Dead Drop

by Marc Cameron

  “Of course it is working,” Tariq said. “It is also entertaining. These dogs will do anything to postpone even certain death, even if it’s just for a minute or two.” He raised a blond brow and cocked his head slightly in the way that made Fadila’s heart beat in her throat. “Who do we have guarding the wave pool now?” he asked.

  “Abu Fahad and Abu Nasser,” Fadila said, hoping he did not see her blush.

  Tariq gave a thoughtful nod, running his fingers through his golden hair. “Good. Tell them to shoot anyone who tries to get out of the water. A couple of bloody bodies at either end of the pool should convince most of them to stay in place.” Abu Tariq stared into the distance, thinking of some bit of strategy, no doubt. Fadila had never seen an American boy so good at strategy. “Long enough for our purposes, at least.”

  Fadila bowed her head. “Of course,” she said, beaming with gratitude and knowing that she was fortunate to be associated with a man so dedicated to the cause of jihad. It was Tariq who had first shown her the Islamic State videos on the Internet. It had been he who made first contact with the recruiter in Arlington, he who had worked with Islamic State operatives to supply their group with weapons, ammunition, and the belt bomb for Saleem. Every member of their group was pious as well as eager, but they were also young and inexperienced. Tariq had worked with the I.S. contact to devise the perfect plan. Members of the group had pledged their loyalty on a video forum earlier that day, before coming to the park—one by one, ensuring with their violent rhetoric that they could never go back to their former lives. Even the name of their little group of lions, Feesabilillah—“in the cause of Allah”—had been Tariq’s idea. Fadila had never met the Islamic State operative, but Tariq told her the man had heartily approved of the name.

  More shooting broke out behind Tariq as he stooped to pick up the black duffel he used to carry his extra ammunition. His blue eyes flashed when he stood up, narrow, with an intensity that sent a warm shiver down Fadila’s legs. She chided herself for the unholy thoughts.

  “It’s coming from beyond the tube slides.” Tariq looked at his watch. “That would be the police trying the side gate. They have finally gotten off their fat asses and decided to come to our party.”

  More screams filled the humid night. Tariq lifted a yellow handheld radio to his lips as he threw the duffel over his shoulder. “Brothers,” he said. “Listen to me. Conserve your ammunition for when we really need it.”

  He clipped the radio to his belt and then held his free hand out toward Fadila. “This will be over soon,” he said, pulling her closer. “The news helicopters will be overhead before long. I’ll watch from the top of Dead Drop, then send word when I see they’ve started to film. Then they can open up on the pool.” He gave her a wink. “I guarantee you it will go viral.”

  Fadila squeezed his hand, looking deep into his blue eyes for any sign of resignation or second thoughts. She found none. “And then?” she asked, though she knew what his answer would be. “After you have sent word down to us?”

  “Then . . .” he nodded slowly. “Then, I will come down and kill as many policemen as I can before I die beside you, Fadila.”

  Chapter 8

  Mattie Quinn knelt next to Dan Thibodaux behind a fiberglass log that was as big as a car and made to look like a fat dugout canoe. Larger than life, it was fixed on a stand made of two more fake logs as if in the process of being hollowed out by the animatronic pirates that surrounded it.

  Riders boarded the log ride on the floor below, going up and around several turns and splashing into a small pond before making the long, clicking climb up to the second story of the same long building. Once inside, they floated on the man-made river between a motorized scene of fierce-looking pirate mannequins, each armed to the teeth with boarding axes, cutlasses, and blunderbusses, while they worked to bury their treasure and make boats.

  A single emergency light cast an eerie yellow glow around the room, throwing huge shadows of the mannequins onto the wooden slat wall. All the pirates had frozen in place when the lights had gone off, but whatever powered the emergency bulbs must have run the water pump and conveyor gears, too, because empty fiberglass logs continued to float into the dim building, bumping the sides of the deep trough with hollow thuds as they moved along the man-made river and disappeared out the far doorway fifteen feet away. Mattie could hear each log as it careened down the flume to splash into the waiting pool below. There was still screaming in the park—a lot of screaming—and gunshots. But sometimes, in between shots, if the screams and the splashes were timed just right, Mattie could imagine someone outside was having fun and not scared out of their minds.

  The room was full of motors, rubber belts, and iron wheels—all meant to move the mannequins back and forth to provide a show. The smell of gear oil and dust filled the air. The water had to be deep in the flume in order to float the big fiberglass logs. Mattie had first thought they should try and swim out but decided against it when she thought about the huge drop just outside the door.

  Hiding, trying to make herself as small as possible, Mattie found it difficult to breathe, as if she’d been caught in an invisible bear hug. She clenched her mouth shut in an effort to keep her teeth from chattering.

  Heavy footsteps clomped around on the wooden floor below. Mattie had caught a glimpse of one of the terrorists when she and Dan ran up the stairs. The man hadn’t seen them yet, but was looking all over the place. Every so often, he called out to anyone who might be hiding, promising he wouldn’t shoot if they came out.

  Mattie was only eight, but she was old enough to figure out what her daddy did for a living, and had listened to him enough to know there was no use talking to someone already pointing a gun at you. She’d been close to death before, so close as to sink her teeth into the hand of a man trying to kill her, to give her dad a chance to kill him. She knew her dad would be looking for her. There was no doubt in her mind. So would Ronnie Garcia, but neither of them was here now—and besides, it was a big park, and they wouldn’t even know where to look.

  A foot away, kneeling behind the same giant fake log, Dan Thibodaux held a piece of white PVC he’d found outside on one of the fences. He’d first thought to try and use one of the axes or swords from the pirate mannequins, but they all turned out to be plastic. In the end, he’d bent the flexible PVC pipe into a bow with a length of twine he got in the mechanical room. A broken piece of thin bamboo fencing became a makeshift arrow. The top end was notched enough that it fit nicely against the bowstring. The pointy end, where Dan had snapped it off from the ground, looked sharp enough to Mattie that her mom would have taken it away—which made Mattie think it might actually be dangerous enough to work.

  Dan had already loaded the arrow and stared intently in the direction of the stairs. Mattie was sure you didn’t say it that way—“loaded the arrow”—but she didn’t know how else to think of it. The rough wooden floor made her knees hurt, but it also creaked and she didn’t want to let the man below know they were there, so she kept still. Dan seemed weirdly calm, even when the footsteps began to clomp up the stairs to get them. It was like he shot terrorists with a homemade bow and arrow every day.

  “Think you can hit him before he shoots?” she whispered, her nerves making her talk even when she knew she should be silent. “It might give us time to run.”

  Ten-year-old Dan Thibodaux kept his eyes on the stairwell and nodded. Next to her dad, he was the coolest person Mattie Quinn had ever seen.

  * * *

  Quinn and Thibodaux stopped in a small stand of trees whose branches were decorated with life-size models of pirate corpses hanging in metal gibbets. In a morbid juxtaposition, the bodies of five shooting victims, one of them a little girl about Mattie’s age, lay sprawled in the grass among the same trees where they’d fallen in the process of fleeing their killers.

  Quinn motioned for Mukhtar to get behind him when he saw one of the shooters enter the four-story wood-sided building that housed the log
ride. A second, taller shooter disappeared around the corner.

  “Tell me about the inside of that place,” Quinn said, nodding toward the log ride.

  “It is tall,” the Iraqi boy whispered. “But apart from where people board the logs to begin their ride, most of the lower interior is scaffolding of wooden beams. There are only two floors. The second floor is at the very top.” He went on to describe the pirate scene inside while peering into the darkness at the building. Finished, he looked back and forth from Quinn to Thibodaux. “There is another door in the back but it is also on the first floor. If they are inside, your children have nowhere to run.”

  “I got the tall son of a bitch around the corner,” Thibodaux hissed. “You take care of the one going in the side door. I’ll join you shortly.”

  Quinn gave a grim nod, experiencing the white-hot rush he felt in his chest prior to any deadly conflict. These two surely murdered the little girl at his feet. “Wait here,” he said to Mukhtar, before moving out at a steady, silent trot. He had no weapon, but Mattie was in danger. If he had to, he would use his teeth.

  * * *

  Jacques Thibodaux was a very large man, large enough to kill one of these teenage pukes with his bare hands if the opportunity arose. But Hollywood movies notwithstanding, killing was rarely a quiet occurrence. People had a tendency to gurgle or squeak before they actually expired. Sometimes it took a brain a while to come to grips with the fact that it was already dead.

  Sporadic gunshots popped and rattled around the park—killers, stalking and slaughtering their prey. A few more shots wouldn’t raise any suspicion. What Jacques couldn’t afford was for the kid to get a word out on his radio that someone had decided to fight back—or worse yet, to tip off the shooter inside and screw up Quinn’s approach.

  This had to happen quickly.

  As big a man as he was, the Marine could be a feather on the wind when he moved. He made a mental note to thank his sweet bride for making him wear the Sperry Top-Siders instead of his favorite pair of squeaky runners.

  A giant paw dwarfed the minuscule Ruger .380 pistol. Standing in the shadows of the dark wood at the edge of the building, he cocked his head to one side, listening intently to try and pinpoint the location of his target. He could hear the idiot humming just around the corner, as if the guy was certain he was at the top of the food chain, with nothing to fear in the world. Thibodaux had gathered himself up to pounce when a flurry of movement in the bushes less than ten feet away caught his eye. At first Thibodaux thought it was Dan and Mattie, but it turned out to be three boys huddled together in the manicured shrubs. They looked to be about the age of his middle sons—somewhere between six and nine. Terrified and obviously separated from their parents, they were caught out in the open, in plain view of the shooter.

  Still hidden by the corner of the building, Thibodaux raised his arms to try and get the boys’ attention and warn them without giving away his position. Around the corner the humming stopped.

  “Hey little children,” a sneering voice called, thickly accented. “Do you think the shadows hide you? I can smell your piss and see the leaves shaking from here. Come out and maybe I will not hurt you.”

  Spellbound, the little boys stared, frozen in place. For a moment Thibodaux feared they might actually comply. He reckoned from the sound of the voice and the scrape of a boot on gravel that the shooter was just around the corner—maybe five feet away and certainly close enough to hit the kids with no problem if he shot.

  Thibodaux scoured the ground around him with his good eye, looking for a rock, but found none. With nothing else to throw, he kicked off one of the Top-Siders and threw it at the bushes, startling the kids out of their stupor.

  Thibodaux heard another telltale scrape of a shoe as the shooter moved closer to the corner, no doubt trying to set up for a shot. Thibodaux heard him chuckle under his breath as the boys broke from the bushes like frightened rabbits.

  The big Marine rolled around the corner with the .380 in his hand, coming face-to-face with the startled shooter. Surprised that anyone had the audacity to fight back, the tall jihadi attempted to backpedal. He held the rifle out with both hands, attempting to use the wooden stock to fend off what must have looked like an oncoming freight train barreling down on top of him in the darkness. Thibodaux swatted the rifle barrel out of the way with one hand as he brought the little pistol up directly under the shooter’s chin, depositing three of its seven rounds in rapid succession.

  The terrorist’s eyes flew wide open as the bullets tore through his tongue. Three copper-jacketed lead slugs punched through his soft palate and sinuses to lodge in the slurry of bone fragment, blood, and gray matter that had moments before been his brain. Thibodaux grabbed the action of the little M1 carbine as the dead jihadi toppled straight backward like a felled tree.

  “And that,” the Marine said to the lifeless body as he tucked the little .380 back in the pocket of his board shorts and shouldered the carbine, “is why I call it my gun-gettin’ gun.”

  Chapter 9

  “He’s coming,” Dan Thibodaux whispered. Mattie could see sweat beading on her friend’s forehead, but his breathing was steady, still oddly calm. He raised the white PVC bow and aimed the bamboo arrow at the open doorway. The footsteps grew louder on the stairs. “Get ready to run,” he whispered.

  A new log came through the black opening at the far edge of the building, splashing with a loud whoosh into the water, bumping and clunking along the side of the flume as it bobbed by between the kids and the opposite door.

  Mattie tried to squish herself into a ball, getting as low as possible while keeping both feet flat on the floor. She had already decided she was going to run no matter what happened. One of her earliest memories was of her dad giving her the “Stranger Danger” talk—warning her about what to do if someone tried to kidnap her. Her dad said she should always run. There was a chance the bad guy wouldn’t even hit you if he did decide to shoot. And if he did actually hit you, it wouldn’t be like the movies. The chances you wouldn’t die were a lot better than if you just stood there like a helpless target.

  Sometimes, though, it was hard to be anything else.

  Mattie clenched her eyes as the steps got closer. Water in the flume sloshed, bringing the log closer with a series of hollow thuds.

  “Anybody home?” a voice said. It was almost playful. “Time to come down with all your friends . . .”

  The emergency light in the stairwell threw the lopsided shadow of a man with a gun into the room, sending it creeping across the pirate mannequins a moment before the terrorist actually entered. Dan pushed the PVC bow out in front of him. He drew the string all the way back to his cheek, letting the arrow fly the instant the man turned to face them.

  The bamboo shaft zipped through shadows, sticking the terrorist in the belly. Instead of falling dead, the man looked up, eyes wide in surprise. He put a hand on his stomach, but left the arrow in place, as if afraid to touch it. His face twisted into a dark grimace.

  Mattie felt a shiver run through her body. She gathered herself up to run.

  “You little shit!” The wounded man screamed, the protruding arrow bouncing as he glared at Dan Thibodaux. He dabbed at the spot with his fingers in disbelief and came up with blood. “You think you are brave man to save your little bitch.” He threw the rifle to his shoulder, but a series of quick pops outside the building caused him to stop and look toward the door.

  Mattie dove for the passing log, feeling Dan jump behind her. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flurry of movement in the flume by the far door. A silver flash rose from the water behind the terrorist, an instant before Mattie and Dan floated out to plunge into the darkness below.

  The movement was so fast and fierce that Mattie was gone before she had the chance to realize it was her dad.

  * * *

  Unable to move directly up the wooden stairs without alerting the shooter, Quinn elected to scramble up the underside of the log ride. The p
ungent odor of creosote hung in the humid shadows as he worked his way up the scaffolding. The heavy timber beams were spaced just far enough apart that he had to jump to reach each one as he climbed. He had plenty of incentive with Mattie at the wrong end of a gun and made it up to the crosspieces supporting the flume in a matter of seconds. Water dripped from the leaking trough in a steady stream, slicking the timbers and causing Quinn to slip twice, narrowly missing a four-story plunge to the concrete below. Feet dangling, and hanging by his armpit just outside the entrance to the building, he was finally able to pull himself over the side of the flume and slip into the water. He moved belly down in the man-made river, grabbing the side of a floating log and letting it pull him along unseen. Over the lip of the log, he could just see the image of the shooter as he came through the door. Floating steadily forward, Quinn was almost close enough to make his move. His heart skipped a beat when he saw Mattie hiding in the darkness, and he was happily surprised when Danny Thibodaux shot the arrow from his homemade bow. The shot was minimally effective, but bought him a fraction of a second to make his move against the gunman.

  Quinn exploded out of the water at the same moment the young jihadi raised his rifle to cut down Mattie and Dan. He saw the children move, but was too focused on the would-be killer to know where they went.

  A low growl escaped his teeth as he brought his left elbow across in a devastating strike that all but tore the shooter’s nose off his face. Following through with the same elbow on the way back across, Quinn snaked his arm over his stunned opponent’s throat, snapping the man’s head backward in a reverse guillotine choke that arched his entire body backward over his heels. Probably still in his teens, the kid had no idea what was even happening.