Calhoun instantly took in the scene playing out before him. Sam Jaywick, in his campus police department uniform, was wrestling with a husky Hispanic man over a gun. The 2nd guard was off to the side in front of the snack bar, nervously jerking both his gaze and his pistol back and forth between the desperate struggle and the prisoners he wanted to keep under control. Calhoun figured the shot had come from the gun the two men were fighting over, but he didn't see any blood on Jaywick or the other guy, so he hoped the bullet had gone wild.
The way Jaywick and his enemy were twisting and staggering around, Calhoun couldn't risk taking a shot in their direction. But the 2nd guard was a different story, so he called, "Hey!"
The man turned his head first, to look over his shoulder, and then his eyes widened as he spotted Calhoun standing there drawing a bead on him. He tried to jerk around and bring his gun to bear, but the Glock in Calhoun's hands had already spouted flame. The 9mm slug smacked into the middle of the guy's forehead and blasted right on through his brain to hit the suddenly blood-splattered wall on the other side of him. His knees buckled, dropping him into a crumpled heap.
Jaywick and the man he was fighting with had to have heard Calhoun's shot, but neither could afford to take their attention away from their battle. Jaywick had both hands clamped around the man's wrist. He wrenched on it, trying to get him to drop the gun, but as he was doing that, the man used his free hand to hammer punches at Jaywick's head. Jaywick hunched his shoulders as much as he could, trying to protect himself, but his head was bleeding from several cuts that had been opened up already.
This would have been a good time for the now-unguarded hostages to rush forward and overwhelm the gunman through sheer force of numbers. Considering the way that most of them were hiding under the snack bar tables, though, whimpering and crying because guns were going off. Calhoun knew that wasn't going to happen.
He bounded forward and chopped the gun in his hand down at the head of the man fighting with Jaywick. The blow landed with a solid thud. Jaywick grabbed the man's gun and jerked it free. He slashed upward with it and crashed it against the man's jaw. Calhoun heard bone crunch. The man staggered back a step and sat down hard, making grotesque noises as he clutched at his shattered jaw. Calhoun shut him up and laid him out with a swift kick to the head.
Then he nodded to Jaywick and said, "Good work."
Jaywick didn't seem to be in a mood to accept the compliment graciously. He said, "I had him! I would've put both those bastards down if you hadn't stuck your ass in, Weaver!"
"You're welcome," Calhoun said wryly. "How bad are you hurt, Jaywick?"
"I'm fine," he snapped. "A little banged up, that's all."
Calhoun looked at the group crowded into the snack bar and asked, "How 'bout these other folks?"
"I don't think anybody's hurt. When this started, it all happened so fast, nobody had time to put up a fight."
Yeah, that was it, Calhoun thought. Just not enough time.
Jaywick checked the magazine in the gun he'd taken away from the now unconscious man, then slid it back into place. As he started to turn away, Calhoun said, "Wait a minute. What are you going to do?"
"There are still a lot of people being held downstairs," Jaywick snapped. "I'm going to rescue them and apprehend the guy responsible for all this."
"Just what I hand in mind----sort of."
A sneer curled Jaywick's lips. He and Calhoun might've been fighting as allies only moments earlier, but that didn't mean his feeling had changed. Clearly he still didn't like Calhoun---and the feeling was pretty much mutual.
"You're not going to suggest that we work together, are you?"
"Might be better than getting killed," Calhoun said. "Might be. Listen, though, the first thing we gotta do is get these other people outta here, just in case Barlow really does have a bomb planted somewhere in or around the building."
Jaywick looked like he wanted to argue, but he nodded grudgingly and said, "Yeah, you're right." he turned and waved the hand holding the gun at the hostages. "Come on, you folks. Get outta here while you can."
"But---but is it safe?" asked a male undergrad with multiple piercings on ears, nose, and lips."
A girl with pink hair said, "We should stay where we are until someone from the government tells us to leave."
"I'm from the government," Jaywick burst out in clear frustration. "See? I'm wearing a uniform and everything!"
"The administration needs to issue a statement and address this," added a middle-aged man who Calhoun pegged as a professor. "This campus is supposed to be a safe space and a gun-free zone." He looked pointedly at the pistols Calhoun and Jaywick held. "Neither of you should have those. You should turn them in to the authorities immediately."
Jaywick looked over at Calhoun and shrugged, "Are they crazy?"
Calhoun just shrugged.
"That's the college experience for you these days," he said.
Then he walked over to the group cowering inside the snack bar and went on, "Listen, folks, I know you're scared, but this is your best chance to get away from here before anything else happens. All you have to do is stand up, walk to the entrance and go outside. There'll be cops waiting out there somewhere nearby, and when they see you coming out, they'll hurry to help you." He paused, thought for a second, and then added. "You can just go with them, and they'll tell you what to do."
Several faces lit up at the phrase "tell you what to do." Calhoun kept his face impassive. He didn't want them seeing what his opinion of them truly was. It was more important to get them to safety.
He wasn't one to smooth-talk anybody, though. Never had been. If they didn't grab this chance while they had it, then the joke was on them.
Two people stood up, sidled nervously forward, then broke into a run toward the entrance. That opened the floodgates. All the former hostages scrambled up and fled.
Calhoun turned to Jaywick and nodded.
"It's time for this bullshit to stop," he said.357Please respect copyright.PENANAZYXOOuUwzE
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The past 20 minutes or so had been dizzying. Reports had come in to Mud Wallace from all over campus about how, in one place after another, freed hostages were emerging from the buildings where they had been held prisoner. Most of them were quite shaken, but they were all right other than a few minor injuries.
The same couldn't be said of the terrorists who had tried to take over Stonewall College. Nine bodies had been recovered already, along with two men who were badly injured but might live.
It was almost as if some crack antiterrorist unit had swept through the campus, wiping out the bad guys and freeing the innocent people.
But instead, all the former hostages told the same story, of how a lone man had killed their captors with stunning and brutal efficiency. Not a young ma, either, but one who might've been anywhere from 50 to 70 years of age....although he moved like a man much younger.
Boone was back in Neil Holt's office, along with "Regina Ferrant, Chief Wallace from Brookhedge, and Holt himself. Ferrant was upset and said, "I fuckin' hate what's going on here. Now, somebody's gotta be lying. How could one man do all of this?"
"With all due respect, Agent Ferrant," Holt said, "but you're wrong. I saw the guy, talked to him. If I've ever run into anybody who absolutely is capable of taking out this many terrorists and freeing that many people, it's the man who was here earlier."
"Jaguar," she said. "Is that what he told you to call him? Just Jaguar?"
"Yup."
Ferrant looked over at Boone and went on. "And he's supposed to be some kind of super-vigilante working for the government?"
"Nobody ever said he's super," Boone responded. "Just very good at what he does. I don't know that the legendary Jaguar is back---but that would sure make some of this a lot easier to accept."
Ferrant just hook her head and turned away. She wasn't going to be convinced. Some people were like that, Boone reflected.
Hell, maybe he just wanted to believe that Jaguar was back. Who didn't like to see a legend return just in time to save the day.
One of Holt's officers, the young man called Gibbs, hurried into the office after knocking on the door but not waiting to be admitted.
"Hostages are running out of the library," he said excitedly.
The two federal agents and the two police chiefs stiffened as they looked at Gibbs. Holt said in a strained voice, "All of them, Alan?"
"No way to know for sure, Chief, but some of them, clearly. I'm told none of them seem to be hurt, at least not too badly."
"Thank God for small miracles," Holt said.
Ferrant looked at Boone and said, "You think this is more work by your mysterious Jaguar?"
"I don't know," Boone replied with a shake of the head. "But let's get over there. Maybe we can find out."357Please respect copyright.PENANAW0Or92NQvR
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Too much time had passed. Lark Barlow had a very strong hunch that Brooke wasn't coming back, and neither was the man he'd sent to tail her.
He hoped she was still alive. At least, he thought he hoped that. But he wasn't really sure. She was beautiful, no doubt about that, and she had seemed devoted to their cause. Not devoted enough to go ahead and fall in bed wiht him, as he had assumed she would, but there would be plenty of time for that once they were filthy rich and far away from here.
Now it was beginning to look like none of those things was ever going to come true. When shots blasted from the
the libary's ground floor, clearly audible right up the escalator, the certainty that he was screwed grew even stronger in Barlow.
Earlier, he hadn't been able to raise any of his men on the 3rd and 4th floors. Now he lifted the radio to his mouth and called, "Joe? Are you there?"
He could have just stepped over to the escalator and yelled up the unmoving steps, he thought bitterly. That's how close ruin had crept to him.
Of course, Joe didn't answer. Barlow didn't waste time trying him again. Instead, as a thought occurred to him, he switched frequencies, keyed the mic again, and said, "LeJohn?"
"I'm here, Lark," a slightly breathless voice returned. "What the hell's going on here? There's been shooting above us, and now below us...."
"You and Flynn are all right?" Barlow interrupted him.
"Yeah, we haven't had any trouble here, Lark, maybe we'd better start trying to come up with some kinda exit plan...."
"There are only two exits from this, you know that. Victory or death." Barlow laughed. "Isn't that what somebody said at the Alamo or someplace? I know I remember hearing that in some history class."
"Yeah, but it's all going to shit on us."
"Get a grip, LeJohn," Barlow snapped. "We may have to make a stand. I want you and Flynn down here now. Forget about the hostages you have got there. Use the elevator and come straight to the lower level."
"You sure....?"
"Just follow my orders, dammit!" Barlow said. With an angry, frustrated snap of his wrist, he threw the radio away from him.
He had two men left down here. If LeJohn and Flynn could reach the lower level, that'd make five of them against whatever the authorities could toss at them. Would the authorities actually attack head-on, though? He had set off two bombs already. Was that sufficient to convince the cops and the Feds that the whole campus was in danger?
Or did they need another demonstration?
Barlow's hand stole into his pocket, fingers curling around the detonator. This was a separate unit. None of the others in the group, not even Brooke, knew about it. They were aware that he had been able to get hold of enough explosives to build only three working bombs. The others were decoys, intended to keep the bomb squad busy checking out the work done for the "groundkeepers" that morning---and to keep the cops worried, so they'd hold back in order to prevent a possible holocaust.
Two of the 3 bombs they knew about had already been detonated at different corners of the campus. The remaining working device was planted at another corner.
But what nobody knew except him was that ever since he'd gone to work as a groundskeeper under the pseudonym John Handel, he had been planting charges around the library's foundation, one at a time, to keep anyone from noticing. He had gotten his hands on a lot more C4 than he'd ever let on to the others. They believed the bomb threat was largely a bluff.
Barlow wasn't bluffing, though. From the beginning he'd known that he would either get what he wanted----the money, along with the freedom and power it'd give him----or he'd wreak his bloody vengeance on the world in a way nobody would ever forget.
All it'd take was for him to open the detonator and press the button. The charges around the foundation would detonate, and the library would come crashing down onto itself, killing everybody inside----including Barlow.
But that was all right, if it came to that. Barlow caressed the cold metal smoothness of the detonator and whispered to himself, "Victory or death."
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