“Hey,” the man called to him in Arabic, “shoo hada?”
Fallon’s response to the man asking him “What is this?” was to swing and fire. A single headshot that dropped the terrorist where he stood. He crumpled to the steps and slid halfway back down the stairs. Not Fallon’s intention, but by this point instinct had taken over.
Two down.
Fallon heard footsteps converging on the stairwell from opposite directions on the second floor. He crouched over the body and angled low, submachine gun angled at the main entry doors as if to suggest that’s where the deadly fire had originated. He could see the plastic explosives layered into place over the glass. Not the way he would’ve done it exactly, but still effective.
The footsteps grew louder, voices in Arabic shouted his way. Fallon swung when the two men were close enough to take in a single sweep. Two shots, both to the head again to be sure.
Four down.
This time his shots coincided with the rattling echo of machine-gun fire coming from the other end of the building. Screams and cries answered the barrage, greeted by a second longer one that drove the students and teachers to silence. Four to six of the remaining terrorists would be down there. Doors chained from the inside, denying him both access and the element of surprise. Without either, never mind both, the game would be over.
Fallon’s Radio Shack walkie-talkie crackled. He snapped it from his belt, listened.
“Shoofi mafi? What’s the matter?”
“Mafi Mushkil,” Fallon replied, hoping he had chosen the right word in Arabic. “No problem.”
“Dilwaati. Hurry.”
Fallon clasped the walkie-talkie back on his belt and headed down the stairs, banking left toward the school’s science wing as the blare of sirens descended on Hampton Lake Middle School.
The students of his eighth-grade honors Language Arts class were arranged two-by-two, fourteen deep, with Fallon bringing up the rear. After rousing them from the classroom against the tearful protestations of many, he placed Trent at the head of the group to lead the way toward the gym.
He’d encountered another terrorist in the science wing who approached him in the half-light, noticing the ruse too late and making the mistake of trying to right his submachine gun. Fallon was close enough to use Trent’s butterfly knife this time, a single swipe across the man’s throat for silence and surety.
He spent just over a minute gathering up two vials of clear liquid in one of the science labs and ran into another of the terrorists, literally, at the head of the corridor. Their eyes had met; the terrorist’s gaping, Fallon’s steeling as his hands came up, thumbs pressing into the man’s eyes to mash brain tissue and send him spasming toward death.
Six down.
Then back fast to his classroom to affect the final phase of his plan, the students suitably scared and confused. He marched them down the hall toward the gymnasium, pretending to prod with the submachine gun while concealing a capped glass vial in either hand.
A hundred feet away, a pair of terrorists guarding that booby-trapped entry to the building spotted him coming and twisted his way, keeping tight to the wall while shouting instructions Fallon ignored. They approached on either side of his marching phalanx and as soon as they were close enough to realize something was very wrong, Fallon popped the caps off his vials and tossed the acid compound at their faces. Not directly on line, but enough splashing home to send their hands upward to comfort their ravaged eyes.
Fallon took each down with a single, quick burst, then pushed his shocked charges on faster. Through the glass doors and half-wall he glimpsed a nonstop onslaught of police vehicles and media vans, continuing with his charges toward the chained entrance to the gym.
He moved to the front of the apparent stragglers he had rounded up, pounding on the door and then swinging away with gun leading.
“Open up! Hurry!” he screamed in Arabic, desperation forced into his voice. “They’re in the building!”
The chains rattled, locks and explosives being thrust aside. The double door entrance jerked open by a sweaty man who bled garlic through his pores.
Fallon started shooting, willing to sacrifice a few innocents to get the last of the job done. He felled the three terrorists converging on the door, before turning his attention on the one who had yanked it open, because his hands were too full to go fast for a weapon. That man had barely hit the floor when Fallon whirled sideways, scanning the room for motion.
He fired at whatever moved, like a cheap arcade game now, hoping no bystanders got caught in the fire but knowing he couldn’t let that concern stop him. He fired his last spray upward into the sprinkler apparatus, activating a spray of water, which almost instantly doused the cavernous room and drenched its occupants.
His submachine gun clicked empty. Fallon was twisting to retrieve the sidearm of a dead terrorist when a bearded rail of a man came at him, showcasing a detonator as he blithered away in Arabic.
“Maashallah! Maashallah!”
Fallon palmed Trent’s butterfly knife, locked the blade into place.
“Maashallah! Maashallah!” The man’s wild hair a soaked tangle that swept over his face, seeming to merge it with his beard.
“Maashallah!”
Fallon snapped his hand outward, sending the knife whizzing through the air. It took the final terrorist in the eye, buried to the hilt in his brain. He fell to the floor. The detonator rattled across the floor.
Fourteen down, Fallon thought, realizing his initial estimate had been off as he looked up and let the cascading water wash over his face. And not a single bystander with them.
Fallon emerged from the boys’ locker room, wearing the uniform and visor of a SWAT officer who’d gone in there to secure the site. Confusion was his ally now, confusion and chaos as the police stormed the building to find bodies everywhere and had to sort through the tales of the mysterious teacher who had killed them. They’d never believe it at first and before they did, Fallon would be gone.
In the foyer beyond the gym, he passed his eighth-grade honors Language Arts class being questioned by an expanding bevy of officers. Fallon kept his head turned low and to the side, cocking his gaze back just once when he was almost to the door, to meet Trent’s.
“So if he wasn’t Beechum, any of you have an idea who he was?” an official in plain clothes was asking his students.
“Rainsford,” Trent said as his eyes locked and held with Fallon’s through the SWAT visor. “His name was Rainsford.”
RIDLEY PEARSON
Not only is bestselling author Ridley Pearson a master of forensic detail but he also plays in a rock band with other bestselling writers like Amy Tan, Mitch Albom and Stephen King. “We play music as well as Metallica writes novels,” he said, so it’s good news that Ridley agreed to contribute a story to this collection rather than an original song.
“Boldt’s Broken Angel” opens with one of the most haunting and powerful scenes you’ll ever read. The reader follows detective Lou Boldt on the trail of a serial killer who is as twisted as Ridley’s brilliant plot. Fight the urge to skip ahead, because you won’t want to miss a single word. This is a model thriller by a modern master, the perfect story to complete the collection.
BOLDT’S BROKEN ANGEL
Erastus Malster-they called him Rastus-hooked both feet beneath the large gray cleat on the bow of the fishing trawler Sea Spirits and, holding himself fast, lifted his arms straight out at his sides like Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. The salt spray peppered his wide-mouthed grin, stung his eyes and seasoned his fourteen-year-old tongue.
It was his uncle’s boat, his uncle’s idea to wave to his mother in the jet as it took off from SEATAC. They had no real way to track the flight, bound for Israel where she was set to join up with a two-star cruise ship tour of Israel ports and Egyptian treasures, so Rastus waved at all the planes, while his uncle drank beer and laughed from the wheelhouse. His uncle loved to laugh.