Time of Attack (4 page)

Jericho Quinn and his precious little girl threw their heads back in laughter as the trigger broke with a crisp snap. The powerful rifle bucked in the woman’s hands. Quinn would live for a few hours more, but in the space of his next heartbeat, he would be done with such laughter forever.

“I
t really is time to go,” Kim said, her voice an exasperated sigh.

Mattie gathered the hem of her dress for another giant leap into her father’s arms.

“Listen to Mom, kiddo,” Quinn said, his arms still outstretched, ready for Mattie’s last leap. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”

Kim moved closer, ready to snatch her out of the air in midjump. “Guess I have to be the bad guy—”

Quinn heard the crack of a supersonic bullet as it hissed past. He was all too familiar with the downrange pop of gunfire. Time seemed to unhinge and slow as if he were moving through life a half step faster than everyone around him. Voices, screams, the sound of running footsteps became muffled and low.

A lock of his daughter’s dark ponytail lay on the concrete walk at his feet, neatly clipped by the passing bullet while she clung to his neck.

Forcing himself to exhale, Quinn grabbed Mattie by the face with both hands, scanning her for wounds. He was rougher than he should have been. Startled, she began to cry but was otherwise fine. He shot a quick glance over his shoulder at Garcia, who nodded immediately that she was unharmed. Behind her and nearer the steps, Steve Brun had his new bride and everyone around them moving toward the opposite side of the chapel, out of the line of fire. An Air Force Special Operator like Quinn, Steve knew the drill.

Thibodaux was also well accustomed to the unique sound of bullets flying in his direction and shooed his wife and boys toward the relative safety of the cadet chapel’s lower level.

The distant pop of a rifle moaned in on the breeze, and Quinn made a subconscious mental note of the time between the bullet’s passing and the report.

He handed Mattie off to Garcia, shouting for them both to run toward the stairs as he reached for Kim’s hand. She’d dropped at the shot and lay blinking up at him as if dumbfounded. Gary Lavin stood over her, staring cow-like, still with no idea what all the fuss was about.

Quinn tried to pull Kim to her feet but she resisted.

“Jericho . . .” Her face had gone pale.

Quinn’s breath caught hard in his throat when he realized her leg was bent at an impossible angle, crooked at midthigh. A crimson stain crept from beneath the perfect blue fabric of her dress, blossoming against the concrete beneath her.

“Oh . . . Jer . . .” The words caught in her throat, strangled. “I’m . . . shot . . .”

Lavin offered all the help of a blank stare.

Fearful of a follow-up attack, Quinn scooped Kim up in his arms to run toward the chapel. He kept her leg as immobile as he could to keep from causing further damage, but the most important thing was to move to cover. She was so much lighter than he remembered. Blood soaked his white shirt from bow tie to cummerbund by the time they reached the cover of the concrete buttresses surrounding the lower chapel. Kim’s head and shoulders shook from fear and shock.

Thibodaux had drawn his pistol and stood at the end of the lower walkway outside the chapel, alert for secondary threats. He subscribed to Quinn’s motto of
See One, Think Two
.

Camille Thibodaux adopted Mattie into her little clan for the moment, shielding her along with all her boys.

Major Brett Moore called base security with his calm, pilot-in-command voice to let them know about the attack and to get an ambulance rolling. Claxons sounded seconds later, warning USAFA cadets to shelter in place or move into the nearest building if they happened to be outside.

“I need your help here,” Quinn said to Garcia, forcing himself to stay calm, though he felt as if his heart was about to explode.

She nodded, returning a small Kahr pistol to the holster suspended below her bra. She knelt on the concrete and pressed the palm of her hand where Quinn directed, high on Kim’s thigh, next to her groin, putting pressure on the femoral artery.

Pushing back a rising panic, Quinn peeled off his uniform waistcoat and stuffed it under Kim’s legs. She moaned, her head falling to one side on the cold concrete walk.

“Her pulse is over the top,” Garcia whispered.

“Stay with me, Kimmie.” Quinn yanked up the hem of her dress, tracing the arcing fountain of blood back to its source midway up her thigh. The entry wound was relatively small, roughly the size of his thumb, but high-speed bullets are made to tumble when they hit bone, and this one had done its job perfectly. Striking Kim’s femur roughly four inches above the knee, it had bounced end over end in an upward line, literally mowing away bone and muscle. Much of her thigh was an unrecognizable piece of burger.

Fumbling through blood, bone, and flesh, Quinn pushed the fact that he was working on his high school sweetheart out of his mind. The femoral artery was fairly easy to locate. It was the diameter of a wooden pencil and arcing fountains of blood at each pulse of Kim’s weakening heart. But getting a hold on it amid the mess of snot-slick gore so he could stop the bleeding was another matter entirely. Had it been completely severed, she might have bled out before he’d gotten her to cover. Even nicked as it was, her life expectancy could be measured in seconds.

Quinn moved Ronnie’s hand down to the wound and used a wadded piece of Kim’s dress to apply direct pressure over the bleeder. He yanked off his tie with bloody hands and ripped away his shirt. Using his teeth, he tore away a long strip of cloth to use as a tourniquet, smearing his face in red during the process. Field medicine was a grisly business. Looping the cloth around her thigh, he pulled it snug well above the wound, remembering the tactical medic’s mantra
High or Die
.

Kim gave a rattling cough. Wincing. Pain had finally worked its way through the initial shock. “You’re welcome.” She forced a grin, peering at him through dazed eyes. “You’ve wanted to get out of that tie all day.”

“Good girl,” Jericho said. His heart was a stone in his throat. “Keep talking to me.” He pulled the cloth tight, knotting it, and then glanced at Lavin, who stood over them wringing his hands.

“Get me a stick or something to tighten this.”

Lavin looked up and down the concrete walkway but didn’t move. “I . . . I don’t see any sticks.”

Quinn spied a cheap fountain pen in the man’s breast pocket and stood long enough to snatch it away. Lavin flinched, apparently thinking Quinn had meant to hit him.

Using the pen as a windlass, Quinn twisted the tourniquet as tight as he dared before tucking it under the knot to hold in place. He cursed for not having the pocket trauma kit he carried with him ninety-nine percent of the time. The trim lines of the mess dress tuxedo left him little room to conceal a pistol, let alone the wallet of QuickClot and bandages. Out of habit, he noted the time he’d applied the tourniquet.

Ronnie stayed where she was, leaning over Kim with both hands pressing the blood-soaked cloth into the wound cavity.

Brett Moore’s comforting voice came from behind him.

“Ambulance is three minutes out,” he said, taking off his jacket and motioning to Lavin to do the same so Quinn could use them as blankets for Kim, who now shook uncontrollably.

Three minutes
. Quinn’s eyes flashed up at Moore. He wondered if she had that long.

“No more shots,” Moore offered. “That’s good.”

“Jer,” Kim moaned, licking her lips. “You would not believe how thirsty I am . . .”

Quinn put two fingers to her neck. Her pulse was rapid and shallow as her heart struggled to send what blood she had left to her brain.

Steve Brun trotted up with his wife. They’d been on the other side of the cadet chapel when the sniper fired, and it had taken them a few moments to find out Kim was a casualty. Steve had continued as a Combat Rescue Officer, or CRO, after Quinn had moved on to OSI. Connie was an ER nurse. It was natural for them to come running when they found out Kim was wounded, no matter the danger.

Connie smoothed the skirts of her wedding gown beneath her knees and knelt next to Quinn while Steve made his way to the opposite side.

“Should I move?” Ronnie asked. A line of blood ran down her chin.

“No, sweetie,” Connie said, calm as if she was up to her elbows in bloody messes every day. “Go ahead and keep that pressure on for now.” She touched the knotted cloth squeezing the flesh of Kim’s thigh. “Tourniquet looks good,” she said, seemingly oblivious to the red line wicking up the white taffeta of her dress as she assessed the wound. It was good to have friends that didn’t run off screaming at the sight of such trauma.

She put a hand to Kim’s neck, feeling for a pulse. Avoiding Quinn’s eyes, she looked at her husband with a flash of pity.

Kim coughed again, weaker now. “Mattie . . .”

Quinn patted the back of her hand, nodding back tears.

Veins in his neck knotted in anger and sorrow. “You’re going to be fine.” The words caught hard in his throat. “Just hang on. The ambulance will be here in a few seconds.”

Kim’s eyes fluttered. She seemed to gather herself up, focusing all the will she had left on this single demand. “Let me talk to Mattie.” Her head fell back against the folded uniforms with an audible thud. Her breathing slowed.

Quinn waved at Camille, who watched from halfway down the chapel walkway. The Thibodaux boys and Mattie were gathered around her like a brood of chicks. Mattie broke away as if released from the starting block. She was young, but even at the tender age of seven she had a tougher constitution than many men Quinn knew.

She knelt beside her mother without an apparent second thought over all the blood. Kim kissed her cheek, straining to whisper something in her ear. Mattie nodded. Tears dripped down on her mother’s face.

 

 

Across Academy Drive, the young Japanese woman had settled back into position quickly after the concussion of the shot. She flicked at the peppermint with the tip of her tongue as she watched Quinn’s ex-wife collapse through the reticle of her scope. She shrugged. That was the way of things. Much could happen in the 1.3 seconds it took for the 250-grain bullet to travel from the muzzle to its intended target. She’d heard accounts of birds flying into the path of oncoming projectiles, of strange winds, and targets bending to tie their shoe or pick a flower at exactly the right moment to prolong their miserable lives.

It did not matter that Kimberly Quinn was not her original objective. The choice had been left up to her, so no one need ever know. The death of his ex-wife would move Quinn in the direction he needed to go. That’s what was important.

While Quinn and his friends flapped around like headless geese, the sniper was already on the move. She left the rifle resting in the crook of the tree. Though not the most common caliber, .338 Lapua rifles were well known in the community of professional shooters. Trying to trace this one would send the authorities down a dozen different rabbit trails. The serial numbers had been removed and the woman had taken great care to see there was nothing that could be used to obtain her fingerprints or DNA. They would think the rifle was a grand evidence coup and waste time comparing ballistics to hundreds of other shootings in FBI and Interpol databases. In truth, the rifle’s maiden voyage had been this one. While the authorities racked their brains for a connection to other crimes, the woman who pulled the trigger would melt back into the black mist from which she had emerged.

Dropping lithely from the branches of the juniper, she brushed off her hands and took one last look at her surroundings to be sure she hadn’t left anything unintentional behind. A group of German couples touring the Academy met her on the paved trail when she stepped out of the brush. It couldn’t be helped. None of them were under sixty. If they were questioned, they would describe her as a cute little Asian girl, out for a walk in the woods.

Two minutes later saw her at the North Gate. She threw a wide smile at the security police officer, who waved her on as he tried to decipher all the traffic on his radio.

She crossed the bridge over Interstate 25, then turned north, toward the Denver airport. There was a certain liquid nature to things such as this. She would have to hurry if she wanted to stay ahead of the torrent without getting washed away.

 

 

Three uniformed paramedics hustled down the steps with a folded stretcher. Heavy boots echoed off the concrete tunnel, but they looked like angels backlit by the bright sunlight at the mouth of the stairs.

Only then did Ronnie and Quinn step back.

Quinn held Mattie’s hand while Ronnie knelt beside the sobbing child. Camille swooped in and took the little girl in strong arms.

“I’ve got this one,” she whispered to Jericho. “Don’t you worry about her.”

The lead paramedic, grim-faced and quiet, used a plastic injection gun to insert a thick needle into the bone below the knee on Kim’s good leg. Once he had the needle set, he started IO fluids while the others strapped Kim to the expanded stretcher. None of them smiled.

Quinn trotted up the steps beside the rescue personnel, holding Kim’s hand. Her skin was cold now, her fingers slack. A red stain soaked the sheet at the site of her wound, but her chest still rose and fell. Quinn focused on that.

Thibodaux, Garcia, and the Bruns surrounded them in a mobile perimeter, eyes scanning the surrounding buildings and rolling hills.

Panting with emotion, Quinn held up his hand, knifelike, and pointed across Academy Drive while the paramedics got Kim situated in the waiting ambulance.

His voice was frayed with despair. He needed something to do, anything besides thinking about Kim’s chances. He’d seen too many wounds like this.

“Jacques,” he said. “Let the SPs know the shot came from over there. I’d say less than fifteen hundred meters from the sound of the report. I want to know when they find anything.”

“You got it, l’ami,” the big Cajun said.