The Sacrifice (57 page)

When Scott arrived at the school, Frank was in the parking lot waiting until the clock ticked down a few more minutes. As the young lawyer walked up the sidewalk to the front door, he remembered the reservations he had about helping with the mock trial team at the time of his initial meeting with Dr. Lassiter. Today, he'd taken a few minutes during the morning to compose a brief speech for the students. He wanted to encourage them to keep believing in what they could accomplish. Frank was at the center of Scott's thoughts. He wanted to say something that would open the door for future contact with the brilliant young man.

It had been an overcast morning, but it was now bright and sunny. Scott pushed open the door and stepped into the broad hallway. It was beginning to fill with students moving from classes to the cafeteria. While he waited for Kay in the reception area of the office, he opened a yearbook that was two years old. It was amusing how much the students had changed in such a short time. In ninth grade, Dustin's ears stuck out beyond his shirt collar, and Alisha Mason was wearing glasses so big they seemed to overwhelm her head.

The door opened, and Kay stuck her head into the room.

Smiling, she asked, “Ready?”

Before Scott could answer, the first shot was fired.

45

Unto the breach.

K
ING
H
ENRY
V
, A
CT 3
, S
CENE 1

W
hat was that?” Kay asked and stepped back into the hall. Someone screamed, and Scott ran to the door. Everything happened quickly and in slow motion at the same time. A second shot was fired, and Scott recognized the sound. It was a high-powered rifle. Students began running in every direction. Scott looked up and down the hallway but in the pandemonium of fast-moving legs, arms, and bodies, he couldn't locate the gunman.

“Get into the office!” he yelled at Kay.

She remained frozen in shock and disbelief.

Crouching down, Scott ran across the hall focusing his attention on the entrance of the building. He still couldn't identify the shooter. A third shot came blazing out of the barrel of the gun. The bullet struck Kay in the head. Scott didn't see her fall. A small pool of blood quickly formed on the shiny floor and mixed with her blond hair.

A fourth shot ricocheted off the floor and into Scott's right calf. He fell down, rolled over, and crawled to the door of the copy supply storage room. He jerked open the door, slid inside, and slammed the door shut. In the darkness he could feel the warm blood running down his leg to his ankle. Grimacing in pain, he reached up and felt along the wall until he found the light switch and flipped it on. He pulled up his pant leg. The wound was bleeding, but it wasn't spurting as if an artery had been severed. He took off his shirt, wrapped it around the wound, and tied it tightly to slow the bleeding. Another shot rang out in the hallway. Scott didn't know what to do. He desperately called back everything he could remember from his military training. He quickly surveyed the room. The only item that could be considered a makeshift weapon was a pair of red-handled scissors.

Then he saw the clock.

When the first shot was fired, Tao was bagging the trash in the boys' bathroom around the corner from the main hallway. The sound of gunfire was not unfamiliar to him. He had fought many skirmishes with Communist troops in the mountains of his homeland. On two occasions he had crept in under enemy fire and rescued a wounded member of the unit composed of men from his village. In America, he would have received a medal. In Laos, he received a simple thank-you.

At the sound of the shot, he stopped and looked toward the door. A boy standing next to him turned to a companion.

“Was that a firecracker?” he asked.

“It sounds like somebody dropped an M-80 in a toilet in the girls' bathroom,” the other responded.

Tao was at the door when the second shot was fired, and a stream of male and female students came rushing in screaming.

“Somebody's got a gun!” a boy yelled.

It wasn't difficult for Tao to recall his training. He slipped through the crowd into the hallway and moved along the wall until he reached the corner. He peeked around the edge of the wall and saw the young man with the rifle standing inside the front doorway. The boy raised the gun and fired again. Tao didn't see Kay spin around and collapse on the floor. Tao moved along the wall. The shooter's next shot was too low and went toward the floor. This was the bullet that hit Scott in the leg. Tao saw him fall, get up, and limp into the storage room. Tao kept his focus on the gun. The young man turned around and took a few steps back so he could look out the front doors of the building. He did not seem upset or in a hurry.

In the midst of the students fleeing down the hall, Tao saw a girl turn toward the shooter. He recognized her immediately as one of the members of the prayer group. Her picture had spent many days riding in his pocket. The girl leaned over and yelled several words at the top of her voice. The shooter turned in her direction and put a bullet in the chamber of his weapon. When he could clearly see the young man's face, Tao gasped. The boy began walking toward the girl.

Pushing aside two boxes of copy paper Scott saw the rest of the bomb and realized that the clock was a timer for an explosive device. There was exactly one minute and thirty seconds until it reached zero.

After the explosion that killed Steve Robinson, Scott and the other members of his unit were debriefed about the nature of the bomb that snuffed out the life of their comrade and the way it might have been disarmed. It was hard for Scott to relive his mistake, but he had no choice. He learned that the key to disabling every bomb was proper disruption of the power source necessary to trigger the detonator. It was just like the movies. Cut the green wire; the world is saved. Cut the red wire; Armageddon is upon us. The problem lay in making the right judgment when there was limited time to analyze the relationship of the components of the device. In the movies, the hero always makes the right choice. In reality, the odds are less certain. The clock read
1:14
.

Scott's mind began to work in overdrive. He quickly checked the back of the clock. If there was only one wire connected to the timer, he could cut that wire with the scissors, and the bomb would be placed in suspended animation—always waiting for the signal that never came. There were three black wires snaking out from the back of the clock. This meant there was a probable backup power source, the main line from the clock to the detonator, and a cross-connected wire that acted like a switch. If the switch wire was cut, it would connect the circuit in either direction and detonate the bomb. The only way to fool the device would be to cut the two power wires before cutting the switch wire. It would require two right choices without a wrong one in between. The clock read
:55
.

The three black wires were identical. No green, red, and yellow. As soon as they exited the clock they were braided together, making it impossible to sort them out as they entered a small metal box. The box, which Scott guessed contained the batteries and the detonator, was screwed shut with ten screws. Even if Scott had a screwdriver, he couldn't have opened the box and sorted through the jumble of wires and con- nectors in less than a minute. The wires left the small box on the other side and traveled a foot to a much larger box that contained the explosive material. The clock read
:41.

Scott picked up the scissors. He positioned his body so that it was between the large box and the door. He didn't know the nature of the explosives, but if he could save someone else by partially blocking the explosion, he was willing to do it. It was quiet in the hallway, and Scott suddenly realized that the shooter was on a suicide mission, passing time until the bomb detonated. Scott had to decide which wires to cut. There was no time to flip a coin. The clock read
:28.

He decided on his strategy. Holding the wire nearest him as it exited the back of the clock, he opened the scissors so that the wire rested against the lower blade. The clock read
:21
. He held his breath and closed the scissors.

In the hallway outside the storage room, Frank walked toward Janie Collins. He passed Kay's body on the floor in front of the administrative offices. He did not know that his fourth shot had hit Scott in the leg or that the young lawyer was in the storage room. He checked his watch. There were less than thirty seconds until the bomb exploded. He wanted to be at ground zero when the ball of fire came roaring out of the room, vaporizing everything within its path.

“You've shot Ms. Laramie! Please put down the gun!” Janie cried out.

Frank raised the rifle toward her. When he did, he looked into her eyes. The eyes knew him. He hesitated. He wanted the moment to be impersonal, and Janie's presence threatened his detachment.

“Move!” he screamed.

He doubted she could run fast enough or far enough to escape death, but in the insanity of the moment, he decided it was better for the bomb to kill her than for him to put a bullet into her chest. Her eyes wide, Janie backed away toward the corner where Tao waited.

Waving the rifle back and forth, Frank approached the storage closet so he could open the door. He didn't want anything to hinder the fiery hell he'd planned from being released in its greatest horror.

When Scott squeezed the scissors, nothing happened. The wire was either tougher than he'd thought or the metal blades of the scissors were very dull. His first attempt only put a crease in the black insulation. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. Blood from the wound in his leg had soaked his makeshift bandage. He felt slightly dizzy. He didn't realize how quiet it had become in the hallway. The clock read
:20
.

He squeezed harder and severed the wire. No explosion.

Of the three identical wires that exited the back of the clock, Scott had cut the wire nearest to him. In the only logic he could muster, he'd decided that the two outside wires were most likely the sources of power, leaving the middle wire as the switch wire. He opened the scissors to cut the wire farthest from him. He would have to squeeze harder. There wouldn't be time for a second chance. The clock read
:15
.