PLEDGE OF HONOR: A Mark Cole Thriller Read Online Free

never seen anything – could never have even imagined anything – remotely like what she was experiencing now, blood flying everywhere, bodies tossed this way and that.
    Without even knowing what she was doing, she turned and – with other teachers – threw open the big glass doors that led to the courtyard, screaming at the children to run for it, to run for their lives.
    The fire alarm went off then, and the frightening wail just served to increase the feelings of confusion that threatened to overwhelm her.
    What was happening?
    Why?
    The gunfire was interrupted as two of her colleagues jumped on the terrifying, bearded killer, but she did not wait to see what happened, just carried on trying to get the rest of the children to safety.
     
    Aabid Karam tossed and turned underneath the two men, but it was a struggle; they outweighed him by thirty or forty pounds apiece, and panic had imbued their muscles with extraordinary strength.
    Another person was on him then, a woman, trying to wrestle the gun away from his grasp.
    He relaxed at that moment, let the gun go; and when the person fell backward, not expecting the sudden release, she knocked into the two men pinning him down, made them slacken their hold for just a moment; just long enough for him to pull the curved dagger from his waistband and plunge it into the ribs of one of them, slash at the face of the other.
    The dagger cut deep into the second man’s flesh, and he recoiled, even as the first man’s dead weight sank down harder onto Karam.
    But Karam rolled the man off, kicked out at the man whose face he’d slashed, making room for him to get to his feet.
    He looked after the running children, pulled out a hand grenade from the bag that lay at his feet, and pulled the pin.
    It was then that he felt the sudden, horrible impact as the women who had taken his gun shot him in the stomach, the powerful rounds bursting right through him, ripping him apart.
    He watched – still conscious – as the recoil pushed the barrel upward, the remaining rounds flying high toward the ceiling, almost laughed at the woman’s weakness; but then he realized that the grenade was falling to the floor right by his feet, and there was no time left to do anything about it.
    He smiled as he embraced his martyrdom.
    At least he would take the woman with him.
     
    Ranson watched with amazement – just as the last able-bodied child ran past her into the courtyard – as one of her teachers, a middle-aged woman named Janice Johnson, who had been here longer even than Ranson herself, shot the killer in the gut with his own weapon.
    But then she saw the small object drop from the dead man’s hand, and amazement was replaced by horror as the grenade exploded in a burst of flame and debris that destroyed the bodies nearest to it, and that knocked her off her feet and out into the rain-soaked courtyard beyond.

12
    Osman Massoud watched as the children poured into the courtyard, screaming and shouting, the adults struggling to contain them, frantically trying to cope with the utter chaos and confusion.
    Aabid and Ibrahim had done their jobs well, had forced everyone out of the school, funneled them toward Massoud, the third man.
    And Massoud was ready and waiting for them.
     
    Ross saw the man too late; he had been hiding behind the swings in the playground higher up the small hill that led out of the courtyard, and had been all but invisible, hidden by the torrential rain.
    But she saw him clearly now, turning toward the hundreds of people – men, women and children – who were gathered in the courtyard. Shivering, cold and terrified, they were also – Ross now understood – sitting ducks, right in the middle of a killing ground.
    The man opened fire then, and Ross was horrified to see that it was a belt-fed machine gun – and she threw herself on the children near her, using her body to shield them from the hundreds of rounds which were blasting across the enclosed area.
    Another man