Dead Drop

by Marc Cameron

  Garcia took a half step back, but it was too late.

  Fadila didn’t seem to care if she lived or died, stepping directly across the muzzle of the shotgun. Ronnie’s finger searched for the trigger and fired, but the blast went over the girl’s shoulder, missing her by a hair, and doing nothing but deafening everyone inside the ship with the concussive boom. Throwing herself at Garcia, Fadila grabbed the shotgun by the end of the barrel and thinnest part of the stock, just behind the trigger guard, attempting to wrench it away. Ronnie held tight, but Fadila brought her knee up in a vicious series of rapid kicks, slamming into Garcia’s groin. Garcia doubled over, feeling as if her pelvis had been broken in two. She clenched her jaw, grinding her teeth from the pain and gulping back wave after wave of overwhelming nausea.

  Women screamed and children began to howl at the sudden violence. Garcia heard the muffled cries of several men shouting for Fadila to stop her attack. But no one stepped in to help—no one but for Camille Thibodaux.

  The fiery brunette crashed in as if she was protecting her own child. She hit both women with such force it knocked them to the ground and sent the shotgun flying against the ship wall with a plastic thud.

  Both arms pushed up over her head, writhing on her back, Garcia tucked her knees to her chest and bucked her hips, keeping herself from being crushed but unable to get Fadila off her. Past injuries to her shoulders at the hands of a madman made the angle impossible to escape. She could feel the hard imprint of a gun against her knees, tucked under the young woman’s shirt.

  Ronnie outweighed Fadila by at least forty pounds, and bum shoulders notwithstanding, she was plenty strong enough to hold on to the girl’s hands, putting the two women in a sort of stalemate—each holding the other, Ronnie unable to wrench free because of her shoulder, Fadila unable to reach her pistol.

  “You killed my friend!” Fadila hissed. Her lips pulled back as she gnashed her teeth. Spittle flew from her lips and she threw herself back and forth, craning her neck and trying to bite Garcia in the arm and hands.

  Garcia was strong, but she knew she couldn’t hold on forever. Beginning to worry, she searched desperately to locate Camille. The rough concrete floor scraped her neck and shoulders. Tresses of black hair puddled around her face, adding to the darkness. A glimmer of hope hit her when she saw Camille had the shotgun.

  Fadila screamed like a crazy woman, redoubling her efforts to tear her hands free. Instead of trying to escape, Garcia held what she had and let her legs separate around the woman’s back, wrapping muscular thighs around her waist. Hooking her ankles together, she did her best to squeeze the life out of her attacker.

  Camille raised the shotgun to her shoulder. “What do you want me to do?” she yelled over a screeching Fadila.

  “Shoot her!” Garcia snapped, bearing down with her thighs. She was pretty sure she felt a floating rib snap, but the enraged woman refused to let up.

  “I can’t,” Camille all but screamed. She stepped to the side, then back again, all the while keeping the shotgun trained on the two women. “You’re moving around too much! I’m afraid I’ll hit you!”

  “Just shoot!” Garcia said, grunting from exertion and the weight of the other woman. “She’s got a pistol in h—”

  Fadila gnashed out again, nearly biting a chunk out of Garcia’s wrist. A moment later she relaxed. She looked down at Garcia, and a gloating smile spread over her face—as if she’d already won. A small metal pin hung from a silver ring between her clenched teeth. Still on her back, Garcia let her head fall to the side, looking up at the young woman’s right hand to find it held a green metal egg. Garcia recognized it immediately as a Russian grenade. Her grip on Fadila’s smaller hand was the only thing that kept the spoon in place—and the grenade from going off.

  Garcia tried to scream. “Camille, wait!” But Fadila came up on her toes, pressing her weight against Garcia’s chest. Her words came out as a breathy moan. Garcia knew she might survive a piece of buckshot or two, but even a slight wound might cause her to lose her grip. If the grenade fell away, it would kill or maim everyone within twenty meters.

  “Grenade!” Garcia gasped, unsure if Camille or anyone else in the ship could understand her. “Get out! All of you!”

  Fadila threw her body from side to side in an effort to free her hand. Still smiling, she seemed to know it was only a matter of time. Garcia held fast, squeezing harder with her thighs. She knew she was doing damage, but her grip was too low, catching the girl around her middle rather than her ribs. Crushing liver, spleen, and gut, it had to be extremely painful, but she was too low to put a quick end to things. Garcia had to pin the girl, cut off her air, or somehow wrench the grenade away without it going off in order to win the fight.

  Fadila had only to open her hand.

  A dark shadow suddenly rose up behind Fadila. Garcia cursed, thinking one of the stupid men had finally decided to step in and help her. If they dragged the girl away, she’d lose her grip—and Garcia and anyone close to her would be turned to red mist in a matter of seconds.

  Garcia felt something press against her locked ankles and Fadila suddenly grew heavier, as if she’d gained a hundred pounds. The young woman’s head flew back and she began to thrash even more wildly, trying to throw off this new threat. Garcia caught a flash of movement in the darkness above her as three shots popped in quick succession. They were too quiet to be the shotgun. Fadila’s eyes flew wide, then rolled back in her head as her body went slack.

  Mukhtar’s head poked over Fadila’s shoulder, skin pale, lips trembling. He looked at Garcia, blinking.

  “Are you alright, miss?

  Still on her back, Garcia grabbed the Russian grenade in both hands and peeled Fadila’s fingers away, taking care to keep the flat metal arming spoon in place.

  “Thank you,” she said as she wriggled out from under the body, rolling her sore shoulders. She bent to retrieve the pin from the concrete beside Fadila’s slack lips.

  “I’m okay,” she said, breathing easier after she’d reinserted the pin. “Thanks for saving me.” She sat back on one of the picnic benches and nodded, still panting from the fight. “For saving all of us.”

  Mukhtar held up Jacques Thibodaux’s .380 pistol. “Mr. Quinn said this is a pipsqueak gun,” he whispered, looking down at the dead girl. “If you’re going to shoot once, shoot three times . . .”

  Chapter 17

  8:47 P.M.

  Lynyrd Skynyrd still played over the park speakers when Quinn pulled open the door to the main office, the electric guitar riff helping to mask his approach. The inner lobby was just as he’d left it, the body of the park manager slumped at the front desk. His assistant, a woman named Tiffany according to Mukhtar, had been shot in the back, where she’d cowered in the corner, curled in a fetal position.

  The door to the back hallway stood ajar, the feeble glow of emergency lighting coming from the manager’s office where the public-address system was located. Quinn paused at the threshold before going in, getting his bearings, remembering the layout of desks, doors, and windows from when he’d taped his phone to the handheld radio and placed it next to the PA microphone. More light spilled from the open door on the right side of the hall, less than fifteen feet away. He heard a rustle of movement, footsteps on carpet, and a nervous cough.

  “I gave you what you needed,” a male voice said. “And this is what you give me?” It was gruff, and direct, accustomed to being in charge.

  “Yeah, well,” a younger voice said. “You know how it is, Uncle Frank. It just looks better this way.”

  “Hang on—” Two distinct cracks from a rifle came from inside the room, cutting off the older voice midsentence. It was dark enough that Quinn could see the flash of each shot.

  Padding with quiet purpose down the hall, he stopped before he reached the office, stepping sideways inch by inch to get a glimpse of the interior without giving up his position. Cutting the pie, they called it.

  The console against the wal
l across from the door came into view first. Quinn’s phone and the radio were still there, right where he’d left them. He took another half step, revealing the feet and legs of a prone man—the recipient of the recent gunfire. The dead man wore the gray slacks and navy blazer of park security. Blood plastered a thick mop of blond hair and broken skull to the carpet. A Glock pistol lay on the floor, inches from the man’s glazed eyes but too far from Quinn to do him any immediate good.

  The squeak of metal from the other side of the desk drew Quinn forward another step. A low whistle followed the squeak, then whispered words Quinn couldn’t quite make out.

  Quinn had opened enough safes in his life to know the sound of a door swinging open. A burglary? It was a stroke of cold and evil genius to hide a simple theft in the middle of a massacre of hundreds by religious zealots.

  Another step brought the entire desk into view. A young man wearing the black polo of a park employee knelt in front of a box safe by the wall off the end of the desk. He stuffed banded stacks of money into a small black duffel. Apparently satisfied that everyone else in the park was too busy to bother him, Terry Spencer had leaned his rifle against the wall, a good five feet behind him, after he’d murdered his uncle. Focused on the money, he’d set a Russian RGD-5 hand grenade on the desk beside him, obviously intending to use the little green egg to blow up the place and cover his tracks when he left.

  Quinn reached the desk in three quick bounds, snatching up the grenade and pulling the pin before Terry Spencer even knew he was there.

  The boy spun at the noise and raised his hands as he tried to get a grip on the situation. He cocked his head sideways, then glanced at the rifle he’d left leaning against the wall.

  Quinn held the grenade in his fist, the spoon under his fingers rather than the proper grip with it toward his palm.

  “What are you going to do with that?” Terry smirked. “You toss a hand grenade and we both die.”

  “Maybe so,” Quinn said, his voice low, almost a whisper.

  “Those other guys out there . . .” Terry said, giving a bored sigh. “They can’t wait to be martyrs.” His eyes narrowed at Quinn and he shook his head. “But you don’t strike me as the kind of guy who wants to die.”

  “All this for a robbery?” Quinn tamped back the rage. At this point, unbridled anger would only slow him down.

  The kid smiled, taking Quinn’s question like some kind of compliment. He kept his hands up but wagged his head as if bragging over some touchdown pass he’d just made. “I know, right? The park’s so deep in blood right now, I get away with a couple hundred thousand cash and no one’s the wiser. Admit it. It’s pretty damn slick. They’d write books about me if they knew who I was.”

  “Dozens of people . . .” Quinn whispered. “You planned all of this in order to cover a theft . . .” He wasn’t really surprised. Nothing another human did surprised him anymore.

  “Two birds,” Terry said. “My friends have a little cause, and I simply jumped on board for my purposes. My uncle had connections to get us a few grenades. He was also nice enough to lend me a few of his guns . . .”

  “And you kill him for it,” Quinn said, suddenly very tired.

  “Who gives a shit about an uncle?” Terry scoffed. “Anyway, he was in on it, too. Listen, this has been fun, but I gotta run.” His eyes shifted again to his rifle.

  Quinn waved the grenade again. “I wouldn’t do that, Terry,” he said. Cockroaches like these enjoyed darkness and anonymity, and speaking their names out loud often disrupted the loop of their thought process.

  The boy gave a slow nod of pride. “You know who I am then?”

  Quinn opened his hand to let the spoon fly off the grenade. Terry Spencer’s eyes flew wide at the sound of the muffled pop as the fuse ignited.

  “Not really,” Quinn said. He pitched the grenade underhanded, past Terry Spencer and into the open safe, before diving sideways behind the desk, hands over his ears, mouth open.

  The thick body of the safe acted like a mortar tube, focusing the force of the grenade’s blast out the open door, directly into Terry Spencer’s face.

  Grenades were deadly, but they were nowhere near the massive explosions Hollywood made them out to be. Out of the line of the blast, Quinn was able to roll during the detonation and come up with the Glock. He was stunned and half deaf, but absent any permanent damage.

  He turned immediately to cover Spencer but needn’t have bothered. The force of the blast had taken off much of the left side of the boy’s body. White tiles from the suspended ceiling littered the carpet. Bits of charred cash in various denominations fluttered down in the dusty air. The grenade had demolished half the room, but the PA system remained undamaged. Lynyrd Skynyrd played on uninterrupted, and the last few bars of “Call Me the Breeze” twanged away over the speakers.

  Quinn now had two working guns, but was too far away to run back to the wave pool. The other terrorists had surely heard the explosion. He needed to contact Jacques before they worked out what had happened, but with the cell jammer still up there was no way to get him on the phone. Quinn staggered to the public sound-system console and stared down at the two-way radio he’d taped to his iPhone, working out the pros and cons of what he planned to do next.

  Chapter 18

  8:49 P.M.

  Mattie Quinn expected the men around the pool to start shooting any minute. She’d been in the water so long that her fingers were getting all pruney, something she’d always found funny in the past. Now, she could only feel sad. In scary stories, the people always worried about getting killed or hurt, but all Mattie could think about was her dad and Ronnie Garcia, and poor Mrs. Thibodaux and her little baby—and what her mom would do all by herself.

  Dan Thibodaux leaned closer, coughing to clear his throat from the constant slosh of water. “We should get closer to the edge, maybe,” he said. “The minute they start to shoot, we can jump out and run.”

  Their new friend Sarah wiped a strand of wet hair out of her eyes and gave a resigned sigh. “I suppose it would be better than just floating here and getting shot. I have to be honest with you, though. We’re still likely to be shot.”

  “Not if a bunch of people go at once,” Dan said. “We can swim around and spread the word. Some people might be too scared, but some might not . . .”

  “Worth a try,” Sarah said. “We’ll just go slow. Don’t make them any more nerv—”

  The music suddenly stopped. All three of the men with guns stood completely still, staring back and forth at each other as if they were afraid of the quiet.

  Then, Mattie heard a sound that made her begin to sob. Her dad’s deep, sure voice suddenly blasted over the speakers.

  “Jacques Thibodaux, Jacques Thibodaux,” her dad’s voice boomed. “Drop them! Drop them all now!”

  The bad guys looked up at the loudspeakers. Three quick pops later and they all lay dead on the pool deck.

  Mattie held her breath, waiting, fighting back the tears she’d been holding inside.

  The speakers boomed again, all over the park, almost as soon as the last bad guy fell. It was even louder now, but Mattie was so excited she could hardly hear it.

  “Off-duty federal agent on the inside to any law enforcement who can hear this. You have two armed hostiles in the trees twenty meters in and approximately ten meters to the north inside the east gate—both male, with dark hair. Both wearing park employee uniforms.”

  Everyone in the pool fell silent, in shock from their ordeal and entranced by the voice that seemed to be on their side. There was a flurry of gunfire somewhere in the distance.

  “The shots came from the east gate,” Sarah said, nodding with satisfaction. “Sounds like the cops got them.”

  Mattie’s dad spoke again. “And there will be a female hostile somewhere. Also a park employee. Name of Fadila Baghdadi . . .”

  Ronnie Garcia’s voice came over the speakers next, strained and breathy. “Fadila is no longer a problem, Quinn.”

>   Sarah looked at Mattie. “Quinn?” she said, blowing water out of her face. “Isn’t that your name?”

  Mattie closed her eyes and began to cry in earnest. “Uh-huh,” she said. “That’s my dad.”

  Epilogue

  9:32 P.M.

  An hour and a half after the first explosion, Quinn adjusted the grip of Mattie’s arms around his neck so she didn’t choke him to death. Ronnie wasn’t much better. Wrapped in wool blankets to combat the onset of shock from the ordeal, neither had let an inch of space come between them and Jericho since the police had swarmed the place and escorted everyone to the waiting medical triage facilities that had been erected in the parking lots. First responders now lined up like taxis outside the main gate. The most critically wounded were still being loaded into what looked like an endless number of ambulances from the five closest hospitals and police cars from every jurisdiction within an hour’s drive.

  A medic insisted on wrapping Quinn’s wounded leg, threatening him with all kinds of horrible infections if he didn’t get it cleaned and checked. Ronnie promised she’d get him to a doctor as soon as the more seriously wounded were taken care of.

  A commotion of strained voices from three tents down drew Quinn’s attention. Stepping away from the glare of portable construction lights, he could see Mukhtar seated on the tailgate of a pickup truck. Three men in suits stood in front of him, peppering him with questions. As Quinn moved closer he could see the boy was cuffed behind his back.

  Garcia tensed at the sight and stepped away from Quinn, peeling off her blanket to reveal the tight yellow swimsuit—the chest and belly of which were smeared with dark blood. Quinn handed Mattie to her.

  Mukhtar lit up, nodding brightly at Quinn. He tried to slide down from the truck but one of the men caught him and shoved him back.