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No, not very original, but effective all the same.
Fallon tried to imagine how he’d do it, how many men in the gym versus how many patrolling and securing the building. He settled on four in the gym, eight for the building.
Seven now.
Fallon stooped and began working the dead man’s jacket free.
“I need you all to stay here,” Fallon told his students. “Don’t make a sound and wait for me to come back for you.”
They looked at him as the stranger he had become even before he’d do
Wait for me to come back for you…
Why had he said that? Fallon wondered, once he was in the hallway, careful to leave the door open as all the others on the hallway were. It would be so easy for him to flee the building now before the inevitable appearance of the authorities on the scene. That was no longer an option for him, the challenge, the game, before him much too great to consider walking away from.
But was he Zaroff or was he Rainsford?
The building was eerily quiet, save for the din coming from the gymnasium area, where nearly 700 students were being crammed in even now. Fallon tried to remember all the details of the Chechnyan school seizing. Those terrorists had waited for the authorities to arrive, waited for them to mount their ill-fated raid, before triggering the explosives and killing hundreds. It would be the same way here, the strategy aimed at drawing the most attention possible. Round-the-clock coverage on the networks for days before the entire country paid witness to a mass murder in prime time.
Fallon made sure to conceal the considerable bulk of his shoulders within the terrorist’s shapeless, now bloodstained, jacket. He tied the dead man’s bandana low over his forehead, hoping it would conceal the differences in their faces and hair from the distance he required. He made sure the walkie-talkie, simple Radio Shack variety, was secured to his belt and started back up the corridor the way the dead terrorist would if he were retracing his steps.
At the head of the hallway, the office directly on his left and the science wing just down the hall to his right, Fallon glimpsed another of the terrorists rushing away from the main entrance with extra chains clanking. By now, all such doors would have been secured and wired with explosives, to detour both escape from within and attack from the outside. Fallon had a clear shot at the man but opted not to take it until he was sure no others were in the vicinity. Instead he made his footsteps just loud enough to be heard. Then swung about, gun leading, back to the stairwell up which number two had rushed.
“Hey,” the man called to him in Arabic, “shoo hada?”
Fallon’s response to the man asking him “What is this?” was to swing and fire. A single headshot that dropped the terrorist where he stood. He crumpled to the steps and slid halfway back down the stairs. Not Fallon’s intention, but by this point instinct had taken over.
Two down.
Fallon heard footsteps converging on the stairwell from opposite directions on the second floor. He crouched over the body and angled low, submachine gun angled at the main entry doors as if to suggest that’s where the deadly fire had originated. He could see the plastic explosives layered into place over the glass. Not the way he would’ve done it exactly, but still effective.
The footsteps grew louder, voices in Arabic shouted his way. Fallon swung when the two men were close enough to take in a single sweep. Two shots, both to the head again to be sure.
Four down.
This time his shots coincided with the rattling echo of machine-gun fire coming from the other end of the building. Screams and cries answered the barrage, greeted by a second longer one that drove the students and teachers to silence. Four to six of the remaining terrorists would be down there. Doors chained from the inside, denying him both access and the element of surprise. Without either, never mind both, the game would be over.
Fallon’s Radio Shack walkie-talkie crackled. He snapped it from his belt, listened.
“Shoofi mafi? What’s the matter?”
“Mafi Mushkil,” Fallon replied, hoping he had chosen the right word in Arabic. “No problem.”
“Dilwaati. Hurry.”
Fallon clasped the walkie-talkie back on his belt and headed down the stairs, banking left toward the school’s science wing as the blare of sirens descended on Hampton Lake Middle School.
The students of his eighth-grade honors Language Arts class were arranged two-by-two, fourteen deep, with Fallon bringing up the rear. After rousing them from the classroom against the tearful protestations of many, he placed Trent at the head of the group to lead the way toward the gym.
He’d encountered another terrorist in the science wing who approached him in the half-light, noticing the ruse too late and making the mistake of trying to right his submachine gun. Fallon was close enough to use Trent’s butterfly knife this time, a single swipe across the man’s throat for silence and surety.
He spent just over a minute gathering up two vials of clear liquid in one of the science labs and ran into another of the terrorists, literally, at the head of the corridor. Their eyes had met; the terrorist’s gaping, Fallon’s steeling as his hands came up, thumbs pressing into the man’s eyes to mash brain tissue and send him spasming toward death.
Six down.
Then back fast to his classroom to affect the final phase of his plan, the students suitably scared and confused. He marched them down the hall toward the gymnasium, pretending to prod with the submachine gun while concealing a capped glass vial in either hand.
A hundred feet away, a pair of terrorists guarding that booby-trapped entry to the building spotted him coming and twisted his way, keeping tight to the wall while shouting instructions Fallon ignored. They approached on either side of his marching phalanx and as soon as they were close enough to realize something was very wrong, Fallon popped the caps off his vials and tossed the acid compound at their faces. Not directly on line, but enough splashing home to send their hands upward to comfort their ravaged eyes.
Fallon took each down with a single, quick burst, then pushed his shocked charges on faster. Through the glass doors and half-wall he glimpsed a nonstop onslaught of police vehicles and media vans, continuing with his charges toward the chained entrance to the gym.
He moved to the front of the apparent stragglers he had rounded up, pounding on the door and then swinging away with gun leading.
“Open up! Hurry!” he screamed in Arabic, desperation forced into his voice. “They’re in the building!”
The chains rattled, locks and explosives being thrust aside. The double door entrance jerked open by a sweaty man who bled garlic through his pores.
Fallon started shooting, willing to sacrifice a few i
He fired at whatever moved, like a cheap arcade game now, hoping no bystanders got caught in the fire but knowing he couldn’t let that concern stop him. He fired his last spray upward into the sprinkler apparatus, activating a spray of water, which almost instantly doused the cavernous room and drenched its occupants.