State of Emergency (14 page)

 

M
arie Pollard sat in the corner on a lumpy mattress that had been thrown on the floor. It was clammy and damp and smelled of mildew. Simon slept next to her leg, rolled up in a striped beach towel—the cleanest thing she could find in the vacant farmhouse. A tamarack fire popped in the woodstove in the corner, helping the ancient boiler keep up against the chilly wind that rattled the windows and creaked at the walls. Marie had no idea what time it was. Ripped from everything she knew, she found it impossible to focus. Her eyes hurt when she breathed. She'd been crying so long her skull felt as if it were full of molten lava.

Lourdes straddled a kitchen chair that she'd turned backward. Resting her chin on bare arms over the backrest, she stared down with squinting black eyes at Simon. Marie tried to make small talk, to find some connection in their womanhood—but Lourdes only ignored her.

“Your baby is very ugly, Marie Pollard,” she finally said, using both her names as if they were one word. “You know that, don't you?” She spoke without lifting her chin from the back of the chair, making her sound bored.

Marie bit her lip to keep it from trembling.

Lourdes arched her back, looking up at the ceiling. “I have never understood what people see in babies,” she said. “They are like insignificant worms at the bottom of a bottle of tequila. I drink them down without a second thought.”

Mercifully, Lourdes's cell phone began to ring. Her eyes brightened when she looked at the number. The hint of a smile perked her lips. The frown came crashing back the moment she noticed Marie looking at her, but she couldn't hide the girlish lilt in her voice. Turning, she walked down the hallway.

Marie let her head fall back against the wall, happy for a moment's freedom from the woman's hateful stares. It gave her time to catch her breath and take stock of the situation.

Lourdes and her two cronies had loaded them up in the backseat of a cramped four-door pickup that reeked of stale fish sticks and tobacco. None of the neighbors on their quiet street noticed a sobbing Marie and her little boy being trundled off to who knew where. She'd taken a rape prevention course with her women's group at church the year before and the words of her instructor came back with the brilliant clarity of a bolt of liquid lighting.
If you are assaulted and find yourself being forced to go to a second location, fight with all you have because that second crime scene will almost always be a murder scene.

Marie couldn't fight. She wasn't even sure where they were. She remembered headlights playing off a dense pine forest and drifted snow when they turned off the blacktop of Highway 95 at some point after they left Moscow. But terrified with worry over Simon, her brain had lost all sense of time and distance.

The two men hardly spoke to her at all. The one they called Jorge walked with a bad limp and swore under his breath at every step. He was in his forties, and had a sizable belly, which made the limp worse. Though he was injured, the other two seemed content to let him do the lion's share of the work. He unloaded the truck. He brought in wood. Now, Marie could just make out his right shoulder around the corner of the far wall, where he hobbled around in the kitchen making pancakes.

A large television in the dining area flickered with the news. Marie didn't know if he even thought about it, but Jorge kept the volume down, allowing Simon to get a little more sleep. He got cranky without a nap and she was terrified of what Lourdes would do if he launched into one of his crying fits.

Pete, the second man, slouched in a sagging recliner and killed zombies on his smartphone. Not far into his twenties, he wore his Carhartt ball cap turned sideways like some sort of farm-boy rapper. A tiny blond soul patch bristled under his bottom lip.

Jorge leaned around the wall. He'd used the tail of his checkered flannel shirt as a towel and it was covered in flour. “You think the kid will eat some pancakes?”

“How'd I know?” Pete muttered, entranced in the gore of his iPhone. “I look like a baby to you?”

“A little bit.” Jorge smirked.

Ignoring him, Pete leered at Marie, licking his lips. Before he could say anything Lourdes skulked in from the back room. Marie could feel the heaviness of her presence before she even rounded the corner.

“The worm will eat what we feed it or it will starve,” she said. “It makes no difference to me.” She carried a laptop computer with the screen half closed. Stooping down beside the mattress, she shoved it in front of Marie.

“Tell him you and the worm still live and breathe, Marie Pollard,” she said, flipping up the screen.

Marie found it hard to breathe when she saw Matt's face. The image was jerky and pixilated from the connection, but it was Matt. He was pale and his beard already bristled like it needed trimming.

“Are you all right?” His eyes sagged with guilt.

“Yes.” Marie nodded, blinking back tears.

“Simon,” he said. “Can I see Simon?”

She turned the computer toward the baby. “He's sleeping.”

“You're not hurt?”

“We're fine,” she said, whispering in spite of herself. “I don't understand, Matt. Who are these people?”

“I'll explain everything when this is over,” he said.

Lourdes grabbed the computer and slammed it shut. “That's enough,” she said. “He knows you are alive.”

It felt to Marie as if the evil woman had just torn away her heart. She pressed her head against the wall, eyes clenched tight as Lourdes leaned in close enough she could smell the odor of her heavy powder makeup.

“Do not get your hopes up, Marie Pollard. You will never understand. Before this is over, I will find out if your little worm tastes better boiled or fried. . . .”

On the mattress beside Marie's leg, Simon threw his head back and began to wail.

 

“
S
o,” Thibodaux said, craning his head to look at Garcia in the backseat. “They teachin' you about surveillance at CIA school?” He sat behind the wheel across from Jericho, who looked through a set of binoculars. Both stared at the door to the eastern-most room on the bottom floor of the Green Flamingo Motel. Just a few yards beyond the end of the building the parking lot melded into the dark pine forest. The only streetlight in the lot was burned out and what little light there was leaked from the tattered blinds of the rooms themselves, making the lot and the motel itself the perfect place for someone who wanted anonymity.

“They do indeed,” Garcia said. Thankfully, she'd already wriggled into a pair of jeans and a dark T-shirt, but Quinn could still smell the faint jasmine odor of her skin wafting up behind him. “But role-playing is never like the real thing.”

“My uncle was a deputy sheriff in Terrebonne Parish,” Jacques said in the darkness. “He used to tell me stakeouts were nothin' more than two people sittin' in a stinking car with the collective urge to pee. I think he was right 'cause I'm feeling the need right now.”

“Well, you better use your Dr Pepper bottle,” Quinn said, his voice muffled against the binoculars. “I got movement at the room.”

Quinn watched as the Yemeni man they knew as Farris Ushan stepped out of the gaudy green door at the end of the rundown motel.

“What's he doing?” Garcia put both hands on the back of Quinn's seat.

Quinn passed the binoculars back to Garcia, his hand already on the door.

“He's dragging a girl out of the trunk.”

Quinn was out of the truck and moving the moment Ushan shut the door to his room. Thibodaux trotted alongside him while Garcia held back a few steps acting as a rear guard.

“We're in the U.S. of A now, Chair Force, and we got no warrant,” the big Cajun said, crouching as he ran. “Just checkin', but are we gonna knock and announce?”

Quinn looked him in the eye. “What do you think?”

 

 

The beautiful thing about cheap motels was that most of their doors were routinely subjected to the boots, rams, or threshold spreaders of the local police. A sideways pull on the handle allowed Quinn to push this one open with hardly more than a shove. A little gentle persuasion tore the flimsy privacy chain out of the wall.

The Yemeni stood at the far side of the bed, towering over a bound Cathy with a leather belt in his hands. His head snapped up at the intrusion.

“Wha—?”

Quinn never stopped as he shouldered his way past the chain and bounded up on the bed to step over the cowering girl. He caught Ushan across a big ear with a brutal slap. Snatching the belt, he looped it quickly around the Yemeni's neck and pulled it tight.

Garcia appeared at the open door, tiny Kahr pistol in her hand. Thibodaux, who scanned for other threats in the room, motioned for her to take the girl to the corner.

The Yemeni's eyes bulged. The veins on his neck swelled red under the leather belt as if they might burst. When his head lolled, Quinn shoved him face forward onto the bed, patting him down for weapons.

He moaned when Quinn flipped him over.

“Where is your friend?” In reality Quinn knew of no one else, but it didn't hurt to make the stunned Yemeni believe he did.

“Zamora gave me the girl.” Ushan shook his head, blinking. “I wanted her for myself, so I came here alone.”

“Where is the bomb?”

“Who are you?”

“The bomb, Farris.” Quinn drew back as if to strike him with the belt.

“What bomb?” Ushan worked his jaw back and forth, obviously stunned by the cuff to his ear.

Quinn gambled, throwing more cards than he actually had on the table. “I know Zamora has Baba Yaga.” He fell into easy Arabic. With his three-day growth of dark beard and copper skin, he could easily pass for someone from the Middle East.

Ushan's eyes narrowed, trying to make sense of things. “Who are you?”

Quinn shot a glance at Ronnie, who attempted to comfort a hysterical Cathy in the far corner of the room. He shuddered to think what would have happened to her if they hadn't decided to follow the Yemeni away from the party.

“I am the man who will cut out your worthless heart if you do not tell me what I want to know,” Quinn whispered, not entirely bluffing.

“If you want to kill me,” Ushan said, “you will have to get in line behind the Chechens.”

“The Chechens don't have you here now,” Quinn said. “I do.” He acted disinterested, but took careful note of every word the Yemeni breathed.

“Yes.” Ushan smiled. “But you do not know this particular Chechen. He would—”

A loud whack, like someone hitting a softball, turned their attention to the door as it flew open. Quinn looked up to see a shotgun barrel pointing through the gap.

Thibodaux reacted immediately, bringing his forearm up under the barrel an instant after the first booming shot split the air inside the cramped hotel room. The Yemeni's head burst, spilling onto the sheets. Grabbing the intruding shotgun's fore end with his free hand, the big Cajun gave a hard yank and pulled the shooter, a balding man with a dirty blond beard, into the room. He used the butt of the weapon to smash the man in the face on the backstroke.

His lips pouring blood, the shooter rolled across the carpet, trying to access a pistol on his belt. Thibodaux held the shotgun to the side and used his Kimber to give the guy a double tap to the chest.

Quinn dove to the floor as more gunfire shattered the glass and tore the mini-blinds off the windows. Tires squealed in the parking lot. Car alarms began to honk and beep from the commotion.

Shotgun still in hand, Thibodaux did a quick peek out the open door. “Looks clear.” He turned back to Quinn. “You okay,
l'ami
?”

Quinn stood up, looking at Garcia. She nodded. “We're okay,” he said.

Thibodaux pulled back the dead man's shirt. He was bony and gaunt, and a crude eight-pointed star was tattooed on each skeletal shoulder, just above his collarbone. “Eastern Bloc mafia,” the Cajun said. “Could be Chechen. Tats are older, probably made in some Russian prison with ash and piss.”

“Not too much of a jump from Chechen Mafia to Chechen separatists,” Quinn said. “Guess this guy was right about them wanting to kill him.”

“Over the bomb?” Ronnie asked. “Do you think they saw us?” Ronnie stood up from where she'd used her own body to shield a hysterical Cathy.

Quinn set his mouth in a tight line.

“They sure enough saw him,” Thibodaux said, looking at the mess of blood, brain matter, and ears that had been Farris bin Ushan.

 

Q
uinn turned on his phone while the plane from Miami was still rolling down the taxiway. There was a missed call from Bo.

He punched in the number and was relieved to hear his kid brother's voice.

“Boaz Quinn,” he said, giving him the older sibling's chiding tone. “I've been trying to get in touch with you for days.”

“What can I say?” Bo laughed. “My life of crime takes me places cell phones don't work so well.” Quinn could hear the sun-bleached surfer attitude in his brother's voice. Four years younger than Jericho, the unrepentant prodigal had left home after a not so stellar year at University of Alaska to start over in Texas. He'd landed on his feet, but square in the middle of a motorcycle club that dabbled in several lucrative, but not so legitimate, businesses. Not the academic that Jericho was, Bo was bull strong and incredibly smart. A natural leader, he worked and fought his way up through the ranks of his new club and found himself in charge in a matter of years.

“Your passport still valid?” Quinn asked. “Or did you have to surrender it to your probation officer?”

“Very funny,” Bo said. “As a matter of fact, I am clear to travel and free for the next few days.”

Quinn smiled at the thought of seeing his kid brother again, even under the circumstances of tracking down a nuclear bomb. “Have I got a deal for you,” he said. “I can't talk about it on the phone, but how do you feel about Argentina?”

 

 

“He is walking toward baggage claim now,” a Japanese man wearing a tan golf jacket whispered. He stood in line at the Dunkin' Donuts holding a newspaper under his arm. His black hair was moussed and combed up in the earnest businessman style. He ordered a coffee from the tired-looking black woman behind the counter as Quinn walked past, almost close enough to touch.

“I am interested in what an American OSI agent would be doing with a Japanese killing dagger,” a female voice answered over the earbud that was paired to the cell phone on his belt. “You know what to do.”

“Of course,” the Japanese man said. He tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter to pay for his coffee and fell in with the arriving passengers as they walked in small groups along the dimly lit hallway, past the ever-present construction that seemed to define Reagan Airport and down the escalator to baggage claim. For an international airport across the Potomac from the nation's capitol, Reagan saw little traffic at this time of morning.

The Japanese man loitered near the carousel as if he was waiting for his own baggage. Quinn stood with his back to one of the large support columns inside the rail that separated the baggage area from the front walkway. His eyes were constantly on the move, flitting from one person to the next, as if sizing them up as potential threats or, the Japanese man couldn't help but think, possible targets. There was no doubt in his mind that Quinn carried a weapon. As a government agent, he would have been allowed to fly with it—and men like this one did not walk around without weapons unless they were forced to do so. His black leather jacket was loose, so it was impossible to know if it was on his belt or under his arm, but he was definitely armed. Quinn's demeanor, the predatory way in which he carried himself, spoke louder than any outline of a pistol under his clothing.

Truly dangerous men, the Japanese man thought, recognized others of their kind.

Quinn grabbed a camel-colored ballistic nylon duffel and turned toward the escalator to long-term parking. Following, but not too close, the Japanese man didn't get on the escalator until Quinn neared the top. He'd already marked Quinn's vehicle in the lot, and parked his own car nearby. It would be easy enough to follow him from a distance.

The Japanese man was halfway up the escalator, trapped between a large Sikh in a black turban and a group of Georgetown coeds dressed in droopy sweats, when Quinn met him, coming down the escalator on the other side.

Quinn spotted the tail at the baggage carousel. A compact Japanese man with neatly trimmed hair to match a military bearing loitered as if he had bags of his own, then left moments after Quinn without retrieving anything. Perhaps it was his earlier encounter with the
bosozoku
, but Quinn had become hyperaware of Japanese men.

With no way to know if the man sought to do him harm or just to test him, Quinn took three steps off the escalator, then turned to take the ride back down, meeting his pursuer face-to-face.

Both of this man's hands were visible, one hanging loosely at his side, the other holding a Dunkin' Donuts cup. It was a calm person indeed who could hold a cup of coffee at the same moment he intended to do violence. Still, Quinn kept a hand in his jacket pocket, fingers wrapped around the Beretta. In his other hand, he held his BlackBerry.

The man's jaw hung open in mortified surprise when he saw Quinn, but his hands remained motionless.

“
Sayonara dake ga jinsei, sa
,” Quinn said, snapping a photo with his cell phone as he passed by on his way back down. It was a line from an old movie, certain to make sentimental Japanese women cry—and the man looked as if he was close himself.
Life is nothing but good-bye
.

Quinn dropped the phone back in his jacket pocket and nodded at the man, whose face now burned at his error. At the bottom of the escalator Quinn walked briskly toward the exit door that would take him to the taxi stands. He'd come back for his car later with a bomb tech. For tonight, a random taxi seemed the more prudent way home.