Rather be Lucky than Good Ch. 02

Second chapter of Dave's day at the mall. Many thanks to the wonderful BlackRandi1958 for editing and pointing out that old dogs have to learn new tricks. No more double spacing after periods. Made some changes to her edited copy. Any errors are mine.

*****

I watched for just a moment to make sure she got away, then turned back to the service entrance where a trickle of folks were running out. As I passed them going the opposite direction, one guy said, "Run for it man, they're shooting people in there."

Okay, call me stupid. I have no military training, so what am I doing heading inside? Somebody's got to do something. Right there in the middle of somebody is the word "me" I'm the only me" I know. I read in the paper the other day that in an active shooter situation, you run. If you can't run, you hide, and last resort you defend with anything you can get your hands on. But, I'm gonna be offensive so I head inside and toward the sound of shooting. Thank god for Tom Clancy's books; they are what is guiding me. With my gun up in front of me I continue down the service corridor. Just as I reached the door, one of the "janitors" steps in front of me, facing the other way. Just as he raised his gun to his shoulder to take out some shopper, I crammed the barrel of my pistol into the base of his skull and pulled the trigger. I was hoping that by cramming the barrel into his skull it would hide some of the sound. Don't know why that seemed important. After all, there was shooting here and there. Before he could hit the ground I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him back into the service area. I laid him out and checked for a bomb vest. Good, nothing under his hoody but him.

Then I took a quick look at him. Could have been Middle Eastern, could have been from Ohio as far as I could tell. I took a look at his rifle. I'm no gun expert, but this was not an AK. Not the M16 I had "played with" at the range either. It looked like a newer version. Definitely a military weapon as it had a fire selection switch for safe, semi, or full. Pretty sure in the US normal folks can't run around with a fully automatic weapon. Maybe you can, but I don't think so. Checking out the rest of him, he's got a fanny pack with a Glock .40 and spare mags for both the pistol and rifle. Figure I need them more than he does, so I pocketed my .380 peashooter.

About that time, my phone rings, I hit the button and my blue tooth starts talking to me. "Jacobs?"

"Yeah, who's this?"

"Chief Ayers, Gwinnett County Police" came the answer.

"What can I do for you, Chief? Kinda busy right now."

"That's what I needed to find about. One of my officer's wives, Jana Jones, called 911 and said you were at Gwinnett Place. What can you tell me?"

"Well I spotted six janitors who did not look right. One had a gun sticking up out of his trash barrel. I got Jana and her kids outta here and into my car. Once I was sure she was on her way, I came back in."

"What do you mean back in? Are you inside the mall? Why, you crazy?"

"Yeah, Chief, I'm back in here. How many officers do you have in here?" I asked.

"None, we're still trying to figure out what's going on" he replied.

"What's going on is you've got an active shooter situation with at least five shooters taking out people."

"Thought you said six?"

"One of them gave me too easy of a solution. He's dead and I've got his weapons." I said.

"What are they using? AKs?" he asked.

"No Chief, that's troubling me. Looks like US military with a semi /full auto selector over the right thumb position. That and a Glock .40."

"Any communication gear?" he asked.

"Shit, didn't check, just a minute. No, don't see anything."

"Okay Jacobs, thanks for the info. Now what's your agenda, you some kind of Rambo?"

"No Chief, I just happened to be here at the wrong time. My only agenda it to see how many other families I can get out of here. Chief, I'm sixty five and though I don't have a death wish but if it happens, it happens. It's a risk I'm willing to take if I can save some other folks."

"Just tell your people not to shoot the old white guy the red shirt. I'm gonna follow the gunfire and see what I see."

"Okay, Jacobs, I don't like having a civilian walking around shooting the place up, but right now you are all we've got. Listen, I'm going to put Sgt. Chin on here. Just keep the connection and tell him what you are finding. He's just going to listen and won't talk unless you ask him to. That'll keep the distractions down. Good hunting and be careful."

With that, I started down the mall listening for gunfire. Unfortunately, I passed several bodies along the way. It looked random, not like the shooters were picking male or female, young or old. As I paused to listen, I heard a whimper coming from behind a display. Carefully, with the pistol ready, I looked behind the display. There were three young teens huddled together, crouched down on the floor. One guy, two girls. I held my finger to my lips in the quiet sign.

"Are you guys injured?" I asked.

"All three shook their heads, but the guy whispered, "They got one of our friends."

"Look, I think the coast is clear. There's an exit right around the corner. Get out of here" I said.

I reached out to one of the girls and pulled her up. The other two stood.

"Ready? I'm gonna get you to the door and cover you backs while you run like hell. Questions? Good, let's go."

Into the phone I said "Three kids coming out the service exit."

"We've got units on the way," said Chin. "Tell them to come out running with their hands up."

I passed the instructions and sent them on. Once I made sure they were on they were on their way out, I turned around and retraced my steps.

Back down the mall towards Glassmakers. Still hearing shots, I looked up to the upper level across the way just in time to see another shooter. Luckily, he had not seen me. I stepped back behind the column next to me, pulled the rifle up and sighted in. One quick three shot blast and he fell over the rail to the lower level floor.

"That's two," I said into the bluetooth.

"Good," came the reply.

About that time, I heard the sound of gunfire further down the mall. A flurry that seemed like forever, but probably only 30-45 seconds. I relayed that info to Chin. "Funny thing about that round of gunfire, sounded like several different weapons, not just these rifles. Some big assed booms and some smaller. Whadda you think that means?"

The Chin said, "Maybe they have mixed weapons or, hopefully, you're not the only resistance."

"If that's the case, you better pass it on to your guys coming in. Don't need any friendly fire," I said.

Where are you?" the Chin asked.

"Lower level, moving towards Glassmakers," I replied.

"Go up to the next level and head for the exit. We have officers coming in that way," he told me.

"Gotcha, just tell them not to shoot the old guy."

As I passed Glassmaker's entrance, I saw movement in the back of the store. Turning towards the store, I saw another of the bad guys raising his rifle. Unfortunately, he got off a shot before I could and I felt it hit me in the right shoulder. Good thing I'm a lefty. I got off a couple of shots with the Glock on the way down. Then it was lights out for me.

When the lights came back on, I realized I was in a hospital room. I groaned a little and instantly my daughter was looking down at me.

"Daddy, you're back, Mom just left. Let me get the nurse," she said.

She stepped out into the hall and called out "He's awake."

That brought a flurry of activity, first the nurses then the doctors. Ann, my daughter, was standing over against the wall taking it all in. The nurses gave me a little water though a bent sippy straw and started checking my vitals. A doctor came in looking at his tablet.

"Well, Mr. Jacobs, you had us worried there," he said.

"What happened? Last thing I remember was some one shooting at me," I said.

"Well, yes, you were shot. It tore up your right shoulder, but we've got that back together. You've got a ways to go with that, still. Unfortunately, on your way to the ground, you hit your head and got a bad brain injury. We've had you in a coma for four weeks now, giving your brain time to heal. At this time, we don't know what if any long term affects you may have."

"Where am I?" I asked, "I know I'm in a hospital, but which one?"

"That's the easy part," the doctor replied, "You are at the Gwinnett Medical Center in Duluth. By the way, I'm Dan Ulteman, your neurologist for the last month. Welcome back. You will have some physical therapy and some other stuff, but we'll have to get that lined up. In the meantime, you just relax with your family while we work on getting you back to normal, which your daughter tells us is not really normal. She told us your blood type is AB normal. Abnormal, get it? She's been very entertaining. Your wife is on her way back up so I'm getting the hell out of here while I can."

"Chicken!" I called after him. Did I mention my wife is a redhead?

"Better believe it." I heard come back through the door.

"Hi, Daddy," my daughter said. (What can I say, even though she's thirty-six, I'm still Daddy. I think it's a southern thing. No, not that stuff. Jeeze.) "We've been worried about you. I didn't know if you were going to make it or not. Mom has been worried to death about you. She was really afraid you were going to die before she had a chance to kill you."

"Okay, thanks for that heads up. Even with a case of massive mental fog, I follow you."

"David!" cried my wife Debbie as she came into the room. "You son of a bitch. You pull another stunt like that and I'm never talking to you again, because you will probably kill yourself. You've pulled some stuff over the last 40 years, but this takes the cake. What the hell were you thinking? Or were you?"

"I know, Debbie. I'm sorry, but I had to do something," I said. "I couldn't just run away and let them slaughter a mall full of innocent folks. Like that family I was sharing a table with. I had to try something." What if you or Ann had been there? I would sure as hell want someone to do something. What the hell was that about? How many folks got hurt?"

"Nowhere near what it could have been," said older police officer as he came in the room. "Thanks to you and four others like you, they killed 19and injured 43. Glad they were lousy shots."

"Well, that's good news. Have you figured out who they were?" I asked.

"Some Arian white power group from Montana. Guess they don't appreciate ethnic diversity in Georgia. Forgive me, I'm Chief Ayers, Gwinnett County Police. I had just stopped by to check on you and heard you were awake," he added.

"Good thing you five guys were in there and took action. Of the nine bad guys, you got three, including the one who got you. The other four got the rest. Y'all had the whole thing stopped before we got one officer into the mall. Guess it does not pay to start shooting up a mall in Georgia," Ayers added.

Just as he finished, several other officers came into the room. The first one in the door, an attractive young female said, "The dispatcher just told us you were awake."

I realized she was Beth Tower, the Duluth officer who gave me the ticket. "Hey, Beth, how are you?"

"Me?" she scoffed, "I'm a lot better than you."

"Okay everybody," Ayers announced, "Dr. Ulteman says we gotta get out of here and give Mr. Jacobs some rest. We've got some arrangements to make, Mr. Jacobs, a lot of folks want to meet you and thank one of our hometown heroes."

With that I heard one of the other Duluth officers scoff. I looked at him and recognized JW, aka Jerk Wad.

"JW," I said, "you got a problem?"

"Yeah, hometown hero my ass; you're lucky you did not a real fuck up charging in like John Fucking Wayne. And it's Office Wilson to you." he added.

He had no sooner closed his mouth than the third Duluth cop walking in behind him said, "One more comment like that, and it won't be Officer anything; just Jerk Wad, the former officer."

With that, JW's face turned 25 shades of red as he said "Yes, Chief, won't happen again, Chief. Sorry Chief, sorry Mr. Jacobs," as he turned and hurried from the room.

"Thanks, Chief," Beth said shaking her head. "Some people's children."

Beth hung back as the other officers left and a different doctor came it.

She smiled at Beth, then to me, she said "I'm Dr. Barrett," she said. "I'm the one who put your shoulder back together. Reminded me of old times."

"Oh, you must be Beth's better half. She told me what you were doing when you met. Thanks for putting it back."

"You're welcome, and call me Julie, please," she said.

To which I said, "Dave."

She turned to Beth and said, "I'll call you later. I need to check his shoulder while I'm here and he's awake."

Beth stepped over and kissed her cheek and said, "Love you and see you later".

With that, Julie turned back to me, slipped my gown off my shoulder and started poking and prodding. After a while, she said, "Looks like it coming along rather well. We've got to do some more Xrays and MRIs, but we'll keep a close eye on it."

Shortly after she left, my son and his wife came into the room. "Damn pops, that was some shit you pulled," he said. My daughter-in law leaned over the bed and kissed my cheek, "You had us worried there, for a while."

With just my family still in the room, I asked, "What's this hometown hero stuff Chief Ayers was talking about?"

Debbie came over and said, "The five of you are being hailed as true heroes. Without what you 5 did, there could have easily been hundreds killed."

"Yeah, Pops, they had 200 rounds each for the M4s and another 80 for the Glocks. Guess they were slow getting going" interjected my son.

"M4? Aren't those new US Military gear? How did those thugs get their hands on those things?"

My daughter, who had been uncharastically quiet up until this point said, "According Randy Chin, those guns were part of a shipment to Iraq. The Army has a big inquiry going on now."

"Who is Randy Chin?" I asked.

"You know, Sgt. Chin. He was on the phone with you while you were playing cops and robbers through the mall," Ann said.

"And how do you know Randy?" I asked.

"I have his daughter in AP World History at Norcross. He and I have kinda been talking," said my single thirty-six year old daughter, the teacher.

"Oh? Well maybe something good will come out of me trying to get killed," I replied.

"Never can tell, after all he is single. Oh, he wants to meet you, too."

"Sure, bring him around. We'll have a party."