In my ear, I heard Ramp's voice. "That one was a warning from an empty office. Thirty more seconds. The next one's going to take some people with it. Tell him."
I did.
Rivera yelled commands into the radio. After twenty-two more seconds leaked away, the justices began to exit the building. One by one they walked to the center of the plaza. Their robes swayed gently in the morning breeze. I couldn't see their faces but I could feel their terror, even from this distance.
Ramp said, "The one in back is not a justice. The tall guy. If he doesn't leave that group in five seconds, you assholes will have some blood on your hands. Tell him that. Do it."
I repeated Ramp's message word for word.
Rivera cursed and spoke into his microphone.
A heartbeat later, one tall, robed figure walked backward away from the clustered judges.
"Tell the cop not to screw with me again. I'm not in the mood."
I held the phone a few inches from my mouth and told Rivera what Ramp had just said.
"Now I want the justices to back up against the wall of the History Museum and get on their knees."
Rivera used a megaphone. The justices moved back slowly, reluctantly. The building on the other side of the plaza was the Colorado History Museum. Its wall rose from the stone at an unconventional forty-five-degree angle.
"Now, have the people who are still inside the court building begin a single file evacuation. They should exit to Lincoln, then south. No running. No hands in the air. Just have them walk out. The justices stay put."
Rivera eagerly gave those commands.
Sam had the binoculars to his eyes. He said, "He's been moving that rack of tanks on the back of the truck. He's doing it real slowly, but the bottoms of the tanks are pointing directly at the plaza now. The base of the rack is solid metal, not an open grid. That's not usual, is it? What the hell's he doing?"
I said, "The hostages are coming out, Sam."
One by one, stepping quickly, seemingly fighting an urge to run, a steady stream of men and women began walking from the entrance of the building, across the plaza, down to the sidewalk, and then south on Lincoln.
Rivera touched me on the arm. "Cover the microphone on that cell phone."
I did.
He spoke into his radio. "Give me a status report from the sharpshooters. We're taking him out as soon as anyone is ready. On my order."
CHAPTER 59
Without warning, Ramp jumped off the back of the truck and hopped into the cab with Lucy. Within seconds, the driver's-side window was blocked with a sheet of cardboard.
Rivera's order to the sharpshooters had been seconds too late.
I thought he looked like a kid who'd missed Christmas and was trying to figure out how to lure the fat man back down the chimney.
"Shit. Now what?" he asked.
Sam pointed at the plaza. "The justices are moving away. Look."
They were. The whole pack of them was squatting in their robes and edging down the angled wall away from Ramp toward Lincoln Street. From this distance, they looked like a pack of nuns trying to walk away on their knees.
Ramp noticed, too. He barked at me, "Tell them to stop moving. Tell the cop, now!"
I said, "Rivera? He wants the justices to stop moving."
Rivera looked to make sure I'd covered the microphone with my finger. "Screw him. They're almost away."
As though he'd read Rivera's lips, Ramp reacted. An audible little boom sounded and a tiny puff of smoke emerged from the steel rack on the back of the truck.
Sam, the binoculars still at his eyes, said, "Oh shit."
One of the tall green tanks began spewing its pressurized contents with an immense hiss and roar. The volume of the noise of the escaping gas was incredible.
As they heard the blast and the subsequent roar, the justices stopped their progression from the plaza and dropped back down to the ground.
Blunt end first, a green tank lifted from the steel rack on the back of the truck like a missile leaving its launcher.
I held my breath.
Another small explosion followed, and then came the roar of additional escaping gases. A second tank immediately lifted from the rack.
Rivera screamed into a megaphone, urging the hostages to run. I'm sure they couldn't hear him. I was five feet from him and I could barely discern his words above the hiss of the ruptured tanks.
Although the first of the tanks launched into the air like a slow-motion rocket, it returned to the ground no more than thirty feet from the truck. It bounced off the stone plaza like a smooth rock on a glass lake, hopping across the wide expanse with a speed and ferocity that should have belonged only to objects launched by the Marines. A stone bench slightly changed the tank's trajectory: It skidded up the angled wall about twenty feet from the huddled Supreme Court justices before it vanished over the top of the roof.
The second tank stayed airborne at least twice as far as the first one had before crashing blunt-end-first into the plaza. From there it tumbled once end over end like a child's jack, finally bouncing high and disappearing into the second floor of the building, demolishing all the windows in its path. The destruction was only fifteen feet above the huddled hostages.
As the hissing died away, I could hear screams. I could also hear Rivera yelling for someone to take Ramp out.
A third puff of smoke emerged from the back of the truck and a third tank launched into the air with an enormous swoosh. A fourth tank followed two or three seconds later.
My eyes followed the two new hurtling tanks until Sam-Rivera's binoculars still glued to his eyes-screamed into my ear, "He just busted out the back window of the truck. Watch him!"
Ramp dove athletically through the empty space where the window had been and immediately disappeared into the void between the big equipment box and the steel rack full of tanks.
I didn't hear any shots from sharpshooters' rifles.
I looked over in time to see one of the newly fired tanks skittering through the justices like a bowling ball through a fresh stand of pins. Black-robed bodies went flying into the air.
I didn't know where the other tank had gone.
The binoculars still at his eyes, Sam yelled, "He's turning the rack this way. Everybody run!"
The steel rack was now pointing right at us, the blunt end of the remaining tanks shining brightly like polished coins.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Ramp launched three tanks in rapid succession. Cops, firefighters, and paramedics scattered like ants. I was pinned by two Denver Police patrol cars. My only route to safety was following Sam across the road toward the front end of the parked flatbed truck. Ramp couldn't rotate the rack that far-if he did, the cab would interfere with the launch of any more tanks.
I could feel the impact of one of the newly launched tanks as it crashed into a patrol car behind me. The concussion was so intense that I almost fell to the asphalt as I sprinted after Sam.
The patrol car burst into flames. A second or two later the whole thing ignited like a bomb as the fire reached the fuel in the gas tank.
Sam and I were enveloped in heat; the force of the explosion threw us to the ground. We crawled the rest of the way across the street and crouched out of sight in front of Ramp's truck. I looked back to discover that the other two tanks had made it all the way across Broadway and impaled themselves in the façade of the Philip Johnson-designed Denver Public Library.
I tried to find Rivera in the chaos. I couldn't spot him.
Sam said, "He only has two tanks left."
A new roar filled the air and another rocket left the launcher. Sam held up his index finger and mouthed, "One."
CHAPTER 60
My instinct was to turn my head to follow the trajectory of the missile as it lifted from the back of the truck. But Sam held my face firmly with both his hands, forcing me to stare into his eyes. As the roar of the newly launched tank diminished, he said, "I'm going to shoot him, then I'm going to compress the switch on his foot. You're going to press the button on his hand every five seconds until the bomb squad tells you to stop. You are not going to hold it down. Every five seconds. You got it?"