Something stung Jake Grafton’s upper left arm and he jerked. He looked. A hole. There was a hole in his coat! What …
He heard the report, a sharp crack.
“Take cover!” he screamed. “Take cover!” He pushed Rita down and fell on the pavement beside her. “Fire coming in!”
Where? He looked around. Against the skyline he could just see the hulking shape of RFK Stadium. Jake scrambled to his feet and began to run. A flash from the stadium high on the structure. Something buzzed by his ear.
Luckily he had hung onto his rifle. It held a full magazine.
As he ran through the gate and turned right for the stadium Jake shrugged off his coat and let it fall. Out of the circle of light and into the darkness, running hard, his heart coming up to speed too quickly and his breath not quickly enough, running …
A goddamn sniper! Some nut or dope addict? Or a diversion to pull the troops out of the armory?
Someone was following him, running along behind. He didn’t look back.
The stadium was surrounded by a huge chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. Everything in this goddamn city had a fence around it! He made for an arch in the structure that he thought should be a gate. The fence would have a gate outside that. It did.
It was padlocked. He shot the lock. Then jerked it. No. This time he put the muzzle right up against one of the links in the chain and pulled the trigger. Sparks flew and slivers of metal sprayed him, but the chain fell away.
He tugged at the gate. Rita pounded up. She was carrying a rifle. She helped him pull the gate open.
“Get men to surround this stadium outside the fence. Tell them to shoot anybody coming out unless it’s me.”
“You think he’s still in there?”
“I dunno. Keep moving. Don’t be a stationary target.” He went through the gate and ran for the arch.
Ramps led away to the right and left. Jake turned left and trotted upward.
On the second level he stopped to catch his breath and listen. The place was dark as a tomb.
Madness. This was madness.
Rita met a squad of soldiers running toward the stadium with their weapons at high port. “Surround it. Stay outside the fence. Captain Grafton’s in there. Anybody else comes out, shoot them.”
“No warning shots?”
“No. Shoot first. And take cover. This guy is a sniper. Try to get behind something in the darkness and lay very still.” She pointed to the sergeant. “Go back to the armory and ask the colonel for a couple dozen more men. Spread them around.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m going in there too.” And with that she slipped through the gate in the fence and ran for the ramp.
Jake walked now, slowly and carefully with the rifle held in both hands and his finger on the safety. His eyes had adjusted all they were going to. He had had trouble the last few years with his night vision, but giving up smoking had helped a lot. His night vision was almost normal now. And he had just smoked a cigarette!
The place was so quiet. Black slabs of concrete, long corridors, huge doors that led out to the seats.
On the third level he turned and went out to the seats, where he could survey the interior of the stadium. There was a faint glow from the clouds, just enough to see the form of the place but not enough to see anyone on the other side of the playing field, if there were anyone there to see.
He hunkered down partially shielded behind a row of seats and scanned carefully, examining the geometric pattern of seats and aisles. After a minute he shifted position and began scanning in the other direction.
Nothing.
He was going to have to come up with a system. Something scientific. A plan.
Okay. He would go up to the top-level concourse and work his way completely around the stadium, occasionally taking the time to survey the seats. Then he would come down a level and repeat the procedure, and so on.
If the guy is in here …
But he probably isn’t. Why would he stay?
Jake got up, staying low, and moved along the row. He would go out a different place than where he came in. No use being stupid about this.
He heard the bullet smack the seat near him and the booming echo of the report immediately thereafter. He fell flat and crawled, the rifle clunking against the seats.
Well, one thing’s clear at least. He’s still here.
Colonel Orrin Jonat sent a dozen more troopers to the stadium. With that dozen gone and the casualties and people to transport the wounded to the hospital and stack the dead, he was down to less than fifty men to guard almost four hundred and run the war.
First he took the time to arrange four teams of two men each around the armory. Not enough men, it was true, but all he could spare. It had also occurred to him that the sniper from the stadium might be a diversion. Still he had to balance that possibility against the other requirements. He was going to have to bring in a couple of companies from the streets. He didn’t have enough men to get new radios in service and keep track of units on the streets.
Were these terrorists the last of them? he asked himself. If only he knew the answer to that!
The army lieutenant leading the squad across the vast, empty parking lots toward the stadium heard the shot from inside. When he got to the gate the sergeant there quickly briefed him.
“Maybe we should go in, sir?” the sergeant suggested.
“The navy people told us to stay out, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“So we got two good guys and at least one bad guy in there in the dark. If we send more people in, we’ll end up shooting the wrong folks. It’s inevitable. We just did that over at the armory. Not again. Deploy the men around the stadium. Anybody tries to sneak out, drill ’em dead.”
Henry Charon was thoroughly enjoying himself. Standing at the mouth of one of the tunnels that led out from the concourse, he looked through the scope on the rifle. He could just make out the man on the other side of the stadium scuttling up the stairs toward the tunnel exit. This is a damn good scope, he told himself. It gathers the ambient light, allowing you to see better at night with the scope than you can with the naked eye.
Charon moved the crosshairs slightly to one side of the moving man and squeezed the trigger. The rifle set back against his shoulder with a nice firm kick as the roar filled the stadium.
He worked the bolt, then trotted back into the tunnel. He turned left at the concourse and jogged along.
He felt good. His side was hurting but not terribly so and he had adequate range of motion. He was fit. He could trot ten miles without breaking a sweat.
Henry Charon wondered if the other man was having as much fun as he was.
“Colonel, there’s a bunch of people coming down the street.”
Orrin Jonat looked at the soldier disbelievingly. “What?”
“A bunch of people. Not armed apparently. They’re just walking this way.”
“How many is a bunch?”
“Hundreds. We can’t tell.”
Colonel Jonat followed the soldier outside. He walked to the gate and looked down the street. Good lord, the street was filled with people.
He stepped back through the gate and got his people in. Then he had it closed. It was just a chain-link fence about six feet high. He asked the sergeant to install the padlock.
“I don’t know where the lock is, sir.”
“Go find it,” Colonel Jonat said. “Or get one of those locks we’ve been using for the prisoners. Hurry.”
He stood there waiting. The head of the column turned and a dozen people came toward the gate shoulder to shoulder.
“Open up.”
The crowd was mostly black. Some white people, but predominantly black men and women. They ranged from young to fairly elderly. Some of the people were supporting others. There was even a man in a wheelchair. The man facing Colonel Jonat was about forty. He spoke. “Open up.”