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Suddenly he pivoted toward me.
His gun exploded in my direction. A deafening burst, orange flashes all around. Loud metallic dings.
I dove away from the door, peeling off a burst of four shots. I didn’t know if I’d hit him. I sucked in a breath, waiting for a stab of pain to see if he’d hit me. He hadn’t.
“It’s a lot harder when somebody’s shooting back at you,” I yelled.
I was crouched behind a tall metal grating. It housed a collection of seven massive bells. Each looked as if it could shatter my eardrums with a single ring. The rest of the observation deck was no more than an eight-foot-wide path. It circled the bells with viewing openings every six feet or so in the wall.
Coombs was on the other side—the bells acting as a cover for both of us.
His voice called out, an easy, arrogant twang, “Welcome to Camelot, Lieutenant…. All these big-shot brains down there… and now you coming all the way up here just to talk to me.”
“I brought along friends. They won’t be talking, Rusty. They’ll be looking for any shot to take you down. Why die like this?”
“I don’t know, seems like a good plan to me. You want to die up here with me, be my guest,” Rusty Coombs called back.
I squinted through the grating, trying to get a fix on where Coombs was. Across the belfry, I heard him shove in a fresh clip.
“I’m glad it’s you. I mean, it’s fitting, don’t you think? You nail my dad, now I get to do the same to you.”
His voice seemed to shift, as if he was circling.
I started to circle as well, my Glock aimed toward the corner of the bell housing.
“I don’t want you to die up here, Rusty.”
“A little slow on the uptake, aren’t you, Lieutenant? Just like always. I gave you everything I could think of. The chimera symbols, the van, the nine one one… What did I have to do, send you a fucking E-mail and say, ‘Hey, fellas, I’m over here?’ Took you long enough to figure it out. Cost a few lives along the way.”
Suddenly, a burst of gunfire rattled the iron grating, bullets clanging loudly off the bells.
I ducked down, holding my head between my hands.
“Your father’s gone,” I shouted. “This doesn’t bring him back.”
Where was he now? I peered through a gap in the grating. Brain freeze.
There was Rusty Coombs. He was smiling at me, his father’s smug, hateful grin. I saw the rifle extended through the bell housing.
In that instant, I saw a sudden flash, felt a recoil of brute force. Then the powerful impact of the shot hurled me backward.
I landed hard on my back, scurried for cover as Coombs rushed around for a clear shot. My fingers groped for my Glock. Jesus, my gun… wasn’t there.
Coombs had shot it out of my hand!
He walked forward until he stood over me. His rifle was pointed at my chest. “You have to admit, I sure can shoot, huh?”
Every lingering hope was gone. His eyes were green and held such a cold, impassive burn. I hated this bastard so much.
“Don’t add any more deaths,” I said, my mouth completely dry. “SWAT teams are coming. Kill me, five minutes later, it’ll be you.”
He shrugged. “At this point, it’s gonna be a bitch to square myself with the coach. People like you”—he stared blankly—“you don’t have the slightest idea what it’s like to lose your father. You bastards took my father.”
I watched his finger move to the trigger and realized I was going to die. I said a silent prayer and I thought, I don’t want to die.
Then the deepest, ear-splitting sound interrupted. It had the force of a building crashing down. One resounding gong was followed by another, then another. I had to grab my ears to keep from going deaf.
It was the bells. They were going off, and it was the loudest noise I’d ever heard—by a lot. The entire tower shook with the thunderous sound.
