Solitude Creek (Kathryn Dance 4)

Then, over the loudspeaker: "Emergency evacuation. All guests. There are terrorists in the park. Suicide bomber in the park. This is not a drill. Everyone evacuate immediately!"

"That's not procedure!" Southern snapped, his face in shock.

"All guests, this is an emergency. Evacuate at once. There is a suicide bomber in the park."

Dance grimaced. "It's him. He got into the security command post somehow."

O'Neil snapped: "Get a team there now!"

Ralston lifted his radio, made a call.

The security man was on his phone. "Derek, what's going on?... Is he in the CP?... Okay, find out. Cut the power to the P.A. system."

"Evacuate! Evacuate immediately. We have shooting victims! If you've been wounded, seek cover immediately. Medical teams are on the way!"

Southern explained to Dance and O'Neil, "We've got a network of underground tunnels--where our security office is. We take sick guests out that way, pickpockets, people're drunk. It's the command post too. He's in there. He's going to try to get out through the tunnels. There's an exit to a parking lot on the western

edge of the property... Oh, Jesus... Look!"

A wave of a thousand, two thousand people was now charging the exit.

"Get back, it's all right!" the security head called out to them. Pointless, as before.

Now began the full-on flight from the park. As the screams rose, the patrons pushing in from the interior of the park began scrabbling over the others at the turnstiles. Some were running through the broken gate, climbing over the unsub's Chevy. One man fell on his back and lay still.

Dance, O'Neil and Southern ran forward, holding their palms up to stanch the flow of human bodies climbing on their fellows, shouting, as before, that there was no attack.

But even if they could hear, the crowd had no rational mind. Safety, escape--those were the only things that mattered.

A creature...not human...

"They're going to be crushed," Dance said.

O'Neil: "The gate. We have to get it open. Now!"

He, Ralston and a half-dozen park workers ran to the unsub's car and, by using pure muscle, pulled it back--five feet, ten, twenty. They then grabbed the gate and swung it open. It screeched on the concrete.

O'Neil leapt aside as the tide, twenty bodies wide, swarmed through the open space. Others continued to push through or leap over the turnstiles.

A mother, holding her young child, about four, staggered through the gate. Then she turned toward an empty part of the parking lot and jogged there. Dance noticed that her arm was badly broken. She got about ten steps toward a bench, but then it seemed the pain overwhelmed her and she eased her daughter to the asphalt. Dance ran to them.

She had just gotten to the woman when there was a shattering of glass and dozens of people flooded onto the sidewalk nearby. They'd broken a large window of one of the gift shops and were fleeing out of the park through the gap. This herd soon swelled to several hundred.

They were bearing down on Dance, the woman and her child. Even though they were out of the park, panic had seized them and they were sprinting madly.

"Get up!" Dance cried to the groggy mother, scooping the girl up by the waist. The crowd was forty feet away, thirty.

The woman suddenly desperately gripped Dance's collar. Unbalanced by her awkward crouch, the agent fell backward. She landed hard, still holding the child. Stunned, she looked up to see a wave of people stampeding directly for them. To judge from their feral eyes, not a single one even saw them, let alone had any intention of veering aside.

Chapter 46

As a matter of pride, Antioch March would have preferred to start the panic without firing any shots.

What a lovely idea. Words alone causing so much destruction and chaos. In fact, he would have preferred to start the madness by merely asking questions, not using fake texts from a fake wife. "Who do you think those guards are looking for?" "Have you heard anything in the news about any terrorist threats here?"

Subtlety, finesse. Let the victims use their own imaginations.

Stampedes, he'd learned, can begin with nothing more than a hint, as insubstantial as a moth's wing, that you won't get what you desire. Or that what you fear will destroy you.