once they got past the automated answering system the number rang unanswered. Torres wasn’t picking up.
Schibl, who had been itching to chime in since we’d entered the truck, couldn’t contain himself anymore.
“I’ve got a pair of marksmen on either side of the store’s main entrance. They can’t see him at the moment, but if he moves into their line of sight without our move endangering a hostage, I’ve given them the order to shoot.”
Zacharia jumped on him before I had the chance. “Hang on there a second, sergeant—we need this guy alive. He’s our only solid lead. The sheriff’s consulted the mayor on this and he has his full support. We can’t let whoever murdered Deputy Fugate get away. Not under any circumstances. So I suggest you tell your men to stand down.”
There was a good chance things were going to get ugly very quickly. I’d spent a decent chunk of my professional life locked in these interdepartmental pissing contests. Although Villaverde was officially in charge, he’d still have to fight the others every step of the way in order for his orders to be given priority. I looked at him and he flashed me a subtle, wry smile. I knew that look. He was going to sit back and wait for the loudest voices to burn themselves out, then calmly assert his authority. It wasn’t my way of dealing with a situation like this, but I was on Villaverde’s turf and far too close to the case to risk trying to shout down the natives. Against all natural inclination, I decided to give them a couple of minutes to reach the correct conclusion on their own.