8.
 Entering the DVA lobby, Jack nodded to Bobula, who sat guard by a computerized ID scanner. “I’ll relieve you for your break in a few minutes.”
“Take your time,” Bobula said patiently as he did a crossword puzzle.
The lobby was small. The right half had the lower side of a stairwell looming over it. The left half had a narrow flight leading upstairs, along the left wall, to a landing. Jack walked up the narrow flight of stairs to the landing. He entered double glass doors into the main lobby, and took the elevator upstairs.
At his desk, Jack logged in under his top secret ID and password. He accessed resource databases for tracking veterans to see if they were real or faking it. There was no Rose Fennel, but that wasn’t surprising, since she was a dependent wife. Or widow, though she clearly hadn’t tossed in the towel yet. Using her married last name, Magee, combined with her husband’s name, Michael, and her Social, he established that a Captain Michael Magee, U.S. Army Special Forces, had indeed gone missing. Everything was as she’d said, except he’d been missing over two years, not one. Rose was clinging to someone long gone, forever lost. Michael Magee was probably a bleached skeleton in wind-torn flight suit, half buried in drifting sand, amid bent and rusting sheets of riveted metal and fire-blackened engine parts. But try and tell Rose that. Jack’s heart ached for her in more ways than one. He hardly knew her, but she came on like an express train.
Police were on high alert. The bombed building in Metro City West still smoked. Jack was in his 100th hour on duty. He’d slept a few winks under his desk with Lucy, and a few hours in his car in a nearby garage.
The elevator was out of order, so he bounded down the stairs two steps at a time to relieve Bobula for coffee. He pounded through the main lobby, and out the double glass door. As he hurried across the landing and down the stairs along the wall, his cell phone shrilled. He flipped it open. A woman’s voice, near hysteria: “Jack, it’s Rose. Victor…he’s got a backpack and he’s coming your way.”
As Bobula rose, innocently tucking his shirt in and ready for a break, Jack knocked him aside and stepped out the door.
Victor stood on the opposite curb, leaning on his crutches. He looked gray, scrawny, wearing a white shirt and a clean, squared backpack that he’d packed with great care.
An ATF surveillance car down the block exploded. Deafening noise spread in all directions, shoving smoke and flame and body parts. Windows fell from their frames many stories up as the blast made all the buildings on the black shudder and rock. Glass flew like shrapnel, cutting pedestrians down. It was that same diversion, working once again.
On the opposite curb, Victor tossed his crutches aside. The blast rattled his clothes, his hair. He pulled a handgun from his pocket, and crossed the street with a determined stride. Smoke roiled around him. His squinting face looked greasy. Wind blew his hair, and he gritted his teeth. He was no cripple. He was Dancer.
Victor’s gun blazed as Jack and Bobula scrambled for theirs.
Bobula’s face splattered in a red haze as he fell backwards.
The entire scenario took minutes to go down from there—maybe two or three.
In slow motion, Jack squeezed off two rounds. One shot made a red spot in Victor’s white shirt, a flesh wound. Victor must be stopped, or he’d enter by the double glass doors, into the bowels of the first floor, to bring the building down and kill Director, Lucy, cubicle meerkats, everyone…
Victor’s shot winged Jack, spun him in a spray of blood, left him face down a dark dream like drowning in glue. Jack half blacked out. He heard himself breathing in groans. At least, this time, no lung shot. Jack could barely turn his head. Through the corner of one eye, Jack saw Victor hesitate, pointing a gun at Jack’s head. Victor’s shoes still smelled of book shop carpet.
Victor wasted no time, but started up the stairs. Jack effortfully raised his Glock and squeezed off another round. He hit Victor in the leg. His arm dropped weakly. Victor staggered and cursed, but he did look back. The rucksack was all-important. He must get up the stairs, main floor, to the center of the building.
“Jack!” Rose Fennel bent over Jack. She wore her periwinkle blouse. Her curls flew. He saw those steel-trap legs and cute knees. Her right arm looked wiry, her left arm atrophied in its bandages. Jack moaned, confusing her with Lucy. He wanted to touch those soft, honey cheeks.
Taking Jack’s and Bobula’s automatics, Rose scrambled up the stairs. She tucked one gun behind her sling, and fired with the other. Jack watched, as he lay bleeding on hard stone tiles below. Rose’s legs pumped up the stairway.
On the main landing above, Victor rattled the big glass door. A terrified young woman receptionist had locked it. She’d saved the day, then slipped on the carpet, and lay propped on elbows and palms. Facing the door with terrified eyes from inside, she babbled inaudibly.
Rose rapidly fired round after round—evenly spaced pops—with piston precision. Muzzle flashes blazed in the smoky corridor. She stumbled, but kept relentlessly climbing and firing.
Victor turned to face Rose. He fired, but only nicked her ear, which sprayed her blouse with blood. As Rose fired, Victor slumped with his back to the glass door. His blood-soaked fingers fumbled with the backpack, as he looked for a ripcord. One pull, and the place would go up, vaporizing half a block.
Rose changed guns, and kept firing. She knelt, using the top steps as a rampart. Victor fumbled with the cord, but Rose shot his hands off at the wrists—one, two—then shot him in the face. The back of his head, brains and all, splattered the thick plate glass door with warm, dripping pinkish-gray jelly and skull fragments.
Rose scrambled up and kicked the backpack aside. It didn’t blow.
All finished. Jack fainted.
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Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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