A horrific scene unfolded before everyone: five or six police officers and civilians lay dead in the middle of the street. Beneath them, blood formed a horrifying trail along the pavement, flowing into the roadside gutter.
The El Centro Central College, as Officer Rocha had described it, was located at the northwest corner of the intersection. The procession marched from west to east, with DPD (Dallas Police Department) cars parked on either side of the procession, blocking the north-south intersection.
There were five police cars in total, three parked on the north side of the intersection and two on the south.
The attack likely originated from north of the officers' position, on Lamar Street, the frontage east of the tallest building in the El Centro Central College complex.
The three police cars parked on the north side of the intersection were riddled with bullet holes, and judging by the posture of the deceased, the attacker had clearly attacked them from behind.
"Attention! They're a professional shooter with incredible marksmanship."
Jack immediately noticed an officer who had been standing directly behind a police car at the time of the incident, but had still been shot and killed. The bullet holes in the police car were concentrated, deliberately avoiding the wheel hub.
The main building of the college they were currently standing in was an eight-story building, long from north to south and wide from east to west. It was connected to the annex on the west side, and to the south was Mel Street, where the parade was located, and to the east was Lamar Street
, where the gunfight took place. Jack and his four companions were moving eastward from Mel Street. The gunfire had become sparse again, but officers could still be seen in the middle of the intersection, firing back at Lamar Street with their bodyguns.
The first floor of the college building was entirely made of large floor-to-ceiling glass windows, some of which had been battered into spiderwebs, making them completely useless for cover. The four men were forced to use the cars parked on both sides of the road to continue their trek.
"Hey, guys, what's going on?" As they approached the intersection, Aubrey waved to two officers crouching at the back of a car.
The two officers, a man and a woman, were both young and black. They clutched their service weapons tightly, breathing heavily with nervous intensity.
Their position was delicate, right on the edge of the battlefield, and they were clearly terrified. The man's chest was covered in a large pool of blood, but it was clear it didn't belong to him.
The woman's thick lips, uncovered by lipstick, had completely lost their color. Her limbs twitched uncontrollably, not from adrenaline but from the alkalosis caused by stress and hyperventilation.
Jack noticed that their uniforms were different from those of the DPD, bearing the inscription "DART," suggesting they were members of the Dallas Metropolitan Transit System.
"Get her a paper bag." This type of acute respiratory alkalosis could be quickly relieved by breathing into a paper bag to restore the carbon dioxide level in the blood.
So, after giving his instructions, Jack left the woman alone and placed his hand on the shoulder of the other, seemingly calmer, black man.
"Calm down, officer, we are the FBI. Tell us what happened?"
"FBI? What FBI? Why are there FBI here?" The black officer's pupils dilated, one leg shook unconsciously, and he mumbled a series of questions as if singing a rap.
Just when Jack was hesitating whether to slap him to help him regain his sanity, Aubrey had already taken the initiative.
He pinched the man's cheek with one hand and patted the other cheek with the other hand. "Hey, man, wake up, you are a cop! Where is your professionalism! You are a professionally trained person. Look around, those citizens are still counting on you!"
"Ah, yes, I'm fine." The black officer seemed to be much more sober. He wiped his face carelessly, not noticing that the blood on his hand was all over his face.
"Someone attacked us from north to south on Lamar Street. Many people fell before we could figure out what was happening. Kroll died, as did Captain Aarons of DPD. People in the parade were also shot. Oh, damn, a lot of people fell at once.
He was coming for us, targeting the police, absolutely. Most of the people who were shot were our people."
"Him? You mean there was only one gunman?" Jack noticed that he used the singular term.
"Yes, I only saw one person, that damned Ni. He just pulled over. Turn the corner and you'll see that black SUV with its lights flashing. Then he just swaggered towards us with an AK and started shooting."
Another burst of gunfire rang out, and a man's loud shouts echoed simultaneously from Officer Xiao Hei's shoulder microphone and Officer Rocha's walkie-talkie. "Officer down! Officer down! Oh, damn, he's still shooting him! Oh my God!"
The gunfire continued, piercing the surrounding sirens. Jack abruptly stood up, lowering himself as low as possible, and dashed like a nimble cheetah towards the three police cars parked at the intersection.
"Jack!" Aubrey gritted his teeth and patted the bewildered Officer Rocha on the shoulder. "Take care of them."
Then he followed Jack's lead, bending down with his Noveske N4 assault rifle in hand.
At least five officers lay dead around the three police cars parked at the intersection. Two civilians, dressed in ordinary clothing, lay dead in the middle of the street behind the cars.
A black woman lay in a pool of blood, her life or death unknown. A black man, shot in the thigh, struggled to hide behind a sidewalk dumpster.
He was nearly there, but ironically, either because he forgot or didn't realize it, he was still clutching a banner that read "Police = Murderers."
The once-thronged protesters had already dispersed, many hiding in what they considered safe areas, their phones held high, filming the scene.
"Bang, bang, bang!" Unable to slide on the concrete, Jack dove and rolled under a police car, his assault rifle instantly opening fire. Bullets struck the concrete pillars of the college building along the street, spraying white ash.
A figure wearing a camouflage tactical vest stumbled and disappeared from Jack's sight. He immediately stopped firing as the distinctive red and blue lights of police lights lit up at the end of the road in that direction.
Aubrey barely caught up, followed by a worried Jiejie and the stumbling Officer Rocha.
Meanwhile, several police cars surrounded them from behind. The nervous officers, dismounting, instinctively pointed their guns at Jack, who was examining the wounded.
"FBI! We're on this!" Aubrey and Jiejie held up their IDs to identify themselves. Given the chaos, a few more shouts wouldn't go amiss.
Jack quickly checked the fallen officers and civilians one by one, sighing silently. There was nothing left to save.
Of the fallen, three officers and the female civilian were already dead. With the amount of bleeding, CPR would be a waste of time.
The other two officers had penetrating wounds in their limbs and had already applied tourniquets, clearly veterans with combat experience.
"Black, young male, wearing a camouflage tactical vest with bulletproof plates. I shot him in the back at least once, but the bullet apparently didn't penetrate. He
attempted to enter the academy, but appears to have been stopped by someone inside. He then disappeared into the northeast corner of the building and fled west."
Jack gestured for Officer Rocha to report the situation to the operations center, his gaze fixed on a body sixty or seventy meters away.
It must have been a corpse, dressed in a police uniform. Jack had just opened fire when the gunman had been shooting him in the head a second time.
Jack also saw the black SUV the black officer had mentioned, its lights still flashing, just over ten meters from the blocked intersection.
This meant the gunman had exited the vehicle and, almost face-to-face, opened fire with his AK74. He then retreated, putting distance between him and the officers who attempted to return fire.
It was clear that DPD officers couldn't be carrying long rifles while maintaining order at the parade; they were only carrying their sidearms. Before the FBI arrived, the gunman was firing slowly and rapidly from a distance of sixty to seventy meters.
Several of the victims were likely killed instantly upon encountering the attack. The two surviving officers then attempted to retrieve their rifles from the police car and return fire, but were both wounded by the well-aimed bursts of fire.
One officer arrived at the scene faster than the FBI, driving south from Lamar Street. Upon noticing the gunman, he immediately exited his car, intending to outflank him.
He used a concrete pillar in the building's hallway for cover, but was immediately counterattacked by the retreating gunman. With a simple Qin Wang around the pillar move, he was knocked down from behind and shot twice more.
A trained and ruthless killer, Jack labeled the gunman a professional and cautiously advanced along the sidewalk beneath the college building, followed by Aubrey, Jiejie, and DPD Officer Rocha.
The glass door leading to the college building was riddled with bullet holes. At Jack's loud identification, two armed campus police officers cautiously poked their heads out from behind the pillars on either side of the gate.
Both were wounded, but apparently not seriously. As soon as one of them spoke, Jack recognized the voice of the man who had radioed in to report the officer's downfall.
He had clearly just witnessed the gunman kill the surrounding police officer. Tears welled in his eyes, as if he was regretting not being able to help.
"We can't go out. There are over 50 kids in the classroom back there who just finished class. We can't, we can't..."
"It's not your fault." Jack stood over the officer's body, slumped behind a pillar, and stopped the officer from moving forward to investigate. He had been struck in the head by multiple 5.56mm steel-core bullets, leaving him completely disfigured.
"Jiejie, Aubrey, help them evacuate the children first." Jack leaned over to examine the name tag on the fallen officer's chest. Brent Thompson, like the two black officers, worked for the Dallas Metro Transit System.
Perhaps because Jack had reported the gunman's escape direction in time, more and more police cars were converging on the street directly north of the college. The piercing sirens made it almost impossible to communicate without shouting into one's ear.
"Officer Rocha, what's that building northwest of the college? Is it directly connected to this building?" Jack took the young policewoman's arm and asked loudly in her ear.
"It's not connected. That's the college library, and there's a parking lot below. There shouldn't be anyone inside at this time." Officer Rocha was clearly familiar with El Centro Central College and might even have attended there.
"Notify command center that the guy is injured. Have officers follow the blood trail. He's trying to get into the college, probably from another direction," Jack said, pointing to a few faint drops of blood on the concrete floor.
Just then, gunfire rang out again, but this time the fight was brief and soon died down. Then, a loud curse came from Officer Rocha's intercom.
"I found him. The bastard got into the second floor of the library from the parking lot. We met at the stairwell. Damn it, he shot me!"
Jack was stunned. Are all Texas police officers this tough? They rushed forward alone.
He and the young policewoman trotted around the northeast corner of the college building, following the blood trail to the street north of the college complex.
Elm Street, a street parallel to Mel Street, was already swarming with police cars, completely blocking the two-lane, two-way thoroughfare.
"Get off the street! Get off the street! Take cover!" Jack was impressed by the recklessness of these DPD officers. A skilled marksman was on the second floor of the library facing the street. Were these guys, standing on the street below, simply trying to make a sitting duck?
As if to confirm his words, gunfire rang out again, and large pieces of glass rained down from the second-floor hallway of the library, landing with a crisp crackle on the sidewalk below. A
barrage of bullets rained down on several police cars on the street below. One officer, just as he pushed open his door to exit, was struck by multiple bullets and fell to the driver's seat. His partner desperately tried to drag him out of the car through the passenger seat, but was also hit by a ricochet.
Jack was on the same side of the street as the gunman, leaving him with no angle to fire from. Unless he left the sidewalk and moved to the center of the street to engage him, he couldn't even provide covering fire.
Fortunately, the DPD officers who arrived to support them were all armed with rifles. Several assault rifles were immediately deployed, unleashing a barrage of bullets into the second-floor hallway of the library.
The gunman, leaning against the wall, continued firing from a window on the other side at the approaching police car at the end of the street, injuring several more officers.
The firefight lasted nearly 15 minutes, and just a minute before the DPD finally deployed the SWAT team's sniper, the gunman disappeared into the corridor.
(End of chapter)