Game Changer (12 page)

17

The tall mercenary stood at a
boundary of light and darkness in the dingy structure and glanced down at the
scratches on his arm once again, and then back at his prisoner, studying him.
His panic of a moment before had given way to a calm resolve. “You’re
bluffing,” he said.

Quinn laughed. “Sure I am.”

“You tried to
shoot
the president. Even my sources know that much. This poisoning
fiction is just the product of a desperate mind.”

“Keep telling yourself that if it
makes you feel better. But if you want to live, cut me loose now. The guy I got
the poison from told me about a simple antidote. But one you won’t find by
searching online. If we leave now, we could be at a drug store in an hour, and
I can give you what you need with time to spare.”

“Just cut you loose?” said the merc
in amusement. “I suppose you’ll want your gun back too?”

Quinn smiled. “As a matter of fact,
yes. And I’ll want
your
weapons as
well. You’ll be driving, while I hold a gun on you.”

“You have balls the size of Texas, Agent
Quinn, I’ll give you that. But I won’t be surrendering. Instead, how about I just
shoot you between the eyes right now and be done with this idiocy?”

“You won’t do that,” said Quinn,
shaking his head. “Because you know that if I’m telling the truth, killing me
is the same as killing yourself. And if I’m lying, you piss off your employer
and lose a big payday.”

“I’m sure as hell not going to
surrender to you.”

“Yes you are. Because if you do, I
promise you’ll survive. I’ll escape, yes, but I’ll leave you poison-free,
unharmed, and alive. And you’ve studied my background. You know I’m a man of my
word. I have my . . . issues . . . with Matthew Davinroy, but you know if I
tell you I’ll leave you unmolested, you can believe it.”

The mercenary remained silent for an
extended period as he wrestled with conflicting thoughts. “You’ve played this
brilliantly, Agent Quinn,” he said finally. “But the book on you says you’re as
creative as they come. Few men could manufacture an elaborate bluff like this
on the fly, and make it seem so compelling. But
you
could. You tried to
shoot
Davinroy, plain and simple. So I choose to ignore your little gambit and to continue
with my original plan, as though this never happened.”

Quinn cursed inwardly. He couldn’t
have sold his bluff any harder. The cyanide tablet he had dropped into
Davinroy’s drink had been coated with a substance that ensured no trace amounts
of the poison would be left on his fingers or nails, a substance that would
only dissolve and release its payload when it came into contact with large
amounts of liquid. He would never have been sloppy enough to let the poison contact
his skin. And there were no antidotes to this cyanide, secret or otherwise. But
he really thought the merc would buy it.

Quinn did have one card left to
play, however. “Your employer seems to know everything,” he said. “So check
with him. If he vouches for what I’m telling you, maybe you’ll see reason. You
know,” he added with an insincere smile, “before your heart stops.”

“Is that supposed to scare me?”

“Absolutely,” said Quinn. He nodded
at the merc’s phone. “Go ahead. Check it out. The life you save just might be
your own.”

The merc frowned and began
composing a text message to his employer, being sure not to reveal the quagmire
he had gotten himself into.
You said
Quinn would be rational
, he typed.
But
he’s ranting about trying to poison Davinroy, when it’s clear he tried to shoot
him. If he’s delusional, I need to know it.
Any intel to support this poison claim?

“Okay, Agent Quinn,” said the merc
after hitting the send button. “We’ll play it your way. Why not? We’ll know any
minute.”

“I
already
know,” snapped Quinn, with far more confidence than he
felt.

While Cris Coffey had discovered by
now that he had tried to poison the president, he was sure Coffey would limit
this information to a handful of people. The chances that this mystery employer
would be in the know were so close to zero as to be meaningless. On the other
hand, the chances that he would know exactly where to find Quinn were pretty
small also. If he did somehow know about the poisoning, this would be more than
a little scary.

The merc’s phone chimed, indicating
he had received a reply to his text, the burst of sound such a stark contrast
to the deep silence that had preceded it that it seemed to fill the entire
small enclosure. Quinn’s captor looked down.
 
I can
confirm Quinn tried to poison Davinroy before any guns came out,
read the
text
. He used a highly potent version of
cyanide. On another topic, I may arrive as early as tomorrow. I’ll keep you
posted.

Quinn didn’t need to be told that
the man’s employer had confirmed his poisoning claim. Even in the dim light
Quinn could see the mercenary whiten as he read the message. He looked as
though he might vomit, and his gaze immediately returned to the scratches on
his arm once again, almost against his will.

Quinn felt a surge of relief. He
didn’t have time to dwell on what this accurate intel implied about the reach
of his hidden adversary, but he would consider it at length the first chance he
had.

“Seems you weren’t bluffing after
all,” said the man. He paused for a moment in thought. “But I won’t be
surrendering,” he added with a sudden dark intensity, his jaw tightening in
resolve. “Instead,
you’re
going to
tell me how to make the antidote. If not, I’ll take out your left kneecap. Then
your right. Then I’ll use my knife to chop off your fingers, one at a time. You
get the idea.”

Quinn moved his left leg closer to
his captor, and gestured toward his kneecap with his head. “Fire away,” he said
calmly. “Just know that if you harm me in any way, there’s no coming back. You start
down that path and I promise you, we both die. No amount of torture will get
you that antidote. But if you surrender, we both live. It’s as simple as that.”

The two men locked eyes in a staring
contest that seemed to last for ages, but in the end, the mercenary folded, as
Quinn knew he ultimately would. A few minutes later the tables had been turned.
The mercenary cut the zip-ties that were binding Quinn and surrendered his
phone and weapons.

When this transfer was completed,
Quinn blew out a deep breath. “We’d better get moving,” he said, receiving no
argument on this point.

He followed the mercenary to his
car, a sleek 2022 Tesla, which explained why Quinn hadn’t heard it. Battery-powered
cars were far more stealthy than their gasoline exploding brethren, and the two
mercs had left the car and walked the last thirty yards to the shed on foot.
 

Quinn knew the men who had come for
him were experienced and professional. They would be well prepared, most likely
harboring a veritable arsenal in the trunk of the Tesla.

“Before we get you . . .
detoxified,” said Quinn, “I need you to fetch a tranq gun from your goodie bag.”
 

The merc wasted no time. He popped
the car’s trunk and rummaged through a large gray rucksack, stuffed to the
gills with weapons and supplies, finding a tranquilizer gun almost immediately.
He tossed it to Quinn. “Let’s get moving already,” he said, glancing anxiously at
his arm.

Quinn pocketed the tranquilizer gun
and extended the lethal one his prisoner had given him. “About that,” he began.
“The truth is, we can stay right here. You were right. I
was
bluffing.”

The man screamed a curse at Quinn
while his face turned a beet red.

“You aren’t looking on the bright
side,” said Quinn. “You’re perfectly fine. No danger of not getting an antidote
in time. Now, I did promise to leave you alive and unharmed,” he added. “And I
will leave you alive. The
unharmed
part, however, will depend on how much you cooperate.”

The man glared at him but said
nothing

“Who do you work for?” demanded
Quinn

The man studied the gun pointed at
him and then stared once again into Quinn’s eyes, taking his measure. He must
have decided that Quinn wasn’t bluffing this time, because his bitter
expression was replaced by one of resignation. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve
never met him, and I know nothing about him. He contacted us, wired good faith
money into our accounts, and we began working for him. About a month ago.”

“Come on. You can do better than
that.”

“You can threaten me, or torture
me, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. You really think a guy this good,
this connected, is going to tell me who he is?”

Quinn decided that the man made an excellent
point.

“We talk over the phone and text each
other,” continued the mercenary, “but that’s it. Thirty minutes before he
arrived he was going to have us tie you down and move out. Get started on our
next assignment. So he could arrive unseen by us. No one gets to know who he
is.”

“Except me,” said Quinn.

“Right.”

“Which means he had no intention of
leaving me alive after he got whatever it is he wanted.”
 

“Probably not,” acknowledged the
mercenary.

Quinn reached into his pocket with
his left hand and removed the phone he had taken from his new prisoner. It was
a custom model, sure to be completely untraceable. “Is he in here?”

“Yes. Under the name 302. That’s
what he told us to call him.”

“And you have no idea what this is
about?”

“None at all. Find you, hold you.
That’s all.”

For some reason, Quinn believed him.
“What’s he sound like?” he asked.

“His voice is average. Not deep or
high-pitched. His English is good, but he has a Russian accent.”

Now
this
was a valuable piece of intel. Assuming it was true. Around
the turn of the century, Russia had become largely innocuous, but many years
later Vladimir Putin had thrust Russia back onto the world stage with a
vengeance. He and other Russian leaders had been making moves to help the
country fully regain its former glory ever since. This was likely a very
important piece to a puzzle Quinn was unable to even begin to solve.
 

Quinn was about to end the
interview when one last question occurred to him. “You mentioned your boss
wanted you to move on to your next assignment just before he arrived here,” he
said. “What next assignment?”

The merc hesitated.

“Are you really going to hold out
now?” said Quinn. “Answer me on this and we’re done. You get out of this
without a scratch.” He glanced at the man’s arm and couldn’t help but smile.
“Well, without
another
scratch,” he
amended.

The man sighed heavily.
 
“Okay. Why not?” he said. “When you go through
my phone you’ll find it anyway. We were told to take out a woman in the Boston
area. Rachel Howard.”

“Who is she?”

“Don’t know. Haven’t begun
planning. Her photo and bio are on my phone. And instructions from 302. All I
know is that he wants her to stop being alive.”

Quinn was satisfied with this
answer. “Thank you,” he said, removing the dart gun from his left pocket.
Without saying another word he shot the mercenary in the leg, and watched as he
crumpled to the dirt, unconscious.

18

Quinn stood over the unconscious
mercenary’s head and pulled him by his armpits toward the back of the Tesla. He
would hide him in the trunk so he’d be out of sight of his partner, whom Quinn
would ambush and put into dreamland as well when he returned from his mission.

As Quinn crossed a border between
brown dirt and green grass he noticed a tiny shimmer on the man’s shoulder,
which happened to be just a foot away from Quinn’s face as he dragged the man’s
body. He leaned closer, but the shimmer disappeared. He was about to write it
off as a figment of his imagination when some sixth sense of his insisted that
he not. His intuition had served him well, and he had learned not to ignore it.

He studied the mercenary’s right
shoulder from several angles, and when he hit one that showed the shoulder
against a multicolored background, the image of a housefly came vaguely into
focus.

What
in the world?
thought Quinn. A fly that could blend in with its
surroundings? What, a fly with chameleon DNA mixed in?

But even as he thought this the fly
suddenly became visible from all angles, as though it knew he was suspicious of
it and had decided to appear more ordinary.

Quinn was left with only one conclusion: it must be
mechanical. But as he studied it further, it began to rub its tiny legs
together, and even though it was missing a wing, he realized that no forgery
could possibly be this perfect. And yet, as absurd, as ridiculous a supposition
as this was, he was convinced he was right.

It must be the ultimate Micro Air Vehicle, abbreviated as
MAV. Drones of all kinds now filled the skies, recreational and otherwise, and
the military variety had gotten smaller and smaller over many years. But as far
as he knew, no one had come close to creating a perfect, working mechanical
fly.
 

Until now, perhaps.

Which would explain so much. What advantages would someone
gain if they could become a fly on the wall—literally?

Intelligence gathering would be revolutionized. The MAV that
Quinn was staring at now could be camouflaged, made almost invisible. And if
someone did happen to see it from just the right angle, they would only be
seeing a harmless housefly, easy to dismiss.

This fly must be beaming Quinn’s location to an interested
party, or even video and audio. He guessed it had begun its mission at Garza’s
mansion, at the fundraiser. Why not? Spying on the president perhaps? When
Quinn had made his move against Davinroy, its operator had sent it on a new
mission: stick to Quinn. Like glue.

Or like a fly.

It could have been clinging to his back while he nearly
broke the sound barrier in Garza’s Maserati, saving battery power and wear and
tear on its wings. The Russian—302—must have sent it. That’s how he knew where
to find Quinn, and even the best time and way for his hired guns to approach
him. And also how he knew Quinn had tried to use poison on the president. He
must have sent another drone to be a fly on Cris Coffey’s wall.

The MAV could have become damaged when he had dived into the
mercenary and they had grappled in the shack, which might explain how it had
ended up on the merc’s shoulder. Or else its operator had decided to move it
there for a better vantage point, and it had later become damaged all the same.

Which explained why it wasn’t trying to fly away now.

What the hell had he gotten himself into? And if this device
had
been perfected by the Russians,
the US could be in a world of hurt. This had suddenly become bigger than
Matthew Davinroy. Quinn may have tried to eliminate the president, but he was
still a patriot. He still loved his country, despite the monster currently at
its helm.

So his mission parameters had expanded. He now had two
impossible missions. Kill the president. And find the Russian who was calling himself
302.