Making her stay low, Robie pushed Eleanor toward the others. He yelled to one Secret Service agent who was shielding the two children, “Get them through that door. Now!”
Another agent came up to help, and together they pushed the kids ahead of them.
Claire started crying as she saw Sam dead on the floor. Tommy looked too afraid to make a sound.
Eleanor called out to her children even as one of the agents with them was hit in the back of the head and went down, falling over a stack of chairs.
A body came tumbling down from the second-floor balcony and hit the floor hard. It was one of the deputies from the local police. He’d been shot in the forehead.
“They’ve got the high ground,” yelled out Reel as she kept backing away, acting as the rear guard and firing widely angled shots at the balcony to provide cover.
“Move, move!” Robie urged Eleanor as more shots rang out.
The other agent with Claire and Tommy went down with a bullet in his spine.
“Reel!” yelled Robie.
Reel catapulted across the room and hit the man who had just appeared in the doorway. Her kick crushed his face and sent him flying backward, his weapon sailing away. Before he could try to get up, Reel had fired a bullet into his head.
The next instant she was falling backward as another man struck her low, driving his shoulder into her gut. She hit the floor and spun away on the smooth wood. She still had her gun and was preparing to fire when a shot rang out. The man who had hit Reel stood there stiffly for a second and then toppled forward, his face largely gone from the round Robie had fired into it.
Claire and Eleanor screamed as another man raced into the room brandishing an MP5 submachine gun. But before he could fire, Robie forced him to take cover when he emptied his clip at the man. Robie pulled Eleanor along and through a doorway as Reel sprinted across the room, hurdled a table, grabbed both kids, and propelled them into the same interior room, kicking the door shut behind her.
Back in the main room another Secret Service agent and a deputy raced in. The deputy was shot in the chest and went down before even firing his gun. The agent fired three shots at the second floor and a yell indicated that he had struck someone. Then he went down in a hail of fire from the man toting the MP5. But he still managed to empty his clip and killed the man who had just ended his life.
Inside the other room Robie and Reel pulled the first family away from the doorway and flattened them to the floor just in time. MP5 rounds ripped through it, spraying metal and wood in all directions.
As soon as the shooting stopped, Robie and Reel led Eleanor and her kids through another interior doorway. Robie locked the door and then surveyed the room. It was small, windowless, and there was a set of stairs leading down.
Reel had already eyed it. “Probably the cellar,” she said. “Curved staircase.”
“Constrained fields of fire,” he replied, understanding immediately. “Gives us an edge.”
“Not much choice. Let’s do it.”
They propelled the first family down the steps. The cellar was even smaller than the room above and had no exit.
They were trapped.
There was a stout wooden table that they immediately overturned, putting Eleanor and her children behind it.
They could all hear the gun battle taking place around them. There were screams, and the zings of bullets missing, and then the thuds of bullets hitting and then bodies falling.
Claire was now hysterical.
Tommy simply seemed paralyzed.
Eleanor looked at Robie; she was scared, but when she spoke her voice was firm. “How do we get my children safely out of here, Agent Robie?”
Reel was surveying the staircase. She had already reloaded and she’d also taken pistols from the slain agents. She flipped a spare to Robie.
Robie said, “We’re working on it, ma’am. We will do our best.”
He tried the walkie-talkie three times but no one answered.
Eleanor looked at him in disbelief. “But that means…” she began, shooting a worried glance at her daughter, who was still sobbing uncontrollably.
Robie nodded and said quietly, “They’re all gone.”
He punched 911 on his phone. It just rang. “They must be swamped with calls,” he concluded.