Day Zero (23 page)

N
ot ready to relax until the plane was in the air, Quinn herded Mattie down the aisle in front of him. Their seats were on the main deck, in the far back section of the aircraft that Thibodaux would have called “steerage.” Out of habit, Quinn studied the faces and moods of the other passengers as he passed, watching for people who seemed out of place or more interested in him than they should have been. So far, no one seemed to care about anything but grabbing the overhead bin space before it was all gone.

They walked nearly the full length of the plane to get to their seats so Quinn got a pretty good look at the passengers who’d boarded before him. Of course, there were still plenty who came in later, and an entire second floor of potential threats that Quinn knew he had to consider. This “unseen threat” way of thinking had driven Kim crazy during the years they’d been married. Stupidly, he’d tried to explain to her that just because she wasn’t paranoid didn’t mean someone wasn’t out to get her. They’d shared all too many silent dinners, with her staring daggers across her Greek salad, because he’d observed someone who looked suspicious in the restaurant.

One thing they had always been able to agree on was the need to be overprotective of their daughter. Mattie negotiated her way down the aisle with her bagful of books and electronics like a miniature adult. It killed Quinn inside that he had to cart her off to Russia in order to ensure her safety. Once she was seated, he made a mental note to go for a short walk upstairs after they got airborne, just to ease his mind. The thought of over five thousand square feet of floor space was a little overwhelming.

An Alaska girl from birth, Mattie had been used to flying from the time she was still in diapers, but even she’d stared open-mouthed at the luxury of the upper-crust seating when they’d walked through first class. The rest of the main, or lower deck, was coach, with three-four-three seating and an aisle down either side. The forward two-thirds of the second deck was reserved for business class, not quite as fancy as first, but still relatively spacious—and expensive at around eight grand a seat. The rear of the upper deck contained more economy seating, cramped and ordinary like the seats Quinn had been able to afford.

Mattie stopped in mid row and compared her ticket to the number above the seat. They were about as far from the ritzy real estate up front as they could get.

“Here they are, Dad,” Mattie said. Quinn was amazed at how much the tone and lilt of her voice sounded like Kim’s.

Seats were scarce with their last-minute booking, but Quinn was able to get theirs on the left side of the plane. Years of flying armed had ingrained the habit of choosing a seat where his gun hand could be next to the aisle—as much to keep from having to explain the bulge between himself and another passenger as to get access to any problem that sprang up during flight.

The guy in the window seat, on the other side of Mattie, looked to be in his late forties. His graying hair was buzzed short over a high forehead. Slightly built, he had a perpetual squint and a prominent chin that reminded Quinn of Popeye the Sailor. Slouching back with the big chin against his chest, the man’s head bobbed to the tune on his headphones. A sweater and a paperback spy novel lay beside him in Mattie’s seat.

She stood politely, waiting for him to move his belongings while Quinn stowed their bags in the overhead. The guy looked up, still nodding to his music, and grudgingly picked up his stuff.

Mattie flopped down beside him, exploring what was to be her new home for the next twelve hours. She brushed the man’s arm when she fished her seat belt out from the space in between their seats. He recoiled as if she’d slapped him, yanking off the headphones.

“Lucky me,” he groaned. “An entire day of flying and I get stuck by some kid who’s all elbows.”

“I’m sorry.” Mattie flinched, shooting a glance at her dad. “I was just trying to get my seat belt.”

“How about that.” He mocked her high voice. “Let’s just try and keep our bony little selves in our own seats. Okay?”

Quinn gave Mattie a wink, nodding her back out into the aisle.

“I think you’re in my seat, Sweet Pea,” he said. “I’ll take the middle.”

The guy groaned again when Quinn moved in beside him.

It was amazing how quickly the airline got so many people to board and buckle up. A few minutes later, the screens on the back of each seat in front of them flickered to life and the Global safety video began to play as the gigantic aircraft began the lumbering taxi toward the runway.

Quinn settled in, letting his arm and shoulders spill over into Popeye’s space, forcing him to readjust with a sidelong glare. He started to say something, but the pilot came over the intercom, introducing the crew.

“
Dobroye utro,
” the pilot said, showing off his Russian
good morning
. “I’m Captain Rob Szymanski. Captain Rob, to make it easier on everybody. Welcome aboard Global Airlines Flight 105 from Anchorage to Petropavlovsk, Vladivostok, and continuing on to Moscow. They want to get us out of here quickly this morning so they’ll have room for three more normal-size airplanes. They didn’t quite take the size of our bird into account, so they need to move some things before we can push back and get in line for departure. We’ll be underway shortly, so sit back and let our capable flight attendants see to your comfort—but more importantly, your safety. . . .”

An attendant named Carly stopped her walkthrough beside Mattie. She was tall with broad shoulders and thick curls of bourbon blond hair that was heavy enough to stay put over one shoulder where it played peekaboo with her eye like a 1940s starlet. The ID card hanging around her neck said her last name was Shakhov and Quinn wondered if she might speak Russian. Smiling, she leaned in to remind the man with the Popeye chin to take his headphones off during the safety briefing.

The man threw his head back, like a teenager who was angry at being told to clean his room, and stared up at the attendant. He left the headphones in place, forcing her to ask him again.

She did, smiling as she’d been trained to do when dealing with turds.

“As you wish, my queen,” Popeye said. He gave a flourish of his hand, mocking her with a theatrical bow.

Carly chuckled as if she’d seen it all before. She was dressed in Global’s trim red skirt and white blouse. Quinn guessed her to be in her early thirties, but she carried herself like she’d been in the business for some time.

She caught Quinn’s eye, shaking her head as if to apologize, before looking back to the passenger with the Popeye chin. “You can put them back on as soon as the briefing is over,” she said. “Believe me, if anything were to happen, you’ll be glad you paid attention.”

Satisfied her orders were being obeyed, Carly gave Quinn one more nod—identifying him as an ally—and continued down the aisle.

Mattie leaned forward looking up and down the aisle. “Four back, three forward, Dad—in case the lights go out.”

“Good deal, Sweet Pea.” Quinn gave her a thumbs-up for remembering. When she was only three years old, he’d taught her to count the number of seats between her and the exits in case she had to find her way out in the dark.

Her eyes sparkled as she focused on the safety video playing in front of her, sucking in the information the way Quinn took in languages.

She glanced up at her dad. “My teacher told us why they have you bend forward in case of a crash,” she said, putting herself in brace position. “This way you’re only thrown backward into your seat if the pilot has to land hard and won’t get whipped forward and then back, like this.” She demonstrated the movement in her seat.

“That’s exactly right,” Quinn said, genuinely proud.

Popeye threw up his hands. “Seriously,” he said. “Do I have to listen to two safety briefings at once?”

Quinn turned to look the man in the eye. That prominent chin was an awfully tempting target.

“What is it that you do?” Quinn said. He kept his voice low, just above a whisper.

“What?” Popeye sneered, leaning backwards as far as he could, creating as much distance as possible before the window stopped him. “What do you mean?”

“For a living?” Quinn nodded slowly. “What is it you do for your job?”

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he said, “but I’m in the crab industry.”

“A crab fisherman?” Quinn mused. This guy was far too flighty to survive on board any crab boat he’d ever been around. Quinn’s father would have thrown him out for chum ten minutes after his shoes hit the deck.

“No, not a fisherman,” the guy said, pursing his lips as if the very word was distasteful. “Fishermen are shit for brains stupid. I’m a buyer. I buy Russian crab for the US market.”

“My dad’s a crab fisherman,” Quinn said. “He fishes Alaska crab for the US market.”

“Yeah, well, too bad for your dad.” The man shrugged.

Quinn folded his arms across his chest and then leaned sideways so his face was close to Popeye’s ear. His head was almost on the other man’s shoulder. “I want you to consider something.” Quinn’s voice was coarse, a quiet growl. “As a buyer of crab, I want you to think of all the things you would do to protect someone you cared about.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Quinn ignored the question and continued his thought.

“So, now that you’re thinking of all the things you, as a man who buys crab, might do to protect his wife, or girlfriend or even, say . . . his daughter, you might be interested to know what it is I do for a living.”

The man’s eyes flicked toward Quinn, and then looked quickly away as if they couldn’t abide the pressure.

“What is it you do?” he asked, trying in vain to hide the tremor that had crept into his voice.

“I’m a butcher,” Quinn said.

“A butcher?” The man gulped.

Quinn nestled back in his seat and closed his eyes, knowing he’d gotten his point across. “In a manner of speaking.”

P
opeye kept to himself during takeoff. The puny crab buyer was a far cry from any real threat and Quinn knew he should have left him alone. If Quinn was anything he was tactical, but when it came to the protective envelope around his little girl, he rarely thought long before he acted—even at the risk of getting himself kicked off the plane. He didn’t like putting Mattie on the aisle seat and planned to move her back as soon as he was sure Popeye was going to behave himself.

Until then, he leaned his seat back and stared up at the ceiling. The Airbus A380 was incredibly quiet, absent the gushing whir prevalent in other commercial airliners. If not for the pressing urgency Quinn felt to get out of the country, it would have been easy to forget he was seven miles above the earth.

According to his frequent flier programs, Quinn had flown nearly a million commercial miles over the course of his career—back and forth across the US, down to South America, all over Asia, and too many deployments to the Middle East.

From the time he’d received his Bs and Cs—badges and credentials—at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, he’d carried a sidearm every time he’d flown domestically. Most international flights made that impractical since the Status of Forces Agreements with countries not immediately involved in a conflict precluded him from carrying a weapon as an agent. Now, as a fugitive, he often found himself without a sidearm—and flying with one was out of the question. Still, on the ground or in an airplane, Quinn could usually find something that he could use as a field-expedient weapon if things happened to go south. He looked for them without conscious thought, cataloging their location for later use.

A ballpoint pen, a pencil, the spine of a hardback book could all come in handy in a pinch. A metal fork from first class could be bent at a right angle at the base of the tines to form a workable push dagger. The wooden cane placed in the overhead compartment by the elderly man who’d boarded just ahead of him made a convenient striking weapon, while a rolled magazine made a fairly efficient club. The magazine was especially painful when shoved end-first into someone’s face. Unopened soda cans could be thrown, as could beer and wine bottles from first class. Neckties made for quick garrotes—as Quinn felt they did every time he wore one—and the crooked metal side support of a folding tray table could be accessed with the removal of a couple of metal pins and wielded like the jawbone of an ass that Samson used to smite his thousand Philistines.

Quinn was a gun guy and freely admitted it. He’d have carried every chance he got, even if he hadn’t taken up the badge. But even in his line of work, he’d used his intellect and powers of observation exponentially more often than he’d ever drawn a pistol. He often thought that the mind was the only real weapon, everything else—be it gun or blade or blunt instrument—was merely an element of strategy.

More than just looking for weapons, Quinn made certain to study the other passengers. Most fell asleep quickly. A few watched movies on their seat back screens and some unrolled sandwiches or other snacks they’d bought at the North Terminal shops. Not a soul on board seemed to care about him or why he happened to be heading to Russia with his daughter. Everyone was the star in his own little show, and thankfully, no one was interested in his.

Even so, Quinn located the pins in the metal arm of his tray table and began to work them loose—just in case the need arose for the jawbone of an ass.

 

A
ugust Bowen started making calls as soon as he left the water park in Manassas. There was an endless list of crappy things about living and working as a deputy US marshal in the DC area. The flagpole, or HQ, for instance, was much too close for Bowen’s blood. Even as an Army officer, he’d never been the spit-and-polish sort, preferring the ragtag, grimy life in the field to the relative comforts of being a garrison soldier. The upside of working in the seat of government power was a fat Rolodex full of contacts.

Ronnie Garcia’s questions about a tail made him jumpy and he found himself looking in the mirror more than usual. He didn’t see anyone, but decided it was worth the time and trouble to drive around a little while he made his calls. He took random turns, cutting back to cover the same road he’d just been down before taking a different side street. He stopped at green lights, waiting for them to turn red before speeding through at the last possible moment, and circled an entire block three times. He could almost hear the Pac-Man music inside his head.

Feeling reasonably certain he’d lost anyone who happened to be following him, Bowen worked his way south and east, generally pointing himself toward Lorton, Virginia, where he jumped on I-95 going south. He took the next exit to circle back north toward Alexandria.

Though well-educated and worldly-wise if he was to believe his mother, Bowen was self-aware enough to know he was little more than a knuckle-dragger in the eyes of Washington elite. To the bad guys on the street, deputy US marshals came down from Mount Olympus on special occasions to rub shoulders with the normal folk, flash a silver star, and snatch a fugitive from their life of crime. But to the established gentry, a GS 12 deputy was like a major in the Pentagon. Their rank might garner respect in the field, but they still fetched coffee for the generals.

When asked what branch of law enforcement they wanted to pursue, high school students often listed the Marshals, FBI, and CIA as high on their list. The truth was law enforcement and intelligence were miles apart in scope and duty. Even much of the protective work he did as a deputy marshal was far removed from the mission of a beat cop or detective. To him, intel was something you used to find the bad guy or keep your protectee alive. The term had nothing to do with bringing down or propping up governments—and Bowen preferred it that way.

Apart from Veronica Garcia—who made his stomach hurt when he thought about her too long—Bowen didn’t know anyone in the intelligence community. But he knew someone better—the ranking staffers on Senate Appropriations who held the purse strings for Intelligence and Justice. It had come as a surprise to him, a natural cynic, that the true bastions of power in Washington were these staffers. Most of them were in their early thirties—drafting bills, shaping policy, and controlling the money for their powerful senators and congressmen.

A call to a staffer named Jennifer at the Hart Senate Office Building provided Bowen with the name of Director Ross’s CIA protective team leader—an agent named Adam Knight. Jennifer assured him that Knight was “one of the good guys.”

Knight answered on the first ring. He apparently had little to do since Director Ross was now behind bars. Bowen told the agent he was working on a congressional inquiry. Knight was hungry for answers himself so he swallowed the story without a hitch.

The poor guy was still spitting blood from losing his protectee. Bowen could hear his teeth cracking from tension as they spoke over the phone. He wanted to investigate matters himself, but had been ordered to stand down by his deputy director, who was now at the helm of the agency. Knight had little to offer, but was able to give Bowen a name.

Joey Benavides had been hired by the IDTF just before being fired from the Clandestine Service. According to Knight, a long-distance affair with an Internet porn star on his government computer had earned Joey B a suspension. Lying about the continuation of the affair and the use of a government computer had cost him his job. Benavides had been one of the men next to Director Ross’s house just before they’d evacuated to the safe site.

The consummate protector, Knight was itching to have a long face-to-face with the guy, but he’d been threatened with violations of any number of laws if he so much as sent a text.

Bowen promised he’d do enough talking for both of them.

“He’s a smarmy son of a bitch,” the agent said. “It wouldn’t hurt my feelings if you put the boot to him a few extra times for me.”

“I only plan to talk to him,” Bowen said. He gave the Charger some gas, speeding up to take the Beltway exit toward Alexandria.

“Whatever,” Knight said. “But when you listen to that slick bastard for two minutes, you’ll be ready to mop the floor with his ass. From what I understand, he’s mooching off a woman who owns an empanada shop somewhere north of Dupont Circle.” The line went silent while Knight checked his watch. “If he’s not on shift yanking the fingernails out of some poor schmuck the IDTF has in custody, you’ll find him at a blues bar called Madam’s Organ about now having a liquid lunch. It’s on Eighteenth Street. Big mural on the side of the building of a redheaded saloon girl with writing all over her chest. You can’t miss it.”

“Got it,” Bowen said.

“Don’t forget to give the bastard a little good feeling for me.”

“You have no idea where Director Ross is being held?” Bowen asked. “No guesses?”

“None,” Knight said. “But Joey will know.”

“Like I said,” Bowen reminded him, “I only plan to talk to him.”

“Look,” Knight said, “Bowen, or whatever your name is, let’s get one thing crystal clear. I’m smart enough to know deputy marshals don’t do congressional inquiries. Do you think I’d be talking to you over the phone about this if Jennifer hadn’t called me after she talked to you? There’s a war going on. Hell, I’m sure my boss is tied up in it somehow. That’s why they carted her off to a secret cell somewhere in Mugambu or wherever the hell she is. But anyone interested in finding her is on the same side of that war as I am, so more power to you. Just cut the bullshit and knock out a couple of Joey’s teeth.”

Bowen ended the call and made a U-turn to get back on the GW Parkway. He took the 14th Street Bridge across the Potomac into DC, and then headed north, cutting through the National Mall and past Ford’s Theatre. It took him another fifteen minutes to zigzag his way through DC’s never-ending road construction and end up in front of the bawdy mural on the side of Madam’s Organ. There was no missing it. Nothing like a redhead with breasts the size of boulders to welcome a guy to an establishment.

Bowen backed into an open parking spot a half a block down from the bar. It was a little past one and the sidewalk in front of the blues bar was still buzzing with patrons. The darkness inside pulsed the tones of a tenor saxophone with mournful notes that could have made Pollyanna weep.

Adam Knight texted an Agency file photo of Benavides. The buttons on his white shirt strained against their stitching, ready at any moment to pop off and zing around the room like so many stray bullets. It was difficult to say if the oil that slathered Joey B’s black curls simply oozed from his body, or if he applied it in the form of a gel. Dark chest hair that looked like a dead animal pelt provided a tangled nest for the gold chain that draped above his open collar. They weren’t visible in the photograph, but Bowen was sure this guy would have rings, lots of them, gold and dripping off his fat fingers.

It took all of five seconds to spot him once Bowen’s eyes adjusted to the dark interior of the Madam’s Organ. He was sitting in a side booth like a cockroach in the shadows, chatting with another guy. The protégé looked to be in his early twenties—probably a newbie whom Joey thought he could train up in the finer points of greasiness.

The big-bosomed mural outside of the bar had nothing on the waitress who met Bowen at the counter. Everything about the woman oozed pissiness. Even her double-D chest frowned at being stuffed into a C-cup T-shirt. Bowen gave her ten bucks to seat him in the booth where he could watch the door and still have his back to Joey Benavides. She didn’t actually smile, but the ten bought him a dab more attentiveness than he’d expected. He told her he was waiting on someone who might join him, so she brought two glasses of water just in case.

Bowen ordered a burger and sweet potato fries at the recommendation of the waitress, and then sipped his water while he listened to Benavides crow in the adjoining booth. The little turd could not seem to shut up about his recent escapades with some housekeeper at a hotel in Colombia. Bowen’s mother called such talk “singing your own mighty songs.” She had assured August when he was still in grade school that others would be much more impressed when you sang mighty songs about them.

Benavides’s story about his prowess with the Colombian maid dragged into disgusting minutiae. Bowen thought his plan to eavesdrop was going be a bust, but the kid sitting with Benavides finally got a question in at about the time Bowen got his food. His waitress wrote her phone number on a bar napkin and slid it over next to his water. He gave her a wink, trying not to imagine what might come exploding out of the tight T-shirt if he got too near the woman. He stuffed the napkin in his shirt pocket with a conspiratorial nod.

She walked away to growl at another customer.

“. . . I heard it got pretty rough,” the kid next door said. His voice was wobbly with excitement.

“Rough, hell.” Benavides laughed around a mouthful of hot wings. Bowen could hear the pop as he sucked the dressing off his fingers. “It was epic. You should have seen her. Oh, she sat there all high powered and dictatorial when we brought her in. . . .”

Bowen pushed the voice memo button on his cell phone, and slid it along the rail to his left so it rested between the wall and the high wooden partition that separated him from Benavides.

“Did she give anything up?” the kid asked. “I mean, you know, anything useful?” He spoke in a fearful hush and Bowen wasn’t sure his phone would pick it up. It didn’t matter. Joey B spoke in the sotto whisper of someone who’d had too many beers.

“Not yet,” Joey said, slurping on his fingers again. “At least not while I was there.” He laughed, snorting.

“She’s on the older side, but she’s lost a shitload of weight. Not half bad to look at . . . if you’re into the whole mom sort of thing. That dude, Walter, really has his eyes on her though, because I thought he was going to throw her down on the table right there.”

“I called him Walters once,” the kid mumbled. “I thought he was going to shoot me for adding an ‘s.’ ”

“Yeah, he’s a real bastard,” Joey said. “But he’s good at what he does. Probably because he enjoys it so much. The guy’s ready to go all medieval on anybody’s ass to get them to talk. I’ll tell you this though: He gets results. That’s for sure.” Benavides laughed, snorting through his nose as if he couldn’t quite contain himself. “Ross was out running when we arrested her. Walter sent us in to take her little shorts and T-shirt away from her.” Benavides’s voice grew quieter as if he was confiding a secret. But he’d drunk enough beer that it was still plenty loud for Bowen’s phone to pick it up. “He made her think we were going to rape her.” Joey paused to take a drink of his beer. “The poor bitch was so scared she pissed herself.”

“Geez!” the kid whispered. “I’m not cut out for that. I’ll stick with surveillance.”

“It’s part of the job.” Joey laughed. “You get used to it. Sometimes you have to close your eyes and do the hard things for your country. I’ll tell you this though, if she doesn’t talk, Walter has some things planned for her that will make sittin’ naked in a cold cell seem like a cakewalk.”

Bowen took a long, deliberate breath through his nose. He slowly opened and closed his fist, feeling the knuckles pop. It took every ounce of self-control to keep from reaching around the partition and turning the greasy excuse for a human being into fry sauce. Instead, Bowen watched the bouncing needle on his phone and took some measure of solace in knowing that he was recording every vile word that spewed from Joey Benavides’s mouth.

 

 

Deputy August Bowen paused the recording long enough to ask the waitress with grumpy boobs if he could borrow the phone behind the bar.

“What’s wrong with your cell?” she asked, bending a painted eyebrow.

“Almost out of juice,” he said. “It’s a local call. Those sweet potato fries are awesome, by the way. Just like you said they would be.”

The corners of her mouth perked into what was not quite a frown. For all Bowen knew it was her version of giddy.

“Sure.” She nodded at the second glass of water. “You still waiting for your girlfriend?”

“Not my girlfriend,” Bowen said. “A work associate. That’s who I’m calling.”

“That so?” She blew him a pouty kiss. It gave him chills—and not the good kind.

Before he asked to use the phone, Bowen had checked contacts in his cell and found the number for Jacques Thibodaux.

The big Cajun picked up after the first ring.

“Hallo.”

“This is Deputy Bowen with the US Mar—”

“I remember you,” Thibodaux cut him off.

“I’m helping out a mutual friend,” he said. “I could use some assistance.”

“Where and when,
cher
?” Thibodaux said. “You call it and I come runnin’.”

Bowen expected he’d have to provide a long explanation. “Okay then,” he said. “I’m at a place called Madam’s Organ in—”

“I know that place.” The Cajun laughed like they were old friends. “Been booted out a time or two. I’m downtown now, but I can be there in twenty minutes if traffic cooperates.”

“You don’t want to know why?”

“I surely do not,” Thibodaux said. “Not on the phone anyhow.”

“Watch your back trail,” Bowen said, almost as an afterthought.