by Marc Cameron
“That’s hard to believe,” Garcia said. She nodded at the three men on the bloody floor. Two were dead and a third was unconscious, blowing pink bubbles out a ragged gap of flesh in the bridge of his nose. The flimsy toilet stall lay smashed into pieces.
“Call Thibodaux,” Quinn groaned. “And Palmer ...”
“I will ... of course ...” Garcia’s eyes darted from the porcelain urinal to Quinn and back to the urinal again. “But I ... well ...” She looked down her nose at his belt with an impish smile. “Looks like you were a little busy when these guys jumped you. You might want to ... put away your ... pistol... .”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Somewhere in Afghanistan
CIA paramilitary officer Karen Hunt choked back a mouthful of bile as consciousness slammed into her like a kick in the head. She fought wave after endless wave of nausea, retching against something warm and coarse. Facedown, she blinked burning eyes and tried to stop the swaying motion in her head. She wondered for a moment if she might be on a boat. There was nothing around her but blackness and searing, bone-numbing pain. Rough cords bit deep into her wrists and ankles. Reality sifted back into her brain like grains of irritating sand. It took several seconds to realize she was on the back of a moving animal. The rough wooden packsaddle—and the slow, lumbering gait of the beast—sawed at the tender flesh of her belly just below her ribs.
A heavy blanket kept out not only light, but any semblance of fresh air. The sour stench of yak dung and wet wool cloyed at her throat. Sickened again, she suddenly realized her gaping mouth was pressed directly against the matted hair of the animal.
By slow degree, voices wormed their way in through the rancid blackness. She could make out the thick, phlegmatic tones of men speaking Tajik. Closely related to Persian, it was the common language of the high mountains of Central Asia. Hunt was fluent in Farsi and Pashto. Tajik was close enough she got the gist of what was going on.
Her captors were jubilant men, gloating as they recounted their recent bravery at attacking Outpost Bullwhip. It didn’t seem to bother them that a handful of ragtag Americans had killed over eighty of them. They praised fallen brothers who had died as martyrs in the holy fight, and cursed the dead Americans to roast in eternal fire.
Memories of the battle and of Lt. Nelson suddenly rushed back into Hunt’s fevered mind. She shivered when she recalled the strange little boy who loved chocolate and smiled ever so sweetly as he spoke of cutting off her head.
The yak stopped abruptly, its bony spine heaving with exaggerated breaths. Hunt tried to use the time to readjust but was strapped down too tightly. She was baggage and nothing else. Her hands and the backs of her calves, which must have extended beyond the coverage of the blanket, were numb with cold and lack of circulation. Karen found that if she strained her neck and pressed her cheek against the side of the beast, she could see a stone-covered path and a splatter of green manure beside a cloven black hoof.
Maybe she was dead and being carted off to hell by the devil himself. It would stand to reason ... if the devil spoke Tajik.
“Cut deep, my brother,” a voice said somewhere to her right. “We reach Big Headache pass by nightfall... .”
A donkey suddenly filled the air with sorrowful braying. Years before, when Karen had first visited the mountains of the Hindu Kush, she’d seen a string of forlorn pack animals with their nostrils slit up each side in a cruel gash. Her father had explained the men who traveled with their pack trains in the highest passes often cut their animals like this. They believed it would help the beasts draw more air in this place they called the Roof of the World.
Karen groaned when the yak lurched forward again, stumbling into a bone-jarring gait. The air grew colder as they climbed and she found herself grateful for the musky layer of warm air that surrounded the animal under the coarse blanket.
When the trail became particularly steep and the yak slowed to catch its breath or pick sure footing, the man walking behind let fly a stream of oaths and curses. His heavy stick struck Karen in the spine as often as it did the yak.
Unfazed, the weary animal continued on, plodding forward at exactly the same gate as before. It had been beaten many times before. She knew her beatings were just beginning.
An eternity later, the yak stopped again, this time on command. Karen strained her ears as shuffling footsteps approached. She heard the thump and scratch of fingers manipulating the cords on the packsaddle.
A sudden blast of light and cold washed over her as the covering was jerked away.
Rough hands tore at the ropes across her back and thighs. At first she thought they’d stopped to give her a break, but one look at these men told her they were not the sort to waste time giving her a pit stop. They’d only paused along the scant excuse for a mountain trial to readjust the saddles before starting a major uphill push.
Towering walls of craggy stone rose into the gray sky. The thin ribbon of trail ahead, wet with heavy fog, wound its way upward disappearing into the same clouds.
Gray sky, gray rock, gray void.
Hunt squinted at the silhouette in a black turban towering over her. The smell of the yak was suddenly a bittersweet memory compared to the foul stench of the man. Only hours before, in the relative safety of Camp Bullwhip, she had joked about the “sweaty-outhouse” smell of insurgents. Now, it made her want to vomit.
As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the light, she could make out the raw, peeling face of her yak driver. He’d been badly burned and wore a rancid bandage that looped over his head and under his chin. The sickening smell came from some form of infection as much as his lack of hygiene. Karen guessed him to be in his late twenties, but he was already missing most of his top teeth.
“Tik-brik!” he commanded again in what she realized was English. He wanted her to take a break.
He raised a robed arm and pointed at an outcropping of rocks behind them, along the narrow excuse for a trail. To their right, gray stone rose up for thousands of feet. To their left, the thin band of rubble that passed for a path fell away into a gray nothingness filled with fog and the crash of a river far below.
“You go!” the man ordered again. He carried a roll of pink toilet paper on a leather cord draped over his shoulder. It was a sort of status symbol in a land where many still used a handful of stones to cleanse themselves.
He pointed with his Kalashnikov and tapped the toilet paper with the other hand to get his point across.
The yak heaved a shuddering sigh, relieved to be rid of its load. Hunt began to shiver uncontrollably, blinking to keep her balance on the narrow bit of rock and loose debris. They’d trained her for so many different scenarios back at Camp Perry—but being strapped to a packsaddle wasn’t one of them.
She pointed at the toilet paper with a trembling finger. The man shook his head emphatically and shoved her, pointing his rifle at a pile of rocks that was presumably supposed to serve as her outhouse.
There were other men up ahead along the trail with a dozen other yaks and donkeys. Some of the pack animals bristled with guns; others had tarped loads she couldn’t identify. The fog and the way the trail curved made it impossible to see more than twenty meters in either direction. She assumed there were even more men around the corner. The ones she could see were similarly dressed to her toilet-paper-wearing tormentor and, she had no doubt, smelled just as disgusting. They ignored her as if she wasn’t there, tending to their animals or weapons.
“You make fast!” the blistered insurgent barked as Karen picked her way around the head-high rock pile fifteen feet away. She expected him to follow her, but was relieved when he stayed at his yak.
She had no idea when they’d give her another chance so Karen took the opportunity to try and relieve herself. Her time at Camp Perry—and other, less well-known sites—had trained most of the shyness out of her. More times than she cared to remember, she and the other students had been made to squat on a raised platform with a simple hole cut in the center to
“do their business.” Such acts had the effect of either stripping away hang-ups about privacy or pressing them so far back into the psyche that they were bound to cause some sort of mental illness in the future. No matter how many times a moderately well-adjusted woman pooped on a tower in front of fifteen classmates, such a delicate act would always be difficult with hateful men standing a few meters away.
Instead of resorting to stones, she ripped off the hip pocket of her BDU pants to clean herself. It was then she realized her captors hadn’t done a very good job of searching her.
Folded in her back pocket, sealed in a clear plastic pouch, was a rayon scarf with an American flag printed on the back. On the other side were printed instructions in six of the local languages—Pashto, Arabic, Farsi, Tajik, and Dari—advising the bearer of the scarf that they were entitled to a handsome reward if they assisted the American who owned it. It was her blood chit, a token to the local populace that she was worth more alive than dead.
Karen searched the other pockets in her baggy BDU pants until she found the stub of an eyebrow pencil. Praising herself for a shred of female vanity, she scratched out a hastily planned message.
“Make fast!” her captor chided again, moving close, but not coming around the rocks. It sounded like “mekfus .”
“I’m done,” she said in Tajik, hoping the man would revert to his native language. “Just cleaning.”
She weighted the scarf down with a heavy rock so it wouldn’t blow away, but left the bulk of it to flutter in the mountain breeze.
Hitching up her pants, she stumbled quickly around the rocks, working her way back along the edge of the trail before the stinking yak beater could come around and see her message blowing in the wind.
She climbed back on the yak without being told, biting her lip as her captor lashed down the heavy blanket.
She’d heard stories from local women about slavers. But they mostly preyed on young girls. Hunt was dressed in an American military uniform. That would surely make her worth something to someone. She supposed that was why she was still alive.
She shivered, despite the sickening warmth of the yak, and wondered which would be worse, getting her head cut off or living the rest of her life as someone’s slave. All she could do now was pray that they were the last in the pack train and someone friendly—or at least greedy—would find her note.
FRIDAY
September 29
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mt. Vernon, Virginia
Thibodaux’s BMW rested on its center stand in front of an eighteenth-century redbrick two-story. Quinn estimated the lot to be over five acres, much of that taken up by a fenced Japanese garden, complete with a gurgling stream, wooden footbridge, and stone Shinto torii gates. The nearest home was over a hundred yards away on either side. Thick hedges gave the grounds an added layer of privacy. Lofty oaks and huge silver sycamores threw the driveway into a near constant blanket of cool shade.
A beaked warhorse, the motorcycle was aggressive even in its idleness, coiled as if in anticipation of violent action. Quinn couldn’t help but think it looked lonely, though, without his bike next to it. A few feet away, nearer the house’s forest-green front door, was a Ducati 848 EVO painted a deep blood red. Thibodaux said it was the color of a Bourbon Street whore’s fingernails, but he kept that between himself and Jericho. Shorter and more compact than the BMW, the Ducati was a superbike—with a race fairing and a stock hundred-and-forty-horse Testastretta engine. With its pointed, upthrust sport-bike tail and humped gas tank, it looked like an angry red wasp. Like its owner, the Ducati was graceful, utilitarian, and dangerous.
Without a bike, Quinn had no reason to wear his riding gear. The black Transit jacket, leather pants, stiff Sidi riding boots, kangaroo-hide gloves, and Arai helmet lay in a forlorn pile near Thibodaux’s GS. He wore faded blue jeans, Rockport chukkas, and a gray Under Armour T-shirt that kept him cool in the warm fall weather. Palmer had promised to get him another bike as soon as possible—but it wasn’t happening quite soon enough to suit Quinn.
He busied himself by sitting on the curb and beating himself up over his divorce and prolonged separation from his daughter.
“Tell me why we do this again,” he said, his voice glum.
“ ’Cause we’re good at it?” Thibodaux shrugged massive, rounded shoulders as he did a pushup in the gravel to eye the oil sight glass mounted low on the BMW’s Boxer engine.
The owner of the red Ducati, Emiko Miyagi—Mrs. Miyagi to her two charges—appeared from around the corner of the house. She padded softly in the afternoon shadows of her crescent driveway as if floating an inch above the ground.
“I believe it is much more than that,” she said. “Do you know Ushirogami wo Hikareru?”
Quinn stood, giving her a polite bow. “To have the hair on the back of your neck pulled?”
“That is correct,” Miyagi said. “But the nuance is much deeper. It much more correctly means having to follow a certain path but not quite wanting to do so. Devotion to duty often involves such a feeling ... but, the blade must cut. That is what it is designed for. Is it not?”
“Now ...” She pursed her lips and stood stoically with her hands clasped in front, a sure indication she was ready to take the conversation somewhere else.
Jericho sighed again, this time in relief.
“Palmer-san believes it is better for you to remain hidden,” Miyagi said. She had the body of a gymnast, with short, powerful legs and muscular shoulders that belied the narrowness of her frame. Tan cotton slacks hugged the gentle curve of her hips. A black polo shirt hid a mysterious tattoo above her right breast, the edge of which was only partly visible, and completely unidentifiable, during their daily yoga lessons. Thibodaux thought it was some kind of snake. Jericho didn’t hazard a guess. The three had just finished a rigorous two-hour session of cardio and yoga—a great deal of which involved head-low positions like Sirsasana, a forearm headstand that Miyagi appeared to favor over all other postures. She assured Quinn it would help heal the injuries he’d received in the men’s room at Cubano’s. Amazingly, she’d been right. After a few minutes of yoga, the full-bore thumper he’d woken up with had quieted to little more than a dull throb behind his left eye.
The men had it on good authority from Win Palmer; Emiko Miyagi was not a person to bet against in a fight. Quinn had yet to see her in any sort of action other than a yoga headstand, but he’d been around enough dangerous people to know this woman had a certain degree of what soldiers called “innate badassi-tude.” She would not do to have as an enemy.
Luckily for Quinn, she seemed to like him. Poor Jacques Thibodaux was not so fortunate.
She continued her instructions. With Mrs. Miyagi, life was a lesson, and she was the teacher. “We have routed all your phones and the email accounts you provided us through a series of remote computers in vacant office space located in three states—all rented with cash.”
Her lips turned up in just the hint of a sneer at the towering Cajun. “I have routed your phones through separate locations so those who wish to harm Quinn-san do not trace him back through you... .”
“Of course you did.” Thibodaux shrugged, giving Jericho an I-told-you-so look. “No need to protect me. Just keep me from getting Quinn killed—”
“That is correct,” the stoic woman said. She handed each of them a silver thumb drive Quinn recognized as an IronKey. “Please use this when you log on to any computer. It will hide your IP address and allow you to work on the Internet anonymously. Additionally, any intelligence you are able to collect will be protected with multiple layers of security.” She glared hard at Thibodaux, turning her head to one side as if explaining something to an obstinate child. “If you input the wrong password ten times, the inside of the drive will be destroyed. There is no way to recover it.”
“Noted,” the Cajun said. He’d learned better than to argue with Miyagi.
“Now, I have something for you.” She reached for a paper shopping b
ag behind the red Ducati.
“You mean for Quinn.” Thibodaux couldn’t help himself. He was only half joking. “I don’t get anything, right?”
“Correct again,” Miyagi said with a half bow. But for the mischievous glint in her black eyes, her expression was deadpan. “Perhaps when your life is in danger by unknown foes, Palmer-san will direct me to issue you such equipment.”
Quinn couldn’t help but chuckle. Though she had the apparent wisdom of a woman twice his age, her smooth skin and youthful physical ability suggested Emiko Miyagi was no more than forty. Maybe it was because he spoke Japanese, but for some reason, this mysterious, badass warrior woman had taken to him. For whatever reason, she bristled like a porcupine when Thibodaux got near her.
She held a polished wooden box in front of her, offering it to Quinn with outstretched hands. “Generally speaking, we will be able to track your whereabouts through your secure BlackBerry.”
She motioned for him to open the gift with a half bow. The tiniest glint of excitement sparkled in her eyes.
“A Breitling Emergency,” she said, rocking slightly in satisfaction.
Thibodaux rolled his eyes, but she appeared to ignore him.
Quinn lifted the stainless-steel timepiece out of the blue velvet lining. It was heavy, thicker than three silver dollars, with two crowns on the side, one larger and located just below the other on a cylindrical metal tube built into the watch in the six o’clock position. He’d known guys in his squadron at the Air Force Academy who’d purchased such “babe-gettin’ ” watches to use as conversation pieces in bars.
“I’m assuming you could triangulate on me if I were to unscrew this and pull out the wire antenna.” He held up the watch and touched the lower crown.