'I'm okay,' I yelled back. 'Can you get him?'
The answer was a volley of gunfire that went on for ten seconds. Loud claps from John's weapon interspersed with soft clicks from the other guy, the exchange laced with the flick and whine of ricochets.
Immediately after the last of John's shots rang out, I heard him shout 'Now, Ward!'
Before I could think about it I ran out of the bay and banked left, holding my gun out to the right and firing again and again. John was providing covering fire. Halfway across the central space I made him out, hunkered down at the entrance to a bay about thirty yards up on the opposite side. The last few feet were accompanied by the sound of the shooter firing at me again.
Then I was in the bay, bewildered to still be alive. I was surrounded by old desks. My ears were ringing. 'Jesus.'
'Who the hell is this guy?' John said.
'No idea,' I panted. 'But we're not getting anywhere near that exit until he's dead.'
'That's not going to be easy,' John said. 'He knows what he's doing. He very nearly nailed you.'
'Thanks for the information.'
'He missed. It's a happy story.' He stuck his gun out of the end of the bay and fired again. The return shot came a second later.
At the back of our bay was a door. I went over, yanked it wide. Beyond lay a passageway heading left.
'It's not going to get us closer to him,' I said. 'But it might get us in the other direction. Which frankly suits me fine.'
I went through first. John followed, backing away from the mouth of the bay, gun held out in front in case the guy decided to run into the bay after us.
When we were both through I shut the door. We hurried along the narrow passageway, reloading feverishly. About every ten yards there were further doors on the left side: the ones that opened gave onto bays just like the one we'd come from, stacked half full of stuff the school didn't need right now. I opened each in turn but couldn't see any value in going through any of them. Then the corridor ended abruptly in a flat wall.
'Shit,' John said.
'I guess we're going out one of those doors after all.'
'We at least need to know where that guy is now. We're trapped. If he comes across to that first bay and into this corridor then we're fish in a barrel.'
I opened the final door. It opened onto another bay. When I stepped out into it I saw there was another exactly opposite, and that it did not hold boxes or chairs like the others, and yet was not empty.
It held a big black car.
'We've found it,' I said.
None of the car's lights were on. From our position the tinting of the glass and the low light made it impossible to see what or who, if anything or anyone, was inside.
I stuck a foot out of the bay and jumped back just ahead of a bullet which came immediately down the central aisle. The guy with the gun was holding his position up at the top. Presumably his job was partly to stop us getting to the car, which was why he'd passed up the chance to run down into the passageway and take us out in there. He could see us the moment we tried to break for the other bay. He was some distance away now, however, and if we ran fast enough and asked for luck, we could still make it across. Probably.
John was already tensed, ready to make the run.
But I suddenly realized it wasn't that simple. To the right of the bay in the end wall was an arched doorway. This gave access into another section of the basement, under the next part of the building. It was very dark through there and we couldn't see if...
'Wait a second,' I said. 'Paul must must be down here too.' be down here too.'
'How do you know?'
'If he got out of the building then this other guy would have left too. So assuming Paul was in that car when it came down here, either he's in it still or he's somewhere down there on the right.'
John got what I was saying. If Paul was still down here then the car could be checkmated in their lines of fire. Either the guy down the end shot us as we were running across to it, or we ran straight into a trap which Paul had in his sights from a location just the other side of the arch into the next section.
John nodded wearily. 'We only get one try at this.'
I didn't know what to do. We were twenty feet from a bomb that might have Nina strapped to it, and we couldn't get out of the building to warn anyone outside. There was no way back or sideways. We were going forward from here. The only question was which direction we took those steps in, and how many we had left. I sent up a thought, a question, hoping someone with more guile than me might see a way ahead.
Now would be good, Bobby. Now would be really good.
The seconds ticked by. John took a step forward. Another bullet whined past the end of the bay.
'We're just going to have to take the risk, Ward...'
And finally my old friend answered.
'His phone,' I said, slowly. 'Paul called your phone. His number will be stored. You can call him back.'
'He'll have the ringer off.'
'Maybe, maybe not.'
'Getting a signal down here...'
'John - it's all we have.'
He got his phone out and hit the button which showed previous incoming calls. The number listed last had come at around the right time and had no entry in his phone book.
'Got it,' he said.
'Wait.' I took a deep breath, tightened my grip on my gun. 'This is bang and go. You dial. If it rings and we hear it and the sound suggests he's not right there waiting to mow us down, we go that instant. I'll run across to the car. You go through there and find Paul.'
He thought about it, knew this was it. 'Okay.'
'Stay alive,' I said.
He looked at me with eyes full of the reflections of people long gone. His smile was sad but real. 'This isn't living.'
'It's better than nothing.'
'Get Nina out of here, if you can. Don't you dare come after me.'
'I know that's what you want.'
He breathed out heavily. 'You call it.'
I waited a beat, and then said: 'Now.'
John pressed the button on his phone. There was a series of quiet tones as it dialled the last incoming number. Two, three seconds of silence.
Then we heard a phone ring. It was in the area on the right, way back in there. Twenty, thirty yards or more.
'Go,' I said.
I ran straight across the aisle. John went just as fast but angled right to take him through the arch into the other section. Three, four shots fizzed through the air between us. None ended in a dry slap.
I made it into the bay and skidded to a halt near the back of the car, spun round immediately to be ready in case the guy down the end had orders to come running down here and duke it out.
'John?' I called, but he was gone.
Gone into the other section, gone away down the road he had always meant to follow to its end.
I gave it thirty seconds and then risked turning away from the aisle to the car. I went quickly to the back door on the right and reached for the handle.
My hand was actually on it when I heard a soft thud.
I started back, not knowing what I was hearing. Then it came again, and I realized something was impacting on the window from the other side.
I pulled my hand back from the door, squatted down and got my face as close as I could. Used my hands to shield out the light.
Saw Nina's face inside.
I couldn't see her hands and she looked awkwardly out of position, as if stretching against something. She'd banged her head against the window to alert me.
She pushed her face up as close as she could and mouthed something urgently. It took three tries, but I got it.
She was telling me the doors were wired.
Chapter 41.
Dust, first, and then the smell of something damp. Darkness and a heavy and dismal ache across his head.
Lee sat upright, slowly and painfully. He had no idea where he was. He tried to stand but the space was confined and his legs were unsteady. He crashed back again, bringing down a pile of something noisy off the hard wooden shelves behind.
He tried again, using his hands to help himself up. Got to a standing position, head spinning. White lights in front of his eyes. Felt strange and claustrophobic. Felt like he was somewhere small.
He put his hands out to the right. Shambled carefully in that direction for a couple of steps, before hitting another wall of shelves. Some of the things on there felt soft, like cloths or towels. His foot hit something with a clang. There was another thing that had to be a mop.
He was in a cupboard.
He tried to go the other way and half-fell against a door. He had a vague feeling that he might even have done this before, that he might have woken up a little earlier and shouted a while, before checking out again. His head felt like it could wobble out on him at any moment. His head hurt really fucking badly.
He felt... not good at all.
He fumbled around the door with both hands, trying to find some way of opening it. Found a handle and turned it, but it didn't seem to do anything. It must have been locked on the other side.
He banged against it with his fists for a while but the impacts seemed to reverberate up through his arms and into his head, turning it into a dark sea of crashing waves that made no sound.
There was no response from outside.
He reeled back from the door, intending to stand still for a moment, to stand and breathe deeply and let his head get back together. Instead he found himself slumping down to land heavily on the floor, mainly on his ass, partly on his side.
It was better down there, if the truth be told. He wasn't going to be getting out until someone came to fetch him. So he might as well sit. They would come, sooner or later. Paul would turn up. He'd notice Lee wasn't outside the school and he'd come see what the problem was. Or Lee's dad might, maybe. Not his mother. That didn't seem likely. She had always been slightly out of reach: had always, now he considered it, seemed to be thinking about something else. But maybe his dad would. His dad had liked him. Or Brad, maybe. Yeah, Brad. He was solid. He was Lee's friend, always had been. If everything else failed, Lee knew Brad would make it here sooner or later, unlock the door, come find him and take him somewhere else. Go and get a burger. Go and watch the sea.
Until that happened he'd just sit here and wait. It was warm. It was a small room, and held you close.
There were worse places to be.
I stood back from the car door. I'd made Nina mouth it one more time to be sure. Paul had wired the car so any attempt to open the doors would detonate the bomb.
But Nina was inside.
I put my hand up against the window. She did not put hers there to meet it, which confirmed she must be tied. But she did rest her head against it, getting as close as she could to where my fingers were splayed. Were it not for the glass, I would have been able to touch her hair.
I knew nothing about bombs. Nothing about how you wired anything or defused anything. Any of the children in the playground above would have been in as strong a position as me to disarm the car. If they'd listened in physics class, probably stronger. An explosion could be due to go off within seconds. In the very next second. In each new second that was born, the world could go white.
But Nina was inside the car.
The only way I could open the trunk would be by shooting out the lock. I'd have to stand far enough away not to take a ricochet, which would put me directly in the line of fire of the guy down the end. Putting a bullet into a trunk full of explosives was also a very high-risk strategy.
I stood as far back from the side as I could, looked at the car, willing it to tell me something I could believe in, and tell me fast.
There were four doors I had been warned not to trust. There was a trunk I couldn't access, containing devices I did not know how to disable. There was unlikely to be much time. If Paul had left the vehicle, it meant it was armed and ready to go.
I realized it came down to this: Did the door triggers work on electrical contact or motion detection? Did a connection have to be broken, or were they also geared to detect sudden physical jolts to the vehicle as a whole?
There was no way to find out. True, the impact of Nina's head against the window had not triggered anything. But she'd done it as softly as she could. What I had to do would not be gentle.
I just had to hope it was electrical. The idea was true or false. Our future was long or infinitesimally short. I had no option but to put it in someone else's hands.
I went back to the window. Put my face up against it again, found Nina's eyes in the murk inside. Told her that I loved her, and then gestured with my hands to get as far back in the seat as she could, away from the windshield, and as far down, while staying as close as possible to this door. She didn't question me. Just held my eyes, then disappeared into tinted gloom.
I stood back. Swallowed. Walked up to the front of the car. Held my gun in both hands and aimed it at the middle of the other side of the windshield.
Fired.