A/N
I back up here just a little bit – or you may want to re-read ch25 anyway.
See you on the other side…
Jeffersonian Museum, West Wing, Mitchell Exhibition Hall
Booth was about to ask for guidance when he heard shouts and screams from inside and an expectant chill ran through him…
BR-R-RAP!
Even muffled by the walls, the sound of the gunshots felt like a punch in the gut. The screaming, crying and shouting rose in volume until punctuated by another gunshot, after which the voices inside slowly subsided to a murmur again. Women and children…
The anger which had been under control was threatening to boil over again.
He keyed the radio, "They are killing hostages. I'm going in."
The voice on the radio tried to argue, "Wait for backup. Regional SWAT is prepping in the Lab."
Not HRT… "There's no time!" He grimaced, "They'll just have to catch up." And pick up the pieces. If any. He vowed he wasn't going to wait while anyone else died.
He tuned out the chatter and advanced to the entry, stepping over the velvet rope that had been unhooked on one end and an easel which had been knocked over. The noises from inside sounded farther away, and he ran around the curved entryway about fifteen yards to where the left hand wall ended suddenly. The hallway doubled back on itself in a switchback. He bet the corridor zigzagged a few times until it reached a larger open area toward the center or rear where the more spectacular specimens would be on display. He slowed ever so briefly to mentally flip a coin, which came up heads. Without pausing to peek he rounded the corner and sprinted past statues and smaller display cases in various states of assembly to the opposite end to the next switchback about 30 yards away. Here he did come to a stop, and he pulled out his mirror…
He went to one knee and held it down low around the end of the thin wall, angling it to sweep the reflected view where he wanted…
God fucking dammit.
It looked like two bodies near the bend at the other end. If only he'd made it thirty seconds earlier… Shit. He tucked the mirror away, darted around the corner and raced to the bodies, his eyes on the next bend the whole time, MP5 at the ready. He counted on the carpeting to muffle his footsteps.
The larger body extended out into the turn where it would be visible to anyone in the next leg of the passage, so he had to slow and put the mirror to use before he could turn his attention to the downed hostages. The coast was clear. From their sounds the terrorists and their remaining hostages were still ahead of him.
Even though he was practically standing on top of the woman, Booth felt himself helplessly and inexorably drawn back to the body of the child twenty feet back, a boy of five or six with light brown hair whom he couldn't help but compare to Parker. He tried to make himself stop that, knowing continuing to do it would drive him out of his mind.
Incredibly, the boy was curled up on his side as if sleeping, his face almost peaceful…
Peaceful, except for the fact he wasn't breathing.
Peaceful, except for the blood which trailed from his mouth and nostrils.
Peaceful, except for the nearly yard-wide pool of blood still spreading sluggishly as it soaked into the carpet from his chest which was a mass of crimson hamburger. Clearly he'd taken the burst. There was nothing for Booth to do.
Booth felt something inside him perilously near the breaking point as he turned back to what he assumed was the boy's mother. He moved more quickly this time, hoping against hope she might be alive, yet wondering if she'd thank him if she survived her child…
He set the MP5 down as he dropped to his knees beside her. She was facing away from him, not quite face down.
He reached over and rolled her back toward him until she was lying face up.
She was a pretty brunette with green eyes… and with the lower part of her face a gaping red ruin. Not a bullet wound but perhaps a blow from a rifle butt. Her shirt was bloody, and he ripped it open to expose the single puckered bullet hole in the center of her chest just above the bra clasp. Right to the heart. Judging by the blood merely oozing out, there was no pulse. Sickeningly, she was still warm.
With a start, he turned his hands over, palms up, as he realized they were covered in blood, and he practically jumped to his feet in shock as an image flashed before his unseeing eyes of another woman and child he'd been unable to save all those years ago in Kurdistan… he was kneeling in the dust of the alleyway, he looked up from hands made bloody by his futile effort to put compression on both sides of the woman's blown out carotid, past her guts spread across her torso in the impromptu Caesarean, to the village midwife shaking her head as she held up the tiny slimy, bluish and lifeless body still trailing a bloody umbilical cord…
SNICK ting
Booth shook it off and looked down in horror…
Transfixed by the nightmarish vision from his past, he'd missed the fragmentation grenade with it's pin removed that had been wedged under the woman's body in the here and now as a booby-trap. When jostled, it had rolled out of her armpit and away from him…
The sound of the spring-loaded striker popping off the "spoon" handle as it ignited the internal fuse had snapped him out of it.
Oh shit…
He made a split second decision… and dove across the corpse toward the grenade.
But he forgot about the blood…
He grabbed the grenade, and it practically squirted out of his slippery hands, ending up a couple feet even further away, the gray painted sphere spinning on its side.
Nearly fully extended already, he made a heart-bursting desperate lunge and managed to get a grip on it. He scooped it up and flung it back behind him up the hall…
BANG!
Stunned by the close call and the too-close-for-comfort blast, it took him a second to realize he'd been hit.
His body armor had protected his back from the shrapnel, but he learned his ass wasn't quite so lucky when he wiped his hands on his pants, picked up the MP5 and staggered to his feet. It burned, but it was just the proverbial flesh wound. More troubling was the ringing in his right ear and the pain which he hoped wasn't a ruptured eardrum.
He was angry with himself for being so fucking stupid in falling for the trap. His old Fort Benning DI would, hell should, rise from his grave in Arlington to kick his dumb ass.
So much for the element of surprise… He'd set off the terrorist's improvised alarm but good.
Then he got a look at the additional violence the exploding grenade had done to the body of the little boy, and his anger turned to a white hot fury.
The terrorists would expect that whoever had tripped the booby-trap had suffered casualties and would need to regroup or even retreat. The terrorists might even use the moment of vulnerability to mount a counterattack if they had the manpower.
But Booth did neither...
Instead, he attacked. He charged up the winding corridor…
Current Marine Corps doctrine called for assaulting forward through an ambush, and sheer speed might help him recover some of the element of surprise.
But it wasn't really that rational.
Mainly he was just mightily fucking pissed.
He ran on, hoping the carpet would help mute his pounding steps at least a little. With his good ear he could hear renewed shouts and cries somewhere up ahead. He reached the other end of this leg of the corridor, slowed slightly to pivot and he pushed off his left foot as he made the sharp turn to his right. He kept his head up and MP5 at the ready at his hip as he accelerated again into the straightaway.
As he neared the end of this leg for the next turn a fragmentation grenade appeared from around the corner, bounced off the wall in a bank shot and was rolling toward him. Instead of dropping to the floor he picked up the pace even more and ran over and past it, hitting the far wall and pushing off it to reverse direction back up the next section of corridor.
BANG!
He was already around the bend and he was protected from the blast
Still moving, he was just twenty five feet away from the terrorist who'd tossed the grenade. Booth's sudden appearance and speed had taken him off guard after all. The other man was half way to grabbing another grenade when he realized his mistake. He aborted the move and reached for his weapon, but Booth's was ready first…
He fired the MP5 from the hip, his first three-shot burst catching the target right in the ten ring. From long training he slowed a little and smoothly brought the MP5 up to his shoulder to immediately follow up with the burst to the head…
BL-BL-BLAM!
The terrorist was already falling back wards and the three big 10mm rounds caught him under the chin, taking off most of his head.
They sure as hell knew he was coming now.
'Speed is life.'
He kept charging up to and around the next turn…
… and right out in to the large open area.
He came under poorly aimed fire, and, while still moving, his MP5 seemed to find the shooter almost of its own volition…
He caught himself with a millisecond to spare… no target!
The other terrorist was in the midst of hostages he'd forced into some sort of large alcove instead of being caught into the open himself. Booth couldn't take the shot, at least not on the run.
But stop or even slow down, and he'd be dead meat.
The terrorist was under no such constraints. His rounds walked toward Booth, chewing up the tile floor in this section.
Booth did the only thing he could. He dove for the only cover in sight in the middle of the atrium...
A/N
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