Greg Rucka: Critical Space

"She'll want to go," Moore told me, after he'd read the invitation. One of his duties was to screen any incoming mail, and he'd opened and read the letter as a matter of course. "She loves Fleet's movies."

"You think it'll be a problem?" I asked.

"Nah," he said. "Invitation is for the movie and then a bash at Pastis on Ninth afterwards. She'll do both, we'll have her back by two in the morning, no later. She's not much of a party girl."

"For which we are all extremely grateful."

"You and Nat want to run the route, I'll let her know we've got security in place."

"We'll do it this evening, after she's buttoned up for the night."

"Right, then," Moore said. "Should be a no-brainer, really."

Ingress was flawless.

Egress was another matter entirely.

We were using two cars, one driven by Dale to ferry Lady Ainsley-Hunter, Moore, and myself from location to location, and then a second car to follow, driven by Natalie, and loaded with Corry and Lady Ainsley-Hunter's personal secretary, a young woman named Fiona Chester. The vehicles were kept lined up around the block, and as each celebrity departed, the event staff would radio to tell each driver that they were free to move. Because we didn't trust the event staff to know their jobs, Dale and I were waiting on word from Moore.

"Sleepy coming out in thirty seconds, " Moore said over the radio.

"Confirmed," Dale answered, and as he started to roll us into position, I got on my radio and echoed the order to Corry. Natalie confirmed before we'd come to a stop, and I was out, holding the door open at the end of the red carpet, scanning both sides of the line. Natalie and Corry fell into position on either side, where photographers and autograph seekers were lined up three and four deep beyond the velvet ropes. The flashbulbs started exploding.

Moore's voice came over my earpiece. "Sleepy coming out."

"Confirmed."

They appeared at the end of the carpet, making their way toward us. Lady Ainsley-Hunter was smiling, waving to each side, and Moore was sticking close to her, and there was another barrage of flashes, followed immediately by a yell, and without warning a fight erupted amongst the paparazzi that spilled onto the red carpet. Moore's left hand shot to Lady Ainsley-Hunter's shoulder, pulling her back toward him and tucking her in, and he tried to power through to the car using his body as cover. I stayed on post, watching as Nat and Corry did their damnedest to keep the route clear.

Cops started swarming in, the gawkers got involved, and suddenly there was a furball of people pushing and pulling. The brawl was escalating, punches starting to fly wildly, and Moore abruptly went down like a dropped brick, a flailing photographer's elbow connecting with the former soldier's face, taking him utterly by surprise. For one horribly long moment Lady Ainsley-Hunter was motionless, alone, standing on the red carpet with the melee around her.

I went off the car, diving in after her, using my hands to knock people out of the way. Over my earpiece, I heard Moore shouting for an evac.

Lady Ainsley-Hunter gripped my arm as I reached for her, and I pulled her into me, looking for a path out. "Got you," I told her. "Got you, you're fine."

"Bloody hell," she muttered.

"Hold on," I said, already turning to fight a path back to the car.

Then Corry was shouting, "Gun! Gun! Gun!"

His name was Samuel Jeppeson, and we learned later that he was forty-three years old and recently released from Bellevue, where he'd been undergoing treatment for paranoid schizophrenia. When the cops finally managed to get a semicoherent statement from him, they learned that he'd stopped taking his medication four days before Lady Ainsley-Hunter arrived in New York. Jeppeson then explained that he had merely been trying to keep the British Crown from reclaiming the Colonies. What we didn't understand, he said, was that Lady Ainsley-Hunter was actually a member of the One World Government's Covert Action Staff, on a mission to New York City to seduce the mayor and recruit the NYPD to her cause.

He never explained where he got the gun, which was a Llama Model IX, a semiautomatic pistol manufactured in Spain, with a magazine capacity of seven nine-millimeter rounds. The gun hadn't been well cared for, and specks of rust were visible around the barrel and along the slide, though they certainly wouldn't keep the weapon from firing.

Any other weapon, and things could have turned out very differently. But Jeppeson brought the Llama, and from that single decision everything else sprang forth.

By the time Corry was shouting "gun" a second time, I had my hand on Lady Ainsley-Hunter's shoulder and was pushing her down into the crouch, hoping that Moore had drilled her on this, hoping she wouldn't go flat. If she went to the deck, down on the carpet, it would be impossible to move her quickly. She stopped on her haunches, and it's to Her Ladyship's credit that she remembered what she'd been taught, and she was in her crouch when I spotted Jeppeson.

He was in full lone-gunman mode, making straight for us, right into the critical space, the pistol out in his right hand, shouting some condemnation that I never actually heard. My stomach had shrunk to the size of a marble, I didn't have time to index my own weapon, in fact I didn't really have time to do anything at all. I remember thinking, quite clearly, that if Jeppeson shot Lady Ainsley-Hunter I'd end up getting blood all over my only suit, which was from Brooks Brothers and which I was rather fond of, and which I didn't think I could afford to send to the dry cleaner because certainly if our principal died I'd never get work again.

He broke through the line with people moving to get away, and I stepped in front of him and grabbed the pistol with my left, trying to force the slide back and out of battery, trying to keep the hammer from falling on the bullet in the chamber. It wasn't a conscious attempt to do anything clever; it was a move of panic more than anything else, an act to do something – anything – to keep the Llama from firing.

The force of my grip on the gun drove Jeppeson's arm back against his body, and I started to reach up between us, to grab his elbow and pin him back. There was the vibration of something metal snapping in my hand, and then my grip on the gun was gone, so I reached for him again, catching his right shoulder with my left hand, catching his elbow once more, and then I pivoted and pitched him headfirst into the carpet. The flip dislocated his shoulder, and Jeppeson hit the deck howling.

As soon as my hands were clear I indexed my weapon with my right, scanning for another attack, and shouting at Lady Ainsley-Hunter, "Get in the car! Get in the car!"

She sprang up from the crouch, and I fell in behind her, looking at the mass of people, wincing at the onslaught of more flashbulbs. Lady Ainsley-Hunter slid into the backseat, and I pitched in after her, slamming the door shut and then literally covering her body with my own. The engine had been running, and we were out into the street in roughly a second, Dale accelerating, speaking quickly into his radio.

"We're clear, we're good," Dale told me, after a minute. "Moore and the others are en route, they'll meet us at the hotel."

I rolled off Lady Ainsley-Hunter and helped her sit up, then began running my eyes and hands over her body, making certain she hadn't taken a wound I might've missed. Given enough adrenaline, a person can take a bullet and keep moving for quite a while, and I didn't want us to arrive at the hotel only to discover that we should have been headed for the hospital instead.

"Fresh," Lady Ainsley-Hunter said.