The Enemy Within

As Tomcic tore his targets to shreds with 7.62mm rounds from his AKM, Khalizad scanned the schoolyard, shooting adults anyone who looked as though they might interfere. He had a better view of the carnage the Bosnian was inflicting, not only because he was standing but because his vision was not focused over the muzzle of his weapon.

Children screamed hysterically and wept, crouching behind anything or nothing at all as they tried, instinctively, to escape the deadly fire. Older kids tried to help younger ones to safety. Some, too young to understand what was happening, simply stood and cried, and were cut down. Many teachers tried to bring the children inside to safety, or shield them with their bodies, and died at Khalizad’s hand.

The second Bosnian, Emil Hodjic, heard the firing and screams from the playground, but kept his attention and his own AKM locked on the street in front of him. His job was to protect the team. He had to keep the road open for their planned escape.

There were cars crowding the intersection half a block away. Hodjic began shooting, firing short, precisely aimed bullets into windshields and tires. He was the team marksman and sniper. As a teenager he had practiced his trade a hundred times in the deadly hide-and-kill games played amid Sarajevo’s artillery-shattered high-rises.

Now he searched for pedestrians, for customers coming out of stores, and for car drivers. Witnesses. Those who fled, he generally ignored. Hodjic was after the ones who watched.

Still firing on the playground, Khalizad heard one long beep on the rental van’s horn. One minute gone. Thirty seconds left. There were no immediate threats in his field of view, so he consciously widened his search beyond the corpse-strewn asphalt. There were shocked and stunned faces pressed up against the windows of the school. The Iranian shot them out, pumping a steady stream of 5.56mm rounds through glass and brick and flesh.

Hodjic also heard the horn the first of the signals the sniper had been waiting for eagerly. The past sixty seconds had seemed like sixty years. To his victims, he was a fearsome figure dressed and masked in black, firing into the cityscape like some nightmare come to life. Only he and his teammates understood their vulnerability and the risks they were running by taking direct action.

During the planning for this attack, the likely law enforcement response had been carefully measured and assessed. The police would not be halflhearted, but every calculation showed the attackers should have enough time to strike fast and flee. The nearest Chicago police station was more than two minutes away, and it would take several minutes more to assemble a reaction force. No, Hodjic was more worried about the possibility of a roving patrol car or an armed response from some unexpected direction. He’d already killed one shopkeeper who appeared at his door with a shotgun.

Many in America’s cities owned weapons. At this point in the campaign, one unexpected bullet could smash General Taleh’s grand design beyond repair.

The Bosnian sniper searched the area carefully, trying to suppress the fear and excitement surging through his body, trying to keep a clear head so that he could spot any movement, any possible threat. By now, the intersection half a block away was a jumble of abandoned cars, their windshields starred or shot out altogether. Bodies dotted the pavement along with shattered glass. He pivoted, sighting over the AKM’s muzzle. There. He saw someone crouched behind a car that had driven up over the sidewalk and plowed into a storefront. He fired twice. An elderly black woman slumped forward and sprawled, unmoving, on the sidewalk.

The van’s horn beeped again twice this time. It was time to go.

Hodjic stared hard along the muzzle of his assault rifle, making sure it was safe to turn his back for ten seconds. He whirled and dove through the open rear doors.

Khalizad heard the horn too and turned, but Tomcic showed no signs of leaving. He was still firing still flailing away at the heaped corpses on the playground. The Iranian had to grab his shoulder to break his fierce concentration.

The Bosnian turned his head slightly, but his expression was unreadable under the mask.

Khalizad yanked on his shoulder again, stabbing a finger toward the van. He said nothing. Except in dire emergency, their standing orders prohibited speech during a mission. No one must hear the accents that would give them away as foreign-born.

This time, Tomcic shook his head as if coming out of a trance. He rocked back slightly. Then, without another look at the schoolyard or his victims, he rose and dashed into the van.

Khalizad was the last one in. He pulled the doors shut and shouted over his shoulder to their driver, “Go! We’re clear!”