"All right, start moving your asses," the tall black man with a gun said as he approached Calhoun and Brooke where they still lay on the floor. The left sleeve of his shirt had something bulky under it, Calhoun noticed, as if that arm were bandaged. If the man was injured, though, he didn't seem to let it bother him.
"Where ya gonna take us, trooper?" Calhoun asked as he pushed himself up. "Disneyland?"
"Don't gimme any trouble," the gunman said as his lips drew back from his teeth in a grimace. "I'd just as soon shoot you, grunt-ass honkey."
That sounded personal, Calhoun thought. He wondered if the guy had a real reason to hate him, or if his skin color and political views were sufficient to justify that hatred. As far as Calhoun recalled, he had never seen this man before.
Of course, in recent days he'd clashed with plenty of guys whose faces he'd never seen, because they were hidden under black hoods....
That opened up an interesting chain of thought, but Calhoun didn't really have time to follow it right now. He didn't want the gunman going unhinged while Brooke was right there, so he climbed carefully to his feet and said in a calm voice, "No trouble. Just tell us what you want us to do."
Being so cooperative went against the grain for him, but there were innocent lives to think of.
Brooke was pale and looked frightened, but she appeared to be calm and had her emotions under control, too. The same couldn't be said of most of the other people who'd been taken prisoner. Some were sniffling, some were outright crying, and everybody looked scared as the three gunmen who had been positioned around the edges of the room began herding the hostages towards the middle of its lower level. There was an open area there, near the escalators, that was large enough for all of them to huddle together. It would be easier to guard them that way, Calhoun knew.
And once he was surrounded by innocents, there was no way he could make a move without endangering all of them. Even though he had said that he wouldn't cause any trouble---even though he was worried about Brooke---he had to go back on that promise if he was going to have any chance to fight back against these assholes.
A glance to his left showed him that Donald Montecristo and the people he was with were being marched toward the middle of the lower level, too. Calhoun caught Pierce's eye. He had no idea if he could count on the young man for anything, but instinct told him that if he had any allies in here, Donald was the most likely to be one of them. Maybe the quick look Calhoun flashed toward him would be enough to tip him off that something was about to happen.
Calhoun stopped short and said in a loud voice, "Wait just a damn minute. They're bluffing!"
That drew the leader's attention. As he swung around to look at Calhoun, for a second his face was contorted by naked fury before the look of cold, smooth menace came over his features again. He smiled thinly and said, "Bluffing? You think we're bluffing?!"
"You're not crazy enough to blow yourself up along with everybody else," Calhoun said "I can tell that by looking at you. You're no martyr. You don't believe there are 99 virgins waiting in heaven for you."
The Middle-Eastern-looking guy standing with Donald glared at Calhoun when he said that. Calhoun ignored him.
"Keep talking," the leader said. "You're smart. I wanna hear your thoughts."
"No, you don't, believe me."
"You really believe we didn't plant bombs all over this campus? That what you mean by bluffing? Huh?!"
"That's right," Calhoun said. "You just want everybody to think you did, so they'll be too scared to make a move against you."
The leader took a cell phone out of his pocket and held it up.
"So I won't push a button on this phone and send out the detonation signal?"
"Won't do you any good if you do. By now all the cell phone towers in the area have been taken offline." Calhoun turned to address the crowd. "Check your phones. You won't have any service."
As far as he could tell, nobody did what he said. They were too afraid (with good reason) of the guns pointed at them.
But the leader, smiling with a self-satisfaction that Calhoun found worrisome, turned his phone so he could look at its display and said, "Well, whaddya know? No service, just like you said." He put the phone back in his shirt pocket and reached for his pants pocket instead. "It's a good thing the triggers on those bombs are linked to sat phones instead."
The phone he pulled out of his pants pocket was bulkier than the slim little cell. As Calhoun tensed, the leader thumbed numbers into the satellite phone, held it to his ear, and smiled.
The boom was muffled by distance and building walls, but it was clearly an explosion. Many of the hostages screamed and grabbed at each other, thinking that the end had come.
But as seconds ticked by and the library didn't erupt in a holocaust of flame and destruction, they began to calm down a bit, although there was still a lot of sniffling going on.
"You still think I'm bluffing?" the leader called out in a ringing voice. "That was just one bomb. Call it a demonstration. I can set 'em off one at a time, or I can call a number that'll detonate all of them at once. If I do that, this whole campus will be blown off the face of the earth. You wanna be responsible for that?!" His mouth twisted in a snarl as he went on, "Well? Do ya?!"
He was staring right at Calhoun as he asked the question, so Calhoun responded, "Take it easy. Nobody wants you blowing anything up."
So the business with the bombs wasn't a complete bluff. He'd been wrong about that, Calhoun supposed. But he still didn't believe that this joker intended to die today. The leader wasn't doing this to make a point. He was doing it because he wanted that ransom money.
But that didn't mean he wouldn't slaughter dozens, maybe even hundreds, of people to get his hands on it.
In fact, the guy's eyes did look a little more crazed now as he stalked toward Calhoun and waved the pistol in his hand.
"Nobody wants to be blown up," he said. "Nobody wants to die. So you'd better all hope the authorities cooperate with me, hadn't you? You'd better hope all those capitalist pigs on the outside whose kids go to school here come up with that hundred million! Otherwise---and I don't care if you believe me or not----nobody leaves here alive today!"
In that moment, Calhoun actually did believe him. He saw that he'd misjudged this man. The leader had no cause other than his own, but he wanted that money so badly he was ready to die if he couldn't have it. Calhoun had faced people who were dangerously fanatical when it came to their religion or their political beliefs---and for many on the left, their politics were their religion---but he had never run into anyone whose lust for money could rival this guy's. That might make him even more dangerous.
But the leader's anger, as he got caught up in his own ranting, had led him to make a mistake. He had stalked forward, gesturing with the gun in his hand, until he was only about 10 feet from Calhoun now.
And that was too close.
Cops had what was called the 21-Foot Rule, developed from a training drill that had a "suspect" charge an office from inside that distance. That was close enough that in many cases the officer was not able to draw, aim accurately, and discharge his sidearm before the attacker reached him.
The leader's pistol wasn't holstered, but he had flung his arms out while he was yelling, so the Glock wasn't pointed at Calhoun. The distance between them was just half the distance involved in the 21-Foot-Rule, as well. In that split second, Calhoun realized all that and allowed his instincts to take over. If he could get a hold of the leader and take that gun away from him, then he'd have a hostage of his own. He didn't know if that would make the others back off, but the guy seemed charismatic enough it was worth a try.
Calhoun lunged forward.
The guy saw him and tried to swing the gun toward him again, but Calhoun had already left his feet in a diving tackle.
Calhoun crashed into him. He was considerably bigger and heavier than the leader, so the impact drove the man off his feet and toppled him over backwards. He landed hard, with Calhoun slamming down on top of him. Calhoun hoped it broke ever one of the bastard's ribs.
He made a grab for the wrist of the leader's gun hand and closed his fingers around it. As Calhoun bore that had toward the floor, he reached across his body and clamped his other hand on the 9mm's slide so the man couldn't fire it. Trouble was, that meant both of Calhoun's hands were occupied, so he couldn't throw a punch. He drove his right elbow at the guy's jaw, and connected solidly.
Unfortunately, it wasn't enough to knock him out, and even though Calhoun was bigger, the leader was wiry and strong. He brought a knee up sharply, aimed at Calhoun's groin, but it caught him in the abdomen instead. It hurt like held and knocked some of the breath out of him, but it didn't incapacitate him as it might've if it'd landed on its target.
Calhoun wrenched at the gun. The leader's grip on it seemed to slip a little, but he didn't let go of it. He tried to wriggled out from under as Calhoun attempted to plant a knee in his belly and pin him down.
Calhoun was vaguely aware that a lot of shouting was going on around him, but no guns had gone off---yet. He heard one man yell for somebody to stay back, and another cried, "Don't shoot! Hold your fire!"
That was what he wanted to hear. They weren't going to blaze away at him for fear of hitting their boss. If he could just get that gun loose and hold it to the guy's head....
The leader's grip slipped again, and this time Calhoun was able to rip the gun away from him. Because of that, Calhoun didn't have to hang on to the guy's wrist anymore. He balled his left hand into a fist and brought it over a short but powerful blow that rocked the man's head to the side. Calhoun shifted his hold on the Glock and grabbed hold of the leader's shirtfront with the other hand. He surged to his feet and dragged the guy up with him. He swung the man in front of him and rammed the pistol's muzzle against his head, just above the right ear. At the same time, Calhoun's left arm went around the man's neck and tightened to hold him in place.
He caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his left eye and glanced in that direction to see that Brooke had moved up beside him. The unexpected sight of her made alarm go through him.
"Brooke, get back!" he snapped. "Find some cover and get down!"
He turned swiftly, hauling the stunned leader around with him so the man's body was between him and the other gunmen. Would they drop their weapons, or would they shoot through the man who had planned this operation and brought them here today?
Calhoun never had a chance to find out what the other gunmen would have done, because at that moment he felt something hard and round press against the left side of his body. He recognized it as a gun barrel and as he looked over, shock went through him to his core. Brooke was crowded close beside him with an intense expression on his face the likes of which he had never seen from her before. He could tell from the way the gun dug into his side that she was the one holding it.
"Stop it, Cal," she said. "Let him go and drop that gun. I don't want to kill you."
The leader was regaining his senses after that punch from Calhoun. He turned his head enough so that Calhoun could see the triumphant grin on his face as he said, "Good work, Jade."
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