True Faith and Allegiance

Dom took pictures with his camera, zooming in on the Palm Court and what he assumed to be three cases full of explosives, and then he backed into the office. Quickly he texted them to Jeffcoat, then he called him.

Jeffcoat answered, “You are in the fucking lobby?”

Dom whispered, “Listen to me carefully. I count only three tangos down here, covering two dozen hostages. They are rigging a massive daisy-chain explosive of some kind. In a couple of minutes this whole rig could go up, or they could set it on a dead man’s switch and we won’t be able to save these people. SWAT needs to breach now. I can engage them from here till they come through the front. It’s a straight shot to the left for them after that. All the lobby threats are in one place, but you have to act right now.”

“We can’t! We are missing SWAT officers up on the fifth floor. Al-Matari and Hembrick have them.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because he called and told us! We sent eighteen men up there. Only five retreated down with some FBI agents, and their body cams show at least seven dead in the hallways. There’s some dead and missing FBI up there as well.”

Dom thought it over quickly. “Okay. Here’s what you’ll have to do. I’ve got access to employee stairs. I’ll go to the fifth floor with my colleague, take down al-Matari and Hembrick, and whoever the hell else is there, and you guys get to the lobby and end the threat here.”

“I don’t have the power to make that happen, Caruso.”

Dom thought for a moment. “Well, notify Russell of my plan. I’m about to start shooting bad guys on the fifth floor. Either SWAT comes through the front and stops these three tangos from setting off that bomb or they don’t.”

“No!” Jeffcoat shouted. “You will stand down and get the fuck out—”

“Three minutes and the shooting starts.”

“Wait!”

Caruso hung up the phone. He didn’t have a lot of love for his plan, but he saw the consequences of inaction in the next couple of minutes to be even more dangerous than what he and Adara were about to attempt.

64

Back in the stairwell Dom was glad to see that the three women from the counter had left. He began moving up the stairs, covering high, and Adara moved up beside him. He whispered into her ear as he ascended.

“We have less than three minutes to engage on the fifth floor. Unknown number of shooters. They think al-Matari is there with Hembrick, along with hostages.”

Adara nodded and the two of them increased their rate of climb.

On the door out to the fifth floor they paused. Dom brought a hand up and with his fingers he reminded Adara the room number was five-one-four. They opened the door and spun out into the hall, Dom to the left and Adara to the right. In front of them they saw the devastation of the suicide bombing, as well as the explosion that took place at the far end of the hall at the stairwell there. Olive-clad men with black body armor lay all over the place, blood and body parts were strewn on the blue and gold carpet, and the walls were ripped, burned, and bloody.

There were dead men and women in plainclothes as well, and Dom suspected some, perhaps all, were FBI.

But there was no one moving in sight.

Dom led the way to room 514, passing bodies along the way. Each body he saw had a gunshot wound to the head, indicating someone had made sure there were no wounded left out here in the hall.

He saw the door to 514 was propped open before he got there. Adara was just feet behind him, and she noticed 515 also had its door open.

Dom arrived first, spun right in front of the door, and saw a single black man on his knees behind the bed, a submachine gun in his hand. He’d obviously not heard anyone coming up the hallway, and he snapped his gun up in surprise at the movement.

Adara spun left, and she saw two men there, both armed and barricaded behind a desk and a bed, on opposite sides of the room. To their right on the floor were several SWAT officers facedown, with their hands cuffed behind their backs.

The two Campus operators engaged their targets simultaneously.

Dom shot David Hembrick through the forehead before the terrorist managed to fire a single round. He then spun to help Adara when he heard her shooting, and he dropped to his knees and leaned right to try to get a line of sight around her.

Adara fired over and over again, hitting the man behind the desk in the shoulder and hip. He dropped his weapon and fell, so she spun to the second shooter, crouched behind the bed.

Before she could fire she lurched back and fell, tumbling backward over Dom and down to the carpet.

Adara had taken a bullet through her thigh, but as she went down, she continued pumping rounds at the barricaded man’s position.

She landed on her back as Dom began engaging the man behind the bed, but as Adara looked forward, she could see under the bed, and she realized she had eyes on the man’s knee, shin, and foot.

As pain jolted up from her thigh wound she fought through it, aimed under the bed at thirty feet, and shot the man straight through the kneecap.