Field of Fire

by Marc Cameron

  “You’re more fired up than I am,” Bowen said.

  “I doubt that, Gus Gus,” Thibodaux said. “Cause I’m thinking you can’t stomach what you saw goin’ on with the poor girls back at that titty bar and you’ve done assigned a shitload of righteous blame for all of it to Petyr the Weasel.”

  “Maybe so,” Bowen said. The big Cajun had a point. Cheekie’s was nothing more than a front for the modern slave trade. There was no gray area in an operation like that.

  “I get it,” Thibodaux said, apparently reading the deputy’s mind. “I really do. Somebody’s gettin’ a boot in the ass and it might as well be our boy, Pete. But MMA’s different than boxing, cher. There’s rules, but you don’t want to be screwin’ around in the octagon. You liable to find yourself with your jaw wired shut and eatin’ nothin’ but your damned bubble tea.”

  “I can take care of myself, Gunny,” Bowen said.

  “No doubt,” Thibodaux said, pointing to Bowen’s split lip with his chopsticks.

  Garcia heaved a heavy sigh, and when Garcia heaved a sigh, Bowen thought, it was a magnificent thing indeed.

  “You could take him,” she said. “He’s big, but he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.”

  “That ain’t the point,” Thibodaux said, slurping a big bite of noodles. “We’re grabbin’ him as soon as he shows. That’s all there is to it.”

  “If Maxim would ever let us know where the fight is supposed to be,” Bowen said. “‘An undisclosed location in Chinatown’ doesn’t give us much to work with.”

  “I gave him the number for my burner.” Garcia checked her watch. “He’s supposed to call anytime.”

  “Makes sense with an illegal fight,” Bowen said. “They call and let us know the when and where at the last minute. Nearly impossible for law enforcement to pull a raid together.”

  The waiter brought Bowen’s noodles and another can of Diet Dr. Pepper for Garcia.

  “Once he calls,” Thibodaux said, “we’ll set up outside the location and grab Petyr while he’s still on the street. You’re not even gonna see the octagon.

  Bowen tore the paper off a pair of bamboo chopsticks and pulled the bowl closer. The soup did smell good, and if he wasn’t going to get the opportunity to put some hurt on Petyr the Wolf, he might as well see what had Jacques slurping so loudly.

  The Cajun’s phone rang, causing everyone at the table to freeze.

  A wide smile spread over Thibodaux’s face as soon as he answered. “L’ami! She hasn’t killed you . . . Yeah . . . Okay . . .”

  The smile vanished from the big Marine’s face. He grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket and took notes on a napkin while he listened to the other end of the conversation. Garcia leaned in close, trying to hear, bouncing so much Bowen thought she might fall out of her chair.

  “Okay,” Thibodaux finally said. “We’ll make it happen. I got someone here who’s dyin’ to talk to you before you go . . . You bet . . . Be safe, Chair Force.” He passed the phone to Garcia who snatched it away and fled to the far corner of the noodle shop.

  Thibodaux leaned in, lowering his voice. “Turns out Petyr’s daddy is behind the gas attacks,” he said. “Or at least the chemist who’s invented the gas itself. Calls it New Archangel. Quinn has him in custody. Seems Petyr’s got a sister who might be runnin’ the whole show. She was able to give them the slip and is on her way to Anchorage now, probably with enough gas to kill a gob of people. We’re supposed to see if Petyr’s tied up with her in some Russian Nationalist group called the . . .” He consulted the notes he’d scrawled on the napkin. “The . . . Black Hundreds or some shit. They could be using Islamic State proxies.”

  “ISIS working for Russia?”

  “Not on purpose,” Thibodaux said. “You know how it is, proxy warriors are always the last to know who they’re fightin’ for.”

  Bowen looked out the window, past the smoked duck carcasses, trying to put it all together. “Petyr doesn’t fit the profile of a terrorist . . .”

  “Maybe not,” Thibodaux said. “But there’s something else. I guess his daddy’s mind is slippin’, poor bastard. Petyr could be in league with his evil sister—or the old man might have accidentally sent him some of the gas labeled as growth hormone . . .”

  “So Petyr’s got some of this New Archangel stashed away somewhere?” Bowen took a deep breath. “He was carrying that yellow duffle pretty close when he came into Cheekie’s.”

  “Odds are this dipshit doesn’t even know what he’s got.” Thibodaux said. “He’s just dammed lucky he hasn’t dug into this batch of his daddy’s stuff yet. His sis probably sent her Black Hundreds nationalists or Islamic State cutouts to retrieve the gas. It would make sense they’d try and cover it up by removing the bodies from the Dumpster.”

  “So we’re supposed to grab Petyr,” Bowen said. “Find the nerve gas his father accidently sent him, and pick up anyone else trying to get the gas . . .

  Garcia walked up. “And we need to do it fast,” she said, handing Thibodaux his phone and holding up her burner. “Maxim called. The fight goes down in some tunnel under Doyers Street—in half an hour. He’s texting me directions.”

  “The Bloody Angle?” Thibodaux closed his eye.

  “What’s the Bloody Angle?” Bowen asked.

  “Doyers Street,” Thibodaux said, drumming his fingers on the table, thinking. “Sharp angle makes it the perfect place for an ambush. Many a Chinese gangster met his death by hatchet on that street around the turn of the century. Quinn and I did some work there a couple of years ago. We heard rumors the gangs had a bunch of old escape tunnels.” He grabbed his phone and began to punch in numbers, pausing just long enough to pull Bowen’s noodles away from him, tapping on the bubble tea instead. “Looks like you get your wish.” He put the phone to his ear, winking at Garcia. “We’re gonna need our own gang to make this work. Lucky for us, I got one on speed dial.”

  Chapter 60

  Alaska

  Captain Amy Munjares, the pilot in command of the Air Force C-21, was a slender brunette who reminded Quinn a little too much of his seven-year-old daughter, Mattie. The easy swagger with which she made her way down the boarding stairs was well earned, evidenced by the fact that she’d used every inch of Ambler’s 3000-foot gravel runway to bring her airplane to a stop that didn’t involve a flaming wreckage.

  The C-21 was a military version of the sleek Learjet35 with wingtip fuel tanks and twin Garrett turbofan engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage. Capable of speeds over five hundred miles an hour, the plane would get Quinn and Beaudine back to Anchorage in a hurry. Landing one of the hot little airplanes out here was akin to racing a Ferrari down a dirt road. This particular plane was based at Scott AFB in Illinois and primarily used for medevac missions. It had been a rest day in Fairbanks on its way back from a training run to Yokota Air Base in Japan when Winfield Palmer had snagged it.

  “Captain Quinn?” Munjares said when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

  Quinn nodded. “Thanks for the pickup.”

  “Getting in was the easy part.” Munjares gave him a sly wink. “I have to find a little girl’s room and offload some coffee. We need to lighten the load any way we can if we want to make it off this little postage stamp of a runway. How many of you are there?”

  “Five.” Quinn nodded to Beaudine, Kostya Volodin, and an itinerant Public Health nurse he’d pressed into service to check over Beaudine’s wounds during the flight to Anchorage. A reluctant Clarence had gone to retrieve Polina on his four-wheeler.

  “Not a chance,” Munjares said. “I’m two thousand feet shy of the runway I need to get this bird off the ground. I can maybe carry four counting the Trooper.” She walked toward the lonely set of weathered buildings set just off the gravel apron. “Go ahead and board,” she said over her shoulder, leaving no room for argument. “Lieutenant Halsey will get you settled in.”

  “Trooper?” Beaudine said about the time a tall man in the light blue uniform shirt
and navy slacks of an Alaska State Trooper appeared at the door of the airplane. He situated a flat brimmed “Smoky the Bear” hat over close-cropped sandy hair and started down the boarding stairs.

  “Aaron Evans,” he said, hiding a grimace when he saw Beaudine’s wounds. “AST. I guess I’m your reinforcement.”

  “They just sent one of you?” Beaudine said, shaking her head in disbelief.

  “I was stationed in Kotzebue before Fairbanks so I know the folks out here on the river.” Evans smiled. “And you know what they say, ‘One riot, one trooper.’”

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Beaudine said, puffing up like she might explode. “That’s ‘One riot, one ranger.’ Don’t you be co-opting Texas expressions.”

  Trooper Evans shot a save-me glance at Quinn. “You must be Special Agent Beaudine.”

  “Well, that sucks,” Beaudine said, deflating at once. “You recognized the bitchy one as me . . .”

  “Not at all,” Evans said. “My boss told me you were injured. Before I took this job, I was a firefighter/paramedic. The powers that be asked me to ride with you and do double duty as another gun who could take care of getting you patched up. There was a whole separate aircraft with the Trooper Swat Team on their way out here, but when you sent word the Russian girl had already departed for Anchorage they got diverted down there to assist APD.”

  Quinn told the relieved Public Health nurse that she didn’t have to fly out after all and then called Clarence on his cell. He and Beaudine followed Trooper Evans back up the stairs with a dejected Kostya Volodin between them. Lieutenant Halsey, a smallish man with a crew cut, sat in the right seat of the cockpit, reading emails on a tablet computer. He welcomed them aboard and told them to sit wherever they wanted.

  The plane was set up with a single blue leather seat on either side, with the front two facing aft—back to back with the pilots—while the remaining four faced forward. The interior was comfortable but cramped, and everyone but Beaudine had to stoop to walk down the narrow aisle.

  “Change of plans on Polina,” Quinn said when the Village Police Officer finally picked up. It gnawed at his gut that he’d left Kaija’s friend out of his sight, but he chalked it up to fatigue and the hot pursuit of Volodin.

  “Good, ’cause she ain’t at her house,” Clarence said over the phone. “I’ll check at the store. Maybe she’s over there.”

  “Pick her up when you find her,” Quinn said. “Just hold her at your office. Lock her up if you have to. We’ll get another Trooper plane out here to bring her to Anchorage.”

  Clarence groused about it, but agreed.

  Trooper Evans grimaced. “I don’t envy him,” he said, helping Beaudine get Volodin buckled into the rearmost seat on the right side of the airplane. “His office is just a broken desk in a leaky warehouse and his lockup is a folding chair beside that desk. And Polina’s not the easiest woman to deal with.” He shrugged. “You work with what you got out here in the village.”

  * * *

  “Okay, ladies and gentleman,” Captain Munjares said five minutes later from the left seat of the C-21. The twin turbofan engines whined as she back-taxied the airplane down the rough gravel to the far north end of the strip getting every inch of usable runway she could. “We’re going to take off to the south. We got a little headwind so that helps. Thankfully, I burned off some fuel getting here, but full disclosure, if it looks like we’re using the road at the end of the runway to get airborne, it’s because we’re actually using the road at the end of the runway.”

  Quinn took one of the seats facing aft so he could keep an eye on Volodin, but in truth he was going to have a difficult time keeping his eyes on anything. He sank into the soft leather and felt his worn-out muscles begin to relax one by one. He imagined them looking like the frayed strands of horsehair on his daughter’s violin bow. The wounds in his thigh ached as if they were on fire, but the pain pushed back his fatigue and helped him focus on what he needed to do when they landed in Anchorage. Volodin sat mutely, staring out the window. The picture of a broken man, he seemed to have no idea where his daughter had gone, only that she was in possession of twelve canisters of New Archangel—which according to him, was enough to kill all the inhabitants of several city blocks.

  Captain Munjares spooled up the twin turbofan engines once she reached the end of the runway, causing the little jet to rumble and shake in place. Facing aft, Quinn put on a headset and turned in his seat to watch the two pilots get ready to take off. They had their intercom isolated, so he couldn’t hear them talk but watching them work together made him think they might actually get out of this alive. After going over a series of checklists and systems, Munjares craned her head to look out the front windows at the short runway one last time. She took a deep breath and gave her co-pilot a thumbs up. He nodded and returned the gesture. A moment later Quinn was thrown forward against his harness as the airplane rocketed down the gravel strip at full power.

  There comes a moment of commitment in every takeoff when the pilot has gone too far to abort without crashing beyond the end of the runway. Munjares got her bird going so fast so quickly that she was committed from the moment she started her roll. Pedal to the proverbial firewall, Munjares yanked her airplane off the runway seconds before she reached the tree line, taking them up at such an extreme angle that for a few seconds Quinn found himself suspended against his seatbelt, looking down from above Volodin and the Trooper. Beaudine was in a similar position beside him but she kept her eyes clenched shut.

  Swagger notwithstanding, the relief was evident in the young captain’s face when she turned around and gave a thumbs-up to Quinn.

  “That was some impressive flying, Captain,” Quinn said into his microphone, meaning it.

  “Thank you, sir,” Munjares shrugged off the compliment.

  “Don’t sir me,” Quinn said. “I’m a captain just like you.”

  “No, sir,” Munjares said. “You’re a captain who knows the President. He called my boss personally to get me to make this flight.”

  “It’s the mission,” Quinn said. “Not me personally.”

  “Whatever you say, sir,” Munjares said. “I’ve been told to floor it. We should touch down in Anchorage in forty-one minutes. Forgive me for saying so, but you look like you could use a nap.”

  Quinn would have laughed if it hadn’t been so true. He peeled off the headset and looked across at Beaudine. “Do you know the Special Agent in Charge of the Anchorage office?” he asked, watching the agent’s eyes flutter and flinch with exhaustion and the pain that had been unmasked by the relative comfort of the airplane.

  “Michele Pond,” Beaudine said. “She taught a couple of classes at Quantico when I was there. Nice enough for a bosslady, I guess.”

  “Let’s give her a call,” Quinn said. “According to Palmer she’s running the show in Anchorage. We need to make sure we’re all on the same page when we hit the ground.”

  Beaudine took her phone out of her pocket and shook her head. “My battery is about toast,” she said.

  Trooper Evans worked his way up the narrow aisle carrying an orange plastic box marked “Trauma Kit” and knelt on the floor in front of their seats. “You’re pretty dehydrated. How about I start a couple of IVs and get some fluids going while you make your calls,” he said. “You both look like you’re the type of people to keel over dead before you’d quit.”

  The Trooper was quick and proficient at starting IVs and had good dextrose drips going on both Quinn and Beaudine in a matter of minutes. Beaudine borrowed his phone, punched in the number for the Special Agent in Charge of the Anchorage office of the FBI, introduced herself, and then put the phone on speaker. She leaned back in her seat while she talked, allowing Trooper Evans to clean and dress the wound on her face.

  Inside the sterile interior of the airplane, Quinn was able to catch a whiff of his own odor. He gave kudos to Trooper Evans for not gagging when he started the IVs.

  A secretary answered the call, but Mi
chele Pond picked up immediately afterward, sounding gracious and accommodating—two characteristics Quinn had not found common to high-level bosses at many federal agencies, much less the FBI. It was apparent that Palmer had told the Special Agent in Charge to bring Quinn up to speed since a person in her position would not normally brief a junior agent and the representative of another agency. It was impossible to tell from her voice, but Pond sounded professional and more “mission” than “ego” oriented.

  “Kaija Merculief’s plane landed a half hour before we got your call,” Pond said. “She’s in the wind but hasn’t boarded any planes out so we think she’s still in Alaska. We’ve distributed a copy of her passport photo to everyone under the sun. APD has set up an incident command post. My office has committed all thirty-six field agents. We’re coordinating with Troopers, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and the Forest Service. All in all, I’d say we have nearly six hundred boots on the ground.”

  “What about Zolner?” Quinn asked.

  “Your Worst of the Moon is cagey,” Pond said. “We have a record of his charter from Ambler to Fairbanks. After that he disappeared.”

  “There are dozens of small planes coming and going out of Fairbanks,” Quinn said, thinking out loud.

  “And we’ll eventually find which one he took—if he’s not holed up in a Fairbanks motel with a hooker.”

  “I don’t think so, boss,” Beaudine said. “From what we’ve seen of Zolner, he’s not the type to abort a mission until he has what he came for.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” Pond said. “We have enough to worry about without some ghost sniper. DIA has heard of a shooter named Feliks Zolner but no known photos exist. We have a BOLO out on a six-foot-eight guy with blue eyes. So far it’s only netted us a federal judge who got pretty angry when APD put him face down on the sidewalk. Anyway, that’s where we are on Zolner. Our first priority is to lock down a target.”