Ms. Tiffany clutched the phone to her ear with white knuckles. “What was that?”
The flat crack of semiautomatic gunfire and the screams of the dying answered her question.
A rampant twitch spread from the corners of her mouth to her round cheeks, her chin, and then her eyes — as if she’d lost all control over the muscles in her face.
“P-p-please don’t hurt me,” she stammered. “Only Mr. Cunningham and the security guys have the combination to the safe. It’s impossible for me to get to the money.”
Ms. Tiffany obviously thought he was there to rob her. Mukhtar threw up his hands in disgust, causing her to hold up the desk phone receiver like a shield between them.
“I do not want the money,” he said. “I am here to help.”
“I have two kids,” Ms. Tiffany babbled, breaking down in earnest. “Please…”
Mukhtar pushed away the fear knotting in his belly and looked down at the pitiful thing. “What must I do to show you I am not your enemy?”
The woman stared at him, blinking back tears, her brain playing some perverse loop of what she thought he was saying. “I don’t have the combination—”
“Ms. Tiffany,” he said, affecting what he hoped was a soft and calming tone. “We need to call the police.” Perhaps a task would calm her down.
She pressed the phone against her ear in a shaking hand. “The line is d-d-dead,” she said, dropping the phone and cowering lower behind the desk. “Please, I am a mother, for heaven’s sake. I beg—”
The office door flew open, causing both Mukhtar and Ms. Tiffany to flinch. Mukhtar felt certain he was about to be shot. Instead, the park manager, Mr. Cunningham, stumbled across the threshold clutching a wide-eyed little boy tight in his arms. Wearing only a bathing suit, the child was maybe two or three years old and covered from head to toe in gray soot. He blinked, staring at nothing with huge brown eyes, likely deafened from the initial blast and too frightened to utter even a whimper. Mukhtar heaved a sigh of relief when he saw it was the man he’d originally come to see. Mr. Cunningham was smart. He would know what to do.
“I believe Fadila and her friends are responsible,” Mukhtar said, spilling all his information at once. He felt a pressing need to explain everything he knew to someone in authority. “I came to tell you I saw Saleem had an explosive belt—”
Mr. Cunningham’s eyes fluttered. He pushed the child at arm’s length as if he wanted someone to take him. His shoulders sagged, and it was obvious he would not be able to hold the position long. Only then did Mukhtar see the jagged shard of wood sticking from his boss’s bloody shirt just below his ribs. Mr. Cunningham’s face grew more ashen by the moment. He gave the boy a final shove, pressing him into Mukhtar’s arms before staggering over to push Ms. Tiffany out of the way and collapse in her chair.
“Park… lights,” he gasped, his breath barely strong enough to propel the words. Sooty, bloodstained hands trembled over the computer keys. “Have to… turn off lights. Make it… easier… for everyone… to hide…”
Cunningham gave a final click of his mouse and the office fell dark. Mukhtar peeked out through the mini-blinds to watch as the main lighting all over the park flicked off, leaving the concrete pathways, the concessions, and the water attractions bathed in the eerie yellow glow of the small number of emergency bulbs. It would indeed be much easier now for people to hide in the shadows. This simple act had saved countless lives. His mission complete, Mr. Cunningham slid out of the chair and pitched face-first onto the carpet. Mukhtar had been around death often enough to know it when he saw it, and this man was dead.
Now completely unhinged, Ms. Tiffany threw her jowly face back toward the ceiling and let go a burbling howl. Her head bobbed in time with the intermittent rattle of gunfire outside, as if she were absorbing the bullets with her body and not just her ears.
“Be quiet!” the Iraqi boy hissed. “You’ll bring them down on top of us!”
The woman leaped over her dead boss and ran to the corner as if she thought she’d find a door there. She bounced when she hit the wall and collapsed there in a heap, screaming as if she’d been set on fire. Mukhtar had seen such a thing and she sounded exactly like that. Some people went catatonic at the death of a friend — or the prospect of dying themselves — others went immediately and completely crazy, as if their last shred of sanity had been whisked away in the awful cyclone of violence.
Mukhtar had no idea where to go, but he knew that to stay here in this place with this babbling woman meant eventual and certain death. He pressed the little child to his chest and then ducked out the door into the vague and inky blackness of the water park — and ran.
Chapter 4
“Contact right!” Quinn hissed. The lights blinked out and the music fell silent over the entire park, leaving nothing but gunfire and screams to fill the sudden void. Still twenty meters from the restrooms, Quinn ducked as he ran, digging in to gain more speed to get him to cover before the approaching gunman spotted him. His stomach rose into his throat at the thought of his missing daughter, but his instinct fell to immediate action over hand-wringing worry. His loose deck shoes slapped the pavement as he ran, and he chided himself for not wearing something more secure. It was hard enough to run, let alone fight, when you were worried about shoes flying off your feet.
Both he and Thibodaux slowed, cutting around a group of oak trees and ducking behind the wooden hut for the high-striker carnival game. A Middle Eastern man, probably in his late teens, worked his way down the adjacent pathway, firing an automatic shotgun randomly at fleeing patrons, cutting some down as they ran, letting others pass unharmed. He wore the black polo shirt and khaki shorts of a park employee. Quinn scanned left while Thibodaux, who was closer, focused on the oncoming threat.
Seemingly oblivious that anyone might actually fight him back, the young shooter focused only on whoever happened to be in front of his shotgun. He laughed when he blasted an older couple in their tracks before turning to stalk directly toward the children’s wading pool — and the pirate ship where Thibodaux’s family was hiding.
The Cajun’s huge fists opened and closed, clenching until his knuckles turned white. A quiet roar welled up from his barrel chest. Rather than drawing the .380 pistol, the furious Marine grabbed the huge wooden mallet from the high-striker machine, gripping it at his side like a war hammer.
“You get the kids out of the outhouse, l’ami,” he whispered. “I’m about to go all Gallagher on this guy’s brain housing group before he gets to my family.”
Thibodaux ghosted into the trees without another word. Incessant gunfire peppered the terrified screams of children, flooding Quinn’s brain with horrific images of his little girl. He shook his head in a futile effort to clear it, forcing himself to look past the falling bodies and focus on a second gunman who worked his way toward the long wooden building that housed the restrooms. Tongues of flame burst from the muzzle of what looked like a large-caliber handgun, periodically illuminating the man’s park uniform as he stalked along the sidewalk between the cotton candy shop and arcade games. An elderly couple shielded three small boys, giving them time to run, and then fell, mortally wounded.
Naturally wired to run toward the sound of gunfire, Quinn moved obliquely, staying out of the man’s line of sight, while he worked his way closer. For all his years of training and actual downrange experience, thoughts of his daughter out there among these killers made it nearly impossible to control his breath and keep from getting tunnel vision himself.
Using the faded plywood of a mini-doughnut stand as cover, he came up perpendicular to the pistol-wielding gunman and crouched, waiting for him to approach. The shooter was close enough that Quinn could hear the clatter of an empty magazine as it hit the pavement.