Staying Alive

“Lay your heads down!” Claire ordered, barely catching herself from the momentum of his brutal push. She didn’t want her kids to see this. The terror she felt was nothing compared with what their impressionable minds would experience. “Lay your heads down!” she repeated. The longer she could put off their panic the better.

Heads went down onto folded arms. She let go a ragged breath and thanked God that they had obeyed quickly enough that they wouldn’t witness the horrible scene unfolding around them. The three masked men entered the room with Mr. Allen in tow. Claire kept a close eye on her students, hoping their curiosity wouldn’t have them peeking.

She should have known better than to hope.

“Down on the floor,” the goon in charge growled to Mr. Allen.

A single gasp ignited a rush of wide, curious eyes peeking above little arms.

That was when the screaming began.

Chapter 2

Claire moved from student to student attempting to calm them down.

The man who appeared to be in charge pointed at her. “You. Come here.”

He leveled his weapon on her as she approached. It was difficult for her to draw in a breath, much less put one foot in front of the other.

When she stopped about four feet away she looked him straight in the eye. “Yes?” Somehow her anger had overtaken her fear. Or maybe she’d gone numb or stupid with the business end of that automatic rifle pointed at her heart. Whatever it was, she hated this man for scaring the children like this.

What kind of animal terrorized children?

“Move everyone to the back of the room.”

He gestured to the area behind the children’s desks, where a long window that filled most of the wall looked out over the inner quad. Claire blinked in disbelief. She hadn’t noticed until then that the police were already on the campus. Beyond the inner quad, just past the drop-off point, at least a dozen official vehicles had gathered in the front courtyard of Whitesburg Middle School.

She turned back to the man doling out the instructions and nodded her understanding. He was taller than the other three, but slight, not nearly as heavily built. His voice, though mean and uncaring, sounded young.

“Line up as many of the children as possible on the window stool with their backs to the room. Do what you must to keep them quiet.”

Her heart thumped hard at the oddness of his request. “Why?”

Cold black eyes glared at her. “Do it or die.”

Somehow the order to move made it from her brain to her legs and she took the necessary steps to follow his order. As she moved back across the room she glanced at Mr. Allen. One of the masked men had secured him to the chair behind Claire’s desk with what looked like yellow nylon rope. The bindings were clearly too tight. Her heart went out to him.

What did these men want? Why were they doing this? Why her school?

She scolded herself for letting the questions splinter her attention. She had to keep her head about her.

One by one she ushered the children to the back of the room. “Help me move the projects and plants, okay?” She had lined the window stool with plants that the children helped water and projects that had been completed recently.

“What’s happening, Miss Grant?” Kira Hall stared up at her, her hazel eyes round with worry. “Why are those men wearing masks and holding guns?”

“I’m not sure, Kira. Let’s just do what they tell us to do and be very quiet. I think everything will be okay if we do that.”

Claire prayed she wasn’t lying to the child.

Please, God, don’t let this turn out badly.

Once the window stool was cleared, she assisted one child after the other onto the wide marble ledge. “Face out the window,” she told them quietly. They would be better off not seeing whatever was about to happen in this room.

By the time she’d reached the other end of the window, her entire class stood on that ledge staring out at the cluster of law enforcement vehicles.

Claire chewed her lip. Maybe this was worse than sitting in their desks staring at those men. She just didn’t know. Seeing those police cars out there would only alarm the children all the more.

“You!”

She pivoted to look at the man, the one she presumed to be in charge.

“Come here.”

“Stay very still and quiet, boys and girls,” she said once more, her voice as soothing as she could make it. Then, with a deep breath for courage, she walked back to her desk where the three men waited.

“Go through each backpack and purse, including your own, and remove any cellular phones. Bring them here to me.”

Few of her students had cell phones but she knew she would find one or two. She nodded. “All right.” Her gaze met the principal’s briefly as she turned to do her captor’s bidding. The image of the children lined up in that window, their backs turned to the hateful intruders, had her stomach dropping to her feet.

It was at that exact moment that she realized the purpose of putting the children in the window.

The realization made her heart follow the path her stomach had already taken.

The window stool was about forty inches off the floor and the window towered another five feet above that. There were no drapes or blinds to draw.

He was using the children to block the view into the room. And, probably, as a reminder of what was at stake. No way could a sniper attempt to take out any of the bad guys with the children lining the window. It was too risky.

These evil men had considered every contingency.

But why?

As she checked the backpacks hanging on a line of hooks mounted on the wall that divided her room from the hall, she wondered again why this school had been chosen. Why her classroom? Was it simply because she’d stepped into the hall at the wrong time? Or was there some other reason she just didn’t comprehend yet.

Peter Reimes. A new jolt of fear shook her. His father was a state representative who took an aggressive stance on fighting terrorism. His name and face would be known to men like these. His family would be an easy target.

She couldn’t be sure…but it was the only theory that made sense so far.

The men spoke perfect English. Were these men terrorists in the most-prevailing sense of the word or were they just thugs?

By the time she’d reached the final backpack she’d discovered five cell phones. Her first instinct was to keep one. Somehow attempt to hide it in the pocket of her slacks. But if she was discovered, it could cost her more than she wanted to pay. The way things looked, it wasn’t like she would get the opportunity to use it. The chances of all three men stepping out of the room at once was about nil and if she turned on the phone and entered 9-1-1, the operator’s voice would give her away. And that wasn’t even counting the one man watching her every move. She might not be restrained the way Mr. Allen was, but she by no means had free rein. The leader knew the best way to use her to keep the children quiet. If she appeared under control, the children would respond better.

So she took the phones and placed them on the desk. She purposely avoided going around behind the desk to get the one in her purse. Maybe he wouldn’t notice that she hadn’t done that. Maybe he would assume her purse had been in one of the backpacks. Plenty of teachers carried backpacks, too.

“Remove the one from your purse,” he instructed when she met his gaze.

So much for that plan. She crouched next to Mr. Allen and reached into her purse. She took the phone and placed it on the desk with the others.

“What do you want me to do now?”

He gestured to the window filled with children. “Stay close to your students. Ensure that no one makes a mistake that would get him or her killed.”

Fear barbed ruthlessly. Still, she managed a nod before going off to do his bidding. Right now cooperation was essential.

Resuming her position in the row of children, who remained surprisingly quiet, Claire turned to face her desk. She didn’t want her back to these men. Whatever happened next, she wanted to see it coming.

The man giving all the orders used the muzzle of his weapon to slide Claire’s phone across her desk to Mr. Allen. “We’re going to make a call and you’re going to do the talking for us. Do you understand?”

Mr. Allen nodded, the movement jerky.

Claire thought about how he’d had a heart attack last year. The red blotches amid the pallor of his face had her worried. But what could she do?

Nothing.

The man in charge nodded to one of his associates who picked up Claire’s phone and entered a number before placing the phone against Mr. Allen’s ear.

“Identify yourself and state your situation.”

“This is Principal Dale Allen from Whitesburg Middle School,” he said. “Approximately twenty fifth-grade students, a teacher, Miss Claire Grant, and I have been taken hostage by what I believe to be a group of three terrorists.”

Shock rumbled through Claire. Terrorists? She looked at first one man then the next and the next. Were these terrorists promoting some cause or was this about money? Were they foreigners? She couldn’t see their faces. Their voices sounded as American as her own. She’d already considered the concept that this was a terrorist act…but somehow hearing Mr. Allen say it made it more real. Mr. Allen kept up with the ongoing terrorist threats of the world. He would have a better grasp than she.

What could they hope to accomplish for their cause at her school? It didn’t make sense. Kidnapping a state representative’s child wouldn’t carry the kind of worldwide leverage terrorists usually went after…would it? Sure, the Reimes name was one associated with antiterrorism, but was that enough to cause these men to promote their agenda in this manner?

She surveyed the students to ensure no one had turned to face the threat or had moved out of position.

“Tell them,” the man instructing Mr. Allen went on, “that we wish to speak directly with State Representative Paul Reimes.”

Reimes. Claire’s gaze settled on the back of Peter Reimes’s head. So they were here about him. Again, she wondered if this was a kidnapping gone wrong. Maybe they weren’t terrorists. Maybe this was about money.

Mr. Allen repeated the demand as instructed.

Claire’s attention shifted from the boy to the scene playing out at the front of the room.

“The secretary says State Representative Reimes is out of the office but they’re trying to track him down.”

Claire’s heart bumped into a faster rhythm. What would these men do now? She sidestepped, taking her time so as not to draw the attention of the third man who now loitered in the middle of the room watching his comrades. She stopped dead in her tracks when he turned to survey her and the children.

When he turned back to his friends, she moved right a couple more steps until she stood directly in front of Peter Reimes.

“Find him,” Allen echoed the leader’s words. “Tell him to call this number immediately.” Mr. Allen blinked, looked confused a moment. “She wants to know what number she should call.”

The leader swung his cold gaze toward Claire. “What is the number?”

She called out her cell number without hesitation.

Mr. Allen repeated it.

The man holding her phone closed it, ending the call.

“Very good, Mr. Allen,” the man—no, the terrorist—in charge offered. “Continue to do exactly as I tell you and perhaps you will survive this day.”

Claire felt herself tremble. She tried to suppress the reaction but she couldn’t keep her body still.

This was not the kind of event you survived.

Oh, God.

“Where are the other kids going?”

Claire pivoted to the boy who’d spoken. Several of the other students began to talk all at once and point out the window.

“Quiet, boys and girls.” She strained to see the scene outside. Sure enough, children from the rooms in the rest of this wing were pouring across the quad. They rushed to meet the policemen.

Not just policemen, SWAT team members. Claire recognized the all-black combat gear, including the helmets. The realization that SWAT had been called in confirmed what she had already concluded.

They were going to die.

No. She squared her shoulders and refused to allow another tremble. They were not going to die.

These were children. She scanned the poor kids watching their schoolmates run to safety. She couldn’t bear the thought of even one of them being hurt.

The door to her classroom flew open, drawing her thoughts back to the front.

“The other rooms have been cleared,” a fourth man dressed in black and wearing a ski mask announced. He closed the door and, rather than join his friends at Claire’s desk, remained at the door.

Were there more or was this it? Each man was armed with an automatic rifle. The fourth man spoke with the same smooth English as the others, maybe just the slightest hint of an accent but too vague for her to identify.

“Miss Grant, I’m tired.”

She spun quickly to scrutinize Peter Reimes who looked sickly pale. “Did you take your medicine this morning?” Usually he didn’t have this much trouble keeping his level steady.

He nodded. “But I still don’t feel good.”

All the excitement was having an adverse affect on his blood-sugar level. He would need food or juice.

“I don’t feel good either,” Penny Myers echoed.

Claire had to get this chain reaction under control before every single child started complaining. Antagonizing these men would not be helpful to their situation.

“Settle down, boys and girls. We have to be very quiet,” she said firmly.

She patted Peter’s arm. “I’ll find you something to snack on. That should help.” Then she turned to face the front of the room. “This child,” she said, deliberately not mentioning his name, “is diabetic. He needs a snack. May I look in the backpacks for something edible?”

The man in charge gestured to his cohort, the one standing in the middle of the room keeping an eye on Claire and the kids. The man strode over to where the backpacks hung and started rifling through them.

Claire’s cell phone vibrated, making a grinding sound against the top of her desk.

“Answer it.”

One of the goons picked up the phone, opened it and held it against the principal’s ear. “This is Principal Allen.” He looked up at the man who gave the orders. “It’s State Representative Reimes.”

The other man finished searching the backpack and abruptly thrust a pack of snack crackers at Claire. Her hand shaking, she reached out and took the small package. “Thank you.”

The man didn’t respond. He stalked back to his position. She quickly opened the crackers and passed the package to Peter. Then she moved down the length of the window and made soothing comments to the rest of her students in hopes of keeping them calm. As she did, she took every opportunity to survey the goings-on beyond the drop-off area.

Were they planning a rescue attempt?

How in the world would they be able to do that? There was no access to the room other than the one door and this one long window. The emergency exit was actually an operational section of window at the southeast corner of the room. The rest of the window was sealed shut. Even if someone managed to open that emergency exit, no more than one or two of the children would be able to escape before the man watching them noticed.

Right now, the best thing to do was to stay cool and not to make any moves that could be considered aggressive or uncooperative.

The leader’s demands drew her full attention back to the front of the room.

“You have just one hour. If the authorities do not release Hamid Kaibar by then, your son will die. Another child will die every half hour after that until Kaibar is released.”

Terror wrapped around Claire’s chest and tightened to the point of making breathing near impossible.

Surely it wouldn’t come to that.

Surely the authorities would comply with their demands.

And release a terrorist? Darlene’s words about Hamid Kaibar reignited in her brain. One on the top ten list?

It was at that precise moment that Claire fully understood the ramifications of their predicament.

Her first assessment had been correct.

They were going to die.

“I want my mommy,” Lila Miles whimpered. Her plea set off a cacophony of similar sentiments.

“Let’s settle down, girls and boys,” Claire urged, desperation taking deep root at this point.

“Miss Grant!”

The brutal tone made Claire flinch as she faced the man in charge.

“Control your students or I will do it for you.”

She knew exactly what that meant.

Turning back to the window lined with children, she shouted, “Quiet, now!”

She moved along the row, touching each student with what she hoped would be a reassuring gesture while urging them to be calm. She promised that all would be fine, that they would be going home soon.

She prayed her promises would not prove to be lies.

“Representative Reimes says that one hour is not enough time.”

Mr. Allen’s voice shook with the impact of the message he had no choice but to relay. Dread twisting into tiny knots in her stomach, Claire waited for a response from the men at the front of the room.

“One hour is all he has,” their captor stated. “That hour started five minutes ago. That is all I have to say.”

Mr. Allen repeated the statement into Claire’s cell phone and the man holding the phone closed it, severing the connection.

Claire worked for several precious moments to maintain her composure as she whispered soothing assurances to the children. Remaining calm was absolutely essential. If there was any hope at all of devising an escape plan, she could not be distracted by panic or fear.

There was no way the authorities were going to release a terrorist, not even to save these children. Claire almost lost hope then and there. The police would try to help. Representative Reimes would call in his every marker, put the pressure on the political chain of command. But she knew all too well what would happen if the powers that be decided to have SWAT converge on the classroom in lieu of releasing the prisoner.

There would be few survivors.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust the highly trained members of such an elite force to do the best job possible, but the four gunmen holding her class captive had nothing to lose. If they went down they would want to incur as much collateral damage as possible. Even if tear gas were somehow introduced into the room to disable the terrorists, they would go down firing those automatic weapons. The children were lined up in the window like sitting ducks in a carnival shooting gallery.

They would be the first to die.

She glanced at the clock high on the wall above the white board behind her desk. In forty-five minutes, the man in charge had promised, the first child would be sacrificed if his demand was not met.

She had to figure out a way to stop that from happening.

Her gaze landed on Mr. Allen. There was nothing he could do. He was bound securely with a masked guard towering over him. The leader lingered around the desk as well. Waiting for the call back, she supposed.

The other two men were covering the door and the classroom at large, including her and the children.

Four armed men and all these children.

She had no weapon, no actual training in how to fight off an attacker. Sure she’d taken a self-defense course once. But that course had focused mainly on preventing the possibility of sexual assault. She had no idea how to fend off terrorists.

One thing she did know, however, was how to fire a weapon. She was no expert by any means. She wasn’t even a particularly good shot. But she knew how a rifle worked. All she needed was to get her hands on one and then she’d just shoot until they didn’t move anymore, as her father had always put it.

If he were still alive, her father would be proud of her for attempting to assess her options under the circumstances, but even he would have to admit that her chances of accomplishing anything were sorely limited. Still, she had to try. Giving up was not her style.

She considered the items she had seen in the children’s backpacks when she’d gone through them. The phones had all been turned over as requested. There really hadn’t been anything else she could use as a weapon. Getting into her desk was out of the question.

What could she use as a weapon? Her gaze skimmed the array of projects the children had turned in last week. A miniature volcano. A papier-mâché dinosaur. A Pterosaur complete with nest and hand-painted eggs. The model of the prehistoric bird was fairly large with pointy metal claws about the size of ink pens attached to its feet. The bird was mounted on a stand as if flying over its nest. If she could pretend to knock it off the desk, she could pull one of the claws free as she picked up the mess. Then use it as a weapon, if she got the opportunity. It wouldn’t be much, but it was better than nothing.

Claire checked on her students. They were getting restless. She moved from one to the other and urged them to keep their eyes on the police cars no matter what happened and to stay quiet. When she’d again reached the row of desks where the Pterosaur sat she backed up a couple of steps and started to turn. Just as she’d planned, she bumped into the bird’s widespread wings and knocked it off balance.

The bird and stand crashed to the floor.

The aim of four weapons fell on her.

“I’m sorry.”

For three or four seconds, she couldn’t catch her breath. She was sure one of the men would shoot her where she stood.

As if God had been watching out for her, her cell phone vibrated against her desktop, drawing all attention there.

Relief flooded her and somehow her heart started to beat once more. She took a deep breath.

While the men focused on the call, she crouched down and started to gather parts of the damaged bird. She pulled loose one of the pointy claws and slid it into the right pocket of her slacks while keeping an eye on the terrorists. When she’d placed the broken bird back atop the desk, she stood.

Mr. Allen’s face had gone utterly white.

Even from across the room she could see the sweat dampening his forehead.

The phone was crushed against his ear so that he could listen to what the caller had to say.

He looked up at the terrorist in charge. “Representative Reimes has tried everything he knows to do but the federal authorities will not release Mr. Kaibar. But he would like to offer the four of you a chance at freedom in return for the lives of the children.”

“Tell him,” their captor said, his voice cold, “that we will not bother to wait the final fifteen minutes. His son dies now.”

Mr. Allen repeated the information, his face now going a sickly gray color.

Claire stood, unable to move, and watched this moment play out. Her mind kept recapping the same words over and over.

They were going to kill the children, starting with Peter.

Mr. Allen abruptly gagged, then gasped for air.

“Mr. Allen!” She moved toward him before her mind registered what she was doing.

Weapons took aim at her, but she couldn’t stop.

“Stay with the children,” the man in charge ordered.

She hesitated long enough to glare at him. “He has a bad heart. He could be having a heart attack! I have to help him!”

The leader nodded to his cohort, the one who’d handled the phone.

Before Claire could reach her desk, the man had shoved her chair, Mr. Allen still bound to it, into the corner. He leveled his weapon and fired.

The blast exploded in the room and left an ugly round role in the center of Mr. Allen’s chest. Blood oozed down his shirtfront.

Claire screamed and ran toward him.