Dead Drop

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 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.