Dead Drop

Chapter 13

Bile burned the back of Quinn’s throat as he wove his way over and through a pile of bodies at the base of Dead Drop, apparently cut down one by one as they ran from the stairs. Skidding around the corner to make up time, Quinn entered the building at the front, one floor above Saqr. He breathed a sigh of relief to find the elevator doors in a small alcove at the rear of the abandoned gift shop, right where Mukhtar said it would be. Rattling cables and squeaking gears told him the car was already on the move. He used his fingers to pry open the elevator’s outer safety doors to expose the shaft. He’d hoped the car would be at the top since Terry had likely been the last to ride it, but it must have already been at the bottom when Saqr reached it. Quinn was just able to jump through the open safety doors into the shaft as the car flew up to meet him from the floor below.

Quinn wanted to land on a support beam and simply shoot the jihadi through the elevator ceiling, but necessary haste gave him no time to plan or aim his leap. Both feet hit square in the center of the light fixture, sending it crashing down on top of Saqr with Quinn following right behind. The wooden stock of the M1 carbine caught crosswise on the ceiling braces, jamming in place and leaving Quinn hanging in the elevator as if from a chin-up bar.

Piking his legs, he kicked a surprised Abu Saqr square in the face with both feet. The teenage terrorist bounced off the elevator wall, dazed enough to give Quinn time to kick him again. Reeling from the blows, Saqr dropped his rifle and fell sideways, causing Quinn to have to release his hold on the carbine and spin to continue to face him. Amateur that he was, the young jihadi still had the forethought to draw a dagger from a sheath at his side and thrust it wildly upward. The long stiletto blade caught Quinn in the front of his thigh, piercing meat and scraping bone. There was no searing pain, only the sensation of a heavy punch, and the sickening shiver as the blade glanced off the thighbone and exited the outside of his leg, punching a small hole in his board shorts.

Instinctively, Quinn lowered his center, capturing the hand that held the dagger and turning it back on its owner. Falling, as much from nausea as any martial arts technique, he drove the dagger into Saqr’s chest. He felt the familiar pop as the blade punched through the cartilage connecting the man’s ribs to his breastbone, and slid into his heart.

Quinn left the quivering knife where it was and pushed away. He scooped up the dying man’s rifle, a short AK-47 carbine with a folding stock, and then stood to test his damaged leg. He could put weight on it, so that was a blessing. The entry wound was located just below the hem of his swim trunks. It was a good two inches across, made deeper by the lateral movement of the double-edged blade when Saqr had stuck him. The exit wound was small enough it could be covered with a Band-Aid. Quinn didn’t want to think about the damage done inside. A more experienced man would have slashed the inside of the leg, severing the femoral artery, bleeding Quinn out in a matter of minutes. As it was, his wound wept a steady flow of blood. But nothing arterial, Quinn thought. That was blessing number two.

The elevator doors chimed as they slid open behind him. Quinn spun to find a muscular man with a black beard peering over the railing toward the base of the slide. It was Kaliq, the young jihadi who had laughed while he shot dead the group of UVA students. Music from the Black Keys still played from the two-way radio in his hand. His gun was parked against the rail ten feet from where he stood.

Blessing number three.

Bodies lay strewn around the concrete deck — groups of teens, families, middle-aged couples — arms and legs tangled, stacked as if they’d been dropped on top of one another. They’d been trapped at the top of the waterslide when the shooting began — and eventually murdered as they tried to run.

The top floor of Dead Drop was wide open but for the trapdoor entrance that gave the slide its name. A two-foot-wide column beside the hard plastic door was home to a small panel that housed the simple controls: a green light to signify the bottom of the slide was clear, and a large red button that tripped the door like a gallows, sending the rider on a near vertical drop for the first ten of the twenty-one-story journey. Wooden stanchions and yellow rope, meant to keep people in line as they queued up for the ride, were now a tangled knot, overturned by the stampede of victims as they attempted to flee back down the stairs. Those who had made it out the small doorway accounted for the pile of dead he’d passed at the bottom.

Saqr’s AK at his hip, Quinn aimed at the jihadi’s belly and pulled the trigger. Fresh out of blessings, he heard nothing but the resounding click of the firing pin on an empty chamber.