In Too Deep(49)

Another burst of gunfire came from down the hallway, and I left the special education classroom behind. There were no other bodies, so I hoped that at least the kids were okay.

The shooting came from the area near Derek Gallegos' classroom. Derek was one of my work friends, a nice middle-aged guy who taught math and was a dedicated Denver Broncos fan. I saw the flash of gunfire from his doorway, even against the sunlight streaming through the windows, and knew I had found my targets.

"Where is Cam Swagger's room?" one of the gunmen yelled, and I flattened myself against the wall, staying out of sight. "Where is it?!"

His question created nothing but screams, and another burst of gunfire. "Someone tell me where Cam Swagger is, and I promise you, we’ll leave,” the voice said again. There was a hint of desperation in his voice. He knew he was running out of time and had to find me soon. I had to intervene. Who knows what lengths he’d go to.

"I'm out here!" I yelled, holding my makeshift sword in both hands. I had only one chance, to catch the gunmen as they were off-balance. I took off down the hallway, intentionally making as much noise as I could, trying to draw them out.

My ploy worked. They focused on trying to come after me. Just what I wanted, as it gave me my best hope. My enemy had the advantage in terms of manpower, weapons, and equipment. I, on the other hand, had the advantage in terms of terrain.

I knew the school like the back of my hand. Rounding the corner, I ducked into the stairwell that was hidden, my sword raised high.

The first gunman to come around the corner wasn't Pinzetti, but instead his unknown partner. I chopped laterally, at what I had hoped was his neck height. Instead, it caught him just under the nose. The man had been running, so the combined force of my chop with his mass going forward tore the handle from my hands while knocking him to the ground. I was able to dive over him, grabbing his AK-47 from his dying hands and rolling to my knees. Wheeling around, I saw Pinzetti come around the corner, armed with an M-4.

"Swagger," Pinzetti said, his rifle at his shoulder, aimed at me. Mine was a mirror image, and part of me wondered what would happen if we both pulled our triggers at the same time. "Where's the goddamn laptop?"

"You really think I'd bring it to work?" I asked wryly. "Who the f*ck hired you, Dubya?"

"It's not at your house," he said. "So you've got to have it with you."

I breathed a sigh of relief, knowing that he was either too stupid to find it or Melina got it out of there. "You really are dumb. I guess they decided that sending someone smart didn't work, so they’d try something different.”

I was trying to get Pinzetti angry, to draw his focus away from me and to hopefully make a mistake. The odds of me surviving were still tiny, but there had to be a chance that things would be okay. I had to believe that fate hadn't brought Melina into my life just to end it so quickly.

However, Pinzetti wasn't going to be taunted so easily. Either he was too stupid or too well trained, or both. When the two cops came up behind him, he spun, the trigger finger on his right hand already tightening. His first shot took the leftmost cop in the shoulder while my first shot tore into his back. He'd worn body armor, but at ten feet, no body armor in the world is going to stop a round from an AK.

Unfortunately for me, shooting Pinzetti in the back made him pitch forward at almost the exact same time that the other cop, a county sheriff that I didn't know by face, fired with his pistol. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, that wouldn't matter, the angles and the aim would be wrong, but this was that one time when everything lined up. His round took me in the left bicep, tearing a deep furrow along the outside of my arm before disappearing into the wall. I dropped the AK, wanting to make sure that the cop didn't think I was one of the gunmen.

"I'm an English teacher!" I yelled as I sank to the floor, stepping back. "Cam Swagger!"

I had to give the cop credit, a lot of others wouldn't have listened. Hell, in New York or Cleveland I probably wouldn't have even had a chance to get a word out, I'd have been filled with ten or more bullets in a single blast. But in Dona Ana County, New Mexico, a lot of the sheriff’s deputies had still grown up on the idea of community policing, and there were even some of the older deputies who carried a six shot revolver instead of a semi-automatic. Also, a lot of them were retired military, which gave them a better sense of fire control by and large. This was one of those men, who gave me the benefit of the doubt. He kept his pistol trained on me, though. "Don't move."

"I don't plan on it," I said, still not feeling the wound. Adrenaline was coursing through me too quickly, and the shock of the gunshot still hadn't faded away. "But you don't have to keep that S&W pointed at me."

His gun still didn't move, but the cop did use his lapel microphone, calling out to someone outside. I lay against the wall, holding my right hand over the wound in my left arm, trying to slow the flow of blood. In less than a minute, a couple of paramedics were there, checking me out. "Hey, Cam."

I identified one of them, a guy who’d acted as the on-site medic during some of the high school's basketball games, and I nodded. "Hey, Bruce. Can you tell this guy that I'm not one of the gunmen, and that I work here?"

Bruce turned his head. "He does work here. He's the English teacher."