by Marc Cameron
“I told you, l’ami,” Thibodaux scoffed. “We got lucky. This Georgetown doctor Nazeer Badeeb is also licensed to practice medicine in Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio, and Texas. You remember Timmons and Gerard?”
“The CIA shooters?” Quinn said, mesmerized as Miyagi tapped a hair-like needle in the top of his foot, numbing the pain as surely as a local anesthetic.
“The very same,” the Cajun said. “Your new CIA friend, Agent Hunt, had the forethought to check their medical records. Turns out Nazeer Badeeb was each boy’s pediatrician while they were in their early teens. He helped with the adoption exams.”
Thibodaux pulled a notebook from the breast pocket of his black Nomex tactical shirt and flipped through the pages with fat thumbs.
“Badeeb immigrated legally back in 1980. Records show his first wife and two kids were killed in a dustup along the Paki border between American operatives and Russian forces during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Those that know him say he blames the U.S. for the deaths—though he didn’t divulge that little factoid when he was trying for his citizenship.”
“Keep your friends close and your enemies closer... .” Quinn mused. He got to his feet with a groan, feeling ten years older than he had only a week before. “So, have you picked him up?”
“Nope,” Thibodaux said. “Palmer put a team on his clinic, but he hasn’t showed. He’s married again, this time to a Chinese Muslim gal named Li Huang. She’s supposed to have a crash pad in Chinatown.”
“In D.C.?”
“Nope.” Thibodaux shook his head. “New York. And there’ve been a few more developments while you were off in Bootystan with your new girlfriends. They’ve announced the location of the VP’s daughter’s wedding. She’s getting married off the south end of Manhattan on Governors Island at five o’clock.”
“Tonight?” Quinn glanced at his wrist, remembering the Breitling had been reduced to molten bits by the Hellfire missile strike. “What time is it now?”
“Ten past eleven in the morning,” Mrs. Miyagi said. She returned the vial of antiseptic to the cargo pocket of her BDU pants and took out a white pill, handing it to Quinn.
“Provigil,” she said.
“Thank you.” Quinn nodded, popping the pill dry. Provigil was a drug the military sometimes gave pilots to keep them awake during long missions. It didn’t cause the jitters like caffeine or amphetamines and there was no crash when it wore off. It had yet to be determined if there were any negative long-term effects. After what Quinn had just been through, he didn’t care. He had to keep moving. Sleep was not an option.
“Governors Island has to be the target,” Quinn said. “Can we have them postpone it?”
Thibodaux shook his head. “Not a chance in hell. According to Palmer, the vice president and Mrs. Hughes feel safe enough since they didn’t release the location to the public until a day ago.”
“But many people must have already known,” Mrs. Miyagi mused.
“And two can keep a secret,” Jacques said. “If one of them is dead... .”
“I don’t like it.” Quinn used Mrs. Miyagi’s shoulder to get to his feet. “We have to keep the president away at least.”
“Palmer-san has advised him just so,” Miyagi said. “But the president does not want to appear weak in front of the entire world. He has yet to decide what he will do.”
“Secret Service has tripled the number of agents on-site. They’re sweeping with Explosive Detection K9s and X-raying everything from the fruit baskets to wedding gifts.”
Quinn nodded, his brain in overdrive. If he was a terrorist, he’d pick the wedding.
Killing so many world leaders along with the president would not only throw world economic markets into a tailspin, it would prove that the United States was touchable—weak.
The wedding was as ripe a target as they came. Still, the politicians were just that—politicians—and they were wont to do what politicians did while they depended on him to look after the dirty little details like keeping them alive.
Suddenly heady with the situation, Quinn looked down at Miyagi and smiled. She and Thibodaux had taken care of things with such explosive force and precision, he’d forgotten to thank them.
“I ...” He took a deep breath, feeling energy flow into his system. The focusing effects of the Provigil were coming at him fast. “You both ...”
Miyagi put the tip of her finger to his lips to shush him. Apart from picking at the bone of his butchered toe, it was the tenderest thing he’d ever seen her do.
“Warriors do not speak of thanks. We do our duty.” She arched a thin black eyebrow. “Is that not so, Thibodaux-san?”
“I expect it is.” The Cajun shrugged.
“Very good.” She led Quinn toward the door. “Are you well enough to ride?”
Quinn flexed his shoulders, amazed at how good he felt. He took a deep breath and nodded. “As a matter of fact I am.”
“Excellent,” she said. “We haven’t much time. I have already spoken to Palmer. Your bikes will be waiting for you in New York.”
Quinn looked up. “The GS is fixed?”
“You will use my Ducati.” Miyagi shook her head. “But see that it comes back in one piece.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Washington
Hartman Drake turned the wheel of his black BMW 7 Series sedan and smiled as the luxurious vehicle accelerated up the GW Parkway toward Arlington Cemetery. He glanced at the navy-blue Suburban in his rearview mirror. Considering his past, it was difficult to keep a stupid grin off his face. As a United States Congressman, Drake wouldn’t normally have rated a 24-7 security detail. But as the new speaker of the House, not to mention the leader of a public crusade against some extremely powerful—and now embarrassed—men and women within the government, he got dozens of threatening phone calls and hundreds of hateful emails each day. Civil liberties groups rallied outside the Rayburn House Office Building. Dark figures loitered in the shadows across Independence Avenue, photographing him as he came and went. Someone had even gone so far as to throw a brick through the bay window of his home in a gated community in Vienna, Virginia.
The Capitol Police had decided it would be prudent to assign a four-man detail.
Kathleen, sitting in the passenger seat, gushed over the fact that her husband warranted protection. She’d always been a little heady with power and prestige—ever since he’d been the editor of the college newspaper at Arizona State. Dumber than the box of proverbial rocks, she’d been fiercely devoted to him from the moment he got her into a game at the Sun Devil Stadium with his press pass.
He looked over at her with a contained smile. She was three years his junior, and her pale skin showed none of the pressures and anxieties of leadership that lined his brow like a washboard. He had to admit she was attractive in a stolid, hackneyed sort of way. She spent an hour on the treadmill every day, watched what she ate, and doted on him as though he were the last man in the world. Even worse, she believed every word that came out of his mouth. Men and women alike would often tell him how lucky he was to have such a wife—beautiful and devoted.
They passed under the gray shadows of the Memorial Bridge; Lincoln sat on his throne to the left. Thousands of dead lay in Arlington Cemetery to the right. Drake passed a rusted Ford pickup belching blue smoke, and then eased back into the right lane. He shot a soft look at his wife. She rarely ever said no to him—but even steak and eggs for breakfast got tiresome after a while.
He eased back into the left lane.
“I’m excited to spend some time in New York,” she said, hands folded in the lap of her peach-colored dress. It suited her complexion and overly sweet temperament.
“Seems like a bad time to me,” he said. “I should swing by the office and pick up some papers. We’re running early and I’ll only be a minute.”
“Hart,” she said sighed. “I’m so proud of what you’re doing, but can’t you take this one night off and just enjoy the wedding? There are go
ing to be so many important people there.”
“This move that you and I are taking,” he said, looking across at her. “It’s the single biggest thing we’ve ever done, Kathleen.” He’d learned a long time before that if he wanted her buy in to something, he just had to talk about it as if it was a joint project between the two of them. He studied the tiny lines around her trusting brown eyes and wondered if she’d feel the same way if she knew how he felt about Julia Sanborn’s legs.
He didn’t love either one, but at least Julia was exciting. Kathleen was not a bad person; she was just boring. He’d admitted that to himself shortly after they’d met in college. But her father had the contacts in local politics to help him get started. Kathleen was far from homely and had produced two strong, healthy sons. She was, more than anything, comfortable.
His heart fluttered in his chest as he they shot past the sign announcing Reagan National Airport ahead. The Potomac River stretched off to their left. To the right was the Roaches Run Wildlife Sanctuary lagoon, a long tidal pond built when the city fathers had been dredging gravel to construct the Pentagon. The sight of it sent a shiver down both legs.
Pressing on the accelerator, he looked at his wife again, studying the tiny hairs on the nape of her neck. She didn’t deserve the lot he’d dealt her... .
“Hart, why are you driving so fast?” she said, wringing her hands. “You’re scaring me.”
“I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said. “My mind was elsewhere... .”
He clutched the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white.
“Shit!” he spat, swerving into the right lane to miss a slowing furniture truck.
Kathleen was thrown sideways by the move. “Hart, slow down!”
“I can’t,” he said through clenched teeth. “The brakes are gone.”
Behind them, the dark blue Suburban wove in and out of traffic, struggling to keep up. A line of traffic lay a quarter mile ahead, slowing almost to a standstill. Drake cut the wheel sharply to the right, skidding the BMW sideways. He jumped the curb and careened down the grassy embankment. Drake aimed the long black sedan between the largest trees. Thick brush scraped and clawed at the sides of the car. Saplings the size of Drake’s wrist slammed at the undercarriage, hewn down by the momentum.
They hit a small rise before the water, launching them into the air in a long, agonizing arc. The BMW hit the water in the vehicular version of a belly flop, slamming Drake and his wife hard against leather seats. Air bags deployed from the dash as well as the sides, pinning them backward.
Stunned by the sudden impact of the fall, Drake struggled to make sense of up and down. Frigid green water rushed into the car. The half-deflated air bag confused him and made it difficult to locate his seat belt. Pockets of air hissed and gurgled as the car settled with astonishing speed toward the bottom of the gravel lagoon. He knew he needed to get free, but he couldn’t get the stupid air bag out of his face. He hadn’t counted on the air bag. He had a job to complete... .
Water covered his chin and then his mouth. In a moment of panic, he screamed for Kathleen, blowing a volley of bubbles and wasting precious air as the lagoon invaded the last bit of space inside the sedan.
As always, she heard his call and came to him.
Fighting her way past the flaccid air bag, Kathleen Drake reached for her husband’s lap and popped loose his seat belt. The eerie glow of the dash lights played off her auburn hair as it floated around her face. She tugged at his arm, pulling him toward her open door and safety.
On the way out, he spotted the shimmering silver bubble of an air pocket in the corner of the car, near the sun visor. Holding tight to her hand, he pushed upward, gasping for a lungful of air before ducking back down beside her at the door. Her tugging grew more frantic as he braced his feet on the car’s frame, holding her down.
The water wasn’t more than seven or eight feet deep and the surface beckoned.
He drew her close, smiling in the near darkness. She smiled back, trusting him completely. Grabbing a handful of hair, he slammed her forehead over and over against the exposed doorpost, before shoving her back into the passenger seat. A flurry of bubbles erupted from her mouth, forming a silent O of shock and terror.
Lungs on fire, Drake held tight to the frame of the car. Kathleen tried to claw her way past, eyes wide, pleading. He kicked brutally at her face and chest, forcing her to stay inside the car. A thin trickle of bubbles streamed from the corner of her gaping mouth as her struggles ceased. He ducked back inside for one last frantic look. She could not survive now that she knew.
He had nothing to worry about. She floated peacefully, arms outstretched as if to embrace him. A thin trickle of blood trailed from her broken nose in the murky green water. Brown eyes gaped open, staring directly at him as if they’d always known his secrets.
Drake broke the surface gasping and choking. Two members of his protective detail had worked their way down to the water’s edge and stripped off shoes and suit jackets to dive in after him.
“Kathleen!” he sputtered and croaked in what was hardly an act as he tried to catch his breath.
A black agent named Norton pulled him into the shallows and passed him off to a partner before sloshing into deeper water to go after the woman they called “The Missus.”
“We’ll get her out, sir,” he yelled over his shoulder before diving into the blossoming circle of bubbles.
The athletic young officer surfaced a short time later with Kathleen in tow.
Sirens wailed forlornly in the distance as Drake stood on the bank shivering with someone else’s suit coat over his shoulders. The four members of his Secret Service detail worked frantically to revive the sodden lump of flesh that had been his wife of over twenty years.
For one terrifying moment he thought Norton might succeed in bringing her around. In the end, the earnest officer looked up in between rescue breaths and gave a solemn shake of his head. Water dripped from the end of his nose. He kept up his efforts but knew it was over.
Drake fell back against the grassy bank, landing on the seat of his pants. His protection detail would assume he’d collapsed out of grief for his dead wife. Instead, a wave of nauseating relief flooded his shivering body. Events had fallen perfectly into place. Driving off the road had been more exhilarating than he’d imagined. As an added bonus, he’d lost his dear wife. No one would question him too deeply about why he’d lost control of the car.
He would now be seen not only the leader in a crusade against those who would harm the United States, but a widower whose beloved companion had been murdered by those very subversives he had in his sights. The naysayers in the military and elsewhere would be silent now or risk the wrath of public opinion.
Hartman Drake took a deep breath and willed his body to calm. He scanned the trees on the side of the bank, wishing his mentor was there, to see how well he’d done. He thought of his youth and the man who had seen his genius and saved him from a life of starvation—a man who had taught him the one true way and brought him to America for a mission far greater than he’d comprehended at the time. Dr. Nazeer Badeeb, his longtime friend.
Their impossible plan was finally coming to pass. The president and vice president would not survive the evening. As the newly elected speaker of the House of Representatives, Drake was poised to take the reins.
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
Laurel, Maryland
Julia Sanborn held her rhinestone-encrusted Coach purse under her arm. She pressed the key fob to unlock her car door with one hand while she talked to her sister on the cell phone with the other. The gray street outside her apartment was deserted. Her heavy heels echoed on the grimy pavement as she sashayed out from her second-story walk-up like she owned the world. Spits of rain clung in tiny droplets to the shimmering black of her pixie-cut hair.
The fob didn’t work, so she unlocked the Mitsubishi sedan with the key.
“I know, I know,” Sanborn yelled into the cell phone as if she was dea
f. “I got bills to pay, you know. He’ll just have to, like, get that through his head or else I’ll show him I mean business... .”
She tossed the handbag into the passenger seat and hiked up her short skirt to maneuver her legs in behind the wheel. “I know... . I know... .”
She stuck the key in the ignition and turned it, but nothing happened. She kept talking while she tried again. “Can you believe it? I mean, like, I have the pictures to prove it... . No... . Of course I’m naked in the pictures... . Of course we are. Yeppers... . I know, really... . I’m tellin’ you, he’s, like, some kind of stud... . No, you can’t see the pictures. I told you, I’m naked too... .”
She turned the key. Again, nothing happened.
“Listen, sis, I’m gonna have to, like, call you back. Can you believe this? My damn car won’t start. Yeah, really, I’ll just get him to buy me a new one.”
Sanborn ended the call and put the phone on the seat beside her purse. She tried the key one more time. Not even a click. “Come on.” She smacked the steering wheel with both hands. “Why does the bad shit always have to happen to me?”
At that moment, the dark form of Mujaheed Beg rose up from the backseat and looped a thin twisted cord around the delicate skin of Sanborn’s throat.
“Because you are greedy, my dear,” he grunted as he fell backward. The cord crossed behind her neck, terminating in two hardwood handles he used to jerk it tight.
Sanborn’s eyes slammed wide in the rearview mirror. Gaudy fingernails clawed frantically at the biting twine.
Beg would have used the piano wire, but he knew from experience that such material would cut through the woman’s flesh like soft cheese. With so much yet to do, this was no time to find himself awash in blood inside the close confines of the car.