Marc Cameron - Act of Terror

She smiled at Martha Newman, who worked alone behind the counter.

Newman was a kindly granny of a woman with a blue-gray sweater to match her hair and a face that held a map of lines as enigmatic as the Kryptos sculpture outside CIA Headquarters. According to Agency legend, Ms. Martha had ridden a motorcycle through South America with her arms wrapped around Che Guevara and had, on more than one occasion, shared a bed with Fidel Castro. When asked, Martha would only smile and utter a few romantic Spanish phrases about her heart.

Martha spoke to her patrons in any of several languages. She seemed to particularly enjoy speaking thick, guttural Russian to Ronnie, who was obviously Hispanic.

“ Dobry den, Veronica,” she said, ringing up the coffee.

“And a good afternoon to you, Ms. Martha.” Ronnie pushed aside the radio on her belt to fish a ten out of her hip pocket.

“Got a date tonight?” Martha asked, counting out Ronnie’s change.

“You never forget anything, do you?” Ronnie grinned. She picked up her cup and focused on the old woman’s sparkling eyes. “They should have kept you in the Clandestine Service.”

“That’s the truth.” The old woman narrowed steely eyes. “ If I had ever been-”

A sharp crack, like a backfiring car, echoed around the corner column where the food court made an L turn beyond the sandwich shop next to Starbucks.

A gunshot.

Ronnie crouched instinctively at the sound. Her hand dropped to the butt of her Glock.

Martha Newman’s long face tensed in the hypersensitive way of someone who’d experienced violence firsthand. “Browning Hi Power,” she whispered.

A series of five more pops came in quick succession followed by a pitiful mix of bewildered shouts and terrified screams.

“Yep, Hi Power,” Martha muttered grimly, confirming her first assessment. “I count two shooters,” she said. “One at the other exit off the main dining area with some kind of forty-five. The closer one has the Browning.” Her head snapped around to stare at Ronnie. “Go on, girl. Call yourself some backup.”

Glock in hand, Ronnie moved in a half crouch toward the staccato crack of gunfire. Going toward the danger area was standard procedure with an active shooter. She kept her eyes on the corner support column, listening to the shots and a rising tide of frantic wails. Weapon tight against her side, she reached with her left hand to key the radio mike clipped to her shoulder.

“Thirty-six to dispatch,” she whispered, certain the shooters could hear her pounding heart.

“Thirty-six.”

Ronnie willed her breath to slow. “I have at least two active shooters in the food court. Number One-somewhere near the south east exit, Number Two-about twenty yards east of Starbucks. Request Emergency Response team ASAP.”

“Ten-four, thirty-six.” The dispatcher’s voice came across louder than Ronnie would have liked. She held her hand across the speaker to muffle the noise.

“I’m closing on Number Two shooter now. They are active… repeat, they are active. Request medical be put on standby.”

Four well-spaced shots cracked around the corner-echoing in the open court. Fitful silence followed, then another shot. A gurgling whimper, as if someone was being strangled, rose amid mournful screams.

Two women wearing white hijabs and indigo dresses ran past, half stumbling, bent at the waist to avoid being shot. Neither was armed and the abject terror on their faces made Ronnie shoo them on, toward Ms. Martha and safety.

Ronnie counted twenty-seven pops before the shooting slowed. She did the math. The Browning had a thirteen-round magazine. Most forty-fives held seven or eight.

“ Maldita Sea! ” she spat, slipping into her native Spanish. She gathered herself to make a move.

Both shooters were reloading at the same time.

Seth- Tum-afik Pedram — Timmons pressed the release on the side of his Browning. The empty magazine clattered to the floor as he fished a fresh one from the waistband of his blood-spattered slacks. The world around him seemed a whirling image of pink gore and the whites of wide, pleading eyes.

His first targets had smiled like fools when they’d seen him approach. Don, a bald man with a graying goatee and the stomach of a fat toad, hoisted his paper cup as if to offer a toast. Seth pressed the gun to his face and pulled the trigger. There’d been no reason to single out the soft-spoken Don. Meeting Timmons’s gaze had been enough to get his brains blown all over the slender woman sitting alone at a table behind him. Seth ran with her sometimes at lunch. Her name was Jane Clayton. She flinched at the shot, put a hand to her cheek in dismay, wiping off bits of Don. Her eyes blinked rapidly as she tried to make some sense of what had just happened.

Seth walked up and shot her in the neck, watched her topple like a bowling pin, and then moved on to shoot another victim.

He didn’t look up from his work, but could hear the flat crack of Gerard’s pistol. They stuck to a well-rehearsed plan: stay on opposite sides of the food court to make themselves harder targets, shooting one or two on each side of a larger group, then picking off the ones in the middle as they milled around like frightened deer.

Some, like Marcia Dubois, mouthed Seth’s name in quiet shock. Her cubicle was across from his, covered with photographs of her three teenage daughters. She cowered, turning her head to one side, begging for mercy.

Timmons showed none.

Firing with one hand, he reached into the messenger bag at his side and brought out an olive-green object the size of a baseball. Before he could move, a tall African American woman held her plastic tray in front of her like a shield and rushed at him with a desperate scream.

Caught by surprise, Timmons shot from the hip, wasting three rushed rounds before he finally stopped her attack. The woman’s bravery incensed him and he shot her twice more in the chest just to watch her body jerk.

Gritting his teeth, he pulled the cotter pin from the grenade and lobbed it into a knot of people huddled in the center of the food court. The flat metal spoon flew away from the device and fell against a dining table with a metallic, bell-like tinkle…

Ronnie watched the M67 grenade sail toward the cowering group. She surely knew some of them, but had no time to process their faces before she dropped to the floor, plugging her ears as best she could against one shoulder and the heel of her left, non-gun hand.

The detonation flung tables, food, and chairs skyward, kicking the air out of her lungs. Showers of white dust rained from the high ceiling like fissures of venting steam. Smoldering napkins fluttered amid smoky silence. Charred bits of noodle and French fries stuck to walls and columns.

Ronnie wiggled her jaw, trying to clear the jumbled mess of thoughts in her head. Even absent shrapnel wounds, the sharp concussion from such an explosion had a powerfully stunning effect on the body’s soft tissues.

The blast left an eerie void, punctuated by whooshing stabs of pain in Ronnie’s ears. She pushed up slowly from the floor, staggering to her feet.

The greasy smell of gun smoke and blood stuck to the roof of her mouth. She shook off the urge to vomit, took a deep breath, and moved to the corner that loomed in front of her. One more step would bring the shooters into her view-and put her in theirs.

Ronnie Garcia wasn’t the best shot on the force, but she was consistent, even under the pressure of a screaming, spit-launching line coach.

Ninety seconds after the killing began, she stepped back from the corner and brought her Glock up to eye level in both hands. With slow deliberation, she began to sidestep, inch by slow inch- cutting the pie, they called it. Her heart beat like a kettledrum as the first assailant came into the picture formed by the glowing tritium sights of her Glock.