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Just then, we heard shots. I knew that none of the police would fire first. Besides, it sounded like rifle fire.
“I think he’s still here,” Warren Jacobi deadpanned.
Screams of panicked students echoed down the loggia. Then they started to run toward us, fleeing the Quad.
Someone shouted, “He’s in the Hoover Tower. The fucker, the fucking madman!”
Jacobi, Kimes, and I ran right into the stampeding students. Joe Kimes was on the radio. “Shots fired! All personnel and EMS to the Hoover Tower. Use extreme caution!”
We got to the green in the next few seconds. Students were hiding behind trees, pillars, large flower pots, anything that afforded some cover.
Two students were down. One of them was a black woman, a bloody circle widening on her chest. Goddamn him. Goddamn Chimera.
“Stay down! Stay where you are!” I yelled across the Quad. “Please keep your heads down!”
A shot rang out from the tower. Then a second and third. A male student dropped from behind a slatted bench.
“Please stay down!” I screamed again. “Stay the hell down!”
I fixed my eyes on the belfry of the tower, searching for a shape, a gun, anything to set Rusty Coombs’s position.
Suddenly, two more shots echoed from the tower. Coombs was definitely up there. There was no way we could protect this many people. He had us where he wanted us. Chimera was still winning.
I grabbed Kimes. “How would I get up there?”
“No one’s going up there,” Joe Kimes snapped back, “without a SWAT escort.” His eyes were wide and frozen. He shouted into the radio. “All SWAT and medical teams to the Main Quad! Sniper is shooting from the Hoover Tower. At least three down.”
I looked him in the eye. “How do I get up there, Joe?” I demanded. “I’m going, so tell me the best way.”
“There’s an elevator on the ground floor,” Dean Stern cut in.
I pulled my Glock out of my side holster and checked the smaller Beretta I had fastened to my ankle. Chimera was up in that dome, raining bullets down.
My eyes fixed on a building that would provide some cover. Jacobi reached for my arm. But he knew he wasn’t going to stop me.
“You wouldn’t give me a minute to grab us both a vest, would you, L.T.?”
“I’ll see you up there, Warren.” I winked. Then I broke for the tower in a tight crouch.
And somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered—why am I doing this?
Chapter 117
JESUS, HE FELT GOOD.
Chimera pulled back the rifle and sat against the hard concrete wall. In a moment, hell on earth was going to bust loose in the Quad. SWAT teams, snipers, maybe even helicopters. He knew he had the advantage—he didn’t care if he died.
He fixed on the big carillon bells. He’d always liked the stupid, damn bells. When they played, you could hear them all over campus. He wondered, when this was over, when he was no longer around, if he could have bells played at his funeral. Yeah, right.
Then he realized he was alone in the Hoover Tower and had just killed five people. What a fucking day this had been—what a life he’d had. He was going down in history, no doubt about that anymore.
He lifted himself up and peered over the side. Suddenly, everything was pretty quiet down there. The Quad had been cleared. Soon there’d be a high-tech SWAT team on the scene, then he’d just have to take out as many as he could get. They were going to have to earn their overtime pay.
But for now, up here, man, everything was beautiful….
Then he spotted Lindsay Boxer! He squinted through the rifle sight to be sure. The “hero cop” who had killed his father. She had run from the cover of the administration building, zigzagging in a crouch toward the tower. He was glad she was here. Suddenly, everything changed. He could still bring this bus in on time….
He followed the darting shape and gently closed his left eye. He let his breathing slow to an almost meditative rate.
