Jeffery Deaver - Solitude Creek

Breathlessly March added, ‘In the park. He rammed the gate. Suicide bomber. But he’s got guns too. There may be more than one.’ He held up his phone for proof.

Wonderful adolescent cries and screams.

The Get was pleased.

Now there was a good-size crowd in this area of the park. People uncertain about where to go. All talking, checking phones, making calls or texting. Gathering children.

And looking for someone with a backpack bomb, a suicide vest, a machine-gun, an RPG.

One man stormed up to a deputy holding one of the ID sheets and confronted him. Others joined in.

‘The hell are you doing about it?’

‘Why aren’t there any announcements?’

‘Do you even know ?’

The officer was flustered. Looking around. Another patron, then two more accosted the cop, demanding why they were covering up an attack and not evacuating. Was it so the amusement park wouldn’t lose face — or tax money the park would pay the county? The officer denied terrorists. But nobody was listening.

March stepped aside, watching the growing agitation of the crowd. Now about two hundred people were milling about, shouting at concession-stand employees, groundskeepers, costumed characters.

Time to ratchet things up, March decided. He called 911.

‘Police and fire, what’s your emergency?’

‘My family’s in Global Adventure. Somebody crashed into the gate and he’s loose. It’s a terrorist. They’ve seen him. He’s got a bomb!’

The dispatcher: ‘We have a report of an accident but there’s no report of any terror—’

‘Jesus, there he is! He’s got a bomb! And a gun too.’

‘Sir, what’s your name and location? Please—’

He disconnected and walked farther around the perimeter of the park, making a circle back toward the entrance. Looking in the trees, looking behind the buildings.

He made another voice call, to a local news affiliate. ‘Please, you have to help! We’re in Global Adventure World, the park, you know. Orange County. We’re hiding. My family’s hiding but he’s nearby. It’s a terrorist. A man with a machine-gun. And another one with a bomb! Please... There’s a terror attack going on! A suicide bomber. He crashed through the gate and he’s in the park. I’m looking at him now.’

‘Sir, please, what’s your name?’

‘Jesus, he’s coming this way.’

He disconnected and continued to walk through the park, noting the increasing number of people on their phones, standing in protective clusters. Some were walking off the paths and into the bushes, peering out — as if in a scene from one of the amusement-park parent company’s movies: the innocent about to be devoured by aliens.

March hurried along the pathway. He was about to play the scenario all over again, walking up to another family and stabbing them with panic, when the husband gripped March’s arm.

‘Hey!’

Wide-eyed, the man said, ‘Mister, you have family here?’

‘Yeah, they’re over at Tornado Alley. Why?’

‘There’re terrorists in the park. A half-dozen. They’re going to blow up some of the rides.’

The wife was sobbing.

‘No!’ March said. He looked at his phone. ‘Hell, you’re right. It’s my wife. Texting. CNN has the story. Terror alert. Suicide bomber in the park.’

‘That’s why the police. They’re all over the place.’

‘And they’re not saying anything!’ March snapped.

He’d thought he’d have to spread the rumor a half-dozen more times but, nope, it wasn’t necessary. The stories buzzed like locusts. One bomber, a dozen. Machine-guns. Al Qaeda. ISIS. Pakistan. Syria.

‘What’re we going to do? How do we get out?’

March shouted, ‘There’s only one way I know about. The front entrance. They don’t have emergency exits, I heard.’

‘No exits? Didn’t they think something like this could happen?’

‘We’re going to be trapped here!’

March waved his arm. ‘No, we’re not. Let’s go!’

The crowd was now moving in the general direction of the park entrance. What had started as a cluster of a hundred was swelling to three, four, five times that number. March walked with them for a ways, then stepped off the path into the bushes and let skittish cattle continue their quickening drive to what they hoped was safety.

What’s going on? Dance wondered.

She and O’Neil were back at the Global Adventure entrance, having heard reports that for some reason hundreds — no, thousands of park guests were moving in this direction. The agent and detective were outside the entrance turnstiles and fence.

The patrons clustering on the other side, waiting to exit, were edgy, anxious. Some exchanged harsh words. A shoving match or two broke out when people cut into the line ahead of the others to leave. The crush could have been relieved if the wide gate was functioning but the unsub’s steamy Chevy still blocked it.

Dance thought of the Liverpool fans clustering outside Hillsborough Stadium, the disaster her father had told her about.

Twenty-five years ago. I still have nightmares...

O’Neil and Dance walked up to the head of park security and Sergeant Ralston.

Dance asked, ‘What is all this?’

Both Herb Southern and Ralston were on their phones. Ralston said, ‘Jesus.’ Whatever he’d learned was very troubling.

Southern disconnected.

‘There’s panicking inside. A couple guests beat up one of my security guards. I don’t know why.’

Ralston hung up too. ‘Okay, this is a problem. We’re getting calls from everybody — the Sheriff’s Office, media, FBI, Homeland. Reports terrorists’re in the park. Machine-guns. Suicide vests. Fucking rumors but nine one one’s flooded, circuits’re almost overloaded.’

Dance muttered, ‘He’s doing it.’

‘Your perp?’

She nodded.

O’Neil said, ‘All it took was him telling a few people the rumor, one news report, a few blog posts, and it’s spread like fire.’

‘It’s what he does. He starts panics. And he’s real good at it.’

O’Neil said, ‘He’s going to try to get out this way, thinking we can’t check everybody.’

‘That’s pretty damn close to true,’ Sergeant Ralston muttered.

Herb Southern walked to the turnstiles, on the other side of which a crowd thirty or forty deep jostled to get out. ‘There’s no emergency!’ he shouted to the crowd. ‘You’re safe. You can stay in the park. Don’t push. Don’t push!’

Everyone ignored him.

Dance asked, ‘What’s the procedure if it were a terror attack?’

‘Lockdown. Get everybody off the rides and have them wait where security tells them. We have designated places of cover from gunmen and bad weather, fire.’

‘Evacuation?’

‘Not a mass evacuation,’ Southern said, staring at the growing sea of patrons. ‘Ma’am, today’s a slow day but we’ve still got thirteen thousand souls in the park at this moment. If they all head out together — well, you can imagine.’

The crowd was swelling as people from inside the park joined the other exiting patrons in bottlenecks between two gift shops, which jutted into the entrance walkway. Every face seemed terrified.

At the turnstiles serious fights were starting to break out and there were more and more instances of people shoving others aside and jumping the barriers, which led to more panic. The crowd was now fifty or sixty deep. And growing. One woman screamed as she was jammed against a fence. Her wrist had broken. Two guards got to her and managed to calm that cluster of patrons. But as soon as they did another fight broke out, more pushing, more screams. Dance watched two other patrons fall. They were trampled before guards got them to their feet. The workers’ faces were as alarmed as their guests’.