A young family struggling with a baby stroller and dragging a toddler tried to make a run toward the emergency exit. The gunman scoffed, and swung the pistol at the same moment he reached the edge of the doughnut stand. Quinn sprang up behind him, close enough now to smell gun smoke and the stench of the man’s body odor.
Still crouching, Quinn swept the back of the shooter’s right leg with his forearm, bending the knee and causing him to fall backward. The pistol shot went wild, missing the young family and zinging off the concrete walk. Quinn’s hand closed around the startled jihadi’s hand, turning his wrist and the pistol back on itself. The young man’s momentum worked with the odd angle to snap the small bones in his wrist, allowing Quinn to snatch the handgun away before the man hit the ground. Wasting no time on negotiation, Quinn put two quick rounds into the jihadi’s chest and a third in his forehead, just in case he was wearing a vest. Quinn groaned inside when the slide locked back on the last round, signifying the gun was empty. It was an FN Five-seveN, a gun that Quinn was familiar with but had never carried. Quinn stooped to search for another magazine but found the kid had run dry — and with the relatively uncommon cartridge, Quinn wasn’t likely to trip over any more unless one of the other shooters carried a similar weapon. It seemed odd that anyone would mount a terrorist attack armed with only a pistol and a handful of magazines, but Quinn had seen people try to kill him with nothing more than a broken broom handle. Cursing that he still lacked a functioning weapon beyond his pocketknife, he stuffed the empty pistol in the waistband of his shorts and then took a quick moment to snap a photo of the dead shooter with his cell phone. He tried to call 911 but got nothing but a fast busy signal.
Expecting he’d be shot at any moment amid near constant gunfire, Quinn sprinted across the open ground. He met Ronnie Garcia as she stumbled out of the women’s restroom. She’d lost her gauzy cover-up, and the strap of her yellow swimsuit hung off her left shoulder. Even in the feeble amber light of the emergency bulbs, Quinn could clearly see her knees and knuckles were badly skinned as if she’d had an up-close-and-personal meeting with the concrete. A streak of blood across the swell of her breasts stood out in stark contrast to her caffè-latte complexion and the yellow swimsuit. She held what looked like a STEN submachine gun, straight from a British World War II movie.
“Where’s Mattie?” Garcia asked, scanning.
“What?” Quinn clutched her arm, as much to steady himself at the news as to check on Garcia. “She was with you.”
“Oh, Jericho,” she whispered. Her eyes met Quinn’s, and then flicked away toward the trees. “People ran in right after the first explosion,” she said. “You know, trying to hide anywhere they could. I’d just grabbed Mattie to get out of there when this guy walked in and started shooting through the stall doors, executing everyone. He was a big kid, like a football player, but he had a knife on his belt and he didn’t expect me. I was able to use it on him from behind…”
“Mattie?” Quinn took Garcia by both shoulders and stopped just short of shaking her. “Tell me the truth! What happened to Mattie?” His knees threatened to buckle at any moment.
“I… don’t know,” Garcia said slowly, looking at the ground. “She must have gotten away.” The guilt of losing Quinn’s daughter was bright in the timbre of her voice. “She had to have run right past you.” Garcia held up the STEN gun. Well worn and gray, it looked like a piece of pipe. The magazine jutted out the side instead of the bottom.
“I thought we might be able to use the bastard’s gun, but I tried to shoot him with it and it’s in-op.”
“Broken spring or a jam?” Quinn asked.
“I’m not sure,” Garcia said, tugging at the bolt on the side of the metal tube. It didn’t budge. “I’ll bring it with and see if I can get it to work.”
Quinn cursed under his breath. A working firearm would have come in awfully handy. “What about Dan Thibodaux?”
“I never saw him.” Ronnie bit her lip.
More gunfire sent Quinn and Garcia diving for the shadows behind a doughnut shack. They stopped, back to back, peering through the thick foliage before going any farther. Quinn could feel the heat of Garcia’s torso against him as she heaved with each deep breath. He worked to control his own breathing, centering his thoughts. Images of Mattie’s tearful face, the imagined sound of her plaintive cries, threatened to flood his mind and undo him completely. Bits of his soul felt as if they were being ripped away like shingles off a shaky building in a terrible wind.
He nodded at the STEN gun in Ronnie’s hand. “The guy you took that from is dead?”
“Oh yeah,” Garcia said. “Very dead.”
More shots stitched the night — flashes in the trees, whirring ricochets — sending them deeper into the shadows. Quinn put his arm around Garcia’s bare shoulder as they ran. The acrid smell of gun smoke carried on the back of screams. Families and hastily formed groups of complete strangers darted this way and that in the darkness. They moved with no real destination in mind, only running away from the last shot they’d heard. With gunmen closing in from every direction, running, hiding, anything at all seemed a futile game. Some were lucky and spilled around the shooters. Others were cut down as they ran.
“We have to get to the kids’ pool,” Quinn said, taking Garcia by the hand.
She looked up at him with stricken eyes. “Jericho, I’m so sorry.”
Quinn gave her hand a pat, hoping to offer more comfort than he felt himself. He gritted his teeth in an effort to block out the screams of the wounded and dying.
“It’s not your fault,” he said. “Jacques told his boys to meet back there at the pirate ship if they got separated. If Mattie and Dan got past us we should find them back there.”
Quinn’s heart sank when he ducked back into the dark belly of the ship with Garcia and found over thirty terrified people crammed inside — but no Mattie.
In the daylight the place was a playground, a place for families. Now, in the scant yellow glow of emergency lights, with the shadowed tables and hidden ladders, it was a hulking black monstrosity. The smell of urine and fear hung heavy in the air, thick enough to cut. Terrified parents clutched their children close, struggling to keep them quiet. Chattering teeth and ragged breathing seemed loud enough to alert any passing shooter. Camille worked her way through the trembling mass of bodies, stopping in her tracks when she saw Quinn.
“Where is my Daniel?” she asked, sniffing back tears. It did not matter that six of her children were safe if one was still out there.
“I’m sure he’s hiding out somewhere safe,” Quinn said, before the poor woman could jump to the same awful conclusions that already filled his mind. “I’m hoping he and Mattie are together.”
Quinn was certain the strain on his face did little to console the Thibodauxs. His mind racing, he glanced at the glowing dial of the TAG Heuer Aquaracer on his wrist — eight minutes since the initial explosion. Time sped by at an alarming rate — and wasn’t likely to slow down anytime soon. A lot of terrible things could happen in eight minutes. He fought the natural urge of a father to run into the darkness, screaming Mattie’s name. It would do her no good if he were dead — assuming she was even still alive.
Both Quinn and Garcia maneuvered through a knot of sweating and terrified bodies until they stood next to Thibodaux, who stood by a small porthole in the ship’s hull, keeping a lookout with a shotgun.