The Firstborn (49 page)

Hassan watched as the saw made its first stroke through the soft flesh of John Temple’s neck, slicing through skin toward the blood-rich artery beyond.

“Hey!” Ibrahim called from the other room.

The screaming stopped with the cutting. Jean-Paul approached, coming to Hassan’s side.

Ibrahim came running from the window in the next room.

“There’s someone here. Four of them.”

“Get the guns!” Hassan shouted.

Canvas came off of the stack of weapons. AK-47s with massive drum magazines carrying a hundred rounds each. UZIs. Grenades. Bullets. All meant to keep the police back when they took control of the school—but now they would be more practical.

Jihad—more than just the closer devotion to the path of God that so many holy men spoke of, but an actual holy battle in which they would strike down their foes before moving on to the fury ahead of them.

Hassan nearly smiled to himself.

So these were the people who had come to stop them. His father had fought in Afghanistan against the Soviets as one of the Mujahedin. He himself had hoped to fight one last battle himself before the end.

They would shoot their way out. Kill the four trespassers, go to their target, and execute their mission.

They would win this battle too. They were better armed—and they were ready.

Chapter 29

T
HIS WAS THE PLACE
. Devin felt it. Rundown. Beat up. But the place nonetheless.

This is where it all had to happen. This was the time when it all would end.

They pulled into the alley, away from prying eyes. The vehicle stopped. Each stepped out of the car. The trunk snapped open, and he pulled out the duffel bag. Devin handed a pistol to Hannah. She looked it over.

“Is this the only way?”

Devin reached into the bag and removed a UMP .45 submachine gun, a rugged piece of equipment with a folding stock and a blocky front end, accented by grooves along the top of its frame. “You’re welcome to stay in the car if you feel it would be better.”

Hannah didn’t speak. She simply reached for a magazine, jamming it into the base of the grip, then donned a Kevlar vest.

Devin led them—a party of four—down the alley. There was a wheelchair ramp at the back of the building leading up to a graffiti-ridden door. Devin moved to the hatch, giving it a small tug.

It moved.

The door was unlocked and open. He turned to the others. “Stay close to me,” he said as reassuringly as he could. “Keep your head down and your eyes open.”

They nodded with him.

Trista looked scared but determined. Hannah held her weapon with confidence but showed obvious signs of fear. Blake, however, simply looked ready to kill.

“Remember—incoming fire has the right of way. Don’t play in the traffic. Your job is to support me. Do what I say and don’t panic. Got it?”

Nervous nods.

“Good.”

He opened the door and entered cautiously.

The first floor was dark. A long hallway with rooms to either side. A set of stairs at the far end with a glow of light pouring down from above.

Devin moved forward slowly. Carefully.

The hall was dark. Dank with soggy floorboards. The smell of mold hanging in the air. The decaying steps just ahead.

Overhead they heard the sound of feet moving across the creaking floorboards. Strings of dust and chalk slipped from the ceiling above.

Devin stopped. The others held behind him.

He felt it coming.

The grenade tumbling down the old, corroding steps. The sounds of the metallic casing bouncing down by threes, pin-wheeling, twisting on an elliptical axis, offset by the grenade’s blocklike fuse.

Devin stared. It hadn’t happened—

—yet.

“Get back!” he shouted, pushing backward, and then he heard the explosive start to tumble.

Everything began to happen fast.

Trista hit the floor, falling into place next to Hannah as she was shoved into a nearby room by Devin.

The grenade exploded with a deafening bang.

The sounds of twirling shrapnel buzzed through the air like killer bees, pattering against the walls like rain. A cloud of thick, brown dust rolled through the hall. Chunks of plaster tumbled from the ceiling.

Trista watched as Devin was up in a flash, across the hall in another room, body pressed against the wall, squatting low. His shoulders pivoted, torso spinning out into the hallway, weapon ready.

An explosion of gunfire—brass spewing from the chattering mechanism—the ejector door snapping back and forth like a piston. Devin disappeared through the dust, thunderous gunfire following behind.

A thousand pinpricks of gun chatter ripped at the door frame, filling it with holes the size of Trista’s fist. Chunks of wood did cartwheels through the air as the wood—old and black—was chopped to bits.

Why had she come? What had she been thinking? These people meant to kill her, not just scare her off. These people wanted them all dead. She threw her arms over her head.

Someone down the hall shouted something in Arabic. Another person shouted back. Something tumbled over the top of her—Hannah, thrusting her upper body into the hall.

Hannah squeezed the trigger—

The weapon chugged like a freight train, roaring out a chorus of bullets. On and on with an unrelenting spray of bullets.

The rifle’s action snapped open, pinned in place—

—click—

“
Grenade!
” Blake’s voice hollered through the drift of tumbling dust.

Hannah stood, racing at Trista—slamming her weight into Trista’s body, covering her.

What had gotten into this girl?

The explosion was only loud for a second—a piercing snap and then a stinging jab to the ear, like ice picks stabbing for her brain. The shock wave pushed them forward—a section of wall blowing inward, disinte-grating. Dust filled the room instantly.

The violent exchange continued without them in the hall.

Hannah was standing, hacking. She pressed the release on the side of her weapon, and the magazine slipped out, falling to the floor with a thud. She reached for Trista—

“Come on!”

Trista stood, looking Hannah in the eye. This was a new creature.

Three stray rounds came popping through the wall, sending bits of confetti spraying from one side of the room to another, leaving a group of distantly placed holes on the far wall.

They shrieked in unison.

A sudden thought of John entered her mind.

Trista gripped her weapon, ducking toward the chunk of blasted wall. She lifted the butt of the weapon and knocked a hanging slab of drywall from its place. She jammed the muzzle of her submachine gun between the severed wires and splintered two-by-fours, squeezing down on the trigger.

The weapon snarled.

John heard the gunfire. It was all going on downstairs—maybe two floors below.

His body ached. He clutched the side of his bleeding neck. The door hung open.

They’d left him alone.

He pushed himself up with his spare arm. Pain sliced up his side. He gripped the side of the freezing bathtub, squeezing with all his might. His body lifted.

Shouts, screams, and gunfire wafted up to his ears from below.

His feet came into place beneath him, and he walked into the next room.

He tried to focus. His vision was blurred, one eye nearly swollen shut. John steadied himself against the table, letting his eyes lift.

A swath of canvas—beneath it lay a stockpile of weapons.

His hand reached out, almost instinctively, and clutched the first thing he could find—a pistol.

It was unlike him—but these were desperate moments.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he fought a theological debate about violence and war and the thought of turning the other cheek—a time and a season for all things under the sun.

He snapped the safety to the off position.

If ever there were a time to kill, then this was it.

Devin watched as the shooter retreated up the stairs again. Whoever they were, they were blind firing at best. With the dust there was no chance of him hitting anything—but he was effectively cutting off that approach.

Something caught his attention to the right—another hallway—another set of steps. There was another way up, which meant there was another way down also. He had to plug the hole.

The dust in the hall was beginning to clear. Trista and Hannah stood on the opposing side. Trista braced herself against the battered wall, firing madly.

“You two!” He jammed a finger at them.

Hannah looked up.

“Cover the stairs!” he shouted through the din, pointing. Hannah nodded, leaning into the hall under Trista.

Devin stepped into the hall as Hannah started shooting. He plunged through the dust, charging toward the second set of steps.

“What are you doing?” Blake demanded.

Devin looked back—Blake. Even now he couldn’t stand the thought of not being in charge—of taking a supporting role, even when he was needed elsewhere.

But now wasn’t the time to debate the role of leaders.

“Keep up!”

Hassan scrambled, pulling back from the steps. They had a foothold downstairs; it had to be broken. He pointed to Ibrahim.