Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Marco Schmidt: An Ambush

I tried phoning Kris, to ask if he was okay. But I didn't get through, I got the usual message that his phone was off. I couldn't stop worrying that I was letting my friends down by just running away. I'd left Cassie in that building, and she might have got shot. She wasn't a close friend, but I'd kind of taken responsibility for her and then let her down. Then I'd left Kris in Brassic, and I'd heard from a dozen people's gossip that there'd been someone go postal there as well. I hadn't known when I left Monty that my friends were all being shot at, but I couldn't stop worrying about her.

So I stopped at a payphone and tried to call Kris. I'd watched some crime dramas on TV, and I knew that there was a possibility of my mobile phone being traced if I used that to call him, so I decided not to try it again. I called three times, carefully copying the sequence of numbers from my iPhone screen to the old fashioned buttons of the payphone. The '7' seemed to stick, and I had to keep pushing harder until I heard the beep, so it seemed reasonable to try again and make sure I'd got it right.

I didn't get through to Kris, but I did see a guy leaning against one of the pillars, watching me, when I turned around again. He was wearing a long jacket which wasn't well suited to the warm day, but that wasn't too unusual among the student populace. What made him stand out was the bulge under his coat that could so easily have been a gun. He saw me looking at him, and his hand went inside his coat immediately, confirming that he was armed. I hadn't quite managed to lose my pursuers in the run from the Mira girl's room, which surprised me, but then I was more used to running on a track. His eyes darted to both sides, maybe he was waiting for reinforcements, and I noticed that he had a wire trailing from his jacket collar to an earpiece. Either one of the CIA goons, or a wannabe who'd seen too many spy movies.

"Hey, Pete!" I waved to a guy a dozen feet to my pursuer's left, causing him a moment of indecision. Pete turned to wave back; I didn't know him that well, but he was in the track club, and he was about the only familiar face in sight. I wondered if going over to talk to someone would get this guy to stop following me. If I was lucky I could get to somewhere it was obvious he was following me, and then I'd have reason to get a friend or two involved without having to tell them the whole story.

The goon didn't give me the chance. He glanced between me and my friend, and I guess he assumed an ambush. Pete was close enough to cause him some problems if it came to a fight. He was also more heavily built than me, doing boxing as well as running, and had been bulking up to get into the middleweight category before some inter-college tournament. So the guy who was following me assumed he was a threat, and pulled out his gun in the middle of a moderately busy quad.

I just had time to yell "Look out!" and point. Suddenly there was a campus security guy running towards us, accompanied by a uniformed cop. Pete saw the gun and didn't hesitate. He didn't know what was going on, but he could see a guy with a gun and hear other students starting to scream in panic. The weapon wasn't pointed at him yet, so he was safe to take three loping strides forward. The goon pointed his piece at me first, and didn't quite manage to bring it around before a potential middleweight champion arrived with a solid punch to his chin.

"It must be one of those terrorists," I muttered, hoping nobody would realise that the supposed terrorist had been following me. "What's wrong with the world these days?" I probably sounded shaken and terrified, but it wasn't an act. I thought I was going to be sick, finding myself in this kind of danger so many times in one day.

"Are you okay, man?" Pete came up, sounding really concerned, "You saved me there, I didn't even notice the gun... thanks man."

"I got it," I nodded, "Just surprised me. But I'm late for meeting my friend, I don't want her to worry if she hears about this. You okay explaining what happened to the police and everything if I make tracks?" We glanced over to where the policeman was cuffing the unconscious goon, while the security guy was talking into his radio.

"Yeah, sure. I owe you." I couldn't help spotting the irony in that, but I was too scared to laugh now. Two shootings in one day would be an amazing coincidence, but a third attempt was bound to make people panic. I could make out a few words from the security guy's radio chatter, and he was talking about some kind of campus lockdown.

I didn't know if Monty had made it back home with the key, but at least one of us needed to be not stuck on campus. It wasn't until I reached the car park that I realised my truck had been taken away by either the real or the fake CIA. I could have taken a taxi, but that would mean standing around waiting, and no doubt there were too many people trying to get off campus after the day's events. The only other option left to me was running, and that at least was something I was good at. I hit the cyclepath hard, pushed my legs to their limit, and by the time I got back to Monty's house all the fear and anger was pushed to the back of my mind. Now I could think about what I actually needed to do.