forty-four

For a long moment nothing seemed to happen. Yet Ruth knew the burst of three shots had drilled right through the center of the driver’s door, leaving vivid holes in the thin white metal.

Then the vehicle’s nose dipped momentarily before it began to slow and wander off course, finally turning away and stumbling to a halt.

The moment it stopped one of the side doors opened and a man jumped out. He dodged away to put the van’s body between himself and any incoming fire before Ruth could react. Seconds later the driver’s door opened and another figure appeared. But this one wasn’t moving easily. He dropped to the ground and rolled under the van, dragging a rifle behind him and tucking himself in behind the front wheel.

“I see two,” said Ruth. “Two only.”

“Got it,” Dave muttered.

Ruth checked Vaslik’s position. He was now running in towards the pickup and waving at the children to stay back. They finally seemed to understand that this wasn’t a game and turned and began running back along the track, followed closely by a man in a check shirt, coveralls, and work boots.

“Firing,” Ruth warned Dave, and squeezed off another three-round burst, this time aiming at the man under the van, who she could see was bringing his rifle round to focus on them. The shots tore into the vehicle’s lower bodywork, one bursting the tyre next to the gunman, and she followed them with another burst, this time seeing the ground beneath the van being chopped up by the high-velocity rounds and raising clouds of dust.

The gunman stopped moving.

Andy Vaslik was feeling a sharp pain in his side. He hadn’t run this far in months, and he knew any ability he might have had to use a handgun with accuracy was diminishing with every stride as his body began to shake with the effort and the rush of adrenaline. But he drove himself on, anxious to put himself between the gunmen and the children. He heard Ruth firing again and saw the effect as the bullets tore into the ground, and he loosed off two hasty shots himself at the stationary van to keep the gunmen’s heads down.

He glimpsed movement behind the van, and saw a figure kneeling down with a rifle to his shoulder. And it was aimed directly at him.

He swerved to put the gunman off, but the man wasn’t aiming for precision. Instead he let loose a burst of fire in Vaslik’s direction before ducking back. But one round was enough; Vaslik felt as if he’d been punched in the arm. He stumbled as he was thrown off-balance and felt his feet skate from under him like a party drunk.

It was the suddenness of that move that probably saved his life.

He heard a snap as another shot tore through the air where his head had been, and he continued rolling, trying to ignore the pain blossoming in his biceps and to focus on not giving the gunman an easy target. He came to rest and adjusted his stance, pushing his gun hand forward and firing three times. In the same instant he saw the van’s side windows disintegrating as a volley of fire poured into them. Above the sound of a rifle, he recognised the snap of a semi-automatic pistol as Dave Proust joined Ruth in firing at the remaining man, who threw himself down flat under the pounding gunfire.

Vaslik rolled twice more to change his position, then waited to see if the gunman moved again. When he did, the man came up into a kneeling position and fired two rapid shots—but aimed at where Vaslik had been lying, not his new position.

Fighting a wave of nausea, Vaslik put everything into the next few seconds. Recalling the endless live-fire practice sessions in the police and with Homeland Security, he squeezed off three shots at the distant figure, then three more.

There was a long silence and the gunman didn’t move.

Vaslik stood up and changed to his spare clip of ammunition, then waved a cautionary signal at Ruth and Dave as they moved closer. But the danger was over. As he approached the gunman he saw why: the gunman had been struck in the head by a single bullet, although from which gun was impossible to tell.

He flicked the rifle away as a precaution, then checked the man under the van. He was alive, still, but only just. His chest was a mess.

Vaslik waved the other two in and went to the rear doors to check the interior. Nothing but a launcher on the floor, along with bottles of water and two sports bags. He checked them out but they contained only extra clothing and wash things.

“One dead, the driver wounded,” he reported when Ruth arrived with Dave following behind, talking on his cell phone. “Number three’s missing.”

“I called it in,” said Dave. “The local cops should be here soon with emergency services. I called Tom Brasher, too; there are going to be questions about our involvement here, but I figure he can act as a firewall if things get heavy.” He looked past the van to where the man and children from the pickup had now stopped running and were watching them. “I’ll go talk to these people and make sure they’re all right.” He nodded down at the wounded man under the van. He was staring back at them, but his eyes were becoming unfocussed and full of pain. “My suggestion: you might want to talk to him before he gets swallowed up in the system.”

“Good idea.” Vaslik hunkered down next to the man. Up close he could hear his labored breathing, and a whistling sound from his lower chest. From that and the amount of blood it was easy to see he was in a bad way. But Dave’s suggestion was a good one and he wasn’t about to waste the opportunity. Once the emergency services got here, along with various law-enforcement people from all over the state, the man would be rushed away and wouldn’t be doing any talking.

“You speak English?” Vaslik asked.

For a moment the man didn’t respond. Then he nodded twice.

“Good. What was your job here today?”

“Driv … driving.” The man blinked slowly, his voice raspy and his accent heavy. “What—?” He looked around, and Vaslik guessed he was asking about his colleagues.

“Your friend is dead,” he told him. “Along with a lot of other people. Where’s the other one who was with you?”

“Gone.”

“Who sent you here?”

“Broth…brother—” The man coughed, and a fine spray of blood appeared on his lips and ran down his chin.

“The brotherhood—I get that. But who asked for your help? Was it Malak?” He felt no compunction about questioning him; had they arrived a few minutes later, this man and his colleague would now be holding children as hostages.

The man shook his head. His eyes were becoming dulled by shock and his chin was dipping, but he clearly had enough determination left to remain silent about who he was working for.

“Do you know where Malak has gone?”

No response.

“Or Bilal?”

Nothing.

“How about the drones? Do you know about them?”

This time there was a flicker; it was momentary, hardly there at all, but it told him that the man at least knew what was going to happen. He wasn’t surprised. The magnitude of what Malak had planned had probably seeped out among those committed to the same cause, and the unusual approach of using drones would have been seen as a clever use of America’s own technology against them.

“That’s fine,” Vaslik told him. “You’ve heard of Freedom? Freedom Field? We know that’s where it’s going to happen. Pity for Malak is, there’s nobody there. They’ve shut the area down. In fact, the only person there will be Malak himself. He’s going to be a lonely man. Then he’ll be a dead one.”

The distant sound of sirens drifted across the open fields, and the man’s head lifted. He frowned at first, then nodded with difficulty and gave a faint smile, as if knowing he had a secret he wasn’t going to divulge.

Vaslik felt a chill and looked past the man as Ruth appeared. She had heard the sirens, too, and was rolling a finger through the air in a signal for him to continue. There wasn’t much time left. This was brutal, but they had to find out where Malak and his toys had gone.

“So where is it, this Freedom Field?” he said. “It’s going to be a big strike, right? An attack on the US military and the US president. You must know where it is.”

But the man said nothing more. Moments later he gave a deep sigh and his body seemed to collapse in on itself, and he was gone.