City of Shadows

Chapter 23

7.34 a.m., 12 September 2001, North Haven Plaza, Branford

They regarded the body of the old man lying on the floor in front of them in silence. Beside him a young female was cowering on the floor, her hands clasped to a wound.

‘P-please… d-don’t kill me…’ she whimpered.

Both support units ignored her. She was irrelevant. Back to the dead man.

‘It is an older version of the one called Liam O’Connor,’ said Faith, studying the old man’s face. ‘A valid target.’

Abel nodded. ‘Good.’ He looked up. ‘The others will be nearby.’ They’d spotted the group heading into this store and briefly picked up the idents of the two support units with them. Those signals were gone now. Switched off.

Other than sneaking past them out of the store’s main entrance, he noted only two other possible exits for them.

‘We must separate.’

Faith looked at the escalator leading to the store’s upper floor. ‘I will go that way.’

Abel nodded and immediately strode towards the staff only door at the rear of the store.

› Locate and kill. We have six remaining targets, he added wirelessly.

› Affirmative, she replied.

Faith jogged up the escalator as another tannoy announcement reverberated throughout the mall. ‘Attention, attention… this is an emergency announcement. All customers and staff are asked to immediately leave the mall. This is an emergency and not a drill. Please leave the…’

The escalator jerked to a halt beneath her feet. She hurried up the rest of the way and at the top she scanned the shop floor. She spotted thirteen people, seven of them wearing the same pink shirts as the dying girl downstairs — she assumed the shirt was some sort of a uniform. None of them, or the others, bore any resemblance to the mission briefing images she’d started with, nor the library of fleeting shutter-frame images, glimpses of her quarry, that she’d managed to build up during the mission so far.

Faith emerged quickly from the store, tucking the gun away into the waistband of her jogging bottoms and hiding the gun’s protruding handle beneath her hoody. No need to attract any unwanted attention. They’d already done enough of that with the gunfight downstairs.

She joined the throng of people on the upper floor, emerging from store fronts. So many of them sluggish, uncertain: seemingly unsure whether this was a real emergency or a drill, unsure whether the exchange of gunfire minutes ago might have been stupid kids letting off some firecrackers.

She scanned the backs of heads, necks, shoulders. She had a comparison image of that particular view of one of the targets called Madelaine. From back in Times Square, when she’d crossed the street and chased them into the building. Madelaine: tall, slim. Long, light-coloured curly hair pulled into a ponytail. Jeans. Checked shirt. The other girl, Saleena: short, slim. Black hair. Dark leggings, black hooded top. Of course they could be wearing different clothes by now.

Her eyes coolly evaluated the people hurrying in front of her, one after the other in quick succession.

Maddy found herself in the middle of a milling crowd of people, a bottleneck at the top of both of the now stationary escalators leading down to the ground floor. Someone had turned them off. Probably a routine health and safety measure in the event of a mall evacuation. Stupid, though, being off. It was taking an age to get down. She was stuck at the top, waiting for an elderly couple in front of her to tramp slowly down.

Come on, come on.

She guessed she must be the last one in their group to get out. The others were probably already running back across the car park, along the pavement towards the motel and their waiting RV.

Her mind had yet to process what she’d glimpsed. It was there in her head. Foster being gunned down. But in the fleeting minute — two minutes — since then, she’d yet to digest it, make sense of it. Feel something about it.

That was going to come, of course. Tears. Probably lots of them. Fear, grief, panic, stress. Four excuses right there to let it go and cry like some typical movie girl-in-distress: all quivering, dimpled chin and smudged mascara.

If she managed to live long enough, that is.

A woman pushed past Maddy, pushed past the old couple in front of her. Heavy heels clanked on the metal-strip steps, wide hips bumping people aside as she pushed her way forward and wheezed a mantra of barely contained panic. ‘Oh my Lord, protect me! Oh my Lord, protect me!’

Maddy wanted to push her way forward like that. But didn’t. Too rude. Still…

Come on. Come on!

She wished she had Bob here with her. Even their half-grown Becks. She might only look like twelve or thirteen years old, but she could snap a neck or take a magazine full of bullets almost as well as Bob.

Then she saw her face. Becks. Only of course it wasn’t Becks.

‘Jesus! You guys took your goddamn time!’ the mall guard called out, relieved at the sight of five cops jogging along the narrow service passage towards him.

‘These the two perps you called in?’ said one of them. A police sergeant. He and one of the others were carrying shotguns.

‘Yeah. These are them.’

‘They don’t match the description our boys called in,’ he said, pumping shells into the weapon’s breech. ‘Armed male and female. Both adults, both Caucasian.’ He looked at Rashim and Sal. ‘These clearly aren’t them.’

‘But — ’

‘Jason, take these two out!’

‘Yessir,’ said one of the cops.

‘You give your details to him,’ he said to Sal and Rashim. ‘We’ll need witness statements off you later.’

‘Right,’ said Sal. ‘Thanks.’

The sergeant stroked his chin thoughtfully, his radio crackled with traffic. More cops on their way in. An armed response unit among them.

‘We got several officers down in there, sir.’

‘I know that!’ the police sergeant barked. ‘I know that. Lemme think. Lemme think.’

Just then they heard the echo of a door bang open, the slap of heavy footsteps on linoleum. Nothing Sal could see. It came from around the corner, from where she and Rashim had just emerged via the toystore’s stockroom some minutes ago.

‘Who’s that?’ whispered one of the cops.

The footsteps echoed. Heavy. Even. Measured.

‘It’s one of them!’ said Sal.

‘Them? Who?’ The sergeant cocked his weapon. ‘One of the shooters?’

She nodded.

‘POLICE!’ he called out quickly. ‘WE ARE ARMED POLICE.’ His voice rolled down the passageway and eventually faded to silence.

The sound of approaching footsteps suddenly ceased.

‘POLICE!’ he called again. ‘YOU BEST COME ROUND WITH YOUR HANDS UP!’

There was no reply. Just the sound of an ammo clip being ejected and rattling on the floor. The clack-snick of a new one being rammed home.

‘That don’t sound so good,’ said the mall guard.

‘Just get these two civilians the hell out of here before this turns nasty,’ whispered the sergeant.

The mall guard nodded. Grabbed Sal’s arm. ‘Let’s go, folks.’

‘OK… OK,’ she whispered eagerly.

The guard led the way. ‘Delivery bay six is right up here. Just ahead,’ he said quietly. ‘We can exit that way.’

He picked up the pace. Sal stole one last glance over her shoulder at the huddle of police officers in the anaemic, turquoise glow of the passage’s wall lights, checking their weapons and holding them up and steady in the trained and engrained two-hand legs-apart stance.

‘Here, this way,’ said the guard. He pushed open double doors that led on to an underground delivery bay.

As they stepped out, the mall guard holding the swing doors open for them, Sal thought she heard the police sergeant call out one last challenge. Then, as the echo of his shaky voice tailed away, the passage behind them suddenly sounded like a war zone.