Jessie shrugged.
Hauck put his arm around her. “She thinks I’m famous in my own mind…” He brought up the basket. “So, Sunil, we have a couple of sandwiches and sodas, and we also took a—”
It was the screech that Hauck heard first.
Grating. Terrifying. The red truck jerking to a stop right in front of their eyes. The heavily tinted passenger window slowly rolling down.
Then the man in the red bandana leaning out—not a man, Hauck recalled later, barely more than a boy—extending the short black cylinder as Hauck, unable to believe what he was seeing, stared at the protruding barrel.
A second before the body-blow of dread set in. Before he realized in horror what was about to take place.
He grabbed Jessie.
“Everyone get down!”
The barrel erupted, spitting orange flashes of death and terror all around. The station’s storefront shattered.
“Jess!”
Hauck pulled his daughter to the floor, the earsplitting zip, zip, zip of twenty rounds per second exploding glass, toppling counters of candy and shredding magazines all over them. He heard Jessie’s high-pitched shrieks from under him. “Daddy! Daddy!”
Above, the window sign promoting discount tune-ups crashed in.
All Hauck could do was press himself into her as tightly as he could, shouting back above the deafening rain of glass and noise something he wasn’t sure of, something he didn’t know was true: “It’s okay, Jess, it’s okay! It’s going to be okay…”
But it wasn’t okay.
Bullets tore through the walls all around them, the store shaking like an earthquake was happening. Hauck had seen the muzzle pointed at his face. He felt sure the attack was aimed at him. Covering his daughter, an even more terrifying fear rippled through him:
What if the gunman tried to come in?
Suddenly, the barrage came to a stop. Just as quickly as it had begun. Hauck held there and prayed for the sound of the truck’s engine revving up. He didn’t hear it—only a heart-stopping double-clicking noise, which terrified him even more.
The shooter was shoving in a second clip.
He knew he had to do something. And do it now. From outside, he heard frightened wails and screaming. He had no idea if anyone might have already been hit. He slid off Jessie, fumbling at his waist for his gun—and, in panic, found only the empty space where it normally would have been, realized it was back in the Explorer. In the fucking glove compartment!
He was unarmed.
The second wave of gunfire started in.
“Stay down!” Hauck screamed above the noise directly in Jessie’s ear, rounds zinging through the remaining jagged shards of glass that still clung to the front facade.
Jessie reached for him. “Daddy, no…!”
Hauck cupped her face in his hands. “Jessie, please, just stay down!”
He pulled out of her grasp, his heart colliding back and forth against his ribs, and scrambled over to the door. He grabbed the largest object he could find, a two-gallon drum of motor coolant, and, using it as cover, crawled outside.
The red truck loomed directly above him. The muzzle jutted from the passenger window, jerking wildly from the recoil. Hauck realized his only option was to wrestle the gun from the shooter’s grip. He slid cautiously along the pavement, ducking under the gunman’s view. Suddenly the truck’s engine revved.
He got ready to lunge.
As if in answer to his prayers, the shooting suddenly stopped. Above him, he heard the deafening roar of the truck’s massive V-8, the gunman shouting something he couldn’t make out over the noise.
Then the sparkle of silver rims zooming by, the cab careening off a stanchion as it shot past him, veering into the street.
Hauck scrambled after it, focusing on the make and plates. A Ford F250, ADJ…9, dealer plates. The rest he couldn’t make out. It jerked a sharp left, bouncing wildly over the curb at the corner, and took off south, toward the Connecticut–New York border.
A plume of dark gray smoke crept out from the scene.
One by one, stunned bystanders began to crawl out from behind their cars.
Hauck looked around. “Is everyone alright?”
One man got up from behind a fuel pump, nodding uncertainly. Next to him a woman was still curled up on the asphalt, sobbing, shell-shocked.
“I’m a policeman!” he called again. “Is everyone alright?”
Amazingly, he didn’t see anyone who appeared to have been hit. He turned back to the shop, the stench of smoke and cordite biting his nostrils. The caved-in storefront looked as if a missile had slammed into it. He had to call it in! Frantically, he dug through his jeans for his cell phone, his fingers fumbling on the keys, 431, the emergency code to the Greenwich station’s front desk.
His gaze drifted back inside.
“Jess …?”
Hauck’s heart slammed to a stop, his eyes falling on his daughter. She was on the floor. Curled up. Inert. Not replying. The phone fell from his ear.
There was blood all over her.
“Jess!”
It may have only been an instant—the same terrifying instant in which he begged his lifeless legs to move.
But in the freeze-frame of that moment, Hauck was hurtled back.
To Jessie—only six. In a Teletubby T-shirt, cross-legged on the grass outside their two-family home in Woodside, Queens. Curled up there, she looked as clear to him then as she did now.
All they heard was her shriek. “Mommy! Daddy!”
He and Beth, rushing to the kitchen window. Knowing immediately that something was wrong, seeing only their white van as it bounced silently down the embankment and came to a stop in the quiet street.
Jess—too scared to even point or move. Just frozen there. His and Beth’s eyes falling on the tiny yellow tugboat that their younger daughter, Norah, had been playing with only moments before. The truth taking hold of them. Petrifying them. Beth’s eyes already filled with terror and fleeing hope.
Oh,
