Run - Blake Crouch [92]
For fifteen seconds, nothing. No sound. No movement.
Then a company of black-clad men swarmed the square, some of them taking position behind the planters, a handful charging into the building.
Jack got down into the floorboard and flattened himself against the carpet, pulling the blanket on top of him as machine guns erupted all around him, men yelling over the mayhem, the shotguns booming down out of the building several floors above, pellets and rounds chinking into the side of the minivan, and then a window exploded, glass everywhere, and the van sank to one side, a tire punctured.
A man began to scream nearby, and Jack covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut and he was saying her name. He could feel his lips moving, though he couldn’t hear the words, not even inside his head, over the terrible noise.
An explosion blew out every window in the van and then came a lull.
Numerous footsteps pounded the concrete. Someone shouted, and the next time Jack heard gunshots, they sounded distant, muffled.
He waited for another minute, then slowly sat up. Brighter in the van with the tinted windowglass shot out. A half-dozen men lay scattered across the plaza, one of them still crawling.
On the fourth floor of the Davidson building a black crater smoked, ragged flames cutting through.
Jack made his way up into the driver seat and eased the door open.
Gunshots inside the Davidson building.
He stared at the bank. Twenty yards tops. Get inside. Find an office, crawl under a desk. Wait for silence.
He glanced back toward the Davidson building. A man stepped out of the lobby and walked into the square. He was looking at the minivan. Jack ducked as far as he could under the steering wheel. More voices. Orders being shouted. Fading away now. He eased up into the seat again and peered through the shattered windshield. The black-clad men had lined the civilian platoon up in the middle of the street. They were making them get down on their knees at gunpoint.
A man in a red bandana stood in front of the POWs. Jack could just hear his voice from the front seat of the van, telling them he would be pleased to shoot them each in the head, felt sure they would in turn be pleased with this outcome. However, if even one of them resisted, his unit would spend the rest of the day torturing them to death.
A handful of the civilians wept. He could see their shoulders bobbing. But no one moved.
The man in the red bandana went to the first civilian, pulled a handgun from his holster, and shot him between the eyes.
He went on down the line, stopping midway to reload, Jack watching the heads of the condemned snapping back, bodies toppling, found himself drawn to study the unimaginable bracing of the next one to die.
Ultimate tension, then emptiness, then ten people lay dead on the snow-dusted street where ten had knelt living thirty seconds before. The soldiers left them there, drifting on down Central Avenue toward the river, in a formation that made Jack certain they were military.
When the last man had slipped out of view, Jack breathed again, leaning forward, his forehead touching the steering wheel.
Staying here, in this plaza, wasn’t going to work. Not with the city under siege.
Meant pushing on.
As he lifted his head, the man in the red bandana reappeared around the corner of the Davidson building. He was walking back into the square, straight toward the van. Jack’s heart jumped from zero to afterburn, a hot spike of panic flooding in.
He slammed his shoulder into the door and barreled out