Black Friday (20 page)

“Listen to me,” she said. “This is Yolanda Crimmens. I'm the assistant director of the Department of Homeland Security, and I'm willing to listen to your demands.”

“I don't deal with women,” Habib said coldly. “Give the phone back to the FBI man.”

“Now, listen—”

Habib lifted the Steyr, and the Americans started screaming again. That was enough. He didn't even have to press the trigger.

“Wait, wait!” the woman cried. “Don't—”

A man's voice abruptly replaced hers, but it didn't belong to the FBI man. It was deep and resonant and sounded like a black, Habib realized.

“Take it easy,” the man said. “My name's Walt Graham. I'm with the FBI. Let's see if we can figure out a way to end this without any more bloodshed.”

There wasn't a way to end it without bloodshed. There never had been. Blood and death were vital components in what was happening here today.

But the Americans didn't have to know that yet. Let them hope, so they would suffer all the more when that hope was dashed.

In the meantime, Habib could accomplish some good for the holy cause of jihad. He said, “Listen carefully, American. These are our demands . . .”

Chapter 31

H
erb Dupont led Tobey and the other men behind several more businesses, then the service corridor made another ninety-degree turn. When they came to the next door, Dupont stopped and said quietly, “This should open into the department store on this side of the mall. I can't be sure, though. I've never been back here in this part. I'm just going by what I can figure out from where we should be.”

“I understand,” Tobey said. “You've done great getting us this far. I guess I need to just have a look.”

He motioned for the other men to remain silent, then held the Steyr in his right hand while he carefully used his left to depress the latching bar on the door. When he felt the latch disengage, he pushed gently. So far, nothing had made enough noise to draw any attention—he hoped.

The door swung outward. Evidently its hinges were well oiled, because they didn't make any sound, either. Tobey was thankful for that. He eased the door open a couple of inches and peered through the narrow gap.

The first thing he saw made him stiffen with shock and anger. A woman and two children under the age of ten lay on the floor not far away, their bodies covered with drying bloodstains where bullets had ripped through them, killing them. That wanton slaughter made fury well up inside Tobey. He controlled it and shifted slightly so he could look elsewhere.

He saw other bodies, but no one who was alive. He didn't hear anyone moving around or talking, either. The grim hush of death hung over the store.

He turned his head and said over his shoulder to Dupont, “I'm going out to have a look around.”

“Be careful.” The man swallowed. “Not to be a pessimist, but . . . what do we do if you don't come back?”

“That's up to you,” Tobey said. “You can carry on with what we planned, or you can go back to the store and defend it with the others.”

“And hope that we'll be rescued before those bastards kill everybody?”

Tobey shrugged.

“Life's a crapshoot, Herb,” he said. “It always has been, and it always will be.”

“Yeah, I guess. Just take care of yourself, that way I don't have to make the decision.”

Tobey gave the man a curt nod, then opened the door wider and stepped out into the department store with the machine pistol gripped in both hands now.

Everywhere he looked, corpses littered the floor. Men, women, and children, gunned down indiscriminately, their bodies twisted in grotesque attitudes of death. Tobey felt both anger and sickness and couldn't tell which one was stronger. Both fueled his determination to find some way to end this before any more innocent people died.

In all likelihood, that wasn't going to be possible. More killing lay ahead. More blood would be spilled. But Tobey would do everything in his power to see to it that it was the terrorists who bled and died.

He stayed low, moving in a crouch through the aisles of merchandise so he wouldn't be spotted as easily if any of the terrorists walked past in the mall and looked in through the store's broad entrance. The leaders of this atrocity probably had patrols out, sweeping through the mall on the lookout for anyone who was hiding.

He didn't hear any shots at the moment, which was good. That meant they weren't attacking the sporting goods store right now.

Or else they had already overwhelmed the defenders and captured the place, but Tobey didn't want to think about that.

He didn't look too closely at the bodies when he stepped over them, or else rage would have blinded him and obscured his other senses. He needed to be as alert as possible right now. He worked his way toward the entrance into the mall, and after a few minutes, he was close enough to see that two armed men stood just outside the store, evidently on guard.

Tobey didn't spot anyone else alive, although scores of murdered shoppers were sprawled on the floor of the mall itself. Clearly, the terrorists had just gone through the place on a killing spree, mowing down anyone who had the bad luck to be in front of their guns.

The death toll, Tobey thought, might stand at upward of a thousand already. That was almost inconceivable. He had a hard time wrapping his mind around such evil.

The two terrorists didn't seem to be paying much attention. The killing was over for the moment, so they were bored, Tobey supposed.

Close by, a rack of blouses had been overturned. From the looks of things, the dead woman who lay next to it must have grabbed the rack as she was falling after being shot. Tobey bent, reached down, and picked up a plastic hanger that had slipped out of one of the blouses.

He straightened partially and whipped out his arm, flinging the hanger across the store. It spun through the air for a long way, propelled by the powerful throw, and finally came down with a clatter.

The two guards responded instantly, stiffening to attention and swinging their machine pistols in the direction of the sound.

They couldn't see anything, of course, since nothing was moving in that part of the store. Tobey stood stock-still, peering through a gap between garment racks at the terrorists as they talked urgently and quietly to each other. Tobey didn't have to be able to hear them to know that they were trying to figure out what they should do.

Finally, one of them stepped into the store and started reluctantly toward the area where the hanger had landed. Tobey could tell he was nervous by the way he hunched forward a little and thrust the Steyr out in front of him. He swung the gun from side to side as his head swiveled back and forth.

That terrorist didn't know it, but he was in no danger at the moment . . . because Tobey had started creeping up on the other one. The second man was focused on watching his comrade search for the source of the racket, and he never even glanced in Tobey's direction.

Tobey stopped just inside the store entrance. The second terrorist was about fifteen feet away from him, just outside the opening between store and mall. Tobey could have killed him easily with a burst from the machine pistol, but he didn't want the attention that was bound to attract. Instead he waited, gambling that his quarry's nerves would get to him.

Sure enough, after a few more moments, the man stepped into the store, still with his back to Tobey, and called out to his companion in a foreign language. Tobey understood just enough of it to know he was asking his friend if he saw anything over there on the other side of the store.

The first man turned, glared, and made a sharp gesture for the second one to be quiet. Then he went back to his search.

Tobey was like a ghost as he came up behind the second man. The Steyr was tucked behind his belt now, so he could strike with both hands.

His left arm went around the man's neck and jerked back, snapping shut like an iron bar across his neck to choke off any outcry.

At the same time, his right hand reached around and across and caught hold of the man's jaw on the left side. Tobey's fingers hooked under the jawbone and he pulled as hard as he could.

He heard the sharp crack as the terrorist's neck broke.

The man went limp and dropped the Steyr he held. Tobey lunged and caught it with one hand before it hit the floor and made a racket. With his other hand, he lowered the dead man to the floor.

When the first man looked around, he would see that his friend was gone, but he wouldn't have any idea what had happened. Tobey could wait for him to come back and investigate.

He didn't have to wait for very long, either. A minute later, a low-voiced call floated across the store. When there was no response, the first man repeated it, more urgently this time. Still no answer, and Tobey eased away from the body of the man he had killed as he heard footsteps approaching. They grew more rapid as they came closer.

Then the first terrorist spotted the body and rushed past the place where Tobey was hidden behind a rack of coats. Tobey uncoiled from his crouch and smashed his Steyr against the back of the man's head.

The terrorist went down hard, too stunned to allow his muscles to work properly. He tried to roll over but succeeded only in flopping clumsily. Tobey kicked him in the head, and the man became still.

Tobey used his foot to push the Steyr away from the man's hand, then searched him. He found a couple of fully loaded magazines and put them in his pocket. Then Tobey slid a knife with a curved blade from a sheath inside the man's waistband and used it to cut his throat.

He stood with one foot on either side of the terrorist's torso, grabbed his hair, and yanked his head back to draw his throat taut, then slashed the keen blade across in a deep cut. Blood shot out away from Tobey, pumping hard for a few seconds before the flow began to ebb.

Tobey let go. The dead man's face thudded against the tile floor.

Two of the bastards dead. It was a start. Not necessarily a
good
start . . . but Tobey was far from finished.

* * *

Bleak lines were etched in Walt Graham's face as he handed the phone back to Springfield's chief of police.

“Bastard hung up on me,” Graham said. “But not before telling me what they want.”

“Never mind that. Just tell us what the guy said,” Zimmer asked.

“They want all Muslim prisoners released.”

“The ones we used to have at Guantanamo, you mean?”

A couple of years earlier, there had been an abortive effort to move all terror suspects from Guantanamo to a federal prison in Texas. When that had turned into a bloody mess, the prisoners had been dispersed to a number of different black sites, according to the scuttlebutt Graham had heard. The real truth of the matter was probably well above his pay grade.

“No, I'm not talking about just the guys we had at Gitmo,” he said in answer to Zimmer's question. “They want
every
Muslim prisoner released, no matter what the charge, from the CIA's black sites down to the county jails and small-town lockups.”

Zimmer, Crimmens, and Shaw all stared at Graham for several seconds before Crimmens said, “But that's insane! We don't even know who's locked up in all the jails in the country, let alone which of them are Muslims.”

“What about the NSA?” Shaw asked. “That sounds like something they might keep track of.”

“They keep track of everything else,” Zimmer muttered. He shook his head. “But it doesn't matter. Coordinating such a thing would be impossible, even if you could get everyone involved to agree to it, which you couldn't in a million years. Anyway, most of the Muslims who are locked up aren't political prisoners, by any stretch of the imagination. They're just criminals, pure and simple.”

“I'm just telling you what the man said they wanted,” Graham said. “I think it's impossible, too.”

“What else?” Crimmens asked. “That couldn't have been all of it.”

“They want twenty million dollars put in an offshore account. The guy said he would give me the number once we'd agreed to the terms.”

“It's a stall of some sort,” Zimmer said. “We know good and well that at least three-fourths of the Islamic terror groups are bankrolled by Saudi oil money. Some of those families are worth billions. Twenty million would be small change to them.”

Graham nodded and said, “I agree.”

“I suppose they want safe passage to the airport, too, and a jet waiting there to take them to, where, Mecca?”

“That's right.”

Zimmer shook his head.

“They're full of hot air, and they're bound to know that. They're just stringing us along. What is it they
really
want?”

Graham rubbed his chin, frowned in thought, and said, “Maybe just to string us along.”

“Keep us waiting,” Shaw said. “Keep us hoping. Keep us
scared
. They know the whole country's watching by now, sitting around their televisions and computers, praying that the hostages make it out alive.”

“I think you're right, Agent Shaw,” Graham said. “There's another angle to consider, too, and I'm not sure those guys in there have even thought of it. This is going to make a huge dent in Black Friday shopping. In fact, the hangover from it is liable to damage the numbers for the entire holiday season. That'll hurt the economy. It's not going to collapse or anything like that because of it, but it's still not good.”

Crimmens folded her arms across her chest and asked, “Then what do we do? If we can't give them what they ask for—and I agree that we can't—what happens next?”

“They're threatening to kill hostages, of course.”

The chief of police spoke up, saying, “When I talked to the leader of the suspects, he told me they could kill a hundred hostages an hour for the next ten hours.”

“No way they're that patient,” Graham said. His voice was firm with conviction as he went on, “This whole thing is a sham. Like Agent Shaw said, they're going to torture the whole country for a while, and then they'll jerk the rug out from under all of us by killing the hostages.”

“You're talking about a bloodbath unlike anything this country has seen in the past fifteen years,” Crimmens said.

“Yes, ma'am. I certainly am. That's what they want. A sea of infidel blood.”

Zimmer said, “We have to get in there. There'll be heavy casualties among the hostages and among the personnel who carry out the assault, but if we wait, everybody's going to die.”

A uniformed officer hurried up and broke into the tense silence that followed Zimmer's declaration. He said, “Chief, we've got another call from inside the mall.”

“That terrorist bastard again—”