Countdown in Cairo

TWENTY-TWO

Alex drove eight blocks and spotted an open meter in front of the small 7-Eleven. The parking spot was small, but Alex knew she could squeeze her car in.

Janet, feeling suddenly frisky, jumped out of the car before Alex could finish parking. “I’ll go ahead and start getting stuff,” she said. “See ya.”

Alex was about to object, but Janet gave her the crazy walk-like-an-Egyptian arm movement again, followed by something reminiscent of the Steve Martin “Tut strut.”

Still a little beery, they both laughed. Before Alex could suggest that she wait, Janet had walked through the automatic glass doors into the store.

Alex parked. Then, in her rearview mirror, past the wiper that cleared the heavy mist, she saw a car pull into a No Parking spot close to the mini-mart entrance. She saw a man jump out of the car, and a second man, the driver, quickly followed. They were a pair of big men in dark jeans and black hoodies. The first man, who wore an overcoat over his hoodie, took one glance in Alex’s direction and forged onward into the store. The second man followed close behind. Alex felt a jolt go through her. Terrible vibes. There was something wrong with the way they were dressed, the way they swaggered, the way they went into the mini-mart on Janet’s heels.

Heavy outer clothes. What were they hiding?

Alex’s mind went into overdrive. In the back of her mind, she was processing something. The headlights of their car had been in her rearview mirror since pulling out from the parking garage. Under normal circumstances, she would have thought nothing of that. But these weren’t normal circumstances. Then too there was something about the first man, the quick furtive nature of his movements, that Alex didn’t like. She was three-quarters of the way into the parking place when she placed him. He was the man she had once seen sitting in a parked car on the block where the Calvert Arms stood. Alex kicked herself for letting Janet out of her sight for even a few seconds.

Then Alex recognized the Taurus. It had been lurking somewhere, and she had missed it. She was furious.

She ripped the keys from her ignition and threw open the door. An oncoming car blasted her with the lights and honked, splashing her as it swerved and went around her. She ducked back in the rain. The driver yelled some profanity.

Alex gestured back with the New York City turn signal, Robert used to call it, and kept moving. She turned toward the store and ran. Her hand went to her weapon, but she didn’t draw it yet.

The suspicious car had left its doors unlocked but there was no one in it. Oh, Lord protect me, she thought. The wheels had been left pointing out and the driver had left a space of three feet between his car and the one in front. Standard smash-and-grab getaway parking position. Alex had seen it before and knew she would see it again.

She also knew what she was seeing here. Trouble with a capital T. Alex burst into the store, looking in every direction.

She didn’t see Janet.

She didn’t see the two men.

She looked down the first aisle, then a second. Still no one. She ran to a third, bumping into a woman with a cart. She turned a corner on an aisle and spotted Janet.

“Hey! Janet!” she yelled.

Janet turned, gave her a big smile. She had a plastic shopping basket on her arm and had already grabbed a few items.

Alex made a sharp beckoning gesture with her hand. “Come here!” Alex hissed. “We got to get going. Now!”

“But we just got here!”

“Now!” Alex called.

She tried to make a gesture, pointing, that suggested imminent danger. She stepped quickly toward Janet. As a precaution she pulled her Glock out and held it to her side, as concealed as possible. The last thing she wanted was a close-in gunfight.

Janet started to speak again. “But-?”

“We’re leaving! Let’s go!” Alex demanded. She walked to Janet and grabbed her wrist, pulling her.

Janet resisted. “What the-?”

“They’re in here! People who are after you!” Alex said.

Janet gasped and swore.

“Move!” Alex said. “We got to get going.”

Janet dropped her basket. The two women moved back up the aisle toward the door. Then in front of them, one of the two men from the street came around the aisle. He stopped and stared.

Alex froze first, then Janet.

The man was ten feet away, grinning, his hands in a position to indicate that under his overcoat he had firepower.

Alex looked behind her. As if by instinct, she felt the eyes on her back. She saw that the second man was behind her, about thirty feet away at the end of a long aisle.

“Just give Janet to us,” the man in front of Alex said.

“Not a chance!” Alex said. She kept her Glock hard by her leg, out of sight. No point to tip them.

“You both want to get killed?” the man asked. He had an accent.

Middle Eastern. Maybe.

“I should ask you the same,” Alex answered. With her free hand, she pulled out her bureau ID. “I’m FBI. Get out of our way and get out of the store!”

The man spat at her. The spit hit on the floor three feet in front of Alex. Alex knew: it was a diversion. She wasn’t falling for it.

Then, bedlam.

The man in front of Alex used both hands to swing up an automatic pistol and wheel it toward them. From behind her, she heard the second man retreat hastily for cover. Alex shoved Janet to the ground with one arm, following her into a low crouch. Once again Alex’s quick reflexes saved her, along with having her own weapon already in her hand and set to fire. Precious seconds saved now meant precious decades longer to live.

Alex’s right hand came up shooting. Her pistol thundered once with an enormous intimidating bang and then a second one. Her mind was lucid and her reactions crisp, as if the danger to her and Janet clarified her thoughts at the same time.

The gunman sprayed the area. But Alex’s first shot hit the man in the upper shoulder. He staggered backward. His coat quickly discolored with a dark crimson. His own pistol fired wildly thanks to the impact of Alex’s shot on his body. Five or six shots sprayed from the floor to the shelves to the ceiling.

Alex’s second shot had ripped into the right arm of the gunman, just at the inside of the elbow where the forearm met the upper arm. The sleeve soaked with the evidence of a clear hit. The gun flew from the shooter’s hand. It hit the floor hard, spun, and skidded.

The man bellowed, then followed with a long, monotonous stream of vicious obscenities. There was a slow-motion reddish explosion of blood and smashed bone from that section of his arm. It sputtered forth. The fabric of the coat had been shredded by the tumble of Alex’s bullet.

More chaos. Somewhere in the store, an alarm whooped like a fire siren. From the neighboring aisles, Alex could hear the screams of other shoppers and their frenzied, panicked footsteps as they sought an exit.

Janet crouched low behind Alex. Alex knew that the danger was far from over. The man she had wounded was scrambling backward, groping for his weapon with his left hand as he flailed and knocked dozens of items off the nearest shelves. Then he lost balance and was on his knees, chest heaving, still swearing viciously, profanely vowing to kill both women if he could get to his weapon.

His partner came around the corner behind him, his weapon already out, ducking low, trying to bring the nose of his own pistol in the right direction and aim it toward their female victims.

Alex jerked her Glock toward the second assailant before he could get his bearings. “FBI! Freeze!” she screamed.

He swung around his hand that held his weapon.

Alex fired three times. At the same time, the gunman poured a volley of shots toward her.

Janet hit the floor, flat and screaming. Alex felt and heard two shots hit the floor to her right with horrible loud skidding ricochets. Another smashed into the shelf display over her head, dispatching shampoo bottles and hairspray in every direction. But her own shots, one of them at least, had found its mark.

The second gunman staggered. Alex had hit him in the upper chest, not mortally, but enough to take him out of the fight.

He kept his weapon in his left hand and could have fired again. Instead, with his right hand he grabbed his partner and tried to hoist him to his feet.

Alex screamed again. “Freeze! FBI! Freeze!” she howled.

The gunman neither froze nor fired again. The fallen man rocked forward to his feet. If he had lunged for his gun, Alex would have shot him. Instead, the second man pulled the first man to his feet. They turned over the remaining part of an aisle candy display. They lurched and staggered toward the door, colliding with other panicked people trying to flee.

Alex whirled and eyeballed Janet, who remained curled on the floor and who was shielding her face and eyes. Alex saw no blood. Neither of them had been hit.

“You all right?” Alex blurted.

Janet gave her a terrified nod. There were tears in her eyes. Her face was white.

Alex made a decision to pursue the attackers.

“Stay here!” she said.

Alex rose to her feet and ran down the aisle. With her free hand, she dropped her FBI ID around her neck on its chain. There were customers down and cringing, and displays were turned over across the floor. Alex pushed and shoved past them.

The cashiers were still ducking low behind the counter. The footing was treacherous, but Alex ran after the gunmen.

She skidded and nearly fell. She hit the entranceway and turned the corner. The more severely wounded man had crashed into the backseat of the car and the second gunman was ducking into the driver’s seat. But he held his position.

He was waiting for her. The gun was trained right at her.

Again, Alex was quick and elusive. She dropped down immediately, hit the sidewalk hard, and rolled to her right, bringing her almost parallel to the car. The bullets crashed into the brick and glass of the store structure and window.

An entire pane of glass shattered and fell behind her. The gunman ducked down into the driver’s side of the front seat. She felt something cut across her left shoulder and assumed she’d been hit with a chunk of glass. It hurt like a hot knife.

On the getaway car, the driver’s side door slammed. The engine roared to life and the vehicle skidded into a brutal backup.

The rain fell in torrents now. The gunman in the driver’s seat took one final shot at Alex, firing through the glass. The front window on the passenger’s side exploded with the impact of a shot from within the car. The bullet hit closest of all to Alex, about two feet over her left shoulder. If it had found its intended mark, it would have killed her. But it didn’t.

In the distance there were already police sirens.

The tires of the escape car skidded in place. Then the car burst forward and smashed into the car in front of it. Alex had a free sight line so she fired her own weapon twice at the car’s right tire, but missed. She raised the weapon and fired twice more into the car, trying to hit the driver.

She missed again. She fumbled with her own weapon and it slipped from her hand to the sidewalk.

And then, to her horror, the back door of the car flew open. The man she had wounded, blood all over his face and upper chest, his eyes alive with hatred and pain, raised another automatic weapon in her direction and prepared to kill her.

He was no more than ten feet away, the car door wide open. He lurched out, bracing himself with one leg. But the motion of the car dislodged him. He fumbled wildly, forced to use his “wrong” hand for his weapon.

The car continued to move and knocked him off balance. He fired again at her, and the bullets flew wide over her head as Alex lunged for her Glock.

She grabbed it and raised it, coming up firing point blank with the final three shots of a ten-round clip. Her volley of bullets smashed the man directly in the center of the chest. He spun wildly and fell backward toward the car. Then as the car swerved, swayed, skidded, and cut out into the street, his huge body spilled away from the vehicle for a final time. He was on one knee. There was still life in him and he tried to raise the weapon again.

Alex knew she was out of bullets. She scrambled to her feet, bolted forward and threw a vicious kick at the man’s head. Her foot smashed across the lower part of his face and jaw, as if she were drop-kicking a rugby ball.

As the gunman on the sidewalk tumbled backward, the car swerved erratically a final time, careened, fishtailed and went out onto the road, its rear door flying loose until it slammed shut from momentum. The car disappeared down the block and turned the corner with a long screech of the tires as it spun out of control.

Seconds later, Alex heard a crash. Then she heard the police sirens grow louder as they approached, and she looked at the lifeless body of the man she had shot. She picked up his weapon from the sidewalk to safeguard it.

She tried to feel compassion. She felt none. She felt sick instead. Sick, and surprised to be alive.

Breathing heavily, Alex felt a pain and saw that her knee was bloody, even through the denim of her jeans. For an instant a jolt went through her like a electric shock. Staring at her injury, she realized that it was only a bad scrape, most likely from when she had hit the sidewalk outside. And her left shoulder started to sting again, this time hotter and deeper. She reholstered her own weapon.

An armada of DC police cars arrived, lights flashing, uniformed officers jumping out, weapons out.

By reflex, she reached again to her FBI ID, holding it aloft and open so the badge could easily be seen. She was shaken but alive and Janet, though terrified, was safe and physically unharmed.

But as police cars with strobelike flashing lights in red and blue continued to surround her, Alex already knew that the night would be as long as it had been violent. Then she looked at the left arm of her coat and saw that, beneath the rain, the sleeve was crimson from the shoulder down. She looked for the rip from a shard of glass from the store window but she saw none.

Instead, there was a much smaller hole, one made by a bullet. As the realization came upon her, her knees felt rubbery, then very weak.

Two DC cops were suddenly next to her, one male, one female. So was Janet.

One of the cops put an arm around her.

“We’ll get you an ambulance,” she said. “Or do you want to go in a sector car?”

“What are you talking about? Go where?”

Numbness was starting to sink in. Alex felt faint-headed.

“The hospital,” the male cop said.

“Why?” She thought it, but didn’t say it. Yet her expression must have asked the same question.

“You’ve been shot.”