Midnight Hero - By Diana Duncan Page 0,47
heads our way, we’ll hear. To them, it will simply look like the swag fell under its own weight and the ornaments scattered and broke.”
Amazed, she flung ornaments. “You are one smart cookie.”
“Aidan gets credit for this maneuver. He knows damn near every survival trick in the book.”
“Speaking of your capable, hard-headed-as-a-rock big brother, what are he and the SWAT team doing now?”
“First they’ll secure the incident site and gather as much intel from as many different sources as possible. About the mall, suspects and hostages. Next, establish communication with the bad guys. Acquire a list of demands and bargain for hostage release.”
They finished smashing ornaments and moved into the store. Inside, Maxwell Moose sprawled like a petrified hit-and-run victim across three collapsed tents, his hooves pointing straight up.
There were no emergency lights, and farther in, the hushed blackness was thick and inky. Bailey retrieved a flashlight from her pack and angled the beam in a slow circle. The store was huge. The vaulted ceiling was painted like a night sky, complete with glow-in-the-dark stars and northern lights. Wall murals gave the impression of a secluded Alaskan clearing surrounded by forest. Gave the perception of solitude. Safety. A fantasy she desperately wanted to buy into. Dripping fake trees sat around the room, along with water-beaded tents. Shelves bulged with camping and survival equipment. As a hiding place, it had merit.
“How will they contact the robbers? Yelling through a megaphone seems counterproductive to peace talks.”
Con handed her the food bags and then picked up the packs and blankets. “The negotiator has a throw phone. A mobile unit he tosses out. The suspects retrieve it and take it inside. Meanwhile, armed officers have surrounded the building in both a tight inner and outer perimeter, and snipers are in position. They’ve got a miserable job. Lying on the ground, no matter the weather, waiting. Watching, staying alert, immobile for hours.”
With him following, she walked to a large tent at the back of the store. She set the food on a dry spot on the carpet near the tent, and he did the same with the packs. While she and Con would be cozy inside their shelter, the men sent to rescue them would patiently endure hours of wet, freezing exposure in the storm. Worse, they could face gunfire. Sympathy, along with anxiety for the officers’ welfare weighted her chest. She’d thought giving up her own time to help redecorate the bookstore was devotion to duty. “Are the snipers there to shoot the bank robbers?”
“Maybe, eventually.” He got out the other flashlight and propped both to cast yellow circles in the immediate vicinity. “Right now, they’re an important source of intel. They report everything they see through their scopes. They watch for a clear line of fire, but won’t shoot without a green light from command. It’s a last resort. With this many suspects, taking them all out with simultaneous cold shots is out of the question.”
She shrugged off the heavy Kevlar vest and dumped it inside the tent. She rubbed her icy hands together. “What’s a cold shot?”
“Depending on where in the body a person is shot, they can still function far too long. I’ve seen mortally wounded suspects run more than fifty yards. Continue shooting for nearly a minute. Plenty of time for them to inflict injury or death.”
He folded back the tent flaps. The interior was protected from the sprinklers’ devastation and would provide a barrier against the pervasive chill. “A cold shot is a bullet to the brain stem. It’s a small target area, between the nose and upper lip, and takes considerable skill. Drops ’em instantly. Immediate neutralization.”
She closed her eyes against the horrific mental picture, but it didn’t help. His cool recitation about snipers severing brain stems might have been about the weather. How did Con block the disturbing images, the terrible memories day in, day out? She opened her eyes and focused on the shelves lining the store. As dangerous as their situation was, the worst thing she’d witnessed was a vicious fight and Syrone’s bullet wound. She’d better prepare. As the night advanced, the risk of violence increased.
Dread churned in her empty stomach. If lethal force became necessary, could she handle watching Con kill someone? And how would she feel about him afterward?
He tore apart plastic envelopes containing the comforters and shook out the blankets, spreading one on the tent floor, folding the second into a bulky pillow and reserving the third in a crumpled pile