“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 pungent 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.
Trapping the shooter in tight next to his armpit, Quinn drove the thin stiletto-like blade of the Benchmade over and over again into his exposed chest in a rapid series of hammer-fists, letting go to rage at the man who had killed so many — and would have murdered his little girl.
“He’s gone, l’ami.” Thibodaux’s thick Cajun whisper worked its way through the angry red mist of Quinn’s brain.
He drove the blood-slicked knife into the dead man’s chest for the final time. Panting, his face spattered in blood, Quinn let the dead man slide from his grasp.
Chapter 10
Quinn spun, knife still clutched in his hand, thinking he’d find Mattie hiding in the corner. He stood panting, thinking, trying to make sense of things when he saw she wasn’t there. He wiped the blood off the Benchmade on the leg of his wet shorts and returned the knife to his waistband before stooping to pick up the fallen jihadi’s rifle. Water and blood ran in rivulets off his body, forming a dark puddle on the wooden floor.
Thibodaux stood by the door to the stairwell, the wooden stock of an M1 carbine in one hand, while he studied the dead terrorist with his good eye. He looked up at Quinn to give him a sober nod.
“You okay, Chair Force?” the Cajun said. “You got a lot of blood on your face.”
“Good,” Quinn said. He jumped across the log flume to search the area around the pirate mannequins where he’d last seen Mattie and Dan.
“I figured you’d done what you needed to do when I didn’t hear any gunfire. Mukhtar is right behind me.” He looked over his shoulder. “Come on up, kid.”
The Iraqi boy stepped hesitantly into the room and gave a wan smile. He looked down at the dead jihadi. “That is Ibrahim,” he whispered. “He is a bully.”
“Was a bully,” Thibodaux said, looking from the dead man to Quinn. “You shoot him with a piece of bamboo?”
“Not me.” Quinn held up the white PVC bow. “Mattie and Dan were here,” he said. “They must have run as soon as Danny shot.” Quinn went to the opening where the logs exited the building and peered out, making sure not to silhouette himself. He saw nothing but the dark outlines of trees and the empty splash pool at the base of the log ride.
Thibodaux came up beside him and took the bow. “My Danny shot that guy with this?”
Quinn nodded. “Looks that way.”
Thibodaux pulled the bowstring and sighed. “Clever boy,” he said. “Takes after his mama.” He dropped the bow and turned toward the door. “Come on, l’ami. If they just left they’re likely still down below. We can catch up to ’em before these shitheads do.”
Both men froze when the radio on the dead jihadi’s belt broke squelch. Quinn picked it up and held it in an open palm between them as they listened.
“Everyone needs to slow down,” a voice on the radio said, this one absent the Middle Eastern accent of the others. “Keep the prisoners moving but save your ammo.”
“That one,” Mukhtar said. “That is Terry Spencer — Tariq, the one I told you about.”
Another voice came across the radio. “Two cops tried again to breach the eastern gate,” the voice said. “I shot them before they could get inside, praise Allah, glory to Him.”
“Excellent,” Terry/Tariq said. “The news choppers will arrive soon and then we can make our demands. Everyone wait for my signal.”
“Wahib copy.”
“Saqr, copy.”
“Al Riyad, copy.”
“Yasir, copy.”
A garbled mix of sounds came next, as several people “bonked” each other, all trying to speak at the same time. Terry/Tariq’s tense voice cut them all off.
“Shut up! Shut up! All of you!” He all but screamed over the radio. “The police have radios, too, you idiots! Anyone who happens to be listening in on this will be able to count us.”
The radio fell silent for a long moment before the lone reply.
“Sorry…”
Thibodaux rolled his good eye. “I think we got us a bunch of highly trained professionals,” he muttered. He tapped an identical radio clipped to the waist of his board shorts. “Which reminds me. I took this off the tall goober I met outside. Turned it off so it didn’t give me away when I was sneakin’ up on another one.”