The Blue Widows - [Kamal & Barnea 06] Page 28
Ben had Hollis Buchert in view. Was the virus escaping from inside his shopping bag even now, infecting all who passed?
Ben fought against panic, willed himself to continue closing the gap between him and the leader of the People’s Brigade, clinging to the hope it wasn’t already too late.
“There’s a man down there with a gun!” Danielle told the cop in feigned desperation.
“Where?” the cop asked, leaning against the railing.
“The big man with the beard just passing below us, wearing the dark jacket,” Danielle pointed out, indicating the man on Ben’s tail. “He had a gun stuck into his belt, I’m sure of it!”
The cop drew a walkie-talkie to his lips and began whispering into it. Then he moved for the nearest escalator, hand starting to go for his pistol.
Loping past an Eddie Bauer clothing store, Ben found himself with a clear path toward Buchert. Beyond them lay the glass-door entrance to the east parking garage, people streaming through it in both directions. Buchert slowed, laying one of his shopping bags on the floor to check his watch.
Ben picked up his pace, readied his shoulder. Slam into the man from behind, take him down to the floor, and pin him there so he couldn’t reach the contents of his shopping bags. There’d be time enough to explain his actions to the authorities later. Ben started forward, picking up speed.
Danielle had watched the uniformed security force converge on Buchert’s soldier, had just started to breathe easier when she saw he already had a pistol in his hand. He held it low by his side and shoved a pair of teenagers ahead of him aside to clear his shot at Ben, who was closing in on a figure in corduroys and work boots.
Buchert! It had to be!
She whipped out her own pistol and angled it over the railing in both hands, sighting in on the bearded man as the mall patrons around her shrieked in fear.
The screams rattled Ben, made him hesitate in the midst of his final lunge. Instead of barreling into Buchert, he reached out and grabbed him by the back of the coat, starting to spin the leader of the People’s Brigade around when a gunshot exploded behind him.
Danielle had been an instant from firing when one of the teenagers the bearded man had pushed from his path moments before cracked into him from behind, full of strut and bravado. The impact forced his pistol upward as he fired, the bullet flying harmlessly toward the mall’s roof.
She heard the echo of the glass shattering, saw flecks of it raining down like hail atop the uniformed security force that had converged on the bearded man from all angles.
Ben heard the commotion, as he spun the leader of the People’s Brigade toward him. His other hand rose into the air and balled into a fist. He wanted to hit Buchert, wanted to feel the satisfying crack of bone and teeth beneath the strike.
The man who had killed his mother, tortured him.
Buchert lost hold of his remaining bag when Ben twisted him around. It hit the floor and its contents slid across the polished tile. Ben vaguely recorded the boxes of varying sizes, wrapped neatly in bows and birthday paper, and got his first good look at the man’s face.
It wasn’t Hollis Buchert.
Gun tucked back under her sweater, Danielle watched Ben slide away from the man who wasn’t Hollis Buchert at all. She backed away from the rail and started moving again as he stood there stiffly, frozen between actions. Ben had focused on the source of the commotion behind him, the bearded man being handcuffed now with four men holding him down, and had smartly veered away. He glanced up as if to look for her, then leaned back against a trash receptacle, a cluster of passersby tightening around him to view the apparent arrest.
At the exit doors behind him, no one was leaving. Frozen in near silence, spectators watched a pair of policemen jerk the bearded man to his feet. A few of them clapped. The man’s nose and mouth were bleeding. He looked angry, resentful, still twisting to fight the police a little as they led him off. Danielle watched his gaze drift briefly upward to the fourth floor and followed it.
A second of the People’s Brigade soldiers leaned over the railing, looking directly at her. She saw him raise something to his mouth. His lips moved. Warning the other two that she and Ben were present in the mall, no doubt alerting them to what had just happened.
Danielle reached to her belt where the Radio Shack walkie-talkie was clipped.
It was gone.
She remembered brushing it as she went for her gun, realized she must have knocked it loose when the pistol came free. Danielle glanced back toward where she’d been standing, nothing visible on the floor amid the sea of churning feet. Then she glanced up again toward the fourth-floor railing and the second of Hollis Buchert’s soldiers. He was gone too.
Ben had moved away from the crowd, standing alone in a corner not far from the glass walkway leading into the parking garage. His heart hammered against his chest. He couldn’t stop shaking.
Before him, the man he’d mistaken for Buchert had collected his birthday gifts, risen to his feet, and exited through the door. Ben had tried to mumble an apology to the man but couldn’t be sure he’d heard. He stood still, trying to collect his thoughts, regroup.
A hundred feet away the cops were leading the bearded People’s Brigade soldier away in handcuffs, the mall already getting back to normal, filling now with the lunchtime crowd. Ben gazed ahead at the quartet of cops hauling their prisoner through a service door, nearly colliding with an older man wheeling an oxygen tank alongside him. Thin plastic tubing ran out from it, clipped to his nose.
The bearded man turned back one last time before the service door closed behind him, seemed to be looking straight at the man wheeling the oxygen tank. The older man veered away, his face visible from the side.
Ben felt a chill freeze his spine. His legs wobbled.
Hollis Buchert.
* * * *
Chapter 75
D
anielle knew she’d become a target, the remaining three People’s Brigade soldiers in the mall perhaps watching her even now. It was impossible to tell; the concourses were too crowded to discern anyone clearly. All the man on the fourth floor above had to do was keep her in his sights, direct the others to her, and stop her from moving on Buchert in the process. She had lost sight of Ben, couldn’t warn him.
Danielle kept to the center of the third-level concourse, considering her next move. The options didn’t please her, until she saw a store diagonally across the floor. The window display gave her an idea, something she had done often before but never in these conditions.
Hesitating no further, she swung to her left and moved toward the entrance to a store called the Fun Shop.
Ben followed Buchert down the escalator to the first floor. He kept the oxygen tank in sight the whole time, wondering if its true contents were spilling out even now, contaminating the air, infecting everyone he passed.
Ben felt about his belt for the walkie-talkie clipped there and hit the transmit button twice. Then he moved his hand to the butt of his pistol.
The costume Danielle bought was a nun’s dress and habit. The Fun Shop clerk seemed to have no problem with her leaving the store wearing it. Danielle had had her choice of dozens of costumes, ultimately settling on that of a nun because it was the one most likely to keep the eyes of the remaining People’s Brigade soldiers off her.
While she went after them.
“Danielle, come in,” Ben said into his walkie-talkie. “Can you hear me?
Ben squeezed the device in his fist, as the escalator deposited him back on the Mall of America’s first floor. Danielle must have a reason for not responding. All he could do was keep Buchert in sight until she made contact.
The fake oxygen tank made Buchert an easy target to follow. Buchert undoubtedly intended to infect the thousands present in the mall right now, including the governors, but he’d do it in a way that would ensure his own survival. Be off the premises by the time the canister began to spew its contents into the air.
But how?
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br /> The roller coaster from Camp Snoopy zipped overhead, drumming in his ears. Ahead of Ben, Buchert glanced at it briefly, then joined the flow of families through the west entrance to the amusement park.
Danielle found the first of the three remaining People’s Brigade soldiers standing above the center of the mall, searching for her through the crowds below. As expected, he turned away from her as she approached, paying her no regard at all. The man raised a foot up to a bench, leaning against a railing set directly over the mall amusement park.
Danielle kept her eyes low and felt for the gun concealed inside her costume as she closed on the brigade soldier, timing her approach to coincide with the roar of the next passenger car to stream by on the nearby section of roller-coaster track below. Danielle drew the pistol when the car banked into a rise, jammed it against the brigade soldier’s back just as the car dropped into a screeching descent. Fired when it passed both of them.
The man started to fall and Danielle guided him down onto the bench, leaving him slumped there. She turned away and noticed a few bystanders looking at her. She smiled serenely at them, then moved on.
Inside the amusement park, Ben passed a giant inflated Snoopy that doubled as a bouncer, currently packed with kids tumbling about. Costumed figures of Lucy and Linus slid by him, and Ben ducked behind a nesting of indoor trees to keep his eye on Buchert. The People’s Brigade leader walked past a collection of souvenir stands, a small food court, and Paul Bunyan’s Log Chute, then circled back around toward the Ripsaw Roller Coaster.
Ben cut across Camp Snoopy, hoping to take Buchert by surprise. Get close enough and use his pistol before any of the People’s Brigade soldiers, or some hapless good Samaritan, for that matter, could intercede.
But a life-sized Snoopy figure posing for a picture with a pair of twins got in his way and slowed him up. By the time he reached the roller coaster, Buchert was already standing in line some ten places ahead. Ben watched him switch the oxygen tank to his left hand while he yanked a few dollars from his pocket with his right and exchanged them for a ticket. Ben kept his eyes on Buchert until he came to the front of the window, purchased his own ticket for the Ripsaw, and fell back into line to await one of the two cars.
Buchert’s intentions here baffled him. Might his riding the roller coaster be some sort of unspoken signal? Was he stalling, waiting for his soldiers to join him down here?
No. Buchert’s motions seemed composed, thought out to the point of being rehearsed. He was here because he meant to be here, in this very spot. No other explanation sufficed.
Before Ben, the Ripsaw cut a neat circle across the entire central-atrium section of the mall, visible from all floors as it sliced through the air. He watched one of its two cars come to a halt. Patrons whose ride had just been completed climbed out, and the line jostled forward with those eager to climb in. A young attendant stopped the line and refastened a chain across it to keep the next grouping behind the safety stripe. Ben counted sixteen slots in the car. That meant he and Buchert would soon be taking their places in the next car that pulled in.
Suddenly Ben heard a commotion at the entrance to the mall. He was too far away to clearly discern what was happening, but the eruption of flashes and sight of news cameras could mean only one thing.
The nation’s governors had arrived.
* * * *
Chapter 76
D
anielle saw the governors enter the mall, posing for pictures and chatting among themselves as they gawked at the sprawling expanse of the Mall of America. She resumed her stroll down the concourse, eyes searching for the third People’s Brigade soldier she had glimpsed earlier. He would surely be looking for her as well, making him all the easier to spot. She avoided the gazes of passersby, keeping her eyes aimed discreetly down. A little farther on, she pretended to adjust her habit and trained her gaze upward.
On the level above, she caught sight of a man pressed tight to the rail, gazing intently down the center of the mall into the amusement park instead of toward the mall entrance, where the governors were still gathered.
It was another of Buchert’s men, she was sure of it!
Danielle followed his line of sight, trying to see what had grabbed his attention. One of the two roller-coaster cars rolled off down the tracks, heading for the first climb. Another car came out of the final loop and sped back to the starting point.
So what was the man looking at?
She watched him move off, then stepped onto the escalator, riding it up. At the top she found the People’s Brigade soldier in motion again, heading for the escalator nearest him along Nordstrom’s Court, in which the wishing-well fountain was located. He stopped before reaching it and pressed up against the rail directly over the fountain, his body angled toward the amusement park.
Danielle saw that he had maneuvered himself to have a clear view of a line waiting to board the next roller-coaster car as it came to a stop. She recognized Ben Kamal standing there, stiff with tension, his vision alternating between the approaching car and someone ahead of him in line. She could see him toying with the pistol hidden under his jacket, as if unsure what to do with it. Another car swooped by beneath her and she suddenly realized why the People’s Brigade soldier had chosen this spot.
It offered a close, clear shot at anyone riding the Ripsaw. She saw the gun tucked into the brigade soldier’s belt and picked up her pace as, below, Ben Kamal climbed into the roller-coaster car.
It was a nine-seat car. Ben rode alone in the sixth seat back. Buchert sat by himself in the front car. He could have used the gun on him here, but the chance of hitting a bystander made him reject the notion. Besides, he didn’t dare launch his attack until he was certain the smallpox was reasonably secure.
An attendant went up and down the car’s length, making sure the safety rail was locked into place over every rider. Ben slid into the center of his seat, focused five ahead on Buchert maneuvering the oxygen tank between his legs for safety.
Then the car crawled into motion and the first rise appeared directly ahead.
Danielle watched the Ripsaw come out of the first drop fast and settle into a lower speed as it climbed for the second. Beyond that was a loop that would spill the car out directly in the gunman’s line of sight. At that point, Ben would be only forty feet from him, an easily manageable shot even with a pistol.
The roller coaster exploded out of its second drop and streamed toward the loop, just seconds away from entering it. Danielle fought the urge to run, knowing that it would give her away, and walked as quickly as she dared down the concourse and veered left onto a connecting bridge directly for the People’s Brigade soldier. She heard the happy shrieks of the riders as the Ripsaw passed beneath her, but focused on the brigade soldier starting to bring his pistol up, measuring off his shot, gun still concealed by his jacket.
Too many people walked past him on both sides for Danielle to chance a shot of her own. No, she had to do this with her hands, get to the gunman before he could fire.
Ben felt his stomach lurch as the Ripsaw slung into the loop. The blood rushed from his head, and the air seemed briefly sucked out of him until the car slowed into a straightaway. Coming out of the loop he could see Buchert had removed the tubing from his nose. He seemed to be hunched over, working on his tank.
Ben imagined him loosening the valve, then tucking it under the seat and leaving it to rattle around after he exited. Buchert would have made his way out of the mall by the time it popped free, spewing its contents of the smallpox virus into the air. Low-tech but effective. All Ben had to do was wait for him to climb out, then retrieve the tank and find a way to reseal it as best as possible. No harsh action required, which meant the gun could stay in his belt where it belonged.
Then what sounded like a gunshot echoed from somewhere above them. Buchert jerked his frame around in search of its source, but his eyes fell on Ben instead.
The Peoples’ Brigade soldier noticed Danielle approaching in h
er nun’s costume but paid no attention. She slammed into the man the very instant he fired. Grabbed him by both shoulders from the rear before he could respond, and shoved him forward.
Over the rail.
He seemed to teeter there briefly, eyes terrified and furious, before he pitched downward and landed with a huge splash in the fountain below.
Ben heard the splash and the screams that followed, saw Buchert’s eyes narrow in surprise and then recognition, the moment suspended in time as the roller coaster banked into the next rise. Then the head of the People’s Brigade was reaching down for his tank again, fiddling with it.