The entire process took less than three seconds. By the time the killer’s nose collided with the in-floor lighting tape, the panicked passengers surrounding him sprang, jumped, and stampeded out of their seats. They got away by any means they could, putting as much distance between themselves and the crazy man with the cane as possible.
Trapped next to the window, the elderly woman on the other side of the killer merely stomped over the top of his body, stepping on his back and head as she pushed her way into the aisle. The girls’ volleyball team cleared out in all directions, screaming and shoving other passengers out of their way. Quinn looked up to see Carly being pushed over the top of her beverage cart in the panic. Juice cartons spilled. An ice bucket poured its contents onto the floor. Carly slid along on her belly, to disappear into the aisle on the other side, out of his view.
The killer struggled, but Quinn heaved up on the cane. He gambled that the man was Chinese and barked at him in Mandarin to stop moving. Chinese people were often startled to hear their language pouring so fluently from the mouth of a Caucasian, and he froze for a moment, trying to make sense of the situation.
Quinn kept steady pressure the cane while he pulled one of the plastic restraints from his waistband. Before he could get it cinched, something heavy crashed into the back of his head.
Quinn reeled at the impact, springing to his feet. He drove himself backwards into whoever had hit him as he fought off a wave of nausea. Fully upright now, he spun in mid aisle, the point of his elbow extended and looking for a target. It found one in the jaw of the redhead who’d been watching him earlier when he’d walked by.
Quinn was still stunned and his delivery was slow, allowing the woman to step back enough that his elbow slid off with little more damage than a slap. The woman’s hands came up to cover her face like a boxer. Rather than regroup, Quinn stayed committed to his original spin, stepping into a furious left hook that caught the redhead in the temple, dropping her like a stone. She fell sideways across the now vacant seats in the middle rows. A hard plastic water bottle rolled up the aisle between them, water pouring from a crack that had very likely been caused when it had smashed into Quinn’s skull.
Behind him, a shout rose up from Carly. The man in the leather jacket had regained his senses and now held the cane in both hands, high above his head like a sword. Before Quinn could move to close the distance, the attacker was slammed forward, struck hard in the back by Carly’s rolling beverage cart.
The harried flight attendant blinked at Quinn, wide-eyed. Her face was wet with spilled coffee and juice. Once perfect blond hair was plastered to flushed cheeks. Her shoulders shook so violently she had to hold on to the cart to keep her feet.
“You good?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Quinn said, zipping restraints around the wrists of the Chinese man and then the redhead. His vision was still hazy. Waves of nausea lingered in his gut. He wondered how many more blows to the head he could take before he started seeing double — or not seeing at all.
Pulling himself to his feet with a low groan, Quinn scanned the cowering passengers. They blinked up at him from their various hiding spots around the cabin. Some looked like they were deciding whether or not to rush him. Others turned half away, eyes down, hoping not to be noticed. While those around the fight had dispersed at the first signs of the trouble, many passengers from business class now crowded together at the bulkhead to see what the fuss was all about.
Quinn could see no one else that presented an immediate threat — for the moment anyway. The dozens of other Asian passengers, many of them families with young children, took a particular interest that Quinn had beaten up one of their own, but that was easy to understand.
He held up open hands to reassure them.
“You have probably heard,” he said, catching his breath, “but there has been a murder on this airplane. I am a police officer. The captain has asked me to assist in arresting this man who we believe to be the killer.”
Hearing Quinn’s voice appeared to bring Carly’s pulse down to a manageable level. “Please, ladies and gentlemen,” she said. “Take your seats. We have everything under control now. Everything is fine.” She broke into a string of fluent Russian. Quinn assumed she was repeating herself for the Russian passengers. She switched back to English again as the passengers began to comply. “That’s right,” she said. “Go ahead and take your seats. Mr. Hackman is a law enforcement officer.”
The redhead lifted her head and moaned. A white paper napkin from the floor was stuck to her forehead. “Wait a minute,” she groaned. “You’re a cop?”
She winced when Quinn took her upper arm and hauled her to her feet alongside the Chinese man in the leather jacket.
“I only ask,” the redhead continued, “because I happen to be a cop too.”
Quinn stopped. “Then why did you hit me?”
“Because, genius, you were beating the shit out of a passenger.” She squinted trying to clear her vision. “Madonna Foss, federal air marshal. Reach into the front pocket of my jeans and you’ll find my creds.”
Quinn knew she was likely the real deal when she used the word creds instead of saying “identification.” A city or state officer might say “My badge is in my pocket”; an NYPD cop would simply tell you he was “on the job”; but a fed would show you his or her creds.
The redhead bent at the waist a little to give Quinn space to retrieve the credentials from the pocket of her tight jeans. “Go ahead,” she said. “Nothing in there that will cut you.”
The Chinese man tried to yank away. Quinn gave him a hammer fist to the groin to calm him down. He sank to the armrest of the nearest seat, wheezing in pain. Quinn let him fall.
“These igmos,” Madonna Foss said. “Always forgetting they’re on an airplane with nowhere to run.” She batted green eyes at Quinn. “You going to look at my creds or not? A girl can’t wait all day for a man to dive into her pockets.”
Quinn ran a hand over the outside of her jeans. A couple of near-death experiences had taught him to treat males and females the same way when it came to security pat-downs. Professor Foulger’s throat had been cut, so he wasn’t about to take any chances. Feeling nothing but the outline of a flat wallet, he reached in and retrieved it.
Her name was Madonna Foss and she was indeed a federal air marshal. Fire-red hair was cut just above the shoulders of her wraparound blouse. Though not a big woman, she was fit enough Quinn’s head still pounded from the blow she’d given him with the water bottle.
Hands behind her back, she nodded at the credential case in Quinn’s hands. “I’m not on duty,” she said. “That’s why the flight attendants didn’t know I was on board. My fiancé is a Diplomatic Security agent at the US embassy in Moscow. I’m on my way over to see him.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, smoothing the hair on the back of his head. “I wasn’t on duty either.”
“Listen,” Foss said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m just as kinky as the next girl, but we’re going to need some kind of safe word if you plan to leave me trussed up like this much longer.”
“Not sure we’re set up to cut them off,” Quinn said, only half joking. “But we’ll see what they have in their kit. Come on, let’s get this guy to the back so I can ask him a few questions.”
He grabbed the Asian thug by the collar of his leather jacket and hauled him to his feet again. Barking in dismissive Chinese, Quinn shoved him toward the rear of the airplane.
Agent Foss peered at Quinn through narrow eyes. “What kind of cop did you say you are?”