Hayden ran to the bars, fitting the key to the lock. Ramses supported himself and then started stamping down upon Price’s skull and shoulders, as if searching for vulnerabilities and enjoying himself in the process. Price had stopped screaming by now and could only emit low groans.
Hayden flung the door wide, backed up by the two guards. She attacked without ceremony, pistol whipping Ramses behind the ear and shoving him away from Robert Price. She then fell to her knees beside the whimpering man.
“You alive?” She certainly didn’t want to appear too concerned. Men like him saw concern as a weakness to be exploited.
“Does that hurt?” She pressed against Price’s ribs.
The squeal told her that “yes, it did”.
“All right, all right, quit the mewling. Turn over, and let me see you.”
Price struggled to roll over, but when he did Hayden winced at the mask of blood, broken teeth and shredded lips. She saw an ear leaking crimson and an eye swollen so badly it might never work again. Against her better wishes, she grimaced.
“Shit.”
She headed for Ramses. “Man, I don’t even have to ask if you’re crazy, do I? Only a madman would do the things you do. Reason? Motive? Goal? I doubt it even crossed your fucked up mind.”
She raised the Glock, not actually fully prepared to take the shot. The guards at her side covered Ramses in case he came at her.
“Shoot,” Ramses said. “Save yourself a world full of pain.”
“If this were your country, your house, you would kill me right now, wouldn’t you? You would finish all this.”
“No. Where is the pleasure in such a quick kill? First I would destroy your dignity by stripping you and binding your limbs. Then I would break your will by random method, whatever felt right at the time. Then I would devise a way to kill you and bring you back, again and again, finally relenting when, for the one-hundredth occasion, you have begged me to end your life.”
Hayden stared, seeing the truth of it in Ramses’ eyes and unable to prevent a shudder. Here was a figure who would think nothing of detonating a nuclear bomb in New York City. Her attention was so rapt upon Ramses, as was her guards’, that they didn’t react to the shambling steps and ragged breaths stealing up behind them.
Ramses eyes flickered. Hayden knew they’d been tricked. She turned, but not fast enough. Price might be the Secretary of Defense but he had also enjoyed a distinguished military career and now brought what he remembered of it to bear. He slammed both hands down onto one of the guard’s outstretched arms, sending his pistol rattling to the floor, and then buried a fist into the man’s gut, bending him double. As he did this he fell, gambling that Hayden and the other guard wouldn’t shoot him, wagering on his position in more ways than one, and fell onto the gun.
And under his armpit he fired, the bullet taking the dazed guard through one eye. Hayden pushed aside the emotion and turned her Glock onto Price, but Ramses charged her like a bull riding a tractor, the full force of his frame paralyzing, slamming her back off her heels. Ramses and Hayden staggered clear across the cell, leaving Price a clear shot at the second guard.
He took it, using the confusion to his favor. The second guard died before the echo of the bullet that killed him. His body struck the ground at Price’s feet, watched over by the Secretary’s one functioning eye. Hayden struggled out from under Ramses’ great bulk, still holding her Glock, wild-eyed, lining up Price in her sights.
“Why?”
“I’m happy to die,” Price said miserably. “I want to die.”
“To help save this piece of shit?” She clambered across the floor, kicking out.
“I have one more play left,” Ramses murmured.
Hayden felt the ground shaking beneath her, the basement walls juddering and discharging puffs of mortar. The very cell bars started to shake. Resetting her hands and knees she steadied herself and looked up and down, left and right. Hayden glared at the lights as they flickered again and again.
Now what? What the hell is this…
But she already knew.
The precinct was under ground assault.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Hayden gasped as the walls continued to shake. Ramses tried to stand but the room swayed all around him. The terrorist fell to his knees. Price watched in awe as the very angle of the room shifted, joints relocated and rejigged, inclines and slopes distorted by the second. Hayden escaped a falling chunk of mortar as part of the ceiling collapsed. Wires and ducting swung down from the roof, swaying like multi-colored pendulums.
Hayden went for the cell door, but Ramses had retained enough gumption to block her way. It was a moment before she realized she still held the Glock, and by then more of the ceiling was collapsing and the very bars themselves were bending inward, close to shattering.
“I think… you’ve overdone it,” Price panted.
“The whole goddamn place is coming down,” Hayden shouted into Ramses’ face.
“Not yet.”
The terrorist rose and lunged toward the far wall, clouds of mortar and chunks of concrete and plaster drifting and dropping down all around him. The outer door buckled and then burst open. Hayden grabbed a bar and hauled herself up and after the madman, Price shambling along behind. They had people up top. Ramses could only get so far.
With that thought Hayden searched for her phone but barely had time to keep up with Ramses. The man was fast, tough and ruthless. He stomped up the stairs, brushing aside the challenge of one cop and hurling him head-first at Hayden. She caught the guy, steadied him, and by then Ramses was pushing through the upper door.
Hayden pounded up in hot pursuit. The upper door stood wide open, its glass cracked, its jambs splintered. Of the monitor-room she could only see Moore at first, picking himself up off the floor and reaching out to correct some of the skewed-up screens. Others had been jarred from their moorings, coming off the wall and breaking as they landed. Kinimaka now rose with a screen falling from his shoulders, glass and plastic stuck in his hair. Two other agents in the room were pulling themselves together.
“What were we hit with?” Moore raced out of the room, spying Hayden.
“Where the hell is Ramses?” she yelled. “Didn’t you see him?”
Moore gaped. “He’s supposed to be in the cell block.”
Kinimaka brushed glass and other rubble from his shoulders. “I was watching… then all hell broke loose.”
Hayden cursed out loud, spying the stairs to her left and then the balcony ahead that overlooked the precinct’s main office area. There was no way out of the building other than to cross it. She ran toward the rail, grabbed hold, and studied the room below. The staff had been thinned out, as the terrorists had planned, but some workstations were occupied along the ground floor. Both men and women were picking their belongings up, but most were headed toward the main entrance with guns drawn as if expecting an assault. No way was Ramses among them.
Where then?
Waiting. Watching. This wasn’t…
“It’s not over!” she yelled. “Come away from the windows!”
Too late. The blitz began with a colossal explosion; the front windows imploded and part of the wall collapsed. Hayden’s entire viewpoint shifted, the roofline falling down. Rubble blasted across the station as the cops fell. Some climbed to their knees or crawled away. Others were hurt or discovered they were trapped. An RPG sizzled through the broken façade and impacted with the station desk, sending gouts of flame, smoke and wreckage fragments through the nearby area. Next, Hayden saw running legs as many masked men appeared, all with guns strapped to their shoulders. Ranging around they took aim at anything that moved and then, after careful contemplation, opened fire. Hayden, Kinimaka and Moore instantly fired back.