BLACK COBRA (Aaron Quinn thriller series, No. 2) (3 page)

He thought of Jason Souther, finding it hard to believe that a man would drive so recklessly with his child on board. If he ever married and had children of his own, he would never do that.

Sorry, kid
, he thought sadly,
but if we ever catch up with him, your daddy’s going to prison for a long, long time.

---

Back in the diner, the officers were busy filling out a report. The two paramedics had zipped Officer Roberts and Johnny Souther up in fluid-tight body bags and were preparing to lift one of them onto the gurney.

Harness leaned out of the Hummer and called to them. “Hey kids!” he shouted. “Leave those poor bastards for the coroner. Trundle your butts out here and help the
living
.”

The paramedics looked at each other then quickly followed the detective’s orders.

Chapter 7

Harness stood by while the paramedics transferred Aaron onto the gurney and carefully strapped him down in preparation for loading into the ambulance.

Aaron was awake. He looked at Harness. “My mother,” he said weakly. “I-is she okay?”

Your mother was with you?
Harness thought, incredulous. He had assumed that the boy and his dad were the only passengers in the Hummer. He was about to ask Aaron to explain, when suddenly a clear image of the crash scene flashed into his mind and he made the connection. He’d been concentrating on the
wrong vehicle!

“Wait a minute ...” he said. “You and your mom ... you were in the Aston Martin?”

Aaron nodded.

Oh my God
, Harness thought. “I thought you were —” He glanced at the Hummer and stopped himself. This was too much to believe. “Was anyone else in the Aston with you?”

All hope drained from Aaron’s face. He knew what was coming next. “Yes,” he replied, “My best friend, Willy ... a-and my new dad, Michael.”

Harness rested his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Aaron Quinn.”

“I am so sorry, Aaron ... but I’d bet my badge that with the exception of the little miracle I see lying before me on this gurney, no one could possibly have survived that wreck.”

Aaron closed his eyes and turned his head away. God had given him everything he’d wished for ... and now He’d taken it all away.

Harness took out one of his business cards and placed it in Aaron’s hand. “My name’s Jim,” he said. “Call me anytime, for any reason, okay?”

Aaron nodded and closed his fingers over the card. Harness patted him on the arm, and the paramedics finished loading him into the ambulance.

“I want hourly updates on this kid’s condition,” Harness ordered. “You got that?”

“Yes, sir,” one said.

Satisfied that the boy was in capable hands, Harness took the patrol car and drove back over to the scene of the accident.

Chapter 8

Brandy Fine sat in Jason’s apartment staring at a blank TV screen. She heard a car pull up and ran to the window, but there was no black Hummer, just another taxi cab. But then she saw Jason Beckham step out and pay the driver.

That’s odd
, she thought. She could have sworn Jason left in his Hummer. As she watched him enter the building she noticed he was limping. She quickly sat down and pretended she wasn’t waiting for him.

The front door banged open. “Pack your bags,” Jason barked. “We’re leaving town.” He grabbed Brandy’s coat off a chair and tossed it to her.

Brandy was alarmed to see that one of his pant legs was soaked with blood; but before she could say anything, he snatched her car keys off the kitchen counter and limped out the door.

“What about Johnny?” she called after him, fumbling with the sleeves of her coat, her mind a blur.

“Johnny’s dead,” Jason said over his shoulder, his voice echoing in the wooden stairwell.

“
What?
” she said, closing the door behind her. “Oh, my God!” Then she stumbled down the hall after him.

Chapter 9

Jason had no way of knowing it at the time, but as he was backing his Hummer away from the dumpster back at the crash scene, he had come within inches of hitting a woman lying just to one side amid a pile of cardboard boxes. She was unconscious , but alive, thrown clear of the Aston Martin upon impact, just as her son had been.

---

Ashley came to and looked around, confused, unable to determine where she was or why she was there. Near her, smashed across the sidewalk, was a twisted, gray, street-light pole, its glass lens shattered and bulb burst — in the gloom it looked to Ashley like a great serpent that had suddenly turned to stone.

A light rain was falling and it was very cold. A sour, smoky odor burned her nostrils and she sensed that something horrible had happened, but she had no clue what it was.

She shoved some loose boxes aside and got to her feet, noticing that the bodice of her dress had been torn away in the area of her right breast, revealing one of the white-lace cups of her bra. She instinctively pulled her lavender, faux-suede jacket closed to cover herself.

Her head hurt, and when she put her hand to her forehead she touched what felt like streaks of dried mud, or perhaps blood. She thought of checking herself in her compact mirror, but her purse was nowhere to be found. She felt for her glasses, but they were missing too.

She looked down at her throbbing left calf and saw she had a deep gash, just below the hem of her sundress — it, too, had clotted over, and she knew she’d been unconscious for quite a while.

She started when she saw flashing lights and several men in uniform hovering around what appeared to be the smoldering wreckage of a car in the middle of the street. The area had been cordoned off from the public with wide, yellow plastic tape with the familiar phrase:

POLICE - Do Not Cross — POLICE - Do Not Cross
.

The car’s fabric top had burned away, exposing its skeletal frame, and under the receding coating of fire-extinguishing foam, the car lay blackened and cold, like the ravaged corpse of a mastodon after an arctic thaw.

A midnight blue van was parked nearby, the word CORONER painted in bright yellow on its side; but it meant nothing to her. She felt no anguish, no emotion of any kind, only a deep, overwhelming sense of numbness.

---

Detective Harness pulled up to the scene in his cruiser. He stepped out and shook hands with some of the men and then stepped over to inspect the charred remains of the Aston Martin.

The vehicle lay on its side and was totaled, but Harness found enough of the original paint to verify that it had indeed been tungsten silver — a stock color for the DBS during that model year, and the same shade as the paint he’d found on the Hummer. He followed two faint skid marks up the street and found a small piece of amber turn-signal lens — a tiny, but vital clue that would no doubt fit nicely into the front-left lighting cluster of that same black Hummer.

---

Ashley watched from the shadows. She felt no need to call to the men as they went about their work. She felt nothing, wanting nothing. She was very tired, but she no longer knew why. A lot had happened to her in the last 72 hours, but she remembered none of it.

She discovered she was clutching something in her left hand. It was the photo Aaron had given her just before the accident, the photo of her with Aaron’s father, Danny, in the alpine meadow. But Ashley didn’t recognize it. She had no idea where the snapshot came from or who the man she was hugging in the photo was.

She absently tucked the photo into her jacket pocket and wandered off down the street.

---

Detective Harness walked the area’s perimeter searching for more clues. He came to the downed light pole and saw the evidence of a car having smashed through it and into a nearby dumpster. But there was no car.

Near the dumpster he was surprised to find a woman’s purse partially covered by a loose cardboard box. The purse was cheap vinyl but new. He checked inside: a hair brush, a bottle of acetaminophen 500s, a set of car keys, a small cell phone, and a credit card. The name on the credit card read:

Ashley Quinn

Harness did a double-take. The purse belonged to the boy’s
mother!

He quickly checked the immediate area, hoping to find Ashley alive. But she was nowhere to be found and he had to assume she had died in the crash.

He stopped when he spotted a small fragment of cloth lying on the sidewalk. It was wet from the rain, but appeared to be printed cotton, a fabric commonly used in a woman’s dress, and it was
new
. He glanced back at the wreckage, judging the distance at thirty feet, and wondered how a piece of light fabric could have been thrown that far.

Then something shiny caught his eye. It was a pair of women’s eyeglasses. They were shattered and bent, but the frames were certainly newer than the other trash in the gutter. He tucked the glasses and the piece of fabric into a plastic bag with the other evidence.

When he had concluded his search, Harness climbed into his cruiser and left the scene, knowing he — and whoever his new partner turned out to be — had a nearly impossible task ahead of them.

~ PART I ~

Wednesday

Two Years Later ...

Vladivostok, Russia

Chapter 10

Captain Second Rank (Ret.) Vtorak Borisovich Pankov washed the last bite of his potato omelet down with coffee and wiped his mouth with his napkin. He carefully folded his copy of this morning’s
Moscow Times
and looked at the two men seated across the table from him.

“So,” he said. “You were able to make a deal?”

Uri Ruden, Pankov’s long-time friend and confidant slid some papers forward. “The agents from the American government have signed the necessary paperwork, Captain. Congratulations. B-39, Cobra, is yours, once again.”

 “So, you are aware that she was my former command,” Pankov said, leafing through the documents.

Uri winced. Clearly his old friend’s mind was not as sharp as it used to be. Must he constantly remind Pankov that he, too, was a retired Soviet submariner, a Captain Third Rank, who had served under Pankov on Cobra during the Cold War Seventies and early Eighties? Out of respect for the legendary captain, Uri restrained himself. “But of course, Captain, your exemplary command of Cobra is well documented. You spent your entire military career in the Soviet Submarine Service — as did I, sir.”

“The Soviet Submarine Service,” Pankov said, pausing to reflect. “The hand-picked elite of the Soviet Navy.”

“Yes, sir,” Uri said.

Pankov turned to their guest, Commander Richard Fagan, 38, a highly decorated, active duty submariner with the United States Navy.

“Cobra and I sailed the world together, you know,” Pankov said, “from right here in her home port of Vladivostok, Russia.”

Commander Fagan smiled. “It’s rumored that during your last mission you had the skill and audacity to navigate her into San Francisco Bay in broad daylight, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge and circumnavigating Alcatraz Island.”

Pankov’s eyes brightened at that memory. “All true,” he said. “We could have neutralized half of California with the nuclear arsenal we carried.”

He paused, the smile fading from his expression.

“But while my torpedoes collected dust, Brezhnev and his ‘collective leadership’ thought it best to play pointless
games
with the Imperialist United States.”

“A complete waste of time, in my opinion, sir,” Fagan said. As a history buff he was enjoying this journey back through time. “And we can’t forget the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

“Ah, yes,” Pankov said. “The ‘Incident in Cuba’, as you Americans like to call it.”

“If I have my facts straight,” Fagan said, “you were the spearhead of an effort to develop a Soviet naval base at Mariel Bay, there in Cuba.”

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” Pankov said. “27 October, 1962. Our submarines had been patrolling the area for weeks. Suddenly the U.S. naval destroyers start lobbing Practice Depth Charges at us to induce us to surface and identify ourselves. Of course, after weeks undersea in difficult circumstances, we were totally exhausted, and we had no way of knowing that the PDCs were anything less than
highly dangerous explosives
. And, to make matters worse, we were unable to establish communications with Moscow.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Fagan said.

“Kennedy and McNamara were overreacting, as usual, treating us like children,” Pankov went on. “The idiots had no idea that each of the submarines they were harassing carried a torpedo with a nuclear warhead whose fifteen kiloton explosive yield approximated the bomb that hit Hiroshima in 1945. Several of our submarines did finally exhaust their batteries, forcing them to surface, but b-39, Cobra, stayed down — and Kennedy and his men didn’t know it.” He paused to take a sip of ice water. “I was so tired and angry I ordered my nuclear torpedo to be assembled for battle readiness. ‘We're going to blast them!’ I told my officers. ‘We will most certainly die, but we will sink them all before we go!’ I remember my security officer staring at me and then fainting dead!”

Fagan was dumbfounded. How could he become a high-ranking U.S. Naval Officer and not have heard about this?

“The citizens of the United States never knew it, Commander,” Pankov said, “but I, Captain Vtorak Borisovich Pankov, came this close to starting World War III.” He held his thumb and forefinger up about a quarter-inch apart. “The biggest regret of my life is that I let my deputy brigade commander talk me out of it!”

Fagan paused as the enormity of Pankov’s words sunk in. “Fascinating, sir,” he said at last. “I had no idea we came that close to nuclear Armageddon.”

“Were it not for a critical lack of bold leadership,” Pankov said, “the Soviet Navy could easily have overwhelmed the Americans, rendering their nuclear options moot. Left to our own devices, the Soviet Submarine Service most certainly would have prevented the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union!”