Dead Drop

Chapter 14

Ronnie Garcia had long since given up hope that anyone crowding around her in the belly of the pirate ship would stay anything close to calm. Instead, she tried to keep the noise down to a level that might, if they were extremely lucky, keep them undiscovered and alive. She knew from experience that few people could keep still, let alone quiet, when they were afraid. The more heightened the sense of fear, the jerkier and more vocal the human body became — as if every muscle and bone was crying out in terror. Breathing became ragged, knees jumped uncontrollably, teeth chattered to the point of breaking. Pent-up words hummed and buzzed, struggling for release behind pursed lips. Children and adults alike sobbed and shuffled, embarrassed at not being able to control their bladders. Jericho called it terror-piss, and the smell of it was overpowering in the dank surroundings, adding to the misery — and the noise level — of the little band of refugees.

Thankfully, the port side of the vessel faced away from the concrete pathways and concession vendors, open to the shallow wading pool. In less violent times, this gave parents a place to sit and watch their toddlers play in the water, protected from the sun and general hubbub of the park. Slides came down from the top deck into the water, and ladders made it possible for small children to climb up from inside the ship’s hold. A half dozen plastic picnic tables were situated around the toddler-size play equipment below. It should have been a fun place, full of splashing and laughter, but hope had vanished with the breeze. The fans that normally kept the shady playground cool had clicked off with the lights shortly after the shooting had started.

Forty minutes had passed since the first explosion. The gunfire had slowed, but errant shots and screams still popped and wailed throughout the park, ripping at the last shred of Ronnie’s nerves and keeping everyone huddled in place.

Though physically sick with worry over Jericho and Mattie, Ronnie had no children and could only imagine the stress Camille Thibodaux was going through. So far, the tough little brunette had been a rock, working to fight what had to be bone-crushing despair while she faced the realities of keeping her remaining six sons as quiet and upbeat as possible.

“Mama,” Denny whispered, his voice as frail as he looked. “My nose is starting to bleed again.”

“Hush now,” Camille said, drawing her little boy closer. She removed the sheer cover-up, making her look all the more vulnerable wearing nothing but her swimsuit. Blood dripped onto her bare thigh. “Just hold it there like that. You’ll be fine.”

One of the men in the back scoffed. “Fine?” he mumbled. “That’s laughable. We’re a long way from fine, kid. It’s only a matter of time—”

Camille glared daggers at the man, her intent clear even in the darkness. He turned away and melted back into the crowd.

“I’m thirsty,” a little girl who couldn’t have been over three whimpered.

Her mother, a near catatonic young woman who had watched her husband and in-laws murdered just minutes before, patted the child on the back, but said nothing.

“I could get her some water from the wading pool,” twelve-year-old Shawn Thibodaux whispered. “It’s gross, but it would be better than nothing.”

“It might come to that,” Camille said, giving her eldest boy a proud smile. “Let’s give your daddy a few more minutes before we venture out. He’ll take care of this, I prom—”

“I am sorry,” Ms. Hatch said, speaking through lips pulled as tightly as her gray curls, “but that gentleman is right. We are in serious trouble, and it’s time we admit it.”

Ronnie held up the shotgun as if to illustrate how aware she was of the dangers. “What do you think we’re doing?” she said.

Ms. Hatch rolled her eyes. It was obvious she was used to being in charge and the fact that someone else was calling the shots had crawled up under her skin and galled her.

“It seems apparent to everyone in this place except you two that your men have been… taken…”

“You mean murdered,” Camille said, her chest heaving, chin quivering. Ronnie knew the poor thing was beginning to crumble. And who could blame her? Her little boy, and now Jacques.

“I didn’t say that, my dear,” the woman said, as disingenuous as ever. “I only mean to say you might want to season your hope with a little dash of realism.”

“You have no idea what my husband is capable of,” Camille whispered.

“If he’s smart,” the man in the Blue Jays hat said, “he’s found a way out of this shithole and saved his own ass.”

Shawn stood and squared off at the man. “My dad would never—”

“Shut your piehole, kid,” the man said. “If your daddy ain’t gone over the wall, then he’s got his ass shot off. We’re stuck with nothin’ to protect us but the hot tamale with a shotgun. End of stor—”

Camille flew at the man like a woman on fire, spitting and clawing at his face. The otherworldly wail of a woman who’d lost her child made the hair on Garcia’s neck stand up.

The idiot backpedaled, barking at Camille to leave him alone, and doubled his fist to hit her. Before he could swing, Mr. Larue smacked him in the side of the head with a piece of broken concrete, knocking him to his knees.

“I’m scared,” Larue said, straightening his pirate hat, “but not scared enough to listen to that.”

Camille stood over the man, one bare leg cocked back as if ready to fly at him again. Her dark hair was mussed, her chest heaving. The right strap of her swimsuit hung off a shoulder. Ronnie didn’t know if she’d ever seen such a burning intensity from another human being.

Blue Jays looked up at Ronnie with squinting eyes, mouth opening and closing — teetering on the verge of a scream. A trickle of blood ran down the side of his head in front of his ear. “You… you’re supposed to be some kind of law?” His voice rose in tremulous anger and indignation until it became a ragged scream. “What are you gonna do about this? Huh? Are you just gonna stand there and—”

Ronnie answered his question with a quick thump to the face with the butt of her shotgun, knocking him out cold. “Hot tamale, eh?” Ronnie said, fire flashing in the depths of her eyes. “No, postalita, I am not going to stand around and let you give us all away.” She gave Larue a wink in the darkness. “A necessary evil. He was making far too much noise.”

“I hate to say it,” Larue said, eyeing Ronnie and keeping his voice to a judicious whisper. “But it is true that your friends aren’t back yet. It’s been over a half an hour. We may need to try another option.”

Ronnie took a deep breath. Maybe the man was right. Jericho and Jacques had been gone too long.

The scrape of a boot on gravel outside the ship caused Ronnie to wheel back to the porthole. She held up her left hand to silence everyone in the crowded ship, and pointed the shotgun out the porthole, toward a man wearing a park uniform approaching from the shadows.

Fadila Baghdadi watched as a flower of orange flame erupted like cannon fire from the side of the wooden ship. A hundred feet away in the trees, she clutched her pistol and watched as Abu Nasser pitched forward into the darkness, cut down by the sudden blast. She’d witnessed many deaths that night, and expected to witness many more. Her own death was inevitable, part of the plan — but she still found it painful to see her friends die.

This was not part of the plan at all. Abu Nasser was not supposed to go yet. They would all go together when the cameras arrived and police stormed the park in a final, glorious battle. But somehow, someone inside the ship had gotten their hands on a gun.

Fadila kept to the shadows, working her way toward the dark hulk of the pirate ship, stopping alongside a wooden shack that smelled of sweets, less than twenty yards away. There were definitely people inside, several of them from the sounds of murmuring — hiding there, waiting to cut down her friends as they walked past. The thought of it set a hot ball of rage alight in her belly.

She wondered if the people inside the ship were the ones responsible for the incessant music that had cut off their communications and rendered the radios useless. Hers was off, but she abandoned it on the sidewalk anyway, realizing it would give her away.

Lifting the black polo, she shoved the pistol down the waistband of her khaki shorts in front of her hip bone. She took a deep breath to steel her resolve, then pulled a green egg-shaped object from her front pocket and held it in her open palm, staring at the oblong outline of a RGD-5 hand grenade. There were only two. Tariq had one and she had the other. They’d planned to use them together, taking many infidels with them at the time of their own deaths. Not as powerful as the American grenades, the Russian weapon was far cheaper, and much easier to obtain. It would most certainly kill anyone hiding in the stupid ship.

She stuffed the grenade back in her shorts, leaving it high in her pocket so she could reach it easily. The fuse would burn for less than four seconds, so Fadila knew she would die as well — but that was of no consequence.

She mussed her hair to look as if she was also being hunted, then affected the terrified expression she’d seen on the faces of the people she’d killed that night. Americans were quick to trust a woman in jeopardy. Whoever was in the ship, police or otherwise, would believe her long enough to give her the opportunity to kill them all.