She nodded, pushed back over her ear a wisp of hair that had worked its way out of her ponytail, and began leading the way up. Dom took her by the arm and passed in front of her.
On the landing of the main floor, they found three female hotel clerks crouched in hiding. One of the women sobbed loudly when she saw Dom and Adara with their guns coming up the stairs, but she grabbed her own mouth to stifle a scream. Dom moved up to them and knelt back down, while Adara covered up the stairs.
“You guys came from the lobby?”
“Yes, we were at the counter when it started.”
“How many bad guys?”
They looked between each other. Finally one said, “We never saw any bad guys. No one but police and guests. There was shooting and explosions. I saw people die. One of the police officers I had just been talking to dropped in front of the counter, I think he’s dead.”
She began crying.
Dom showed the women Adara’s schematic of the lobby on her phone and asked them to tell him where they were. According to the women, the other side of the door in front of them led to a back office behind the counter, and no one in the lobby would see them if he went in there.
Dom said, “Okay, good. Listen, it’s clear down these stairs out the front door. Does anybody have a cell phone?”
One of the women said, “Our phones are at the counter.”
Dom was worried about the women running out onto East Walton with a hundred police with rifles pointing at the door, but he didn’t have time to call ahead for them to warn Jeffcoat they were coming out. He said, “Go into the kitchen of the bar, through the liquor closet, and down the stairs. The long dark hallway leads next door and you’ll be safe over there.” He pulled a flashlight out of his backpack and handed it to her.
“Are you… are you sure?”
Dom nodded, squeezed Adara on the shoulder, and said, “I need to see what’s going on in the lobby. I want you right here doing what you’re doing, covering this stairwell.”
She nodded. “Be careful.”
Dom slipped into the office, staying low with his pistol in front of him. The door to the lobby was propped open, so he went wide of it and looked out into the large space.
He saw a few bodies on the floor, but looking across into the Palm Court, he could see two men holding Uzis on a group of guests cowering there. Another man was moving several roll-aboard suitcases around the group, and then playing wire out from a backpack. Men and women, mostly over the age of fifty, were seated in chairs and on the floor, and Dom saw panic in many faces, even across the length of the lobby, as the terrorist carefully attached wiring to something inside one of the cases.
Dom was certain the terrorists were prepping a massive bomb, big enough to collapse the higher floors of the building and kill virtually everyone inside.
Looking around, he was surprised he didn’t see anyone else in the lobby. Even the stairs down to the main level and the exit appeared to be unprotected by al-Matari’s cell members.
Dom took pictures with his camera, zooming in on the Palm Court and what he assumed to be three cases full of explosives, and then he backed into the office. Quickly he texted them to Jeffcoat, then he called him.
Jeffcoat answered, “You are in the fucking lobby?”
Dom whispered, “Listen to me carefully. I count only three tangos down here, covering two dozen hostages. They are rigging a massive daisy-chain explosive of some kind. In a couple of minutes this whole rig could go up, or they could set it on a dead man’s switch and we won’t be able to save these people. SWAT needs to breach now. I can engage them from here till they come through the front. It’s a straight shot to the left for them after that. All the lobby threats are in one place, but you have to act right now.”
“We can’t! We are missing SWAT officers up on the fifth floor. Al-Matari and Hembrick have them.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because he called and told us! We sent eighteen men up there. Only five retreated down with some FBI agents, and their body cams show at least seven dead in the hallways. There’s some dead and missing FBI up there as well.”
Dom thought it over quickly. “Okay. Here’s what you’ll have to do. I’ve got access to employee stairs. I’ll go to the fifth floor with my colleague, take down al-Matari and Hembrick, and whoever the hell else is there, and you guys get to the lobby and end the threat here.”
“I don’t have the power to make that happen, Caruso.”
Dom thought for a moment. “Well, notify Russell of my plan. I’m about to start shooting bad guys on the fifth floor. Either SWAT comes through the front and stops these three tangos from setting off that bomb or they don’t.”
“No!” Jeffcoat shouted. “You will stand down and get the fuck out—”
“Three minutes and the shooting starts.”
“Wait!”
Caruso hung up the phone. He didn’t have a lot of love for his plan, but he saw the consequences of inaction in the next couple of minutes to be even more dangerous than what he and Adara were about to attempt.
64
Back in the stairwell Dom was glad to see that the three women from the counter had left. He began moving up the stairs, covering high, and Adara moved up beside him. He whispered into her ear as he ascended.
“We have less than three minutes to engage on the fifth floor. Unknown number of shooters. They think al-Matari is there with Hembrick, along with hostages.”
Adara nodded and the two of them increased their rate of climb.
On the door out to the fifth floor they paused. Dom brought a hand up and with his fingers he reminded Adara the room number was five-one-four. They opened the door and spun out into the hall, Dom to the left and Adara to the right. In front of them they saw the devastation of the suicide bombing, as well as the explosion that took place at the far end of the hall at the stairwell there. Olive-clad men with black body armor lay all over the place, blood and body parts were strewn on the blue and gold carpet, and the walls were ripped, burned, and bloody.
There were dead men and women in plainclothes as well, and Dom suspected some, perhaps all, were FBI.
But there was no one moving in sight.
Dom led the way to room 514, passing bodies along the way. Each body he saw had a gunshot wound to the head, indicating someone had made sure there were no wounded left out here in the hall.
He saw the door to 514 was propped open before he got there. Adara was just feet behind him, and she noticed 515 also had its door open.
Dom arrived first, spun right in front of the door, and saw a single black man on his knees behind the bed, a submachine gun in his hand. He’d obviously not heard anyone coming up the hallway, and he snapped his gun up in surprise at the movement.
Adara spun left, and she saw two men there, both armed and barricaded behind a desk and a bed, on opposite sides of the room. To their right on the floor were several SWAT officers facedown, with their hands cuffed behind their backs.
The two Campus operators engaged their targets simultaneously.
Dom shot David Hembrick through the forehead before the terrorist managed to fire a single round. He then spun to help Adara when he heard her shooting, and he dropped to his knees and leaned right to try to get a line of sight around her.
Adara fired over and over again, hitting the man behind the desk in the shoulder and hip. He dropped his weapon and fell, so she spun to the second shooter, crouched behind the bed.
Before she could fire she lurched back and fell, tumbling backward over Dom and down to the carpet.