by Marc Cameron
“Public?”
“Look,” she said. “I’m not sure who I can trust right now.”
“You called me,” he said. “Remember?”
“I guess I did,” she said. “Listen, there’s a water park near Manassas. Can you meet me there?”
“Well,” Bowen said, “I was assigned to a protective detail, but as it happens I just got relieved to deal with a local police matter. I can meet with you tonight, no problem.”
“That’s too far off,” Garcia said, sounding as if she about to loose a flood of Cuban curses. “This is life or death. I wouldn’t bug you if it wasn’t.”
Bowen took a deep breath. “Okay. A water park in Manassas.”
“Eleven o’clock.”
“I’ll be there.” He looked at his watch. “But I’m not wearing a swimming suit.”
“Up to you,” Ronnie said. “But this is a family place. They won’t be too happy with you lounging around in the water without one.”
Chapter 36
Alaska
Quinn hung his head out the window of Lovita’s borrowed Pontiac, thinking of how many times he’d ridden this road on a motorcycle. Die-hard riders often called other vehicles cages. The little Pontiac was a perfect example of why. Thankfully, the passenger window was completely gone, allowing some escape from the stale odor of fast food trash—and some creature that had crawled up inside the air vents and died.
It was not quite seven in the morning but the sun had already been up for three hours and the Chugach Mountains glowed with the brilliant golden-green of summer. Joggers and bicyclists moved steadily through the crisp Alaska morning down the paved pathway between the Glenn Highway and Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson. There was a time Quinn had thought of becoming the OSI detachment commander here at JBER. His parents pushed for it. Kim certainly wanted it. Heaven knew he owed Mattie a little more of his time. But for some reason, that normal, move-up-the-ranks-and-become-the-boss portion of his career just wasn’t meant to be so the det co thing never materialized. He was an Air Force Academy alumnus, a Fulbright Scholar, and spoke five languages. Out in the world he could have been described as a renaissance man. But he was just rough enough around the edges that he always felt like a bit of a thug compared to the other Air Force officers in garrison. He supposed he just wasn’t cut out for it. Lately, it had been difficult to comprehend what he was cut out for except for slitting the odd throat now and then. It sure wasn’t being a father—no matter what patriotic platitudes he spouted to Lovita about having something to fight for.
His mind had covered a dozen different scenarios for his arrival at the airport by the time they passed the National Guard Armory—known as the “Green Banana”—between Eagle River and Anchorage. He had never been the nervous sort. When he made a decision, he followed through, leaving the outcome to God or fate or whatever great cosmic dice game was in control of his destiny. But that was him. When it came to his daughter, he was capable of worrying a hole in his gut.
Quinn’s greatest worry was that his parents had been followed out of DC and a crowd of IDTF agents or contract killers would swoop down on them as soon as he set foot in the airport. If by some miracle his parents were able to get Mattie to Alaska unimpeded, there was the high likelihood that some other passenger, a TSA officer, or even a US Customs agent might recognize Jericho from having grown up with him. Nearly 300,000 people called Anchorage home, but the small-town feel made it difficult to go to a store or restaurant without running into someone who knew him.
Five months of heavy black beard had made him look like a pirate. He’d trimmed it back to a more city-acceptable length before leaving the hangar that morning. Lovita said it gave him “ambiguous ethnicity.” He wore a ball cap pulled down low and black Wiley X shades that he hoped were all enough to camouflage his identity.
Traffic was heavy with morning commuters along the Glenn, but Lovita took C Street through midtown and hung a right on International Airport Road across from Baily’s Furniture Store. He’d met plenty of pilots who scared him to death when they got behind the wheel of a car, but Lovita, a village child who rarely drove anything larger than a four-wheeler, handled the car as if she’d grown up driving in a city much larger than Anchorage.
His head still out the window, Quinn caught the flowery sweet scents of birch and balsam poplar as they neared the airport. The air was still crisp enough that no one questioned the fact that Quinn was wearing a black motorcycle jacket. A Vanson Enfield, the jacket was heavy leather but old and worn enough to fit like a comfortable baseball glove. It wasn’t armored like his customary Aerostich Transit Leather, but that one had been cut to ribbons back in Japan.
Lovita pulled up next to the curb at the North Terminal and put the car in park. She turned to look at him, smiling softly.
“I think I would make a good government operative,” she said, out of the blue.
Quinn cocked his head to one side, studying her face. The traditional tattoo notwithstanding, she was probably right.
“I think so too,” he said. “Give me a call after this is over. I can introduce you to some people.”
“Be careful, Jericho Quinn,” she said, as if his name was all one word. “I need to keep you as a contact.”
Her voice was even huskier than usual, her eyes red as if she’d stayed awake much of the night. She was an incredibly tough human being, but coming within inches of crashing into a mountainside was enough to work on anyone’s emotions.
She leaned across the seat to give him a hug. The smell of cigarettes and some sort of musky perfume she’d found back at the hangar was a welcome cover for the odor of the Pontiac.
“Thanks for flying Air Lovita,” she said.
“Yeah, well, thanks for saving my life.” Quinn turned to grab his duffel from the backseat. “You flying back tonight?”
She nodded. “Got a Costco run, then fish to cut when I get back,” she said simply. Good-byes over, she waited for him to shut the door, then pulled away without another word.
The North Terminal was the older portion of Ted Stevens Airport. It wasn’t quite as swank as the newer, main terminal across the way, but it did have a huge stuffed polar bear in the waiting area outside security—the part of the airport Quinn most remembered as a child. It was also the terminal for US Customs and international flights arriving and departing Alaska.
The Alaska flight from DC had arrived an hour earlier at the South Terminal, but Quinn was already inside by the time his parents had retrieved their bags and hopped a shuttle to the north side of the airport. Quinn didn’t see any tail, but if there was one, it wouldn’t matter at this point anyway. He’d known Kim wasn’t coming, but his heart sank a little when she didn’t get off the shuttle with everyone else.
Mattie bolted to him as soon as she came through the door. It had been half a year since she’d seen him last, beside her mother’s hospital bed. It was a lot for an adult to handle, let alone a seven-year-old girl.
She buried her face in his chest, squeezing him until her arms shook.
“I missed you too, Sweet Pea,” Quinn said, glancing up at his father. He mouthed the words “How’s Kim?” so Mattie couldn’t hear him.
Pete Quinn took a deep breath, putting a hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Can you help Grandma with the luggage, sweetheart?” he said. “I need to talk to your dad a minute before y’all go.”
Mattie looked up, arms still locked around her daddy’s neck.
“We’ll just be a minute.” Jericho hugged her one more time before peeling her away.
Mattie nodded and dutifully went to stand with her grandmother, a tall woman with deep brown eyes and silver-gray hair she liked to call “Arctic Blonde.”
Pete Quinn’s large gray eyes held the same look they had one winter when Jericho and Bo were boys and he’d told them their favorite dog had been eaten by a pack of wolves.
“What is it?” Jericho said, bracing himself for the worst.
“She bange
d her leg pretty bad when those guys tried to get her and Mattie in the van,” he said. “I think she’ll be fine, but doctors are worried about blood clots. She’s in the hospital at Bethesda. I know you’re worried, son, but Bo is with her night and day. Your friend Jacques is pulling security and helping out more than seems humanly possible. He’s a good man. I like him.”
“Me too,” Quinn said. “But he’s got his own family to worry about.”
Quinn’s mother handed him the folder with Mattie’s passport and the visas Thibodaux had given her. Quinn gave her a hug at the base of the escalators leading to the second level and through security, apologizing for turning her into a mule for forged documents. She gave him a tense smile, tears welling in her eyes.
“Don’t cry, Mom,” he said. “Dad always said God counts a woman’s tears and blames them on us guys.”
The matriarch of the Quinn family smoothed the front of her light Windbreaker. “Well,” she sniffed, “if that’s the case, you boys are going to have a lot of explaining to do someday.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek before gathering Mattie in for one last hug. “Now remember,” she said. “Your name is Mattie Hackman. Don’t forget that.”
“Ten-four, Nana.” Mattie grinned, giving a little mock salute.
Jericho shook his father’s hand. “I wish you’d let me make some calls. I’ve kind of turned you into a target over here.”
The elder Quinn shook his head. “Have you seen the fish runs this year? I have a boat to tend and a crew who depends on me. We’ll be so far out in the ocean, nobody’s going to bother with us.”
“Don’t you fret over us.” Quinn’s mother waved off any thought of worry. She seemed soft, but Quinn knew she was tough as barbed wire underneath the façade. She had to be to be married to his dad and raise the two boys she’d been given. “We’ll be fine.”
“All right.” Jericho sighed. “I don’t like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
His mother gave him a half grin. “Those are the exact words I used when you told me you were taking up boxing.”
Since they were taking an international flight, Quinn produced a notarized letter at the security checkpoint, signed by Kimberly Hackman, giving him permission to leave the country with their child. Kim had signed it, and Bo had used his charm to get one of his girlfriends to notarize it. The heavyset TSA officer, who was all of twenty-four, had still quizzed Mattie with some halfhearted questions and consulted with his most recent Amber Alerts and NCMEC Missing Children photos to make sure Quinn wasn’t stealing his own child. Thankfully, he worried more over that than checking out their false identification. The ID was plenty real. It was, in fact, manufactured by the government and presumably off the books. But allegiances changed and unless Miyagi or Palmer had printed the passports themselves, someone else knew of their existence. Quinn had never worried about it before, but Mattie’s presence added an entire new level of tension.
When they finally made it past security and were sitting at the gate, Quinn found himself mildly surprised that he wasn’t dog piled by law enforcement. Still half an hour away from boarding, passengers crowded around the podium so they could be the absolute first to board. Quinn suppressed a smile in spite of his nerves. It was easy to see why airline personnel called such impatient passengers “gate lice.”
Mattie had calmed down quickly, as she always did, and now sat listening to music on her iPod. A multitasker at seven, she swung her legs off the edge of her chair while she flipped through the pages of her Lemony Snicket book. Her mother had been shot, her father was a fugitive, and armed men had tried to shove her in a van just hours before, but she appeared to share Quinn’s ability to compartmentalize and carry on in the face of events that would cause other people immobilizing stress. She’d not skipped a beat in giving the TSA agents her fake name, jabbering away with just enough details about their long-planned vacation to Russia. Quinn couldn’t help but wonder how many other traits she’d inherited from him—and worried over how much of a problem this special talent at lying would be when she hit her teens.
He took a deep breath and willed himself to be as calm as his daughter. The next big hurdle would be clearing Immigration and Customs once they reached their destination. If anything, Russians were known for their convoluted bureaucracy. He’d been through plenty with Aleksandra Kanatova and he knew she was trustworthy enough to keep up her end of the plan. But even with her help, the odds were overwhelming that they would run into all manner of problems entering the country—even on clean passports.
Quinn consoled himself with the idea that the twelve-hour flight would give him time to rest and make plans. The plane would stop in Petropavlovsk on the Kamchatka Peninsula first, then Vladivostok, before continuing on to Moscow, where he’d have to make first contact with Russian immigration officials. He hoped Kanatova would be there and waiting.
Quinn looked at the information board above the Global gate, and then checked the Tag Aquaracer on his wrist. If nothing happened for the next half an hour he’d be able to relax—at least while they were in the air.
Chapter 37
Near Manassas, Virginia
August Bowen located Garcia with little trouble amid the crowd of families, flirting teenagers, and screaming children at the outdoor water park. It was ironic that a woman who seemed bent on playing spy games should possess oh so many traits that made her do everything but blend in. She lounged up to her shoulders in a raised tile hot tub that was tucked in behind a gigantic, spaghetti-like yellow waterslide. Deeply bronzed and well-muscled, she was still supremely feminine. The parts of her that lay above the surface shouted for everyone in the park to guess what lay beneath the water.
Bowen walked barefoot across the concrete, smiling, happy to feel the heat against his toes. He’d changed into a pair of blue board shorts in the locker room and shut his clothes up with a combination lock that reminded him of his days back in junior-high gym class. Even a halfhearted thief would be able to defeat such a basic padlock in a manner of seconds, so he kept the dive watch on his wrist and submitted his wallet to fate. He congratulated himself for having the forethought to leave his gun locked in the center console of his Charger.
A blinding sun reflected and refracted off the rippling blue surface of the many small pools and rivers that made up the park. The warm Virginia air, heavy with the odor of chlorine and Coppertone, mingled with the must of oaks from the greenbelt that ran between Manassas and Centerville before sliding like a leafy delta into Battlefield Park.
Bowen worked his way through scattered deck chairs and gangs of barely dressed teenagers. Screaming toddlers ran by on stubby legs or washed back and forth with their mothers in the nearby wave pool.
With so many big-armed, khaki-clad federal lawdogs wearing all the latest gadgets, August Bowen strove for practical over practi-cool, both in gear and physique. Blue jeans and a T-shirt beat out khakis and polo shirts when the marshal didn’t force his hand at work. Like many boxers, he rarely lifted weights, feeling they slowed him down and gave him mirror-muscles instead of true, usable power. He worked hard to keep the body of a fighter, hardened by hours of skipping rope, long runs, and years of pounding the heavy bag.
Such a level of fitness brought with it a certain don’t-screw-with-me vibe that stopped most fights before they started—and garnered him stacks upon stacks of cocktail napkins with women’s phone numbers.
A bright scar, the size and shape of a football, stood out against the tan skin of the ribs on his right side. His blue board shorts covered a corresponding scar on his buttock and thigh, all from a long-forgotten Russian land mine near Mazar-i-Sharif. The mine put him in the hospital, but it had turned his interpreter into a red mist. Bowen thought about that good man each time he saw the scar in the mirror. Few people ever even noticed the scar at first, focusing instead on the full head of silver hair on a seemingly healthy man in his early thirties.
Garcia looked up when he approached and nodded him ove
r with a wide smile that could have stopped a charging buffalo in its tracks. Bowen imagined she’d hooked Jericho Quinn with much the same look.
“Hey there,” she said, as he stepped into the cool water. “Thanks for meeting me.”
Though the water park was relatively crowded, the moms and kids that made up the bulk of the patrons were much more interested in the high-octane slides and wave pools than a simple whirlpool tub. Ronnie shared the ten-by-fifteen pool with only a couple of pimple-faced teenage boys who lounged along the wall opposite her, willing themselves to look ten years older. They cast expectant glances every few moments, just waiting for her to stand up so they could get a better look at her. The boys stared at Bowen with dagger eyes when he encroached on their territory, but cowered when he came closer—small dogs, brave only when safely behind their screen doors.
Bowen gave the boys a polite nod. He remembered all too well the mind-numbing rush of hormones he would have felt at their age in the pool with someone with the curves of Veronica Garcia. Pushing through the waist-deep water until he was beside her, he slid down the cool tile wall with his shoulders against the concrete lip of the pool.
Garcia rolled solid shoulders as if she was trying to relax. Bowen, whose army shrink had told him after the nonsense in Afghanistan that he should use his artistic talent to work though his issues, watched this woman and told himself he was thinking only of what fine art the lines of her body would produce. His artist’s eye picked up the slight unevenness in her collarbones—a car wreck, maybe. She had a tiny mole on the lobe of her left ear—something he would certainly highlight if he were drawing her face.
He blinked to clear his thoughts, covering with a smile. “How have you been?” he asked.
She glanced back and forth, dark eyes scanning the crowds. The last six inches of her black hair pooled in the water around her neck, mopping bronze shoulders when she moved.