Act of Terror (33 page)

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Authors: Marc Cameron

BOOK: Act of Terror
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C
HAPTER
S
IXTY-NINE
“C
an you put her down in the ball field?” Quinn said into his headset. Thibodaux sat across from him, strapped in to his seat forward of the cargo bay on V22 Osprey.
The pilot, a balding man with smiling blue eyes, turned to glance over the shoulder of his green Nomex flight suit. “I can set her down in the middle of Times Square if you want me to.” His name was Jared Smedley, an Air Force Academy squadron mate of Quinn's. Smeds had gone on to flight training after the academy, graduating at the top of every class he took. He'd been a flight instructor for the last three years and had been brought in from the Eighth Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to fly overwatch and rescue during the wedding. He gave a thumbs-up to his copilot, a waif of a girl with a blond ponytail hanging out below her flight helmet. She returned the gesture.
He had the swaggering confidence of a pilot and the skill to back it up. Quinn had always found it impossible not to like the man.
Capable of straight or vertical flight, Smedley's aircraft, the tilt-rotor V22, made insertion possible in areas like Manhattan and Governors Island.
Quinn's Bluetooth earbud chirped. He moved the boom mike of his headset away and tapped the device. It was Palmer.
“Homeland Security facial recognition just got a hit on an NYPD security camera on Mott Street. Looks like the doctor is buying cigarettes at a newsstand. I'm sending a still to your phone now.”
Quinn took the BlackBerry off his belt.
“Who's the guy with him?” he asked, turning the screen to show Thibodaux.
“Look at that mop,” Thibodaux scoffed. “He's Elvis's evil twin.”
“Don't know,” Palmer said, an edge to his voice that Quinn could feel. “We have intel that Badeeb's wife is hiding out in a flophouse off Bowery. Looks like they're heading to meet up with her.”
“Roger that,” Quinn said. “We're about to touch down at a ball field in lower Manhattan. It'll take us about ten minutes to get there on the bikes—”
Dust and leaves flew outside the windows as the huge rotors began to lower the Osprey onto the center of the baseball diamond. One of the two crewmen in the back told them to stand by and activated the lowering mechanism on the ramp at the rear of the bird, giving them a quick exit with their bikes.
Quinn stood from his seat along the bulkhead, working to release the straps on Mrs. Miyagi's candy-apple-red Ducati 848.
“Don't forget, Jericho,” Palmer said. “We need to take Badeeb and his wife alive. See who the other guy is. Do me a favor and try to keep from killing him.”
“If at all possible, sir.” Quinn nodded.
“Make damned certain it is possible,” Palmer said. “I'm pretty sure the president will go against my advice and come to the wedding no matter what the Secret Service or I say. He keeps reminding me that the terrorists have won if they get to dictate where we do and do not go... .” There was a sudden blip on the phone—another call. “Hang on a minute... .”
Quinn and Thibodaux sat, geared up and ready, on their bikes. The heavy rear ramp lowered the last few inches with an agonized hydraulic whine. Dust and litter swirled into the back of the aircraft as Palmer came back on the line.
“Jericho? You still there?” His voice was breathless, heavy.
“I am,” Quinn said, feeling a rise in the pit of his stomach.
“Jericho,” Palmer said. “It's about Garcia.”
C
HAPTER
S
EVENTY
T
ara Doyle wiped the airmen's blood off her hands and threw the wad of paper towels in the trashcan. A swatch of red painted the chest of her flight suit and the V of her neck. She didn't bother with that. The smell of blood helped her focus on the matters at hand.
Her entire life, at least from the time she was nine years old, had been lived for the next few hours. The years of study, the decades of pretending to love her adopted family, to care for this country of dogs—it all led up to her actions this one night.
“I will cut the throat of the whore that is the United States of America,” she chuckled out loud to the cavernous hangar. “With one of her very best airplanes ...”
Walking toward her jet, she had a fleeting thought of Jimmy. He'd been a toddler when her American parents had taken him in from the Indian reservation in Montana, too young to know she too was adopted. A good confidant—he'd caught her crying on so many occasions and come in to console her without once asking her why. She shook the thought from her mind. None of that mattered now. He was one of them, nothing more than a means to an end, someone to vouch for her citizenship and make her background more believable. She had to remind herself of that. Jimmy Doyle deserved to die like the rest of them—
 
 
“Major Tara Doyle, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!” A muscular Air Force OSI agent wearing khaki 5.11 pants and a black ballistic raid vest stepped from behind the wheels of a nearby F-22 Raptor, Sig Sauer pistol at high ready.
Doyle spun, fillet knife in hand, but Ronnie Garcia rose up from her hiding spot behind the aircraft tug and hit her in the face with a crescent wrench.
The queen of West Texas bitches fell like a sack of wet sand. Garcia winced from the exertion, gritting her teeth against the searing pain in her back.
Moments later, the brightly lit hangar swarmed with OSI agents in black vests and thigh holsters. Everyone present had personally worked with Quinn and, for one reason or another, had his complete trust.
“We need to get a copy of the weapons load-out,” Garcia shouted. “Whoever signed for this payload of bombs is in this along with Doyle.”
“Got two dead in the back room,” an agent who'd been a year behind Quinn in the Academy yelled from across the open hangar. He stood at the door wearing a pair of blue nitrile gloves. “They got their pants around their ankles and their throats cut from ear to ear.” The agent shook his head. “It's a mess.”
Garcia, still holding the wrench, looked down at the smear of fresh blood across the front of Doyle's flight suit. “You really are a bitch,” she said.
One of the agents, a tan Colorado native named Judson who'd spent time in Iraq with Quinn, knelt to roll a moaning Doyle onto her stomach so he could handcuff her. He looked up at Garcia as he closed the cuffs with a ratcheting zip.
“You better sit down,” he said. “You look pretty pale.”
Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea to come along considering what she'd been through. But she was just stubborn enough that whatever the cost, she wasn't about to let a couple of holes in her back keep her away from something this big. In truth, Garcia thought she might be sick to her stomach at any moment.
“I got her,” a beefy man with mussed blond hair said as he took off his navy-blue sports coat and draped it over Garcia's shoulders. The sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up to reveal a black octopus tattoo on his forearm. “Let's get you back to the hospital, young lady. My big brother would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you.”
Garcia swayed on her feet, slumping into his arms.
Two Quinns ... it was almost too much to fathom.
C
HAPTER
S
EVENTY-ONE
Q
uinn gunned the Ducati, shooting over the lip of the Osprey's metal ramp. As he was accustomed to the longer travel in the GS's suspension, the 848 jarred his fillings, landing with a stiff thud on the hard-packed soil of the ball field. His spinning tire gained traction almost instantly. Thibodaux, not to be outdone, revved his big GS Adventure, coming up even with Quinn on his right.
Palmer had briefed Quinn about the raid on the F-22 hangar at Langley. It calmed him some that Bo had been there to help look after Garcia.
That left the loose ends of Badeeb and his unknown acquaintance to clean up.
“We're en route to Chinatown now.” Linked to Palmer via encrypted cellular, Quinn spoke into the mike inside his helmet.
“Outstanding,” Palmer said. “The problem is, with this sleeper jet jockey out of the picture, the president is determined to attend the wedding.”
“That's not a good idea, sir,” Quinn said, splitting traffic to cut between two lanes packed full of bumper to bumper yellow cabs. “There has to be more to this than a single pilot. What about the brother?”
“He's clean. Got several extended relatives from the reservation in Montana who vouch for him. Even has a couple of baby pictures and a footprint on his hospital birth record.”
“Still,” Quinn said, downshifting to shoot around a moving van. “It doesn't pass the smell test. A target as ripe as that wedding has to have two shooters pointed at it.”
“I'm painfully aware of that,” Palmer said. “I even used your little ditty on the boss—‘see one, think two.' I'm afraid he remains unconvinced.”
Quinn swerved sharply, countersteering around a puttering delivery boy whose bicycle was piled head high with takeout boxes from a Chinese restaurant.
“Understood. We'll be at the newsstand where Badeeb bought cigarettes in less than a minute. I can already smell the fish shops... . I'll call you when we have something.”
“Tally ho, beb,” Thibodaux's voice came across Quinn's earpiece, as they turned the bikes out of the honking, chaotic traffic of Bowery and into the cramped and twisting alley of Doyers Street. Gaudily painted green, yellow, and red brick buildings with rusted, zigzagging fire escapes rose up on either side of the narrow pavement, giving the place a kaleidoscope-tunnel-like atmosphere.
“See the guy with the cigarette under the neon sign?” Jacques pointed with his chin as he rode. “He look like our Pakistani doc to you?”
“Roger that,” Quinn said. His eye caught the movement of another dark figure striding purposefully through the door of a yellow six-story brick halfway down the block. He only caught a glimpse, but the upswept pompadour of black hair and the sure movements told Quinn this was the Evil Elvis in the photograph.
Badeeb stood in the grimy shadows under the tattered sign of the hand-pulled noodle shop. Even in the dim light, his oval face shone with perspiration. Twin black pebbles stared back from an enveloping haze of smoke from the cigarette that hung from his lips. He seemed oblivious to a couple of motorcycles, intent instead on the man who'd just disappeared into the yellow building.
“You got Badeeb?” Quinn gave an almost imperceptible nod of his helmet.
“Matter of fact I do, beb.” Thibodaux rolled on the gas and tore down the narrow street. Just before he reached Badeeb, he extended his left arm like a jousting knight—directly at the startled doctor.
The cigarette fell from Badeeb's lips a split second before the armored knuckles of the Cajun's huge right glove obliterated his nose.
Quinn grabbed a handful of front brake, squeezed until he felt the back end lighten, then pushed forward with his legs to bring the bike onto its front wheel in a sort of reverse wheelie known as a
stoppie
. Rolling on the front wheel, Quinn used his body weight to throw the back wheel around, executing a snap hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It was a move he'd practiced with his brother hundreds of times on a slew of different bikes. Bo called it their patented “going-the-other-way maneuver.”
Quinn hit the gas as soon as the little red Ducati's rear wheel settled back on the pavement. Smoke flew up in a whirring rooster tail while the tire found its grip. As his head whipped around he watched the door to the yellow brick building swing shut behind the dark Elvis.
C
HAPTER
S
EVENTY-TWO
M
ujaheed Beg paused inside the building, sniffing the stale air. He hadn't lived this long by rushing headlong into things—not even simple jobs like strangling old women. For this, he would use his old friend, the wire garrote. At least that would bring some enjoyment. He'd not been able to employ it on the congressman's mistress—too much blood. Such a thing wouldn't matter in the dark, cage-like atmosphere Li Huang called home. Residents were unlikely to notice a dead dog rotting in the hallway of such a place, much less a little blood on the stained wooden floor.
People hacked and coughed behind low walls up and down the narrow corridors as if the place were a tuberculosis ward. The strangled gurgles of a dying woman would draw no attention at all. Under the sullen light of a dusty hallway bulb, any blood that made it under the doorway would be hard to identify until long after Beg was gone. In any case, most, if not all, of the rabbits in this warren of rooms were illegal aliens and were highly unlikely to call the authorities—even to report a murder.
A long stairway gaped upward to the Mervi's right. The chattering riot of a Chinese game show, sirens from police dramas, and dramatic dialogue of historical romances tumbled down from the black hole above, mixing with the sour smell of human confinement. It was early enough in the evening that most of the inmates—that's how Beg thought of them—were still out working the sidewalks or stuck in a basement sweatshop sewing the sleeves on clothing for American consumers so they could proudly say they bought products made in the U.S.A.
Halfway down the smoky hall, an old man with wisps of gray hair like moldy cotton candy squatted, backlit by a grimy window leading out to the fire escape. A hotplate of boiling noodles and fish bubbled on the floor beside him. Like the rest of the place, he reeked of day-old alcohol and sweat.
Li Huang's wooden door was just beyond the old man, under an exposed row of radiator pipes that ran like monkey bars across the stained ceiling.
Beg put a hand inside the pocket of his jacket, feeling for the wooden handles and reassuring coil of sharp wire. He walked past the old man, considering whether he would have to kill him or not on the way out. The old man was bony and frail as a stalk of drought-parched wheat, and such a thing wouldn't be hard.
Li Huang normally stayed at one of the Badeebs' much more comfortable homes on Long Island or in Pennsylvania. Out of an abundance of caution—and to get her in a place that he could more easily have her killed with no link to him—the doctor had asked her to hide in this horribly filthy hotel used by Chinese Snake-heads to hide their illegal human cargo until they paid off their debts.
State prison inmates had larger accommodations. Each room was barely six by eight feet, topped with chicken-wire mesh in a halfhearted attempt to discourage thieves. Devoted to terroristic jihad—she called it
sheng zhan
—Li Huang had readily traded her middle-class home for this wretched place that smelled like a restaurant trash Dumpster—all for the sake of keeping her dear husband's plans safe.
And now that same husband had sent a very deadly man to kill her.
Beg knocked on the flimsy, hollow-core door, feeling more of a rush than he'd anticipated. Perhaps it was the fact that he had shared tea with this woman dozens of times while he'd discussed plans with her husband.
The door creaked opened a crack to expose one rheumy eye and the glint of charcoal hair.
Knowing that she would surely have a weapon, Beg didn't wait to be invited in. The door gave easily to his weight and Li Huang fell backward in the tiny room, slamming her head against the edge of the wood two-by-four frame that made up her simple bed.
Li Huang flailed out as she fell, knocking over a rickety bedside table and sending a ceramic reading lamp crashing to the bare wooden floor.
Trembling fingers reached up to touch the knot where her head had struck the bedframe. They came back red with blood. Narrow eyes flitted back and forth around the room looking for a nonexistent escape route as Beg slowly took the wire garrote from his pocket. He grasped the wooden handles in each hand. Li Huang was a proud woman. She would not be a screamer as some were. He could take his time.
Staring up at him, her nostrils flared. Her tongue flicked against her lips, snakelike.
“Why?” she demanded, though the stricken pain in her eyes said she already had her answer.
Beg shrugged. There was no need to explain.
“My husband sent you?” Cold realization flushed across her face.
Beg bounded forward without speaking. He grabbed a handful of hair and jerked her away from the bed. Instead of fighting back, she threw a hand to her throat. Beg couldn't help but shake his head. Such a weak defense would do precious little good against the unforgiving wire noose. This would be over much more quickly than even he had anticipated. The doctor was right, he thought, as he zipped the razor-sharp wire tight. She did smell like old fruit.

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