National Security

by Marc Cameron

  Bo’s sandy hair was cut short, though it was still long enough to cover his ears. While his companions all sported full beards or goatees, the younger Quinn had only a healthy growth of stubble, which, if he was anything like his brother, he could have sprouted in less than a day. Like the others, he wore faded jeans and a denim vest over a dark T-shirt. An indigo rocker under the angry-looking black octopus on the back of the vest was emblazoned with the word DENIZENS in embroidered red letters four inches high.

  Bo was the only member of his group not completely sleeved in tattoos. While the other men’s muscular arms were covered in multicolored images of big-breasted women, eyeless skulls, and blazing guns, Bo Quinn had only one visible piece of ink. Occupying the entire inside of his veined right forearm was a jet-black octopus, identical to the one on his vest, eight arms trailing around a single angry eye.

  Bo’s second in command appeared to be a tall Viking of a man with a scar that ran from his right eyebrow across his nose and to the bottom of his opposite jaw. Called Ugly by the others, he was bald but for the shoulder-length patch of hair on the back of his scalp, which he pulled back into a blond ponytail. A green jailhouse tattoo of a spiderweb covered the left side of his face, drawing attention to the jagged scar. The man had hugged Jericho, grinning as if they were long lost cousins. Caught up in the reunion, he’d embraced Megan as well. She’d been surprised that he’d smelled faintly of cookie dough along with the lingering odor of pipe tobacco. When she closed her eyes, she could picture a kindly old uncle. When she opened them, she saw a bloodthirsty pirate. At first, Megan had found it disconcerting the way the men, who were the type her mother would mention in the same sentence as the phrase “gang rape,” exchanged pleasantries as if meeting at a family reunion over a plate of slaw and barbecued ribs.

  “Pleased to meet you, ma’am,” Ugly had said, his face a picture of earnestness behind the green web of prison ink. A diamond stud adorned the scarified cauliflower nub of what was once his left ear. “I’ll lead the way,” he’d said, climbing back aboard his bike. “Y’all follow me... .”

  Carrie Navarro had gone to her mother’s home nearly sixty miles away. Palmer pulled some strings and got the Bureau to stand up a protective detail out of an abundance of caution, though none of her protectors knew exactly who she was or why they were guarding her.

  The vacant house Jericho and his friends were using for surveillance was directly across the street from Navarro’s now-empty nest. Hidden in the trees at the far corner behind Navarro’s modest white frame home, Thibodaux was able to maintain a visual along the south and east sides of the house. From their position across the street, Mahoney and the Quinn brothers could watch the front as well as the west side. Both Jericho and Bo had agreed that it provided an excellent location that would give them a “tactically superior advantage” when Zafir arrived. Megan listened to the men and wondered what it must have been like growing up in the Quinn home.

  Bo Quinn had insisted on pulling his new Harley-Davidson Night Rod inside the vacant house, unwilling to leave it outside to be caught in the cross fire if things “went rodeo” on them. The low-slung motorcycle now sat like a flat black locomotive in the middle of the living room.

  Despite the urgency of capturing Zafir Jawad, the Quinn brothers chatted calmly about Bo’s new bike, how fast it was for a Harley—Jericho had plenty to say concerning this—and how much horsepower Bo had been able to milk out with a few modifications.

  “She’s American and she scoots, Jer,” Bo had said, nodding smugly. “A hundred and fifty miles an hour, right out of the box. I’d like to see your German bike do that... .”

  Over time, Mahoney noticed a smoldering intensity about the two men that began to make her feel a little light-headed. At first she blamed it on fatigue, but realized it was much more basic than that. Though they shared the same strong jaw and propensity to grow a quick beard, the brothers were like night and day. Where Jericho was dark, Bo was blond, with the sun-bleached look of a surfer. Four years Jericho’s junior, Bo was much more flamboyant in his manner, strutting his muscles as he moved like a body builder in the middle of a contest. Jericho was more subtle. He looked every bit as strong, and, for all Megan knew, might have a couple of tattoos of his own hidden somewhere under his polo shirt or 5.11 Tactical khakis. Whatever he had, he didn’t flash it.

  By the time they’d been waiting five hours, boredom and the men’s easy banter had worn away any semblance of inhibitions in Megan.

  “You two are so different,” she heard herself say. “You grew up together, and you seem to like the same things, and yet you appear to have ended up on polar opposite sides of the law.”

  Bo laughed out loud, slapping his knees with both hands. He slumped beside her on the ratty tan shag carpet, letting his back slide down against the wall.

  “I’m a lost cause, Doc,” he said. “Our folks were so proud of Jericho, especially when he got the appointment to the Academy. That was like a three-hundred-thousand-dollar scholarship, wasn’t it, Jer?”

  “I don’t know. Something like that,” Jericho grunted without looking up from his rifle scope pointed across the street.

  “Well—” Bo let his head fall to one side so he looked directly at Megan. “Everything our parents saved not having to pay for Jericho’s college, they got to use on my bail money.” He shrugged, maybe, Megan thought, a little sadly. “Like I said, a lost cause. Tough to live up to a brother like that one, I’ll tell you. I can barely string five coherent words together in English. He was rattling off three different languages before he got out of high school. We had a really cold winter his sophomore year so he stayed inside and learned to speak fluent Japanese. Funny thing though, he never could figure why the girls liked me more... .”

  “How about we stay focused?” Jericho said. He leaned back from the Remington 700 sniper rifle mounted on a short, tripod-like table and stretched his back. A box of cartridges that read .300 WINCHESTER MAGNUM sat on the table beside his left arm. Each looked the size of Megan’s finger. The room was dark and the curtains drawn but for a thin gash a foot in front of the rifle barrel. He sat far enough from the threshold so as not to be seen by anyone across the street.

  “He’s been like this for as long as I’ve known him,” Bo went on, the edge of mischief sharp in his voice. A pistol bulged at the waist of his black T-shirt. The cuffs of his faded jeans rode up over heavy riding boots to reveal white socks as he rested his arms across bent knees.

  “Don’t pay any attention to my wayward brother, doctor,” Jericho grumbled. “He doesn’t have the opportunity to talk to that many honest women.”

  “As a matter of fact,” Bo said, “I’m not entirely certain such an animal exists.”

  Megan smiled at that. “What did you mean when you said your brother’s been like this?” She dipped her head toward Jericho.

  “You know.” Bo shrugged. “The responsible one. Taking care of things.” The muscles along his neck tightened as he spoke. Where Jericho’s strength was wiry and deceiving, Bo Quinn had thick, visible power like the knotted roots of a short but sturdy tree.

  “Chair Force, you there?” Thibodaux’s disembodied voice crackled across the radio clipped to Quinn’s vest.

  “Go ahead,” Jericho said.

  “Just checkin’ in,” Thibodaux said. “I still got no movement out here.”

  Bo took a BlackBerry phone from his belt. Using it like a walkie-talkie, he pressed a button and checked on all his men. Each reported no movement. Moon and Cujo covered the alley behind Navarro’s house. Ugly and Mean Jim waited up on Lafayette Avenue, toward Trinity Park about a quarter mile away, acting as a backup team in the event reinforcements were needed. They had the house surrounded.

  “Bo’s guys report no contact,” Jericho said into his mike. “Nothing on this end either.” He didn’t say it, but Megan could tell from the tension in his voice that he was as worried as she was that Zafir might wait until he was contagious and spread the
disease for a while before paying a visit to Navarro, if he showed up at all.

  The sun had come up hours before. Heat waves were beginning to shimmer off the cars parked along the live oaks lining the curb. Modest homes, most built in the early seventies, were strung up and down the block, each with a familiar look of its cookie-cutter neighbor. The siding or brick color changed on every other house and some had scabbier lawns than others, but otherwise, they were the same. Two houses to the west, a bass boat loitered on a gravel pad alongside the empty driveway. It was faded by years under the hot Texas sun. The healthy crop of weeds and low tires on the trailer said few of those hours had actually been on the water. Several homes up and down the block had motorcycles in the driveway or parked along the curb. The Denizens’ Harleys wouldn’t cause a second look.

  Returning the BlackBerry to his belt, Bo leaned back against the wall again and took a long pull on his bottled water.

  “What’s all this about these guys gettin’ seventy virgins if they die for the cause?” He spit a bit of wood from his toothpick on the floor. “Pardon me, but that just don’t seem like Heaven in my opinion. Now ...” He winked at Mahoney. “Promise me seventy experienced women and I might be willing to strike some kind of a deal... .”

  Jericho glanced up from his rifle scope long enough to shake his head. “My brother, the religious philosopher. . .”

  Bo ignored him. “So,” he said, grinning at Megan with a face that looked eerily like a more lighthearted version of his brother. Judging from the other members of the Denizens motorcycle club, he had to be leading a hard life, but he appeared to be absent the worry and stress Jericho carried around on his shoulders like a backpack full of moral responsibility. “You dating anyone?”

  Mahoney shook her head, blushing in spite of herself. She wondered what she’d say if the other Quinn asked the same question. “No. My job ... my life doesn’t lend itself to dating... .” Mahoney wondered why that was true. Other doctors in her office dated all the time. Some of them partied like little rabbits. Maybe she’d never extended herself. It was depressing to think she was now in her thirties and had never really had a serious relationship. She would never admit it to this man, but though she was no virgin, she was far from experienced.

  “Outstanding.” Bo put his hands on his knees.

  “What?” Megan winced, suddenly afraid Bo Quinn could read her mind.

  “I mean the part about you not dating anybody. After we’re done here, and we whack your little terrorist friend, how about you and me get some breakfast? What do you say?”

  “Knock it off, Bo,” Jericho said. “She’s not your type. And by that, I mean she’s got a brain between her ears.”

  “Ha, ha, ha.” Bo wagged his head back and forth. He winked at Mahoney as he got to his feet with the slow groan of someone who’d been in a recent fight. She caught the glimpse of a white scar, almost an inch wide, running above his right hip at the waist of his jeans and disappearing over his kidney. Hand on the butt of his pistol, he readjusted the tail of his T-shirt and leaned a shoulder against the wall to peer out a gap in the living-room curtains. He took care not to touch them and cause any movement that could be seen from the outside. “I always wanted to be like him, you know—when we were growing up... . Except when it came to girls. He moved way too slow for my taste in that regard.”

  “At least I had taste.” Jericho chuckled. “That was the difference.”

  Mahoney closed her eyes. She enjoyed listening to the two men banter. Though they were fiercely competitive, there wasn’t an ounce of animosity passing between them.

  “I guess it would be difficult”—Mahoney smiled, unable to resist the urge to pick on Jericho—“having a brother who goes around bent on saving the world all the time.”

  Bo gave a little shrug. “Like I said, he’s been like that my whole life. It’s all I’ve ever known. Always watching out for the one weaker than he is.” A mischievous sparkle gleamed in Bo’s eyes. “He doesn’t like to talk about it, but there was this Eskimo girl back when we were younger—”

  “I’m not kidding,” Jericho said, still glued to his rifle scope. “Knock it off.”

  “Hey, Jericho.” Bo raised a brow. “You invited me here, remember? Besides, it’s not like I wasn’t there, too. This is my story as much as it is yours.” He turned back to Mahoney, chuckling and waving off the implied threat. “Anyhow, we were riding our bicycles along the Coastal Trail in Anchorage. I think he was in the ninth grade at the time ... fourteen or fifteen, and I was maybe eleven. I was lucky he would even hang with me. Well, not far from Westchester Lagoon, we rode up on a bunch of college boys harassing this homeless native gal. She’d had a little too much to drink, and the boys were probably high. It was sort of a perfect storm. They were ... you know, shoving her around and calling her a muk... .”

  “Muk?” Mahoney asked.

  “Short for mukluk,” Bo said. “It’s like the N word of the North—pretty rude thing to say, really. Anyhow, just as we peddled by, one of the guys took a swipe at the old gal’s shirt and ripped it half off. Things went from bad to worse in a hurry. They started to grope her and she cut loose with a terrible howl. I remember, it about the scared the pee outta me. Everything was way the hell out of hand—and then my brother flew in from his home planet of Krypton... .”

  Jericho scoffed.

  “I was just a kid, you understand,” Bo went on. “Didn’t know what to do. But my big brother jumped off his bike in a heartbeat, wading into among those college boys like they were nothing more than three mosquitoes—”

  “As I recall, you waded right in there with me.”

  “ ’Course I did,” Bo scoffed, more serious than before. “But I had your example.”

  “I just enjoyed a good fight back then.” Jericho shook his head. “That Eskimo woman provided me with an excuse.”

  “You still like to fight.” Bo’s eyes gleamed at the memory. “You know what I remember most, Jer? When you’d finished with the first two and had that biggest son of a bitch on the ground, pounding his face bloody with your fist ... that boy was sobbing and slingin’ snot something awful by then. I expect he was afraid you were gonna kill him. He said something like, ‘Why are you doing this? Who cares about a drunk Eskimo?’ You remember what you told him?”

  “What?” Mahoney leaned forward in anticipation. “What did you say?”

  Bo snorted. “ ‘Who cares about a drunk Eskimo?’ the kid says, and my big brother just keeps hittin’ him and says, ‘It’s my job!’ Can you imagine such a thing? A fourteen-year-old kid telling someone that saving a woman was his job ... like he had some sort of God-given calling to look after other people... .”

  “That’s about enough storytelling,” Jericho said. “I was in it for the fight and you know it.”

  “Whatever you say, big brother.” Bo smiled, looking at Megan with a long sigh. “I gotta tell you though; I think I started to worship him from that moment on.”

  Cujo’s nasal voice squawked across Bo’s BlackBerry, rescuing Quinn from any further roasting.

  “Boss”—the biker was breathing hard—“You’re not gonna believe this ... but it’s rainin’ rag heads out here.”

  Mahoney sprang to her feet. Jericho sat up, away from his scope.

  “Say that again, Cuj,” Bo said.

  “Aye-rabs!” Cujo said. His voice was jubilant as if was shouting BINGO! “We got us two in custody.”

  CHAPTER 45

  Bo offered up the phone. “I think we’re into your bailiwick, Jer.”

  “Hey, Cujo, this is Jericho,” he said. “What do you mean ‘in custody’?”

  It was clear from the muffled grunts in the biker’s voice that he was on the move as he spoke.

  “Moon spotted two guys sneakin’ up the back alley a couple houses down from you. We was able to work our way up a deep creek bed to get in behind ’em. Then we waited under a magnolia tree and conked ’em on the head as they tried to sneak by. Jacques checke
d ’em out. He says it’s not the guy you’re after, but they’re definitely the bad guys.”

  Thibodaux’s drawl broke squelch on Jericho’s radio. “Neither one is Zafir, beb,” he said. “Both got all their fingers and toes ... so far at least.”

  “And you’re sure they’re Arabs and not from Mexico or Central America?”

  “Chair Force,” Thibodaux grumbled into his radio. “You’re killin’ me, pal. I have spent a day or two in the Sandbox my own self. Neither one of ’em has an ID, but they were ‘Allah Akbar-in’ me to death ’til I gagged their sorry faces.... And, lest you get too worried we smacked some poor member of the local mosque, one of ’em has a copy of Zafir’s martyr photo folded up in his back pocket. They’re either the SOB’s backup or they belong to his fan club. Either way ...”

  Jericho peered through the rifle scope across the street at Navarro’s front door while he thought. “Get them out of sight as fast as you can. Zafir’s out there somewhere and I don’t want to tip him off.”

  “Where’s Moon?” Bo said two minutes later as Thibodaux and Cujo huffed in from the backyard, each carrying a bound and gagged Arab over his shoulder. A wave of heat and humidity rolled in with them when they opened the door.

  Thibodaux dropped his prisoner unceremoniously in the middle of the living-room floor, well away from Bo’s Harley. “Moon stayed behind to keep his good eye peeled in case Zafir shows up. Sorry we couldn’t call earlier, Jericho. We sort of had our hands full.”

  “Moon’s okay then?” Bo asked, checking out the front window.

  “He’s fine, boss.” Cujo looked around the room, still holding his Arab over a broad shoulder. “I left the sawed-off with him.”

  A prodigious beer belly rolled over the top of the biker’s jeans, completely hiding his belt buckle. He wasn’t as tall as Thibodaux, but he was every bit as muscular and the extra weight around his middle didn’t seem to hold him back at all. Completely bald, each side of his polished scalp was tattooed with matching black lighting bolts. He sneered, showing a gold front tooth.