them, Buckner didn’t.
Although the man presented a small target by lying in the prone position, he had obviously never learned about ricochet shooting or grazing fire, as they called it in the military. When a bullet is fired at a surface at an acute angle, it has a tendency to skip along the surface, much as a flat rock can be skipped along the surface of a lake. The Army taught machine gunners to keep their fire low when engaging enemy forces. Rounds that don’t hit the personnel directly and miss low will graze along the ground, often bouncing a foot or two high, much like a skipped rock.
It had taken two seconds for the rifleman to get off a shot. If Sinclair appeared at a location different from the corner of the hallway where the man was now aiming, the rifleman would have to shift his aim, thus giving Sinclair another second. If Sinclair could get his first shot directed at the floor halfway down the hallway within that time, one or more pellets, skipping along the floor, might hit the target. Even if he missed, Sinclair might get close enough to upset the rifleman’s aim and give him time to fire the last three rounds. He had a good chance of hitting the rifleman if he could put thirty-six pellets downrange.
Sinclair quick peeked. Two men were disappearing into a classroom near the end of the hall. Lisa Harper’s classroom couldn’t be much further. The rifleman was still in position.
Sinclair checked the shotgun. One round in the chamber, three more in the magazine. He got a running start and dashed into the hallway, immediately dropping to his knees and sliding halfway to the far wall. The shotgun’s stock was already against his shoulder. He twisted his body and fired. Without waiting to see the results, he pumped the action and fired again, and again, and again.
Sinclair dropped the empty shotgun and drew his pistol. The rifleman was motionless. He hadn’t gotten off a shot. Two men in long, black raincoats and ski masks exited a classroom and pointed guns in Sinclair’s direction. One was an SKS rifle, the other a pistol. Sinclair sprinted back around the corner out of their field of fire as a barrage of bullets struck the wall behind where he had been standing.
Although he had taken out one target, Sinclair wasn’t much better off than before. He was pinned down once again. The only way forward was through open ground defended by a man with a rifle.
Sinclair looked in front of him. The dead man’s rifle lay ten feet into the exposed kill zone. Although he had never fired an SKS, he’d handled them as evidence on numerous occasions. Years ago, Oakland was flooded with thousands of Norinco SKS rifles. At two hundred dollars each, the Chinese-made rifles were a favorite drive-by shooting choice of drug gangs for several years. Crudely built, marginally accurate, but utterly reliable, the SKS was a military rifle designed by Russia during World War II. Because it didn’t match the characteristics of an assault rifle, it was legal to purchase even in California.
Sinclair had survived one sprint into the long hallway, and he hoped his luck would hold out again. If the two remaining gunmen were skilled at hitting a moving target, as were many hunters, he was a dead man. He dashed into the corridor and grabbed the SKS. His leather-soled shoes provided little traction on the slick floor, and he nearly fell. Bullets pinged around him as he dove back to safety around the corner.
He pulled the SKS’s bolt to the rear and ejected a live cartridge into his hand. The internal box magazine, which could hold up to ten rounds, was empty. The dead man had fired them during their brief gunfight. Sinclair wished the body wasn’t in the kill zone because the man’s pockets surely contained stripper clips of ammo, but he didn’t dare risk searching the body while exposed to gunfire. He pressed the single cartridge into the magazine, released the bolt, and watched it load into the chamber. He had one shot. If he was lucky, he could take out the man with the rifle, close the distance to the final man, who was armed only with a handgun, and finish the fight.
He quick peeked around the corner. The muscular man had a crowbar in his hand and was trying to pry open a classroom door at the end of the hall—Lisa Harper’s room.