Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  “I have your latest physical pulled up on screen right now,” Palmer said. “You’re barely even cleared for light duty.”

  “I’m fine,” Quinn said. “And more than willing to take the risk.”

  “This isn’t about you,” Palmer said. “I can’t run the risk of letting one of these bastards slip away because you’re not completely healed from your last endeavor. Don’t forget, you’re not our only asset. Now take the time to heal, and let me get back to work. That’s an order.”

  “Boss,” Quinn said, coming as close to pleading as he ever had in his life. “I know my capabilities, and I am fine. Honestly. Let me help.”

  “And how about Garcia?” Palmer asked. “She was still in a sling when I saw her a month ago. Are you telling me she’s good to go?”

  “That’s a difficult issue, sir,” Quinn said, deadpan. He reached to stroke Garcia’s hair, knowing she might never let him touch her again when she found out what he was doing.

  “Is she with you right now?”

  “That would be correct,” Quinn said, still forcing the smile. He pressed the phone to his ear to make certain none of Palmer’s gruff voice spilled out for Garcia to hear.

  “I’ll make this easy for you then,” Palmer said. “Yes or no? Has she healed enough to go back to work?”

  “I don’t believe so, sir,” Quinn said. He sighed, watching Garcia absentmindedly massage her injured shoulder. She’d unzipped her riding jacket midway down her chest, making it difficult for Quinn to concentrate. The rich black leather was a perfect contrast to her deep coffee-and-cream complexion.

  “But you’re good to go?”

  “I’m afraid so,” Quinn said.

  “Well, hell,” Palmer said. “Let me talk to her then.”

  Quinn held his breath as he passed Garcia the cellphone. He could only hear Garcia’s end of the conversation, but that half told him it was Palmer, and he was in serious trouble.

  “I’m fine, sir,” Garcia said. “Thank you for asking . . . No, sir, still some soreness, but I am definitely fit and ready to work . . . Quinn? No, he’s in good shape. I would not hesitate for a minute to put him in . . .” She gave Quinn a grinning thumbs-up. “Okay, sir.”

  She handed the phone back to Quinn.

  “Pack a bag,” Palmer said.

  “Where to?”

  “Still trying to figure that out,” Palmer said. “You interested to hear what your partner said about your fitness for duty?”

  “I heard it all, sir,” Quinn said, feeling gutted.

  “I’ll call you back with more news when I have it. The President wants to brief the nation within the hour.”

  That’s fast, Quinn thought, but didn’t say it.

  “We have damn little actionable intelligence as of yet,” Palmer said, as if reading Quinn’s mind, “but POTUS feels the American people need to know he’s ready to act the moment we have anything to go on. The markets are going to tank when the opening bell rings tomorrow, and he wants to do something to keep them from hitting bottom.”

  Quinn nodded, thinking that through. Terrorists committed violence in order to destabilize nations—to tear the underpinnings out of a culture they didn’t agree with. President Ricks had vowed not to let that happen on his watch. A retired Navy Admiral, former SEAL, and recent Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Ricks struck Quinn as a man who knew where the keys to the Tomahawks were located and wasn’t afraid to use them. He’d taken the reins from the disgraced former president Hartman Drake in what had amounted to a necessary coup just months before, vowing to lead the American people with a reasoned but firm hand until the next election. Ricks had no ambitions when it came to politics—which made it much easier for him choose to do what was necessary rather than just politically prudent.

  Quinn had met the new president only once since he’d taken office. He was tall and gave the impression of a man in uniform even when wearing a business suit. The ribbons and medals of his combat experience on land and sea were etched in the creases of his face and the gleam of his eye. The new president had stood from behind his desk in the Oval Office at that first meeting, extending his hand to Quinn and looking him up and down as he nodded in approval. “So,” he’d said. “This is my star henchman.”

  Quinn liked him from the start. He’d never considered himself a henchman, but, he supposed, it was an apt description depending on your point of view. In fact, Quinn didn’t really care what anyone called him so long as he was henching for the right side.

  Palmer’s patrician voice yanked him back to the present. The national security advisor liked to hear a certain amount of feedback when he talked on the phone, even if it was nothing more than a grunt. Quinn had been listening silently for too long.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m still here, sir,” Quinn said.

  “I’m sure I don’t have to tell you this,” Palmer said, “but we are in a shit storm of unknown dimensions here. I’ll get back with you shortly.”

  Garcia worked to put on her helmet, wincing from the pain brought on by the angle of her shoulder. At first she slapped Quinn’s hand away, like a child wanting to zip her own coat, then grudgingly accepted his help. “What did he say?” she asked as he fastened her chinstrap.

  “He said to pack.” Quinn slid the phone in his pocket and climbed aboard the BMW. He wracked his brain for an easy way to tell Garcia he’d thrown her under the bus just moments before she’d lied through her teeth to say he was okay. He planted his feet in the loose gravel and waited for Ronnie to climb on behind him—harder now with her bum shoulder.

  “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said, clenching her teeth to try and hide the fact that she was in pain.

  “Are you going to have trouble hanging on?”

  Garcia recoiled at the sympathy. “You just ride the bike. I’ll be fine.”

  Quinn nodded. “We’ve still got dinner in a couple of hours at Marx Brothers.

  “Seriously?” Garcia said. “I thought we had to pack?”

  “We also have to eat.” Quinn shrugged.

  She leaned forward as if to put her arms around him, then sat back suddenly, flipping the visor on her helmet. “Wait a minute,” she said. “He’s not calling me in, is he?”

  Quinn shrugged. “I’m not sure.” Lie number three.

  He pressed the start button, feeling the big Beemer’s familiar sideways torque as he revved the engine.

  “Good to go?” He checked in one last time via the intercom, hoping for some sense of understanding.

  “I told you I’m fine,” she snapped, in a voice that said she was anything but.

  Quinn groaned. He’d planned this day to perfection. The gorgeous ride down his favorite mountain highway, a dance recital with his daughter, and a date with Garcia to a five-star dinner at his favorite Anchorage restaurant. But the ride had been cut short by the arrest of the cop shooter, and Quinn had ended up begging his boss to bring him in like some kid asking to join a ballgame. And now he had to make the hour ride back to Anchorage wearing a very angry woman like a backpack.

  Chapter 8

  Providenya, Russia, 2:21 p.m.

  Where American military aircraft were refined pieces of sleek equipment, they were also finicky and prone to sucking up runway debris. Russian military aircraft were engineered like tractors, capable of operating in the most austere of battlefield conditions—like the Providenya airstrip.

  A steady rain pounded the drab gray buildings of the old MIG base by the time the Su 35 carrying Colonel Ruslan Rostov rolled to a stop over the gravel and decaying concrete of the Providenya military airstrip. The landing was timed to fall in between American satellite passes and across the bay from the village so as to be out of the way of prying eyes. The two-seat “trainer” version of the Sukhoi allowed Rostov to make the trip from his office in Khabarovsk to Providenya in just over two hours. The dart-like fighter jet could have traveled faster, but for the two additional external fuel tanks required to
make the 3500-kilometer journey.

  Captain Lodygin waited at the edge of the runway in an ancient black ZiL sedan, made clean and shiny by the rain. He emerged from the car wearing a gas mask and handed one to Rostov as soon as his feet touched the ground from the small boarding ladder. The colonel slipped it on over his head, feeling foolish since the pilot went about the business of fueling without one.

  “Is this still necessary,” he said, glaring through the foggy lenses at Lodygin. “Has not the rain cleared the air?”

  The captain shrugged. “Perhaps, perhaps not,” he said. “But the winds are notoriously unpredictable here between the mountains and the sea. Who knows what has happened to the residual gas . . .”

  Rostov pulled the elastic strap tight behind his bald head.

  “I assume you’ve heard about the attacks,” the captain said.

  “Attacks?” The colonel sank into the tired leather of the ZiL’s rear seat and shut the door.

  Lodygin made his way around the sedan and got in beside the colonel. His voice was hollow as it passed through the filter of the mask, like a science-fiction movie villain. It was impossible to tell behind the filter and rubber seal, but it looked as though the man was grinning. “The second attack was in Los Angeles—also on live television. Hundreds are dead from an unknown nerve agent. The way it moved so effectively through the crowds, it has to be Novo Archangelsk.”

  “So it is beginning to surface . . .” Rostov had been shouting so much over the last two hours that he could muster little more than a croak. “Volodin must have put it on the market for sale to the highest bidder.”

  “Someone has,” Lodygin said. “The formula for Novo Archangelsk is unknown to the Americans. Perhaps—”

  “It was unknown to the Americans,” Rostov said, letting his head fall back against the headrest of his seat. “It will not take them long to analyze samples in the lungs and tissue of the victims. Do the Americans have a suspect?” Rostov asked.

  Lodygin’s shrug was almost lost on his narrow shoulders. “Another high school student they believe to have been radicalized by Muslim extremists, much like the attack in Texas.”

  “More damned jihadists!” Rostov pounded the armrest. He could picture General Zhestakova inviting him on a walk—down a dead-end hallway.

  Lodygin interrupted the terrifying thought. “Perhaps these attacks will buy us some time to find Volodin while the Americans lick their wounds.”

  Rostov scoffed. “Americans are not known for sitting back while they lick their wounds. They will be hungry to punish someone—and if they find the New Archangel leads back to Russia . . .” He shook his head, unwilling to even speak the thought. He looked at the driver, a young soldier who also wore a gas mask. “Take us directly to the laboratory.”

  Lodygin’s eyes flicked back and forth, buglike behind the lenses of the mask as they rode together in silence. It occurred to Rostov that Volodin was not the only one capable of selling this new nerve gas to the highest bidder.

  * * *

  Still wearing the mask out of precaution, Rostov stalked toward Dr. Volodin’s office the way he went everywhere, leaning slightly forward at the waist, bald head pointed bulletlike at his intended target, steel-blue eyes slicing their way through everything in their path. The sociopath Lodygin’s heels clicked on the polished tile floor as he scrambled up from behind to step deftly around and give a discreet flick of his fingers. He motioned the guard to unlock the door to Volodin’s study. In point of fact, Rostov would have been put out had the Captain not stepped up in such a way.

  The private leaned in just enough to turn the knob before snapping to in a hasty salute.

  “As you were,” Rostov said over his shoulder, leaving Lodygin to shut the door behind him. The captain was four inches shorter than Rostov’s two meters. Hunched and narrow shoulders made him look smaller and caused his uniform tunic to sag in the center of his chest creating a loose pocket Rostov was surely big enough to hide a small cat. A flap of black hair was plastered across the man’s pallid forehead as if he’d never seen a photograph of Hitler. Rostov could not help but think there was a need for greasy instruments like Captain Lodygin, so long as they were kept in a different box and weren’t allowed to sully the other tools.

  “Dr. Volodin is not very tidy for a brilliant scientist,” Rostov noted, standing just inside the door and letting his eyes play around the room. The office was a mirror of the man, furnished with a fine leather couch and a desk of rich mahogany—both covered with a thin patina of the glacial dust that seemed to coat everything in eastern Siberia. Microscopes, gas burners, and glassware of every shape and size occupied a row of metal tables running down the center of room. Several dark circles discolored the tile below the tables indicating mishaps with chemicals or even small fires. Computers and other scientific instruments both large and small occupied various stations along the sidewall opposite the mahogany desk, which seemed more fitting for a world leader than a cloistered chemist.

  Three orange suits of thick rubber hung like skinned beasts on pegs along the far wall. Beside the suits, situated at waist height, ran a long window of reinforced glass looking into the pressure-sealed work lab complete with rows of stainless steel rabbit cages. But for all the cutting-edge scientific equipment, the most prominent fixtures in the room were the piles and piles of paper, some starting on the tile floor and reaching Rostov’s waist. One instrument that resembled a microwave had become home to a frayed stack of folders held together with several fat rubber bands. Volodin’s scrawled handwriting covered every scrap of paper in mathematical equations and drawings of chemical compounds. Oddly, a stack of neatly rolled woolen socks was stacked in the metal in-basket atop the doctor’s desk. A wicker laundry hamper sat off the end of the desk stacked with printouts of time sensitive e-mails and other important correspondence.

  Rostov had been to the lab before and seen firsthand the scientist’s unorthodox and erratic behaviors.

  “There is an extremely fine line between brilliance and madness,” he said, more to the stacks of paper than to Lodygin.

  “A necessary risk, I suppose,” the captain said.

  “I don’t remember it being this bad,” Rostov said, turning to shoot an accusatory look at Lodygin. This had, after all, occurred on his watch. “How long has he been living like this?”

  Lodygin shrugged, affecting the narrow-eyed, deadpan drawl that made Rostov want to put a bullet in the back of his head. “To one degree or another . . . since well before I arrived, to be sure. The man’s methods are odd, there is no disputing that, but lately it has been difficult to tell where his mind is. But his methods produce results.”

  “I’ll give you that,” Rostov nodded, beginning to pick through the piles of paper. “In a war, results are all that matters, I suppose . . .” He spun to face Lodygin. “But there are no results now that you have let him sell or destroy the entire supply of the gas!”

  “There are other scientists in Russia,” Lodygin said, still unaware of how close he was to a concrete floor and a killing chair. “Might we not find someone else to decipher the doctor’s notes and manufacture more of the New Archangel without him?”

  “Tread lightly there,” Rostov said, as he took a seat in Volodin’s chair and began to go through desk drawers. “The fewer people that know of this debacle the better. I am quite certain that I will be called back to Moscow at any moment.”

  He flipped through the contents of the lap drawer, which consisted mainly of foil gum wrappers and broken pencils, preferring to think rather than speak any further to Lodygin. The man’s voice was like some toxic resin on his ears and it made him physically ill to listen to it for long. Or perhaps, Rostov thought, he was ill because he knew what his reception would be should he not have any answers before General Zhestakova summoned him to Moscow.

  There were many in the Kremlin who had supported his idea to develop New Archangel—but in the end, all they would remember is that Rostov was in charg
e, and that he had failed.

  The failure had not come because the gas was used against the United States. That had always been the idea. Even the use of cut outs in the form of radical Islamists had been discussed at length—on the right timetable, with the necessary backstops in place to keep blame from falling into Russia’s lap.

  Captain Lodygin’s sullen voice pulled Rostov back to the present circumstance. “I’m certain there are other chemists who would do the job quietly . . . with the right . . . incentives.” The man spoke as if he relished the thought of applying said incentives, the more heavy-handed and cruel the better. “Do you wish me to begin at once?”

  Rostov ignored him, removing a stack of shipping labels from the lap drawer, and ran a thick finger down the pages as he read the carbon copies of previous labels, ignoring Captain Lodygin. “This is interesting,” he said. “Volodin has been making shipments of what he labels “Vitamin supplements” to someone named Petyr Volodin in New York City.”

  “A brother?”

  Rostov shook his head, perusing the slips. “His son.” The consummate scientist, Dr. Volodin had even kept notes on his correspondence. Shipped eight canisters BGH to Petyr, the latest entry noted. Rostov flipped through the pages of the journal until he found another entry where Volodin had written out Binary Growth Hormone, rather than BGH.

  Lodygin held up his mobile phone to show the Internet search image of a shirtless, muscular man with spiked black hair. He had a tattoo of a grinning skull on his belly and an eight-pointed star on the front of each shoulder, just above his chest.

  The captain released a poisonous sigh. Rostov couldn’t help but wish he’d put the gas mask back on to hide his hideous grin. “Petyr Volodin is a marginally successful cage fighter who trains at a gym in Brighton Beach.” Lodygin sneered. “Apparently, he calls himself Petyr the Wolf.”

  “He is Vory.” Rostov nodded at the star tattoos. “Those must be from time spent in a Russian prison,”