The Hammer of God

“Bill, make it for the first row then crawl up to the side where they are. I’ll drop the knife guy when you pop up, then the camera guy. You grab Janice and dive under the seats for cover.” He radioed two of the remaining SWAT guys to pick two targets each, clockwise, starting from the one at the exit door near the stage, and ordered them to go when Bill jumped up or if he was discovered. The cops up on the lighting catwalks had clear shots on the five bad guys in the back wearing the headscarves of the Caliphate.

He assigned the last SWAT cop to cut the wire on the string of explosives dangling over the audience. He had followed the detonator wire to the house right box where the line was attached. That trooper had to scale the back stage scaffolding and use a cast entrance from the loge. A quick learner, he went against his civil police training and coldly and without provocation strangled one of the terrorists who had been assigned that hallway to guard. He then took his position in the box and investigated the wires to make sure it was a simple two-wire open circuit and no tamper proofing was in play. When he reported that it looked like a simple cut and disarm, Bridge told Bill that it was all on him.

Bill waited until every terrorist he could see was looking the other way and then he scrambled across the lower part of the theater from the stage apron to the first row of seats. He stopped and listened to hear any sounds that would indicate if someone saw him. Over his radio, he heard Bridge.

“Good so far. Go slowly, Bill, I got my gun on the knife guy’s temple. If he moves his hand, I pop him, so don’t rush.”

Bill shimmied to the end of the aisle. There were at least 12 rows that got wider and wider as the theater went back so that the end of each aisle was somewhat visually covered by the one ahead of it when you looked toward the stage from the rear. At the sixth row, a figure appeared at the exit door. At first, the young Jihadi from Jordan did a double take when he saw Bill just looking up at him from the floor. He then started to raise his gun and open his mouth. But from two different directions, muzzle silenced, bullets entered his forehead and he rotated back against the closed door and slumped to a sitting position, blood gushing from the blasted open back of his head. Bill froze again to see if anyone noticed that.

“Okay, you’re clear; keep going.”

One of the bad guys ran up to the guy holding the knife. He had a portable TV. He started talking in Arabic. On the TV was the news of the helicopter crash and the rumor that it had a radiological device of some kind on it.

The one with the knife then said something about Allah and started to say something else when his head exploded. His grip on Janice released. Bill shot up and ran toward her. The disconnected explosives fell harmlessly, like clothes on a broken line. A trooper started to open fire on two of the bad guys across the way. The cameraman went down next. The five at the back of the room all went down in one second. Out of nowhere, a screaming man in a headscarf came running in from the wings towards Bill and Janice. Bill fired from his rifle as he covered Janice and the guy caught two in the legs. He started to fall but kept firing as he fell. His bullets ripped into the seats around the Hiccocks as the stuffing flew. Two more hits entered the shooter’s body as he was falling and he and the gun fell silenced.

Bridge was up and scanning now; he started yelling to the hostages, “Get down, Get down…”

They were already scrambling, flattening themselves out and trying to hide. Then he heard a scream. He wheeled around and one of the bearded henchmen had a woman in his grasp and a.45 automatic at her temple. The jittery Middle-Eastern man started to say something in Arabic, but Bridge fired and hit the gun, which in turn smashed into the guy’s face. Immediately, blood started to come from the man’s cheek and his hostage fell to the right. Bridge then hammered the gun into his head by successive shots sparking and clanging off the side of the pistol.

Bill grabbed Janice and got her to focus on him. “Are you all right? Did they hurt you? Are you okay, baby?” She nodded, shuddering, and then collapsed in his chest.

A scuffle broke out among the hostages. Bridgestone ran to the commotion to see an old guy wrestling with another man. The old guy was detaining him but the younger man socked him in the jaw trying to get free.

The older man yelled, “Shoot him. He’s got a switch under his coat. He’s one of them.”

Bridge didn’t have a clear shot. The old guy was still hanging on to the younger one, grabbing his arm. But then Bridge saw the button flash from under the guy’s coat.

“Shoot ‘em or he’ll kill us all,” the old guy yelled.