Pete had his hand on the wheelchair's control. He shoved it forward, and there was nobody to stop him now since Father Steve had let go of the chair and stumbled back.
The terrorists were still pouring in as Pete rolled toward them. Everybody was shooting and yelling and screaming. The back room had become a madhouse.
Pete remembered what it was like on Omaha Beach. They'd been pinned down by the Germans, and if they had stayed there they would have been chopped to pieces even worse than they already were. So Pete, like the other officers and non-coms, had passed the wordâ“Move or die!”âand then led by example.
That's what he did now, somehow summoning up the breath to yell, “Follow . . . me!”
And by God, they did. Every open shot he got, he took it. Head shots, because the .22 wouldn't do any good otherwise. One of the terrorists fell, then another. Pete rocked back in the chair as something slammed into his chest, but his left hand, mostly useless but now important again, was locked around the knob and had it pushed forward, so the chair kept moving.
The others swept past him, the punk kid, the black security guard, that skinny blond Air Force woman, the cop, the custodian, even the teenage girl who looked like she ought to be a cheerleader, not a fighter. They kept going, pushing the terrorists out of the doorway and back into the front part of the store.
Pete's chair didn't stop until the wheels hit the front wall, and even then the motor whined and hummed as it kept trying to drive the chair forward. Pete's hand hadn't budged, even though his head had tipped forward and the front of his shirt was soaked with blood.
When they found him there like that later, the side of his face that didn't droop from the stroke wore a big smile.
A smile of triumph.
* * *
Habib ran around, not knowing what to do. What was happening? How had things gone so wrong so quickly? He had had everything under control. Allah was on his side. The Americans weren't supposed to be fighting back like this. They were godless infidels, craven cowards, helpless before the irresistible tide of holy jihad.
If he could find the man who had called him on the phone and kill him, the resistance would collapse. That man was the leader, the one driving the other infidels to defy Allah's will. He had to die.
And as soon as he did, Habib would give the order and his men would ascend to heaven on glorious balls of fire, lifted on high to the martyrdom that awaited them.
The explosion from the play area, where a group of the hostages had been held . . . that was what started this catastrophe, Habib thought.
The American he wanted to kill had to be somewhere around there.
Clutching his Steyr, Habib started in that direction as shooting began to erupt all over the mall.
* * *
Tobey had no way of knowing it at the moment, but his hope had turned out to be right. Hearing the explosion and the sudden outburst of shooting, the other hostages had assumed that the mall was under attack by the authorities from outside, and they were seizing this chance to rise up against their captors. For more than two hours, fear had kept many of the prisoners paralyzed, but as if they realized this was their last chance, they threw off those shackles and acted to save themselves.
Some died. Many, in fact, were cut down by desperate terrorists wielding machine pistols.
But this time there was no surrender. This time the former hostages just kept coming, overrunning those who would have destroyed them and ripping those evil men to pieces. It was the epic struggle between light and dark, civilization and barbarism, that had gone on for centuries, and though barbarism might well be the ultimate fate of mankind, on this day that would not be the case.
On this day, evil would not win.
* * *
Jamie, Irina, Jake, Calvin, Aaron, and Kaitlyn were among the first of the store's former defenders to battle their way out and go on the offensive against the terrorists who were starting to realize that things were not going their way after all. The defenders drove the enemy back toward the center of the mall.
An explosion slammed several of the Americans to the floor. Jamie was one of them. As she sat up, shaking her head to try to dispel the ringing in her ears, Aaron knelt beside her and shouted, “Some of them are wearing suicide belts! We'd better not get too close!”
“Damn it!” Jamie said. “Somebody should've told me that before now.” She raised her voice to shout orders. It sounded odd to her, as had Aaron's voice, but at least she could understand the words. “Don't crowd them too close! Riflemen! Aim for their midsections! We'll blow them to smithereens with their own bombs!”
More blasts shook the mall as shots aimed with deadly accuracy found the bombs and detonated them. Even the bullets that didn't set off any explosives punched deep into terrorist guts and dropped them.
The counterattack forged on.
* * *
“Would you look at that,” Walt Graham said in an almost awed voice as he watched thousands of people flood out of the mall. “I'd say our hostage crisis is over.”
“Yes, but we need to round up as many of them as we can,” Helen Shaw said, “in order to make sure some of the terrorists aren't trying to slip out with them.”
Graham looked at her, smiled, nodded, and said, “Agent Shaw, I think you're destined for a long, successful career in the Bureau.”
* * *
Charles Lockhart heard footsteps pounding up behind him. He spun around and spotted one of the terrorists running toward him. The man appeared to be fleeing from something.
It quickly became apparent what he was afraid of, as several hundred former hostages boiled around a corner after him.
Lockhart lifted the bow and arrow and cried, “Halt!”
The terrorist skidded to a stop and jerked up his machine pistol just as Lockhart loosed the arrow. The point slammed into the man's thigh and buried itself deep in the muscle, but that didn't stop his finger from pulling the trigger and sending a burst of slugs into Lockhart's chest. The bullets' impact drove him back against the wall. He hung there for a moment before he began sliding slowly to the floor.
His vision seemed to be dimming as a hot flood coursed through him, but he could still see well enough to watch as the wounded terrorist tried to limp away from the mob, only to have it catch up to him and rip and trample him into something that didn't even look human anymore.
Charles Lockhart smiled faintly. He didn't want to die, but there didn't seem to be anything he could do about it. At least he had finally done something in his life worth remembering. He would go down in history as one of the heroes of the Battle of the American Way Mall. A minor footnote, perhaps, but still there.
“The green light,” he breathed. Gatsby had seen it, and now so did he.
* * *
Tobey, Herb Dupont, and the rest of the makeshift squad had cut down several more terrorists before automatic weapons fire from their right flank ripped through them, knocking several of the Americans off their feet. Tobey twisted toward the new threat, but before he could fire, a bullet struck the Steyr and knocked it out of his hands. Tobey wasn't hit, but the impact numbed both hands to the elbows.
An instant later, a slug clipped his left thigh and knocked that leg out from under him. One of the 1911 .45s fell from his waistband and skidded across the mall floor.
Tobey glanced over, saw that Dupont was dead, the front of his clothes covered in blood from the gaping wound in his throat. Another man was down and appeared to be dead, too, and the others had their hands full exchanging shots with a trio of terrorists that had closed in from the left.
The man on the right, the one who had ambushed them from inside a store they were passing, came toward Tobey with his machine pistol thrust out in front of him, ready to finish Tobey off. Tobey struggled to reach for one of his other guns, but his arm muscles refused to work.
The .45's boom took both of them by surprise, but the terrorist was even more shocked as the high-powered round smashed into his chest and drove him back a couple of steps. His eyes rolled up in their sockets and he fell to his knees, only to pitch forward a second later in a limp sprawl.
Tobey pushed himself up on an elbow and looked around to see who had saved him.
“Ashley!” he cried.
She stood there, tall, straight, and beautiful despite the smudges on her face and the trickle of blood from a scratch on her forehead. She gripped the Colt in both hands. Tobey knew she had picked it up after it slid away from him. Call it a miracle, call it fate, call it whatever suited whatever you believed, but they had found each other again just in time for her to save his life.
She had said that she couldn't pull the trigger like that, but he had known all along that she could if it meant saving innocent lives.
Feeling was starting to flow back into his numbed arms. He was able to push himself to his feet and lift those arms as Ashley lowered the gun and rushed into his embrace. He caught her tightly against him and murmured, “Ash, Ash,” as he raised a hand to stroke her blond hair.
Another shot blasted, and Ashley surged against him as the bullet drove into her body. Tobey let out an inarticulate cry of denial. Ashley's head jerked back, her eyes widening in the realization that she'd been shot.
“Tobey . . .” she whispered. “I love . . .”
Her head tipped back even more now, loose now in either unconsciousness or death.
Tobey didn't have time to find out which as more shots roared and a bullet screamed past his ear. He went to the floor, taking Ashley's limp form with him. He lunged behind one of the seats next to the play area and plucked the .45 from her unresisting fingers.
Then he rolled out into the open, winding up on his belly with the Colt grasped in both hands in front of him. He saw the man who had shot Ashley standing about fifteen yards away, and for a frozen second in time, once again he was back in Iraq, staring into a young face . . .
Only this time that face didn't look innocent and scared. The man's features were twisted with hate, almost unrecognizable.
But Tobey knew him, and some gut instinct made him yell, “Habib!”
The look of shock on the man's face as he jerked back a little told Tobey he was right. Somehow, the kid whose life he had spared all those months ago had made it to the United States. Not in search of a new and better life, but to carry poisonous hatred inside him, and let that evil loose on thousands of innocent people.
Habib hesitated. Tobey didn't know if the kid remembered him or not, but it didn't matter. His finger didn't tighten on the trigger in time, and Tobey shot.
The bullet ripped through Habib's left shoulder and knocked him back. He stumbled, and then Tobey was on him, batting the gun aside, ramming into him and knocking him down. Tobey landed on top of him and closed both hands around Habib's throat.
Shooting was too good for a snake like this. Tobey was going to choke the life out of him.
Habib writhed feverishly and tore at Tobey's arms and hands, but he couldn't rip them loose. He reached down toward his midsection. Tobey let go of Habib's throat with his left hand and caught hold of his wrist before it could find the wire to jerk loose on the suicide belt he wore.
Tobey's big right hand was still clamped around Habib's throat. He shook his head and said, “You're not going to blow yourself up, you bastard. I'm going to do what I should have done before. I'm going to finish you off myself.”
He held Habib's hand away from the bomb and kept choking as the terrorist's struggles grew more and more feeble.
“No virgins where you're going, you son of a bitch. Just the devil, waiting to welcome you home.”
Habib spasmed one final time, and then his wide, staring eyes began to turn glassy with death.
Tobey let go of him then and tried to stand up. His wounded leg wouldn't hold his weight. Sprawled on his stomach, he looked toward where Ashley lay.
He started to crawl toward her. Around him, and elsewhere in the mall, the shooting began to fade away. Men shouted. American voices. Cops or soldiers or both, rushing in to mop up the rest of the terrorists. Tobey hoped the killing would soon be over, but he was done, out of this fight.
Instead he whispered, “Ashley,” and felt the ring box pressing into his body as he pulled himself closer and closer to her still form.
Chapter 37
Later that day . . .
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“C
alvin!”
The young security guard was sitting in the back door of an ambulance, a blanket around his shoulders, a foam cup of coffee in his hand, when he heard his mother call his name. There was just enough time to set the coffee aside before she was there, throwing her arms around him and hugging him.
“I'm all right, Mom, I'm all right,” he told her as he patted her awkwardly on the back. “Everything's gonna be fine now.”
Then he realized she was alone, and a chill went through him. He pulled back a little so he could rest his hands on her shoulders.
“Mom? Where's Dad?”
“He . . . he had a heart attack,” she said between gulping, sobbing breaths. “But he's going to be okay. The doctors said so, and he was awake enough for me to tell him that I was coming to get you.”
Calvin's heart pounded hard in his chest, even harder than it had during the fighting in the mall. He said, “Are you sure he's going to be all right?”
“I'm sure. He's just going to have to take it easy for a while.”
“That's all right,” Calvin said. “I'll take care of us. Don't you worry.” From the corner of his eye, he saw that another blanket-draped person had come to stand beside them. Calvin said, “Mom, I want you to meet somebody. This is Irina . . .”
* * *
Jake had gotten out of there as fast as he could. They hadn't wanted to let him go so soon, but that big FBI guy, Walt Graham, had interceded on his behalf. Jake had promised to talk to the FBI, Homeland Security, and whoever else wanted to talk to him, but later.
After he'd seen Adele and made sure she was all right.
He hoped she hadn't been watching the news all day and worrying about him. The fact that he hadn't returned would be enough to scare her, and if she knew what had been going on at the mall, he was sure she'd be terrified.
Now, as he let himself in, the house was quiet and dark. He stepped inside, spotted the still form in the chair, and all the breath went out of him. He lifted a hand and said, “Adele . . . ”, then went toward her, stumbling, falling to his knees in front of the chair, leaning forward and resting his head against her knees, grown thin and bony as the disease stole the life from her.
“Adele,” he said again.
Then her hand moved, touched his hair, and she said, “Jake? What are you doing down there? Oh, my, I've been napping for a long time. Jake? Did you get my curtains?”
* * *
Aaron, Jennie, and Holly walked across the parking lot toward Aaron's car. Holly said, “Looks like I won't have a job to go back to for a while. They say they're going to have the mall open again before Christmas, but I don't see how. All those explosions. . . there was just too much damage. But they've promised to hire everybody back, not just in the seasonal stores if they're gone, but in the regular stores, too.”
“You think they might have a job for me somewhere?” Aaron asked.
Jennie looked at him and said, “You? You're going to work in the mall?”
“Ehhh . . . I'm thinking honest employment might be good for a change.”
During the counterattack in the sporting goods store, Aaron had seen how that crazy old man charged the terrorists in his wheelchair like he was Teddy freakin' Roosevelt at San Juan Hill or something. It had been the most . . . what was the word? Valiant? Yeah, it was the most valiant thing he had ever seen. And to think he'd been planning on robbing that old geezer.
Then he wondered how he had come up with that thought about Teddy Roosevelt. It wasn't like he'd ever paid much attention in history class or anything. Funny the things that stuck in a guy's head.
“I don't think you'll make much money working at the mall,” Jennie said.
“Maybe not, but if I'm careful and do a good job, maybe it'll be enough to help you pay for college.” Aaron shrugged. “Hey, it's a start, anyway.”
Holly put a hand on his shoulder, bumped her hip against his as they walked, and said, “Maybe we can work in the same place.”
“I'd like that,” Aaron said.
* * *
Tobey was sitting in the back door of an ambulance, too, at the edge of the area in the parking lot that had been cleared for triage. His wounds had been cleaned and bandaged, and although none of them seemed serious, he knew the doctors would insist on keeping him overnight in the hospital just to be sure.
He knew that Charles Lockhart and Herb Dupont and Pete McCracken were all dead. He had watched while Kaitlyn Hamilton reunited with her father and brothers and delivered the news among hugs and tears that her mother had been killed. He had witnessed the much happier reunion between Jamie Vasquez and her husband and kids.
All around the mall it continued. The tears of grief and shock, the tears of joy and relief. The miracle of life and the senselessness of death. A vicious wound had been struck today in the soul of America.
But not a fatal one. America would recover . . . this time.
If everyone soon forgot, though . . . if the politicians postured and the pundits pontificated and the apologists deflected the blame onto anyone and anything else instead of directing it at those who had truly caused this tragedy . . . then who could say? More than three thousand innocent Americans had died on September 11, 2001, and it hadn't taken much time at all before things had gone back to normal. About a third that many had been killed today. Tobey gave it a couple of weeks, and then everybody would move on to something else. Christmas was coming, after all.
He sighed and pushed himself to his feet.
One of the paramedics paused in his busy round of activities to say, “We'll be leaving for the hospital soon, sir.”
“That's fine,” Tobey said. “I'll be in here.”
He stepped up into the ambulance and moved over to the gurney fastened into place on one side. Ashley lay there, her face pale, her eyes closed, but when he slipped his left hand into her right one where it lay on the sheet covering her, she opened her eyes and tightened her fingers on his with surprising, reassuring strength.
“Hi,” she whispered.
“I've got something for you,” Tobey said as he reached into his pocket with his other hand and closed his fingers around the ring box. “I was going to give it to you on Christmas Eve, but I don't think I'll wait.”
Somebody outside closed the ambulance doors, and a moment later it pulled away, detaching itself from the sea of flashing lights around the mall. A few tendrils of smoke still rose here and there from the sprawling building, but they were soon lost in the late November sky.