Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  “Very well,” Rostov sighed. “But I will shoot you myself before I face a firing squad.”

  “Do we yet utilize firing squads?” Lodygin said, dead serious.

  “I will reinstitute the practice myself for your benefit, Captain,” Rostov said, his voice rising, “if you do not keep the Americans from seeing those fish! And arrest that fool Volodin. He’s obviously responsible for the spill—and I want to know what he’s done with the rest of it.”

  Rostov consoled himself by imagining what he would do to the doddering scientist. The Kremlin had forced the man on him with assurances that he was the best in the field of chemical weapons. And so he was, but he was also a nightmare. Once a gifted scientist, Kostya Volodin had begun to slip mentally. Worse yet, he appeared to have developed a conscience over chemical weapons. Rostov had reported this, but the general had made it clear—Novo Archangelsk was important to the Kremlin and to the President himself. The responsibility of keeping Volodin working fell squarely on Rostov’s shoulders. Up to now, the greasy Lodygin had been doing just that, allowing Rostov to abstain from the gory details.

  A sudden thought sent a new crop of sweat to the colonel’s bald head. “He was not among the dead, was he?”

  Lodygin remained silent.

  Rostov screamed into the phone. “Do not dare tell me Volodin is dead!” He wiped frothy spittle off his lips with his forearm. “He must account for the missing gas.”

  “He has vanished,” Lodygin said.

  “What do you mean, vanished?” Rostov slapped the desk with his hand. This was possibly the only news worse than if the old bastard had died. “Are you saying he took the gas with him?”

  “I do not know,” Captain Lodygin said. “Corporal Myshkin informed me only moments ago. Apparently, a young woman with whom Volodin keeps frequent company has also gone missing.”

  “You are as close as can be to the end of the earth,” Rostov said through clenched teeth. “Where could they have gone? Put Myshkin on speaker.”

  A shaky voice came across the line. “I . . . am . . . Corporal Myshkin, Colonel.” If pale gray had a sound, this was it.

  “You’ve searched the entire facility?” Rostov barked. “What of his apartment?”

  “We have looked everywhere, Colonel,” the boy stammered.

  “Well, look again!”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Myshkin stammered. “The captain has placed men at his apartment, in the event he returns. . . but I fear he will not.”

  “And this girl?” Rostov snapped.

  “Yes, Colonel,” Myshkin said. “Kaija Merculief. We are watching her apartment as well. The neighbors inform us that she is a night butterfly, a prostitute, but that Dr. Volodin is her only customer. She is fifteen years of age—”

  Rostov wanted to strangle someone with the phone cord. His daughter was fifteen. “Kostya Volodin is an old man. You tell me he keeps company with a fifteen-year-old prostitute? Is that how you people amuse yourselves in Providenya?”

  “No, Colonel,” the corporal stammered. “I mean, I suppose Dr. Volodin does. In his defense, the girl looks much older than fifteen.”

  “Never mind,” Rostov said. “I do not much care how old she looks. Find Volodin. Now. I want him back in his lab with the missing gas canisters within the hour. Your life depends on this, Myshkin. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Colonel, extremely clear, but . . .” The corporal’s terrified gulp was audible over the phone. “I . . . I fear that is not possible. No one has seen the doctor since the last flight out of Providenya.”

  Rostov ran a thick hand across his face, thinking. “Are you there, Captain? Pick up the phone.”

  “Yes, Colonel,” Lodygin said, still supremely smug, as if he were perfectly happy digging his own grave. The line was clearer now that it was off speaker and the sniveling Myshkin was gone.

  Rostov took a long breath, working to relax his clenching jaw. “What does he mean, the last flight?”

  “An air charter departed Providenya one hour and ten minutes ago.”

  “Tell me what you make of this, Captain.” Rostov’s voice rose with each and every word. He had abandoned any idea of calming down. “Because from where I sit, it looks as though the doctor hoisted a flag of warning to our enemies with this debacle in the river and then slipped away with the remainder of the gas under your watch.”

  “I will locate Dr. Volodin myself,” Lodygin said, finally showing some sort of initiative beyond his inane plan to spray black paint on dead fish.

  Rostov paused before answering. “This charter flight,” Rostov said. “Did it by chance go to Murmansk? I seem to remember the old fool having family there.”

  “Not Murmansk, sir.” Captain Lodygin gave a quiet cough. “Alaska.”

  PART I

  CONSPIRE

  The meaning of my star is war.

  —RUDYARD KIPLING, Kim

  Chapter 1

  Near Anchorage, Alaska, 3:25 P.M.

  Jericho Quinn knew an ambush when he saw one. He rolled the throttle of his gunmetal gray BMW R1200GS Adventure, leaning hard over into the second of a long series of S turns. Sometimes called the two-story bike of the motorcycling world, the big GS flicked easily on the twisty road. A chilly wind bit the tiny gap of skin between the chin of his helmet and the collar of his black leather jacket. Behind him, riding pillion, Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia squeezed with strong thighs, leaning when he leaned, moving when he moved as he negotiated the narrow, seaside road. Her soft chest pressed against his back, long arms twined around his waist.

  Popping the bike upright on a straightaway, Quinn shot a glance in his side mirror and watched the grill of a dark panel van loom behind him. It came up fast, pressing aggressively on the winding two-lane that ran on the narrow ledge between mountain and ocean. Quinn bumped the throttle again and sped up, easing farther to the right and buying some distance while he considered any and all options that didn’t end with him and Garcia as twin grease spots on the asphalt or Wile E. Coyoted into the mountainside.

  The van accelerated, moving close enough that it filled Quinn’s side mirrors with nothing but chrome grill. Just as he was about to swerve onto a gravel trail that cut off toward the ocean, he got a clear view of the guy at the wheel. A kid with a thick mullet haircut pressed a cellphone to his ear while gesturing wildly with the hand that should have been reserved for steering. Quinn kept up his speed but took the shoulder instead of the trail, allowing the van to barrel past before the next blind corner. For all Quinn knew, the guy never even saw him.

  He’d ridden the Seward Highway south of Anchorage hundreds of times while growing up and knew there was a passing lane less than a mile ahead. Cell phones, sleepy drivers, drunks, turds with mullets—all made Quinn want to beat someone to death with an ax handle—but road rage had no place from the back of a motorcycle. No matter the traffic laws, the reality of physics dictated a right-of-way by tonnage if you wanted to stay alive.

  “I’m proud of you, Mango,” Garcia’s sultry voice, spiced with a hint of her Cuban heritage, came across Quinn’s Cardo Bluetooth headset as he flicked the leggy BMW back onto the highway proper. “You didn’t even mutter when you yielded to that dude.”

  Quinn poured on more speed, sending up a tornado of yellow leaves from a tiny stand of birches along the road. “I’m not much of a mutterer,” he said.

  “Yeah, well,” Ronnie chuckled, “you’re not much of a yielder either.”

  Turnagain Arm, a narrow bay off the Cook Inlet of the Pacific Ocean, lay to their right, silty waters white-capped and churning as if her tremendous tides hadn’t quite figured out which way to flow. Craggy peaks of the Chugach Mountains loomed directly to their left in a mix of rock, greenery, and waterfall that tumbled right to the shoulder of the winding road.

  Quinn moved his neck from side to side, letting the adrenaline brought on by the idiot in the van ebb—and taking the time to enjoy the ride until the next idiot barreled up behind him. He flicked the bike aroun
d a basketball-sized rock that had come to rest in his lane. Here and there, great swaths of stone and shattered trees that had been bent and torn by avalanche, fanned down the mountainside, just beginning to heal from the previous winter.

  Quinn could relate.

  It felt good to be back—back in his home state, with a badge back in his pocket, and back on his bike with the woman he loved on the seat behind him. Along with the two guns and Japanese killing dagger that hid under his black leather jacket, he bore as many scars as the avalanche chutes that cut the mountains above him. Some of the wounds were still painfully raw.

  Ronnie bumped the back of his helmet with the forehead of hers and worked in closer behind him, giving him a playful squeeze. She was a strong woman, just a few inches shorter than Quinn, with broad, athletic shoulders and strong, alluring hips. Far from fat, her Russian father had called her zaftig. Her ex husband—a man who wisely steered well clear of Quinn—described her as having a “ghetto booty.” But if the powerfully aggressive BMW reminded Quinn of The Death Dealer’s black warhorse, Veronica Dombrovski Garcia was no helpless maiden, cowering at the feet of a Conan or John Carter of Mars. She was a beautifully fierce warrior princess, clutching her own sword and flanked by pet tigers. Quinn’s seven-year-old daughter had privately confided to him that Garcia looked an awful lot like Wonder Woman.

  As strong as she was, Garcia’s squeezes were considerably weaker than they had been, absent the ferocity they’d once possessed. It was understandable. Her treatment at the hands of sadistic captors had left both shoulders badly damaged, one requiring a lengthy surgery and months of physical therapy to repair. There had been concerns that she might not be able to use that arm again at all.

  It would take a while, but Quinn was sure she’d heal, maybe only to ninety percent—but ninety percent of Ronnie Garcia was ten percent above any other woman Quinn had ever met. She pushed the limits being out of her sling, but he wasn’t really in a position to admonish her.

  Gripping the handlebars, Quinn rolled his own shoulders back and forth, feeling the tell-tale pop and grind of damaged gristle and working out some of the stiffness and after-effects of being shot by a Chinese terrorist just months earlier. Emiko Miyagi, friend and defensive tactics mentor, had done wonders with shiatsu massage and her specially designed, if incredibly painful, yoga routines. He could deal with physical pain. It was the thought of being incapacitated that haunted him.

  The official written orders from the Air Force doc at Andrews had been to take it easy. But in an off-the-record chat, he’d told Quinn to work the injury until he started to “piss it off,” and then dial back some. Riding the bike definitely pissed off his old wounds. He found the hyperawareness and attention to balance it took to negotiate the mountain roads and prosecute the tight turns on the leggy Beemer to be just what he needed to put a bow on his recovery process—both mental and physical. In any case, disobeying doctor’s orders was part of his DNA. He’d been doing it for weeks, adding dead hangs and then pull-ups to his physical therapy regimen as soon as he could make a good fist. His old man had once lamented that Jericho could burn calories just sitting in the corner and looking mean. The older he got, the less that was true, so exercise was a necessity, injured or not.

  Quinn knew he might not be a very good yielder, but he was a good healer. At nearly thirty-seven, the mending just took a little longer.

  Both he and Garcia wore beaked Arai dual-sport helmets, his gray with an airbrushed paint job of crossed war-axes on the sides, hers canary yellow. Racing gloves and full black leathers protected them against an accidental dismount and the icy crispness of an Alaska autumn. Icon Truant motorcycle boots offered protection to his ankles but allowed him the freedom of movement to run should the need arise.

  Though not a heavy woman by any stretch, Garcia was ample enough to make an extremely pleasant backrest. Her warmth seeped through Quinn’s leather jacket, bringing with it an added layer of comfort against the chill and an excited happiness that he hadn’t felt since his daughter was born.

  Garcia gave him another playful squeeze. It sent a twinge of pain through Quinn’s bruised ribs but he didn’t care. His father had often urged him to lead the kind of life that bruised ribs. Now, as an agent for the Air Force Office of Special Investigations or OSI, he’d been assigned to work directly for the President’s National Security Advisor—doing the things that needed the heavy hand of his particular skill set. He wasn’t about to let a couple of old wounds—or some jackass with a mullet—stop him from enjoying this trip with Garcia. They’d been apart for far too long, and now he’d finally gotten her to his home state.

  They’d been in Alaska for the better part of the week, going to the Musk Ox Farm and eating reindeer hotdogs in downtown Anchorage with his seven-year-old daughter Mattie. The two got along well enough that they shared whispered girl-secrets that they kept from him. To Quinn’s astonishment, even his ex-wife Kim seemed at ease with the fact he’d brought his girlfriend up to spend time with his parents—an obvious final step before any more permanent arrangement.

  The trip was never meant as a test, but if it had been, Garcia would have aced it. Every new place Quinn took her threw her into a state of childlike awe. If anything, she appeared to love Alaska even more than he did—which was saying something.

  The pavement was still clear and dry but the mountains along the Seward Highway had been dusted by snow that same morning. This “termination dust” signified the end of Alaska’s short autumn but gave the already breathtaking scenery an extra shot of beauty. Quinn couldn’t remember the last time he’d wanted to impress anyone as bad as he wanted to impress Veronica Garcia. It was a difficult endeavor considering everything they’d been through together.

  As if she knew he was thinking about her, Garcia moved even closer—if such a thing were even possible.

  Quinn absorbed it all, flicking the BMW back and forth through a maze of rocks that had tumbled onto the road on the far side of a blind curve. Like Quinn, the bike was happiest when dealing with the rough stuff.

  Garcia’s husky giggle poured through the Cardo earpiece in his helmet. “She wiggles like a sassy woman.”

  “That she does,” Quinn said, his lips pressing against the foam microphone. “But she doesn’t wiggle herself. I wiggle her.”

  “You got that right—”

  Always scanning, Quinn tensed at a sight a quarter mile up the highway, causing Garcia to stop mid-sentence.

  He could tell by the way her body moved—or stopped moving—that she saw it right after he did.

  A white Anchorage PD patrol car sat parked in a paved pullout overlooking the ocean. The driver’s door gaped open and a uniformed officer crouched behind the back bumper. He was bent over the prone body of his partner, one hand on the downed man’s chest, the other at the radio mic clipped to his lapel. A scant three hundred yards ahead on a long straightaway, a red pickup and a white Subaru sedan sped away, southbound, past the turnoff to the ski village of Girdwood.

  Quinn slowed, using his left hand to unzip his jacket and reach inside to retrieve a black leather credential case. Pulling up on a fallen officer without ID was a good way to get shot.

  The downed officer lay on his back, surrounded by shattered glass from the rear window. His eyes were open and he writhed in pain. A good sign, Quinn thought as he put his foot down to steady the bike and flipped up the visor on his helmet. A line of what could only be bullet holes stitched the side of the police car. The other officer, a younger man with the earnest look of a full-grown Cabbage Patch doll, glanced up at the sound of the approaching motorcycle. His big eyes narrowed with adrenalized intensity. He nodded at the sight of Quinn’s OSI badge and returned to his radio traffic.

  “. . . medics code red,” the officer said, calling in help for his injured partner.

  The officer’s earpiece had come unplugged and the steady voice of the dispatcher spilled out of his radio. “All units, 10-33 for 25-Bravo-2,” she said, adv
ising others on the frequency to yield to the officer’s traffic.

  The young officer continued with his description. “Two white male adults, one white female. They . . . it . . . I mean . . . the vehicle’s still going south.” His face was flushed, his voice a half an octave higher than it should have been.

  Quinn recognized the wounded officer as Greg Sizemore, a man Quinn had gone to high school with. A patch on the shoulder of his navy blue uniform identified him as an FTO or Field Training Officer, which made his partner a trainee. New or not, the rookie was doing everything right by applying pressure to an apparent gunshot wound just above Sizemore’s collar bone.

  “Are both vehicles involved?” Quinn asked, nodding toward the tiny dots that were the pickup and the Subaru as they faded into the distance around a mountain curve.

  “Only the white sedan,” Sizemore said, grimacing at the pain from his wound. “The pickup came by just before the shooting. I think the white car must have passed him. Driver and . . . front passenger are both armed. Don’t know about the girl in back.”

  Quinn felt Ronnie tap him on the shoulder. He scooted forward against the gas tank, giving her room to get off the bike. The bullet looked to have caught Sizemore just above his vest, probably destroying his collarbone. Blood seeped up through the rookie’s clenched fingers but he appeared to have it stopped until an ambulance arrived. Ronnie peeled off her helmet, shaking out long black hair, and bent to help.

  “You good for me to go get ’em, bud?” Quinn asked, looking at the downed officer.

  “Hell, yes,” Sizemore grunted, stifling a cough. “Sons of bitches shot me. Tear ’em up.”