Holt must've passed out at some point from shock and loss of blood. He remembered calling for help over the walkie-talkie, and then the next thing he knew one of his guys was kneeling in front of him, cursing in shock for a moment before saying, "Good God, Chief, what happened here?"552Please respect copyright.PENANAtOamopr7YE
Holt's wounded hand still hurt like hell, but the pain in his head and chest had receded to dull aches. He lifted his good hand and pointed.
"John Handel---dead behind the desk. Don't know where---the rest of his guys---are---They're probably---dead, too."
"I've called for an ambulance, Chief." The young officer's face was blurry and Holt didn't recognize him at first. Then his vision cleared a little and he could make out enough of the guy's face to tell that he was Alan Gibbs, who'd been working here at Stonewall under Holt for several years.
Gibbs went on. "Who the hell is that?!"
Holt realized he was talking about the dead man with the knife still sticking up out of his chest.
"He tried to----kill me. Guess he figured----I was a harmless old man."
Gibbs blew out a breath and shook his head, said, "Not hardly. Did he kill Mr. Handel?"
"I don't know. Must have---or had something to do with it, anyway."
Holt wasn't breathing as hard now. He could tell that despite his injury and the infirmities of age, he was getting his body and his mind back under control again. Iron will and the habits of a lifetime had a lot to do with that. He wasn't going to let some punk get the best of him, and he sure as shit wasn't going to allow trash like that to put him under.
"I'll be okay, Alan," he went on. "You'd better watch yourself. The bastard's probably got friends around here somewhere."
"Yeah, Chief, I think you must be right," Gibbs said. He looked like he was worried about more than Holt's condition now. "I heard reports on the walkie while I was running over here. We've got shots fired all over campus, sounds like."
Holt bit back a groan. Handel's murder wasn't a random killing, then. Stonewall College was under some kind of coordinate attack by persons unknown. This was the kind of thing everybody in law enforcement had learned to dread over the past few decades of increasing political violence.
"Have there been---any explosions?"
"Not that I'm aware of. You think it's terrorists, Chief?"
"Gotta be, if there's more than one or two of them."
"There've got to be at least twelve. From what I could tell over the walkie-talkie, our officers were responding, but there aren't enough of us to cover the whole campus in a situation like this." Gibbs swallowed hard. "Besides, we're not equipped or trained to deal with terrorists."
And neither was the Brookhedge PD, Holt thought. Some of those officers had likely had a little SWAT training, and they had some tactical gear, but up against a big force that wouldn't be enough.
"Call the DPS," Holt said. "Tell 'em we need state troopers, Rangers, whatever they can send us. Better call the FBI, too. The Feds'll want to get in on this." He closed his eyes for a second. "We'll have Homeland and ATF swarming all over."
"Better them than us, Chief, no offense. This is above our pay grade."
That rankled Holt, and the irritation gave him more strength.
"Nothing that concerns the safety of this campus and its students is above my pay grade," he said as he sat up straighter. "Get out there and find out what's going on, then report back to me."
"But Chief, you're hurt...."
"And you've already called for help. The EMTs should be here soon..."
As if on cue, two men in the tan and brown uniforms of the local emergency medical service hurried into the office, both of them carrying bulky kits containing gear and equipment. Holt recognized both of them.
"Chief Holt!?" one of the men exclaimed. "Nobody told us you were the victim."
"At least I'm better off than that guy," Holt said, nodding toward the man he'd killed. "You don't need to waste any time on him."
"Yeah, I can see that." The EMT knelt beside Holt and picked up his handkerchief-wrapped hand. "Got any other injuries we should know about?"
"I took a whack on the head, but I think I'm okay."
"Get the chief's vitals," the man said as he carefully unwound the blood-soaked handkerchief.
"And you get out there and find out what's happening!" Holt told Gibbs again.
"I can tell you some of that, Chief," the EMT said. "You have shots fired in multiple buildings, and there are reports of casualties as well."
Holt couldn't hold in the groan this time. With his good hand, he motioned for Gibbs to go on.
"You're gonna need a bunch of stitches here," the EMT said after he had uncovered the cut on Holt's palm and taken a look at it. "We need to get you to the hospital. I'll bandage it better...."
"Can't you just, you know, glue it shut or something? You can do that, can't you?"
"Not a cut that's this deep and serious."
"Then just clean it up and bandage it the best you can and give me a shot of antibiotics or something. Because I'm not leaving this campus. Not with all hell breaking loose like this."
"Dammit, Chief, you're not gonna be able to do anybody any good here. As much blood as you've lost, you're liable to pass out at any time!"
"Then gimme a shot to bump me up enough so that won't happen. I'm not going to the hospital, no way!"
"What I ought to do is give you a shot that'll knock you out, then we can do what needs to be done."
Holt glared at the man and said, "You do that and I'll look you up when this is all over. You don't want that, believe me."
The two EMTs looked at each other. The one who'd been taking the chief's pulse and blood pressure shrugged, as if saying that the decision was up to his partner.
Before they could make up their minds, Alan Gibbs ran back into the office. The young officer had his cell phone out.
"Chief, ya gotta see this," he said. "It's streaming all over the place."
He dropped to a knee and held up the phone so Holt could see the screen.
The shot was shaking a little, which told Holt that the hand of whoever was shooting this was trembling, no doubt from fear. The angle was upward, because the person with the phone was on the floor. The shot showed a fairly young man, dressed casually, like most of the students on campus, standing near the base of an escalator with what looked like a Glock 9mm in his hand. Holt could see enough of the surrounding area to recognize the location: the lower left of the Hamilton Memorial Library, a few hundred yards from where they were right now.
The young man with the gun was talking. The audio quality wasn't great, but Holt could make out most of what he was saying. It was the usual leftwing drivel about how the evil one-percenters were responsible for everything that was wrong with the world.
As it happened, Holt actually did believe that there was too much income inequality in the country. For the most part, though, it wasn't the high earners who drove the economy and paid 95% of the taxes who were responsible for it.
In Holt's opinion, the blame lay with the Democrats, and some politicians who called themselves Republicans, who had increased taxes repeatedly, who had loaded down the average working stiff with astronomically high health insurance costs, who had overregulated many small businesses to the brink of extinction. Those were the people who had done their best to grind the middle class out of existence, so that most of the population would be condemned to sucking on the government's teat forever and therefore would have no choice but to continue voting those politicians, and others like them, into office in perpetuity.
Those were the vermin in human form who had created the income gap.
None of which had much bearing on the current miasma, so Holt ramped those thoughts down as they flashed through his brain. He watched the man with the gun blather on, and his heart started to hammer harder when the guy mentioned bombs planted all over the campus.
Holt didn't doubt the truth of that threat, not for one moment. Anyone crazy enough to start shooting up a college campus was nutty enough to plant bombs, too.
Plant....
"That's it," Holt said suddenly as he reached out and grabbed Gibbs's arm with his good hand. "That's why they killed John!"
The second EMT had stood up and drifted off into the garage area of the groundskeepers' shed. He came back into the office now with all the color washed out of his face.
"It's not just Mr. Handel, Chief," he said in a hollow voice. "There are some dead guys in the garage, too, and---and they're all stripped down to their birthday suits!"
"It was the uniform they wanted," Holt said. "In those coveralls, everybody figured they were just the regular groundskeeping crew. That allowed them to spread out all over the campus and plant bombs."
"I saw some of them digging over by the Language Arts Building earlier," Gibbs said. "You think...."
"Gotta be!"
Gibbs jumped to his feet.
"We can find all the places they've been digging!"
"No!" Holt said. "They probably have anti-tamper triggers on all those explosives. Stick a shovel down in that dirt and you're liable to blow yourself to kingdom come!"552Please respect copyright.PENANAUanDuh8E3o
Gibbs stared at him and asked, "Then what are we going to do?"552Please respect copyright.PENANAIuL38Whnqx
"Get out there and warn everybody else on our force. Make sure any Brookhedge cops who show up know what's going on, too. And when the staties get here, let 'em know. They'll be better equipped to deal with it than any of the locals."552Please respect copyright.PENANAiz8QWv4LZB
Gibbs nodded in understanding.
"How 'bout you, Chief?"
"I'm fine, dammit!" Holt said as he gestured sharply again. "Now go on..."
He stopped as his head spun crazily. All that blood he'd lost was catching up to him again. He felt his eyes rolling up in their sockets. His head tipped back as he heard the EMT kneeling beside him exclaim, "Chief! Chief Holt!"
Then consciousness was gone again, as Holt descended into a nightmare vision of explosions spreading all over the campus of Stonewall College, leaving a crimson trail of bloody death and destruction in their wake. 552Please respect copyright.PENANAeFfJwCI4jQ