I was dispatched to the Federal Law Offices of the Attorney General’s Special Counsel with a force of twenty-seven officers. I was in charge. This was a terrible idea. Not only was I not leadership material, but I had a vested interest in finding anyone responsible and punishing them. This punishment would be exceptionally brutal if I found Nyleena’s dead body somewhere within the building.
On the street, several cars were burning. Smoke poured from the secure garage that attached to the building. Several windows had been busted. Gunshots could be heard from within. Screams pierced the sounds of chaos on the street around us. People ran around us like headless chickens. A few just stood still and stared, while a few others moved like zombies, being too traumatized to react.
“Clear the street,” I barked. A group of five officers peeled away from us. They began trying to move the civilians away. “One group will go into the garage and the other with me. We will meet in the lobby and work our way up. Kill only when necessary. We need survivors.”
I was used to being the first one in. I was used to being the one to kick down the door. In this instance, someone had kicked the door down for me, and given the chance, I was probably going to put a bullet in their head. While we did need survivors, we did not need many, because I could be very persuasive. We used hand signals to communicate.
The lobby looked as if a bomb had gone off. Blood was still pooling up in places on the floor. Glass, metal, and plaster coated the ground, creating obstacles for the blood to flow past. There were no groans or moans from the bodies on the floor. It was apparent that the US Marshals in charge of protecting the building had gone down in a firefight. Several men with masks were among those in suits and uniforms. A few of the officers with me began checking for vital signs. I scanned the room, expecting a sentry to start firing on us, but none did.
This situation did not make sense. Anyone who entered this building must have known it was going to be a one-way trip. I hated zealots. They were irrational, illogical, and unpredictable. I heard more gunshots above us, causing my muscles to tighten. I wanted to run up the stairs, find whoever was shooting and make them stop. No one in this building deserved to die.
The other team joined us. They shook their heads. I nodded once, and we headed for the only two staircases in the building. The law office was built to be tall and narrow. It was a safety measure. If it were tall and narrow, anyone trying to do exactly what had happened here would be trapped by a lack of an exit. Yet, it still allowed people to flee in the event of an emergency.
I took one group up one set of stairs. A man I barely knew named Demetrius Lazar led a team up the other one. Lazar and his brother, Dominic, both lived on my street and were US Marshals. They were identical twins, except for some scarring. Dominic Lazar worked in the Fortress. Demetrius worked for Witness Protection. I was willing to trust him not to be killed or get anyone else killed. The others in my group, I did not know as well and therefore, did not trust to do the same.
Opening the door to the emergency stairs, I expected to find bodies piled on the steps. However, it was oddly empty. Either no one had tried to flee or the stairs above us were going to be blood soaked. After all, we were only on the lobby level. Most of the important stuff happened on the fifth floor and above. Nyleena’s office was on the twelfth floor. I wanted to head straight there, but knew I could not. There could be survivors or perpetrators on the lower floors and I had to deal with them first. Sometimes, it was hard to prioritize when you were a sociopath, because there was a great deal of narcissism involved, and the world essentially revolved around my needs and what I needed was to know that Nyleena was safe and sound.
We moved as a unit, swapping positions to gain vantage points as we moved up the stairs. A group of four officers broke from the group and stayed in the stairwell. The rest of us moved inside. As we entered the main common area on floor one, Demetrius Lazar did the same. He nodded to me and we moved down the corridors and through the cube farms. On this floor, we could hear people sobbing. No one dared make more noise other than a sob. As our footsteps crunched on debris, we could hear others trying shush the sobbers.
“US Marshals Serial Crimes Tracking Unit!” I shouted. “US Marshal Aislinn Cain! Put your hands up and step out.” We all had our weapons leveled at a spot near a door, a door that was closed. There was movement behind the door and it began to open slowly. A young man in his twenties timidly stuck his head out. Seeing us made him sigh. His shoulders slumped, his face relaxed.
“Come on,” he said to other people that I could not yet see. His hands were in the air as he exited the room. “There are some people in there too wounded to walk out,” he told us.
“Fine,” Demetrius Lazar began to move forward, and I mimicked his movements. We both turned on the door at same time. It appeared to be filled with office workers. They were a mess. Some were bleeding.
“Damn,” I said. We were going to need paramedics. “Everyone who can walk out will need to do so now. A group of officers outside the emergency doors will escort you outside. We will get first responders for anyone left.” With help, everyone got to their feet. Their coworkers were helping, even those that probably should not have been moved. I did not protest this. The faster they left, the less likely they were to be shot at.
Suddenly, I realized there was a flaw in my plan. We couldn’t keep sending officers down with people. We also couldn’t keep searching both stairwells. We just didn’t have the manpower. I looked at a group of FBI agents.
“I want you to go downstairs, go into the lobby, and stand sentry. I also need you to make sure that none of the survivors walks out that front door until we are finished sweeping the building. There could be snipers on the higher floors waiting for them to exit. Do you understand?”
They nodded and went to join the officers in the stairwell. I could hear some whispered noises over the communication earpieces. They were repeating my instructions. This was good. I still wasn’t much of a leader, but if we could sweep the building and not die, I would consider it a win.
Floors two through seven were similar to the first floor. Survivors were huddled in clusters inside offices that were meant to be protective areas. I was finding that every floor had these special offices or conference rooms. No glass windows looked into the office. The doors were reinforced steel with a wood veneer over them. The frames the doors were set in were also steel. The walls that held the frames were concrete with plaster over them. They were marked with three blue dots. On the eighth floor, I began looking for the rooms with the blue dots. We found it. The door was open, and a woman was screaming from within. Two men with masks had their pants around their ankles. This was not their day. Lazar and I both shouted out that we were US Marshals. They turned, fumbling for weapons or maybe their pants and both of us fired. My shot hit one in the head, just above his left eye. Lazar’s shot made the other man’s nose explode. Blood rushed from the wound. Both men fell to the floor, eyes still wide with surprise. The victim in the safe room was still screaming. Several people lay on the floor around her, dead. I checked the door while a female FBI agent went to the woman. It hadn’t been forced. They just hadn’t made it inside fast enough.
She was the only survivor from the eighth floor and I was certain she was broken. Some things could not be repaired. The female officer had to escort her down the stairs, half dragging her, half carrying her.
The door of the ninth floor loomed before us. The small window was smeared with blood. Whatever lay on the other side was not going to be pretty. Lazar and I exchanged glances. He knelt down, putting his hand on the pull for the door. I drew both guns and slid against the wall. I took a breath. As I inhaled, the door was jerked open. I was in before Lazar had even finished. Three men were in the room, standing over a group of people who were on their knees.
“US Marshals Service, SCTU! Drop your weapons, and get down on your knees, now!” I shouted as other officers moved in behind me. I heard one of the men repeat SCTU as he tried to exchange a glance with his partners. I fired, putting a bullet in his thigh. As he reached for it, I shot him a second time, a little higher, burying the .9mm bullet in his hip. His leg gave out and he fell to the ground, his weapon skittering away from him. Someone from the floor screamed. The other two held up their hands, but didn’t drop their weapons. I considered shooting a second one to prove just how serious I was, but decided to make it a little more real for them. I charged forward, not running, but moving swiftly. Behind me, someone gasped. I hit the bigger of the two men and he lost his footing, sprawling onto the floor. I swung the gun, catching the second guy in the face. His cheekbone crunched as the force of the Beretta and my hand, smashed his cheekbone. The skin split open, instantly causing blood to pour from the wound. I hit him a second time. He dropped his weapon and his body. He lay still, his hands behind his back. I holstered one gun.
“US Marshals Service,” I repeated to all three men. The one that was sprawled on the floor moved. I caught him with my boot, my foot slamming down squarely on his ankle. The noise was even louder and more satisfying as his ankle dislocated and the small bones broke. I ground my toe into the wound until he screamed. Once the sound exited his mouth, I let up.
Lazar and several others moved in. They put handcuffs on the bad guys and gave instructions to those we had just saved from being executed. As they stood the second guy up, he went to struggle. I yanked my baton off my belt and flicked it out at the same time. I stared at him. He met my gaze, hate burning on his face. I smiled and he paled. The struggling stopped.
“I will see you a little later,” I smiled wider. “I think we are going to have a long chat and become very good friends.” He tore his eyes away from me and stared at the floor, all the fight and gusto gone from him.
The tenth floor was eerily quiet. The doors with the blue dots were all securely fastened. Agents began to knock on them. People began to straggle out. This floor had been prepared more than the others had. There were almost no dead bodies in the main area or unsecured offices. Those coming out of the secure rooms looked terrible, but they weren’t full of holes.
The same did not go for the eleventh. Most of the carnage was located near the two stairwell doors. They had been mowed down as they tried to flee. Only two rooms had people in them and the number was small.
I wondered about this. Why had the tenth floor gotten behind closed doors, but not the eleventh? I stopped a young woman who was coming out of the room. Her arm was bleeding and it looked like she had been shot.
“Why did you not stop…” I stopped. I didn’t know how to ask a survivor why there were so many dead people around us. “Go on. Get your arm looked at.”
“What was that?” Lazar asked me.
“Why did so many people survive on tenth floor, but not the eleventh?” I asked him.
“I don’t know,” he seemed to think about it. “The way they planned and carried out the assault maybe?”
“Like perhaps they picked floors?” I asked.
“Yeah, and used the elevators to coordinate the attacks as much as possible,” Lazar answered.
“What is this floor?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he answered.
“We should find out,” I told him and walked towards the stairs. I had a feeling that I knew exactly what floor this was. If I were right, the twelfth floor would be even worse.