Chapter 1172: FBI Joins the Battle (Part Two)

What lay before them was a scene of carnage—five or six officers and civilians lay sprawled in the middle of the street, blood pooling beneath their bodies and streaming along the pavement toward nearby drains in horrifying crimson streaks.

The El Centro College Officer Rocha had mentioned stood on the northwest corner of the intersection. The protest procession had been moving west to east, and DPD patrol cars had been stationed on both sides to block off traffic from the north and south.

Five police cruisers had been parked here: three at the northern intersection and two to the south.

The attack had clearly come from the north—specifically from the east side of the main building in the El Centro College complex, along Lamar Street.

The three police cars parked on the north side were riddled with bullet holes on one side. Judging by the positions of the fallen officers, the shooter had attacked them from behind.

“Careful! We’re dealing with a professional marksman—his shooting is precise.”

Jack immediately noticed one fallen officer who had been standing directly behind a patrol car but was still fatally shot. The bullet holes on the car were tightly grouped and deliberately avoided the wheel hubs—clear evidence of deliberate, accurate fire.

The main college building was an 8-story rectangular structure, long from north to south and narrow from east to west. It was connected to an annex on its west side, with Main Street (where the march took place) to the south and Lamar Street—site of the shooting—along its eastern edge.

Jack and his group had arrived from the west, moving east along Main Street. The gunfire was becoming intermittent again, but they could still see officers returning fire toward Lamar Street with their sidearms.

The building’s first floor was made up of massive glass panels—already shattered and webbed with cracks, useless for cover. The team advanced crouching, using the cars parked along the street for protection.

“Hey! What the hell is going on?” Aubrey called out as they approached two officers huddled behind the rear of a sedan.

Both officers—a young Black man and woman—looked to be in their early twenties. They gripped their pistols tightly, panting in panic. Their location placed them right at the edge of the “battlefield.” Clearly terrified.

The male officer’s chest was stained with blood—though not his own. The female officer, lips drained of color, was visibly shaking. Not from adrenaline, but from hyperventilation-induced alkalosis.

Jack noticed their uniforms differed from DPD—they had “DART” patches, indicating they were part of the Dallas Area Rapid Transit police.

“Get her a paper bag.” Hyperventilation like this could be treated simply by breathing into a bag to restore CO2 levels. Having issued the order, Jack turned to the male officer, laying a hand on his shoulder.

“Breathe. Officer, we’re FBI. Tell us what happened.”

“FBI? FBI? Why the hell is the FBI here?” The young man’s pupils were dilated, one leg bouncing uncontrollably. He spat out questions like he was rapping.

Jack considered slapping him to bring him back to reality, but Aubrey acted first—grabbing his cheeks with one hand and slapping the other side of his face lightly.

“Focus, man. You’re a cop! You’ve been trained for this. Look around—civilians are counting on you!”

“I... yeah, I’m okay...” the officer muttered, wiping his bloody hands across his face without even realizing it.

“Someone ambushed us on Lamar Street, north to south. People started dropping before we even knew what was happening. Kroll’s dead. So is Captain Ahrens from DPD. Protesters got hit too—damn it, there were so many bodies.”

“He was targeting us—no doubt. Most of the casualties are cops.”

“Him? Just one shooter?” Jack picked up on the singular pronoun.

“Yes! I saw only one guy. Damn bastard. He just parked his SUV, walked out, and started spraying us with an AK. That black SUV over there—that’s his. You’ll see it just around the corner, lights still flashing.”

Another round of gunfire erupted. Both the DART officer’s radio and Rocha’s walkie-talkie crackled with a male voice screaming, “Officer down! Oh God—he’s shooting him again! Dear God!”

Amid the ever-growing cacophony of sirens, the shots sounded even louder. Jack sprang forward, staying low, sprinting toward the three patrol cars positioned at the intersection like a cheetah in motion.

“Jack!” Aubrey swore and clapped Rocha’s shoulder. “Watch over them.”

Then he too dashed forward, bent low, Noveske N4 rifle in hand.

At least five officers were down near the cruisers. In the street behind them lay two civilians. One, a Black woman, was sprawled motionless in a pool of blood. The other, a Black man, had been shot in the thigh and was trying to crawl toward cover—a trash can.

Ironically, he still clutched a banner reading: “COPS = MURDERERS.”

The marchers had long since scattered, but many still lingered at what they thought were safe distances, phones raised to record the chaos.

Bang bang bang! Jack dove under a cruiser, rolled, and returned fire, targeting the concrete pillars along the college building’s street-facing edge. His bullets raised white plumes of dust.

A figure in a camouflage tactical vest staggered and vanished from view. Jack ceased fire—the path behind that figure was now filled with police lights, and he didn’t want to risk hitting friendlies.

Aubrey arrived moments later, with JJ and Officer Rocha not far behind.

Several cruisers arrived just then, and panicked officers jumped out, weapons raised—only to aim at Jack as he checked on the injured.

“FBI! We’re on your side!” Aubrey and JJ yelled, holding up their credentials. In this chaos, better to shout twice than not at all.

Jack quickly examined the downed officers and civilians, grimacing. Nothing to be done. Three officers and the woman were already dead—so much blood that CPR would be pointless.

The two surviving officers had gunshot wounds to their limbs and had already applied tourniquets—clearly combat veterans.

“Black male, wearing a camo tactical vest—probably has armored plates. I hit him at least once in the back, but the round didn’t penetrate. He tried to enter the building, was blocked, and fled northeast.”

Jack pointed Officer Rocha toward command with this update, eyes locking on a body 60-70 meters ahead—a uniformed officer, the one the shooter had double-tapped before Jack’s arrival.

Jack also saw the black SUV, its lights still flashing, just meters from the cordon. The shooter had fired point-blank with his AK-74 before retreating slowly, continuing to pick off responding officers from 60-70 meters away.

DPD officers, managing the march, hadn’t been carrying rifles—only sidearms. Until the FBI team arrived, the shooter had been able to snipe at his leisure.

One officer had arrived even earlier—driving south on Lamar, he’d tried to flank the shooter using a concrete pillar for cover, only to be hit from behind in a brutal maneuver. The shooter had doubled back and executed him.

Jack now considered the attacker a trained killer—professional and cold-blooded. He advanced along the sidewalk under the building’s overhang, followed by Aubrey, JJ, and Rocha.

The college building’s glass doors were riddled with bullet holes. When Jack called out their identity, two campus police officers peeked out from behind pillars—both wounded, but stable.

One of them was the man who’d screamed over the radio moments ago—his eyes glistening with tears, clearly tormented for failing to stop the killing.

“We can’t go outside. There are 50 students in the back classrooms. We... we can’t...”

“It’s not your fault.” Jack stopped the officer from approaching a fallen comrade—Officer Brent Thompson of DART—whose head had been obliterated by multiple 5.56 rounds.

“JJ, Aubrey, help them evacuate the students.” Jack glanced down at the nameplate on the corpse and nodded grimly.

Thanks to Jack’s earlier update, a growing number of units were converging on the college’s north side. Sirens wailed so loud that shouting was the only way to communicate.

“Officer Rocha, what’s the building northwest of the main hall? Is it connected?”

“No—it’s the library. Below it is a parking garage. Should be empty at this hour.” Rocha clearly knew the campus well—maybe she’d studied here.

“Inform command—the suspect is wounded. Follow the blood trail. He tried to enter the main hall, so he might try another entrance.”

Jack pointed to faint blood drops on the pavement.

Just then, another burst of gunfire erupted—but this time, it was brief. Moments later, Rocha’s radio crackled with a furious shout:

“I found him! The bastard snuck in through the garage and made it to the library’s second floor! We engaged at the stairwell—damn it, he shot me!”

Jack’s eyes widened. Are all Texas cops this hardcore? Charging in solo against a marksman?

He and Rocha sprinted to the northeast corner of the main building, following the blood trail to the northern street: Elm Street, parallel to Main.

Dozens of police cars now clogged the street.

“Get off the street! Take cover!” Jack barked. The library was directly above them, and the shooter had a perfect vantage point from the second floor. These officers were sitting ducks.

Almost on cue, gunfire erupted again. Glass rained down as bullets shredded the second-floor windows.

Bullets tore into the cruisers. One officer, just stepping out of his vehicle, took multiple hits and slumped dead behind the wheel. His partner tried to pull him out through the passenger side and got hit by a ricochet.

Jack had no angle to return fire—he’d have to step into the open to shoot, which was suicide.

Fortunately, the incoming DPD reinforcements were better equipped. Rifles were raised, and a hail of bullets ripped through the library windows.

But the shooter, hugging the wall, shifted positions—firing again at police arriving from the far end of the street. More officers were wounded.

This firefight dragged on for nearly 15 minutes. And just as DPD was about to get their SWAT snipers in place... the shooter vanished into the corridor.