Besieged

Book 3: Jake Mahegan Thriller

by Anthony J. Tata

Genres: Action & Adventure; Military Thrillers; Political Thrillers

Synopsis

"GRIPPING AND GRITTY." - Richard North Patterson, #1 New York Times bestselling author A school under siege. A shooter in the classroom. An all too common American nightmare unleashed again. But this time, former Delta Captain Jake Mahegan happens to be on the schoolgrounds checking in on the daughter of a colleague. Instead he's staring down a suicidal gunman rigged to blow. During the standoff another attack begins outside the school. The gunman goes down, Mahegan is knocked unconscious, and a twelve-year-old autistic girl is kidnapped. Mahegan knows his mission before the smoke clears, but where it takes him is unimaginable - deep into a widespread conspiracy that threatens the nation's very core. Treason in the highest halls of government. And only one man is prepared to stop it - or die trying... "An explosive, seat-of-your-pants thriller!" - W.E.B. Griffin and W.E. Butterworth IV on Sudden Threat "Mahegan stands out from the crowd of usual thriller heroes." - Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Topical, frightening, possible, and riveting." - James Rollins on Sudden Threat "This one truly kicks butt. Crackling with action and tension, it'll hold you captive from the first page until the last." - Steve Berry, New York Times and #1 international bestselling author

Release date: November 28, 2017

Publisher: Brilliance Audio

Print pages: 464

Sample

JAKE MAHEGAN SAW THE SHOTGUN BENEATH THE YOUNG MAN’S COAT, a Western-style duster that swirled in the fall breeze just enough for him to see the weapon’s barrel.

Mahegan approached the elementary school building from the parking lot. The school had narrow rectangular windows that looked like firing ports in a German pillbox and dull red bricks that placed the structure in the forty- to fifty-year-old range. The aggregate on the full parking lot was showing through the asphalt like weatherworn pebbles in a mountain desert. There were three cracked and sinking sidewalks: one up the middle, where Mahegan was now; one from the right; and the other from the left, where the man with the shotgun was. Above him was a rusty corrugated metal awning, which led back to the parking lot.

The young man wearing the duster was moving quickly, with his eyes cast downward, perhaps believing that if he couldn’t see anyone else, the inverse would be true. By his long, rapid strides, Mahegan could tell he had a clear objective in mind. Maybe it was to protect someone, but he didn’t think so. While concealed carry was lawful in North Carolina, it wasn’t lawful on school grounds. School systems in North Carolina banned any weapons on campus, unless, of course, someone chose to violate the law and shoot children.

Plus, Mahegan had seen this look a million times on crazed enemy combatants in too many countries to count. And while every foe with a weapon was different, they all seemed to possess the same inner fear cloaked like a thin veil in false bravado. Where some saw the confident warrior, he saw the fearful enemy, the man or woman scared of what he or she would do next but paradoxically still driven to perform the evil task.

Mahegan knew before reaching the door that this person intended to shoot people in the school, perhaps even children. When the young man looked up, Mahegan saw his eyes dart left and right. The shooter didn’t notice Mahegan, at least not at first. And Mahegan was hard not to notice, not because he was special in any one way, but because he was almost six and a half feet tall and a Native American. Also, he was wearing board shorts, a wet rash-guard long-sleeve T-shirt, and slip-on Vans, not typical PTA attire.

Just before he had received the text message to come to the school, Mahegan had been at Wrightsville Beach, surfing a smooth five-foot swell with offshore winds. The ground swell was the leading edge of a push coming from a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. There was not yet any threat of landfall, so Mahegan and some others had enjoyed the silky waves. But the text had come as soon as he was out of the water. It was from a former Delta Force teammate, who wanted him to meet with Promise White, the daughter of one of their killed-in-action unit members. They had lost several good men in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, and his team had made a vow to always to take care of their own. That included families, who often bore the hardest burdens of combat.

Even though Mahegan was no longer in the unit, his responsibilities to his fellow operators and their families would live on as long as he did, even beyond that, as far as he was concerned.

No broken promise.

His buddy Patch Owens had texted Mahegan those words from Charlotte, North Carolina, as he was storing his surfboard at South End Surf Shop, across from Crystal Pier. Because that was their signal that Promise might need help, Mahegan had driven in his government-issued Cherokee SUV to rural New Hanover County, where she taught fifth grade. Mahegan hadn’t seen her since her father’s burial three years ago, when she was twenty-one. He first met her when she was a gangly fifteen-year-old kid back at Fort Bragg. Her dad, Thurgood “Judge” White, had been a longtime unit operator and was nearly twice as old as most of Mahegan’s team. As a senior noncommissioned officer, Judge had been an informal leader of Mahegan’s outfit, even though Mahegan had been a captain and the commander.

He had watched her grow up over the years, and when she’d broken down at Judge’s funeral, she’d chosen Mahegan to latch onto and cry with. He hadn’t minded, because it had given him an excuse to hold his emotions in check, something he had a hard time doing, especially when he was angry.

That image of Promise as a heartbroken twenty-one-year-old young lady about to graduate from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington was what Mahegan had had in his mind as he approached the school.

The kid walking fast with the shotgun poking at his duster looked in Mahegan’s direction again. This time the presumptive shooter noticed him and quickened his stride. Mahegan got a better look at what he might be carrying when he saw the menacing front end of a sawed-off shotgun hanging just below his right hip. He must have had it slung over his shoulder beneath the coat.

On the shooter’s left side Mahegan couldn’t see anything but the possible outline of another weapon, perhaps a pistol. He did detect something heavy in the coat pockets, probably shotgun shells.

He was about twenty yards in front of Mahegan when he made the turn to the main door. As Mahegan began to run toward him, he wondered if the door was locked. Mahegan scanned the entryway and didn’t see any PUSH TO TALK button on the side, and his concerns were confirmed when the shooter yanked open the green metal door, casting a glance at Mahegan over his shoulder as he sped up his pace.

Mahegan carried a Sig Sauer Tribal nine-millimeter pistol in his Cherokee, but the vehicle was fifty yards away, in the parking lot. He hadn’t anticipated an active school-shooting scenario. For that, Patch’s text would have included a different code phrase: en fuego, which is Spanish for “on fire.”

As the shooter opened the door, Mahegan saw beyond him that teachers were leading lines of children in each direction. He remembered Promise talking about “specials,” which meant art class, physical education, or music. The children were smiling and excited, so he guessed some of them were getting ready to go out for recess.

Mahegan caught up with the door before it closed, but the shooter already had the pistol and shotgun out from beneath his coat as he shouted, “Misha!”

He was aiming the weapons at the line of children when he whirled around and trained his guns on Mahegan.

“You don’t want to do that,” Mahegan said.

The shooter was sweating. Nervous. Beads of perspiration slid down his acne-scarred face like skiers navigating rough terrain. The kid was maybe twenty years old, possibly even went to the university in town. His hair was matted to his forehead, and Mahegan was looking for the tell that he was going to pull the trigger. He aimed a twelve-gauge shotgun and a nine-millimeter pistol at Mahegan’s heart from a distance of fifteen feet. Five yards in a football game could be a long expanse. Mahegan wanted the shooter closer so that he could maneuver on him. Already the teachers had noticed the dangerous situation and had begun moving the children quickly in each direction. Mahegan heard some squeals and screams, but so far the teachers and students were acting professionally, as if they had rehearsed the drill.

“Seriously. Don’t do it,” Mahegan reiterated.

“Why not?” the kid asked and then snickered. “I’m the one with the big guns.”

Mahegan’s combat-honed gallows humor kicked in, and he thought, Obviously, he isn’t looking at my arms, but the kid did hold a sawed-off shotgun in his right hand and a pistol in his left hand. On average, 80 percent of people were right-handed, and Mahegan figured the shooter held the heavier weapon in his dominant hand.

The shotgun had been badly sawed, as if the shooter had done it with a hacksaw the day before. Mahegan noticed its jagged edges. The metal was blue and scarred. The kid had sawed at an angle, as if the gun had kept moving away from him when he was doing the job. The barrel to Mahegan’s right was about a half inch longer than the barrel on his left. It also had a slightly turned-in bevel across the opening of the bore. Didn’t matter, he thought. The spray would be lethal at this distance.

As his mind raced with options, Mahegan considered that every second the shooter was staring at him was a second more that the children and teachers could escape to their safe rooms.

“What do you want here?” Mahegan asked.

The shooter’s eyes scanned him. They flickered nervously without any pattern. He was conflicted. The long coat he wore looked new, as if he had bought it just for this mission. The pockets appeared full of ammo, and he was ready for slaughter. But he was nervous.

“I’ve gotta do this, man, so just get out of here!”

Then Mahegan noticed it. Beneath the shooter’s sweatshirt was a layer of bulges that he had seen too many times on suicide bombers. He also saw a pair of flex cuffs zip tied awkwardly to his belt, their only purpose being to take a hostage.

“Who are they?” Mahegan asked. “Can they detonate you in here?”

The shooter looked at him with confused eyes, probably wondering how Mahegan knew, or guessed, that he was rigged with a bomb. The shooter was reluctant. If he had been eager to kill Mahegan, he would have already pulled the trigger.

In his periphery, Mahegan continued to watch the children and the teachers move swiftly and quietly, mouths open in silent screams. Ten seconds had passed, and that was ten seconds those kids didn’t have before. Mahegan needed another ten. He asked him again.

“Who’s controlling you?”

The shooter started shaking and opened his mouth. Mahegan was assessing him fully, watching his face, his hands, his eyes, his feet, and the tension in his neck. Just above his neck Mahegan saw the shooter had a nearly invisible wire leading to an earbud. Someone was talking to him.

“Ain’t no one controlling me,” he said.

That was when Mahegan knew the shooter had been told he had maybe thirty seconds to kill him and snatch whoever Misha was. Otherwise, everyone was going to die. The shooter needed to act before his handlers killed him by remotely detonating the bomb he was wearing. Mahegan imagined that the man initially had about five minutes total to do what needed to be done before the cops arrived. He was sure that every teacher and principal had dialed 911 and every law enforcement officer in the county was on the way.

And Mahegan wondered who Misha was and why she might be valuable as a kidnap target.

The macro problem, as Mahegan saw it, was that Promise worked in a small town in coastal North Carolina where the density of police officers was not what he would find in a big city, like Charlotte or Raleigh. He didn’t hear any sirens yet, which made him think that perhaps this was a larger operation and there was a cell phone blocker turned on. Whoever was controlling the shooter might have been using a portable jammer that allowed transmission on the bandwidth he needed to detonate or talk to the shooter but blocked all other signals.

Mahegan saw the kid’s face flinch and knew that he was about two seconds from being shot. The shooter had his duster, and Mahegan had his skintight rash guard and board shorts. His Vans had good traction on the freshly buffed floors.

Three things happened at once. First, Mahegan remembered his Slow is smooth; smooth is fast motto from his combat days and deliberately slid to his right, lowered his body mass, and closed the distance between himself and the shooter. All those actions were designed to avoid the more open barrel from the bad saw job, get below the upward kick of the gun, and make him react nervously. Mahegan didn’t think the kid could shoot the pistol and the shotgun at the same time.

The shooter was not a trained marksman. In fact, it was clear he had not done this before. He was a one-and-done disposable killer, perhaps a kidnapper, being controlled by someone else.

Mahegan used a wrestling move he had learned in high school called a single-leg takedown. Usually, he started from two feet away, not fifteen, but Mahegan had a decent wingspan and began gliding along the slick waxed floor.

Second, in his periphery, Mahegan noticed Promise was running around the corner. Even with everything happening in front of him, seeing her brought every memory he’d ever had of her as she grew from a rebellious teenager to the beautiful young lady she was today. Slender and athletic, she was wearing a sleeveless top and a practical pair of slacks atop even more practical flats. Her black hair was bunched into her signature ponytail. She was carrying something in her hand. Dark skin covered finely honed arm muscles, which were flexing as she was lifting her arms.

Third, the shooter pulled the trigger as Promise shouted, “Jake!”

Mahegan felt the heat from the shotgun blast blow past his face. He had gotten far enough away from the muzzle alignment, and the shooter had jerked far enough to his right, a natural tendency for right-handed shooters, that none of the pellets found him.

Mahegan heard them smack into the metal door about the same time he heard Promise’s pistol fire.

The shooter’s head kicked forward, presumably from the bullet Promise had put there using the aim her father had taught her. Mahegan had the man’s leg snatched tightly to his chest as he stood and lifted him from the floor. Unsure if his adversary was dead, Mahegan drove his foot into the man’s right knee from a ninety-degree angle, cracking it.

“Open the door!” he shouted to Promise, who was next to him now. She pushed the door open with her hip and scanned the exterior for any other shooters. Mahegan lifted the man’s lifeless body into a fireman’s carry and ran through the front exit until he was at least twenty yards away, in the parking lot. He dumped the body and charged back toward the school.

He felt the heat from the blast lick at his neck as he dove through the door opening. Promise used the heavy metal door as protective armor against the bomb. She slammed the door shut as he flew through the gap as if stealing second base with a headfirst slide. Promise was blown back onto the floor next to him, and they both lay there. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, and for a moment he thought she had been injured or worse.

Smoke wafted through the shattered glass and the wire mesh, which had probably saved Promise’s life. The windows were fractured, and some flecks of glass had sprinkled onto the floor, but there was nothing that could have seriously harmed anyone. When Mahegan had dumped the body, he’d made sure the shooter was facing the parking lot, which meant most of the explosives had been directed away from the school.

“Aren’t you glad I don’t follow the rules?” Promise said. She was talking, of course, about her having a pistol on school grounds. It would have surprised him if she didn’t, actually. He remembered her being an enterprising person and an expert marksman. Her father had taught her well and had been her mentor. Judge White had also been a mentor to Mahegan and the rest of his team.

“How much ammo do you have? I think others are coming,” he replied.

“Jake Mahegan. You never did have time to say hello,” Promise said.

They were lying there on the floor, with her on her right side and him on his left. Pain bore down on his left deltoid, where two years earlier a portion of his best friend’s vehicle had exploded along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and had sent a chunk of metal into his arm, just below his Ranger tab tattoo. He swam and surfed in an effort to rehabilitate the shoulder, and it was improving. He had recently had the word Teammates tattooed on his right bicep to honor all his men lost in combat.

“Hello,” he said to Promise. Her face was inches from his, and he could smell her light and citrusy perfume, despite the cordite hanging in the air like a searching ghost. The contrast of scents was stark, a metaphor for so many things in his life, especially violence and love. All of about ten seconds had passed since the bomb detonated, and a total of about two minutes since he saw the shooter walking into the school. That was the difference between life and death, he remembered. Combat had taught Mahegan that hesitation killed. He could see that Promise had learned from her father that same creed.

He studied Promise for another second, noticing the flaring of her nostrils as she pulled in oxygen to steady her heart rate.

“We need to move, now,” he said.

“I’ve got two magazines in my pockets and two more in my purse, which is in my classroom.” Her eyes were locked on Mahegan’s, intent and focused.

“Go get your purse, and I’ll talk to the principal,” he said.

Promise immediately got up and ran. He stood and looked at the doors. All the windows were bulging inward, held in place by the tight mesh, which was mostly there to keep burglars from gaining entrance. The steel doors had held fine, though they, too, bulged inward from the force of the blast. Beyond where the shooter/suicide bomber had been, the metal poles that held the corrugated roof awning in place had buckled. There had definitely been more force to his front than to his back, which told him that an experienced crew had set him up. The handlers of suicide bombers gave their mules targets and told them to stand facing them so that the blast would have the desired effect.

He stood and observed through the shattered window. A single police car moved slowly, banking sharp left and making right turns as it wove through the car-pool lane. This was no standard black-and-white with a light rack on top. It looked like a Ferrari painted in the police cruiser colors of black and white. It stopped briefly adjacent to the middle sidewalk, as if it were thinking.

Straining to see through the wire mesh who might be driving the car, Mahegan noticed the car seemed to be adjusting to something as its front wheels turned toward the building. It bumped up onto the sidewalk and aimed its grill directly at the doors Mahegan was using as cover. The vehicle was sleek and low, allowing it to glide beneath the buckled awning.

Breach force and assault force, Mahegan thought. Was the first guy the breach force or perhaps even a ruse? Was this now the assault force?

Smoke began to boil from beneath the rear tires of the fake cruiser, and suddenly it launched at the front doors like the ramrod it was intended to be. He had little time to evade its penetration. After pushing off the door, he followed Promise’s route to the right, catching a blur of blue to his left, only to find Promise heading back his way. He grabbed her mid-stride, dove into one of the first open classrooms, and slammed the door shut.

“Bomb!” he shouted. As soon as he did, he saw dozens of little eyes widen as the children peered at him from behind furniture and cubbies. He held Promise on the waxed floor when the car exploded with a deafening roar.

The school building shuddered but held, as far as he could tell. The sixty-year-old construction turned out to be better than he had guessed. They were in the first classroom off the main lobby, where the car had detonated. He took stock of the kids, who appeared scared but alive. The young teacher whose classroom they had used as cover was keeping her cool and remained in charge. Worry was etched across her youthful face, but she was poised, nonetheless.

“I’m going to check on casualties,” Mahegan said to Promise. “You should go be with your students.”

“My teacher assistant is with them. This room connects to my classroom through there.” She pointed over her shoulder, beyond the cubbies filled with frightened eyes. “I’m coming with you.” Then, to reassure him, she punched the SEND button of a handheld radio and said, “Missy, this is Promise. Status?”

“We’re okay. No injuries.” Missy’s voice was firm, but it was anything but confident. He thought she sounded scared, and rightfully so.

“I’ve got the ammo, and I can shoot,” Promise said.

“Your call. I’d prefer you get eyes on your children and then come join me.”

“As you wish,” Promise said. She darted through the door that connected the two classrooms. She closed the door behind her, most likely knowing that the door would add some modicum of protection. His main concern now was a follow-on attack. They had a suicide bomber, possibly two, unless the car had been remotely controlled, as he suspected it might have been.

He walked into the hallway, where smoke wafted in all directions. By now the principal was on the intercom and was barking orders.

“Move to the playground immediately. We need all teachers to move their children to the playground immediately. Standard protocols.”

Mahegan saw a little girl, maybe eight to eleven years old, standing in the middle of the hallway. She was rocking backward and forward, her head bobbing, in what appeared to be self-soothing motions. Mahegan knelt in front of her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and asked, “Who’s your teacher?” She flinched. Not a complete recoil, but a shrug to toss his hand off her shoulder. He removed his hand.

She glanced at him with blank eyes through awkward-looking glasses. They looked like designer glasses, with wide pewter temples leading to tips that connected to an athletic strap made yellow to blend with her blond locks. The strap ran beneath her hair. The bridge and rims were coincident; the lenses large and square. Her eyes averted downward, as if she did not like making eye contact.

Mahegan said, “It’s okay.”

She stepped away from him and then toward him, as if she was confused. Then she laid her head on his shoulder and said, “Hold me. Tight.”

He pulled her closer, as he would have wanted if he were her age and under attack.

“My name is Jake. What’s your name?”

A minute went by, and she just rocked against him, most likely suffering shell shock. Then she said, “Misha.”

Misha. But the word hadn’t come out cleanly, as if from the sweet voice of an innocent child. She had made a louder sound than he’d expected, as if she struggled to communicate and the louder she spoke, the clearer it might seem to her.

Misha.

The name the shooter had called, Mahegan remembered. Had she heard her name, and was that why she was standing in the hallway, disconnected from any of the streams of students flowing to safety? He was standing now and cradling her in his arms, which was when he felt the blood on his hand. Her back was soaked. A piece of shrapnel had clipped her somewhere.

He rushed her back to the classroom, where children were being marshaled to move to the playground for accountability. Promise linked up with him as he walked Misha into the first classroom.

“My kids are on the playground and accounted for. Where did she come from?”

“Her name’s Misha, and she’s wounded. I need a first-aid kit,” he said.

“I know. . . .” For whatever reason, Promise stopped and turned to her colleague and said, “Shea, can we borrow yours?”

“Of course. It’s in my desk,” the teacher said. She was probably Promise’s age and was white, with porcelain skin. Her dark hair was cut just above her shoulders. She wore a red print dress and white sandals. She had dark eyes with brows furrowed deep in worry. With the last of her children lined up to leave the room, Shea shot across the room and swiftly retrieved a white first-aid kit from her metal desk drawer.

By now, Promise had Misha’s dress off her shoulders and had turned the young girl’s back to Mahegan. He noticed again that Misha had a yellow strap that held her glasses against the back of her head, like an athlete might. As he looked up at Promise from behind Misha, something in the lens of her glasses caught his eye, but she turned her head, and whatever Mahegan thought he saw was gone. He thanked Shea for the medical supplies and said to her, “Take care of your kids.”

“I know what to do,” she said, not in a snarky way but in a reassuring one. She was a teammate, as all the teachers seemed to be. They were executing the drill with precision as he noticed lines of children moving quickly beyond the door.

A piece of shrapnel from the bomb, metal, or glass had raked a quarter-inch-deep gash across Misha’s back, as if someone had used a straight-edged ruler and a box cutter. Opening the white first-aid kit, he found an assortment of Band-Aids, antibacterial ointment, square pads, butterfly clips, aspirin, a bottle of Betadine, and a single roll of gauze. He quickly opened the antiseptic and said to Promise, “Sing her a song or something.”

Promise said, “Misha, can we play our game, honey?”

Misha muttered something and started rocking again, but he was focused. He poured the Betadine along the cut, and she immediately wailed and leapt toward Promise, who had known what was coming and opened her arms. Misha flapped her arms and kept rocking, giving him a hint that perhaps she was a special needs child.

“That’s all there is, honey. Misha, that’s all there is,” she said in a soothing voice. He could instantly picture Promise with a classroom full of students, teaching and mentoring them. She was a natural.

“Ants! Ants!” Misha shouted at Promise through her choked sobs.

After hesitating, Promise said, “We don’t talk about the ants, remember, darling?”

Mahegan wasted no time in opening the butterfly clips and began snapping shut the wound. In all, he used the entire lot of eight. Blood was seeping down her back, and the orange Betadine made everything look worse. He used the antibacterial ointment, generously spreading it from clip to clip. Next, he placed the gauze atop the wound, with Promise taking it across her front as she handed it to him. They wrapped her four times, until they had used the entire roll.

“Take us to where everyone else is,” he said to Promise. His sense was that they were the only ones still in the building, as Shea, whose classroom was the last in line, had already marched her group to the rally point.

He lifted Misha and carried her. She was still crying but had settled into a rhythm of soft sobs. She struggled against him like a two-year-old child bent on climbing down from her parent’s grasp.

“Ants! Ants!” Misha shouted again. He had read somewhere that autistic children sometimes felt like their senses were on fire. Perhaps she had Asperger’s syndrome or a form of autism. He held her firmly as they moved swiftly along the hallway, and her mood seemed to shift without warning. She suddenly seemed to have an inward sense of peace, which seemed abnormal for the moment. The tighter he held her, the calmer she became.

“Please. Don’t want to go,” Misha muttered. He figured she was more scared of the uncertainty that lay ahead than the familiar confines of her classroom. She smelled of baby shampoo and freshly washed laundry. Her blond hair fell across his face as he followed Promise, who led with her pistol. They jogged through hallways lined with artwork made by elementary school students. Construction paper of all colors with drawn images, some looking like animals, others looking like people, created a kaleidoscope effect as they barreled toward the double doors Promise was pushing against.

Misha held tightly to his neck. While he was confident in the quick medical repair job he had performed, she would need real doctors soon. She had lost blood and was being remarkably still against his chest, which indicated she might be going into shock.

As they raced toward the doors, he saw the assembled throng of hundreds of students and teachers on a soccer field, who all seemed to be staring and pointing in his direction, their mouths shouting words muffled by the metal doors.

Then the world exploded in front of his face. The doors buckled inward as dirt and rocks kicked at the side of the building. The sound was deafening thunder in his ears, like the explosions he’d heard in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Promise had been leaning her hip against the door and was now flying past him, as if in slow motion. The blast hit him as he instinctively turned Misha away from the detonation. The force was stronger than wiping out in a twenty-foot Hawaiian north shore wave. His back had taken the brunt of the force, and he had felt heat from the fire, as well. The scar in his left deltoid burned with injuries old and new as the blast slammed him against the concrete wall.

He held on to Misha as tight as he could. His head hit against the wall as he turned to keep from crushing Misha.

Then everything went black.

MAHEGAN REGAINED CONSCIOUSNESS, CHOKING AND COUGHING from smoke that wafted through the hallways like the souls of lost children. Surely there could not be this kind of death and destruction in an elementary school in southeastern North Carolina, not far from where he was born on the Outer Banks.

The first thing he noticed was that Misha was no longer in his grasp. Where had she gone? How long had he been unconscious? He rubbed the back of his head and found blood seeping from a deep cut at the same time he noticed paramedics huddled over an unmoving figure, which was too large to be Misha. Standing, he stepped over the rubble of concrete blocks and walked toward the group.

A police officer drew on him immediately with a Glock, saying, “Hold it right there, buddy.”

He raised his hands slightly and said, “I’m looking for Promise and Misha. I was with them when this happened. I’m the one who threw the suicide bomber out of the lobby.”

Mahegan stared the officer down, which was not difficult.