Title: Shall We Play A Game?
Author: FraidyCat
Disclaimer: remains in effect
My Name is FraidyCat, and I'm a whump-a-holic.
A/N: The geography of L.A. is a mixture of fact and fantasy.
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Chapter Thirty-One: Shrapnel
It sounded as if a car had backfired directly outside the small shop. Amita made an involuntary yelp of distress and pitched forward into Alan. He oomphed and dropped the pale yellow baby afghan he was holding up for Amita to see, staggering backwards into a solid wall even as he reached for her arm to offer a steadying hand. It was as she pushed herself back into a fully-upright position that she understood the floor had been rumbling beneath their feet. She smiled nervously and started to turn her head toward the entrance. "Was that an earthquake?"
Alan followed her gaze and was shocked to see that the two large display windows were cracked. As he moved up beside Amita, one was threatening to shower glass all over the immediate interior of the shop, and a saleswoman was trying to force the other two customers away from the front of the store before they were speared. Alan balanced on the balls of his feet and waited for aftershocks. "I don't know," he admitted, looking around. "Maybe we should find a doorway…"
He snuck his arm around Amita's waist and she leaned into him gratefully, more rattled than she cared to admit. She chuckled self-deprecatingly. "I've lived in Southern California my entire life, and I'm just never ready for this."
Alan started to steer his grandchild's mother toward the back corner of the store, away from potential projectile glass. At least the store specialized in blankets and quilts – if things started flying around, he would cocoon Amita in layers and then lie on top of her, if he had to. "I should hope not," he soothed, grabbing an over-stuffed pillow from a display. "I always think it's a sad commentary when someone claims to be 'used' to these things!"
Amita let Alan take care of her and was sorry for everything bad she had thought about him that morning. "Shouldn't there be some aftershocks?" she murmured.
Before Alan could answer, the wail of sirens split the air – dozens, from the sound of it, and growing closer. Alan helped Amita lower into a corner full of plush animals. "This can't be the epicenter," he mused, almost to himself. "It wasn't that strong…"
Amita pulled on his arm and he plopped onto the floor next to her. He embraced her shoulders and abstractly smoothed her dark hair. "Don't worry," he crooned. "We're fine. We're safe. Don't worry, dear."
Amita sniffed, feeling so foolish she felt like she had to explain to the button on his shirt. "I'm not worried about me," she offered, then raised troubled eyes to his. "You're right, this can't be the epicenter. Maybe the hospital…"
Alan shushed her. "Hush, now. Charlie's good. He's fine. Do you hear either of our cells ringing?"
She relaxed against him marginally, but still sighed. "Not yet," was all she could let him have.
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Dawn was leaning over, digging through her pack for another block of C-4, when she decided that the detonator cap could serve two blocks of the explosive if she arranged it so that it lay between them. Cracker would be pleased that she conserved their resources. She pushed the pack almost all the way under the dividing partition so that she could gain better access to the back of the commode. She had just liberated one end of the detonator wire and was a few inches away from the cap when Cracker lay on the remote.
For C-4, it was a small explosion. The amount of product they had brought with them would have leveled at least one city block. As it was, the force blew the wig right off her head, the hand right off her arm, and propelled her ten feet backwards. She was stopped by the shattered mirror over the row of sinks. She was beyond feeling it, of course, but a shard reminiscent of a stalactite sliced the vertical length of her back as she slid down the wall, severing her spinal cord in two places. At that point, she lost even the body's natural death throes, becoming a rag doll. She landed almost neatly in one of the sinks, her arms and legs akimbo, her eyes sightless in a face scorched with third-degree burns. Her blood dripped down the drain, and a cheap black wig dropped from the ceiling into her lap.
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They had pulled the curtain between the two beds, and Ian tried to burn a hole through it with his eyes. When Charlie had first freaked out, Edgarton was afraid that there had been some sort of new physical crisis; maybe he shouldn't have let Charlie sit up for so long playing chess. Ian had pushed the call-button over and over, and hospital personnel were finally beginning to pour into the room when he checked his watch.
He almost stopped breathing himself when he saw that it was 2:15. Charlie's moans were most incomprehensible, but occasionally Amita's name, or Don's, could be recognized. Once, Ian was sure he understood Charlie to ask for his father. He began to get a tight feeling in his chest as nurses and doctors were unable to determine a physical cause for Charlie's distress.
Ian was a tracker; of native American heritage; he could smell his prey. But this was just weird. Charlie hadn't been told the specifics of what was going down, today. Sure, he knew that things were heating up with Planet Green, and even unwell he could probably discern that his brother would be involved in that somehow. But freaking out at exactly 2:15? Weird.
One of Charlie's doctors called for a sedative, and a nurse took off at a run out of the door. That's when another pulled the curtain between the beds. When Ian's glare didn't produce any results, he twisted painfully in the bed until he could reach the telephone. He wished he had his own cell – David's personal cell, as well as Wright's, were programmed into his unit. The best he could do now was to remember the number of Eppes' desk in the bullpen. He knew Eppes wasn't there, but he hoped someone answered before voice mail activated.
He almost slammed down the phone in disgust when the call went to into the system, ane he heard Eppes inviting him to leave a message. In fact, the receiver was already several inches away from his ear when he heard a click followed by Sinclair's voice. "Special Agent Eppes' desk; this is Special Agent Sinclair. May I re-route your call through the switchboard?"
"No!" Ian yelled, and someone standing at Charlie's bedside peaked around the curtain. "Sinclair, wait! Wait! It's Ian."
He held his breath, anxious to learn if David had heard him. At length, a guarded "Ian?" rewarded his patience.
He sighed and smiled. "Yeah, yeah, David. Listen, is everything all right?"
David was silent for so long that Ian was afraid he had decided to hang up after all. "Sinclair?" he asked anxiously.
"We got three of them," David finally answered, almost in a monotone. "They were waiting with a get-away vehicle near the Westlake/MacArthur Park Metro station." He snorted, mildly. "An LAPD uniform rookie made 'em."
Ian closed his eyes in relief. "Good," he exhaled, "that's good." He opened his eyes and looked at the curtain separating him from Charlie, again. "Listen, have you heard anything about Eppes' operation? It's weird, man, but Charlie just freaked out big time. They're sedating him before he hurts himself. He was fine, and then he was crying for his girl, and yellin' for Don – it was freaky." David was silent again. Ian lowered his voice. "Sinclair, you are not easing my mind, here."
The detached monotone eventually answered. "I'm waiting for news. There was an explosion. We lost radio contact. I don't know how bad it is."
Ian gripped the plastic so hard the hospital phone almost melted. "Holy shit," he breathed. He felt his eyes go round as he looked toward Charlie's bed – he could still hear a quiet whimpering. "Holy shit," he repeated. "Just how close are those two?"
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Colby was sure he had stepped on a land mine.
There was no other explanation for the fire in his leg, or the twisted debris under which he lay. He groaned, waiting for this to turn into another bad dream, another memory of Afghanistan. His head was pounding, and heard distant noises: running water…voices, perhaps. He couldn't quite make out what they were saying, which meant the voices probably belonged to one or more of the native factions. They were no doubt combing through the rubble looking for American weapons, and shooting anyone who wasn't already dead.
Colby suppressed a moan, and lay as still as he could, waiting to die.
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Don was standing in the open doorway to the toddler classroom when the blast ripped the door from its hinges and slammed it into his side with the force of an entire football team. Part of the door hit him in the head and he saw stars as lurched sideways. Off-balance, half-unconscious, still his insincts led him to fight to stay on his feet. He became tangled in Cracker's legs, however, and went down hard. His service weapon flew out of his hand and skidded across the carpet, stopping only when it collided harmlessly with the back of one of the small chairs, which had been pushed over by either a falling flannel board or the LAPD officer who had broken his own nose with the butt of his rifle and was lying unconscious in the growing rubble. Don shook his head, regretting it almost immediately as he nearly lost his breakfast, and scrambled woozily to his hands-and-knees, gazing at the carnage. The shouts and moans of downed officers were becoming more clear as the sound of the explosion faded. He reached automatically for his back-up piece on his ankle while he continued to search for Liz. She was the only one not wearing a vest.
He finally spied a familiar sock – the shoe was gone, but the leg attached, thank God, was moving. She was under a member of the F.B.I.'s own swat team – much later, she would remember him deliberately wrestling her to the ground and protecting her with his own body. Don started to push himself up into a standing position when he remembered the suspect.
He glanced toward where the door used to be just in time to see Cracker's leg disappear from sight. The asshole was crawling away.
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When several minutes passed without an aftershock, one of the store's customers and the sales clerk went into the back room. The broken glass near the front entrance was foreboding, but the woman who worked at the shop told them that there was another exit in the back. It emptied into a small employee parking lot that was shared with the coffee shop next door; she suggested a reconnaissance mission.
Alan would have volunteered to help immediately, but felt obligated to stay with Amita. In fact, he had been nearly overcome with a strong feeling of responsibility to her – and to his son, whose presence he felt very strongly – ever since the incident had occurred. The other two customers, the ones who had been near the front windows, were a couple who appeared to be around Don's age. Observing how Alan had protected Amita, the man first led his partner to the opposite corner of the store, where he did the same thing.
Then he disappeared with the clerk into the back. He kept up a running dialogue – mostly for the benefit of his wife, Alan was sure – but it was nice to know what was going on, anyway. Inventory was stored in the back room, and the young man and the clerk dug through the fallen boxes and shelves until they created a path to the door. They had some difficulty wrenching the door open, but finally did.
They left the relative safety of the store together. The clerk, a woman about Millie's age, turned out to be the owner; she felt it was her responsibility and her right to figure out what was going on. Even the back of the building was teeming with people, and as they worked their way to the front, they could see smoke coming from the nearby Y daycare center. A crowd was gathering, police and fire vehicles were screeching to a stop, and it was starting to look as if there had been no earthquake at all.
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She wasn't thinking about the baby. She was thinking that the jerk had knocked her up, brought her to a tiny store virtually unknown to man and left her in the middle of an earthquake. Barely affording Alan and Amita a look, the final customer rose on shaky legs and headed for the front door.
Alan struggled to his own feet, pleading. "Please, miss! Ma'am, we need to stay away from the windows!" She ignored him. In fact, she increased her speed, and was almost at a full jog when she pushed through the door and out onto the sidewalk, into a growing throng of people. Alan had been following, but the cracked glass suddenly shattered, cascading mostly into the store. Amita screamed; the crowd on the sidewalk screamed and jumped back; Alan may have even screamed when he turned and headed back for Amita as fast as he could.
She was standing when he got there, reaching out to pull him toward her and fighting back tears. "Don't do that again! Are..are you all r-r-right?!"
Alan hugged her hard, speaking into her ear. "I'm fine, dear, I'm fine." He took a step back, and smiled. "It's all good, as they say."
In spite of herself, Amita laughed. She let her gaze wander in the direction of the back room, then looked questioningly at Alan. "Do you think we should just go? Maybe it wasn't an earthquake."
He shrugged, and took her hand in his. "This is a pretty safe place, relatively speaking," he began.
Neither one of them was prepared for the man who burst through the back entrance in blood-covered chinos, limping to a halt and swearing as he registered the sea of glass that prevented his escape through the front. He turned as if to retreat through the same door he had come in, but swore and turned again, this time coming directly at Alan and Amita.
Alan stepped in front of the young woman, urging her as far into the protected corner as he could. The stranger barreled into the old man at full speed, burying his hands in his shirt and slamming Alan backwards so that his head made contact with the concrete wall behind him. He didn't even hear Amita calling him, or her shriek of horror when the stranger turned on her and pulled her out of the corner, whipping her around to stand as a shield between him and the cop who had chased him all the way from the daycare center.
Amita whimpered and struggled as Cracker crooked an arm around her neck and pulled her head back so far she was sure he would break it right off its stem. "SHUT THE HELL UP!" he ordered.
Alan, in an unconscious heap on the floor, didn't even see his own son when Don came crashing after Cracker, blood trickling down the side of his face and a .38 clutched in his hand. "BACK OFF!" Cracker yelled again, wrenching Amita's neck even further. "BACK OFF, OR SHE'S DEAD!"
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A/N: Oh, no! I cannot seem to stop the whump. As a tribute to those of you understandably upset when I ripped Charlie's hand off in an explosion – I repeated the plot device on Dawn (who is definitely not a candidate for reattachment). What's going on back at the daycare center? Will someone find Colby, even though he is trying to hide? Will Charlie feel Amita's terror even through his sedation? Will Don be forced to let Cracker escape, dragging the hapless heroine with him? Oh, woe!