Time of Attack (5 page)

Garcia touched his shoulder, letting her fingers slide off slowly. “You go take care of her. We’ll check it out over there.”

“We’re ready to go, sir.” A burley paramedic with slicked black hair waved Quinn inside. “It’s a good idea if you ride along.”

Quinn looked out the window of the ambulance as they pulled away, watching the thick line of cedar trees on the hills across Academy Drive. He ground his teeth. The trauma of working on Kim had knocked his tactics for a loop.

He pulled the cell phone from his pocket and pushed Thibodaux’s number.

The big Cajun picked up immediately. “Talk to me, beb.”

“It’s only been minutes, Jacques,” Quinn said. “There’s a good chance the shooter hasn’t made it off the campus.”

“Way ahead of you,” the Cajun said. “Security Police just arrived. They’re lockin’ down the gates as we speak.”

Quinn hung up, torn between the urge to run down the person who’d shot Kim and the responsibility to stay by her side. He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. Her eyes were closed and the oxygen mask covered her face, but he felt her give him a weak squeeze in return.

“Dammit!” The heavyset paramedic watching the monitor wiped the sweat off his brow with the back of an arm.

“What?” Quinn held his breath.

Kim’s hand fell away.

 

R
ick Bedford’s eyes snapped open. He groaned and smacked his lips, trying to figure out where he was. The sheets were soft and free of dirt, and the room was a comfortable temperature—sensations he found completely foreign to recent experience. It took a few seconds for reality to seep back into his addled brain and bring the realization that there was a naked woman clinging to him under those soft sheets.

He sighed, letting his body relax again. The smell of his bride so close now after such a long absence was balm for his wounded soul.

His arm tingled from the weight of her head on his shoulder. Muscles cramped in his leg where her thigh draped across his, damp, sweating from skin-to-skin contact. He didn’t care and would have happily drifted back to blissful sleep. Still, he didn’t want to have his arm amputated.

“Sorry,” he whispered, lifting Marta’s hand. He sighed again as her body slid away from his.

“It’s all right.” From the sound of her voice, Bedford could tell she’d been awake for some time—probably never even gone to sleep. “The girls will be home from Kendra’s anytime now.” She smiled, hair mussed from the nap—and other things. “They’re pretty smart teenagers, so I should have a shower before they get home.”

“I’ve been gone the better part of a year.” Rick laughed. “If they’re all that smart, having a shower won’t hide much from them.”

Marta batted her eyes. A sure sign that she wanted him to stay in bed a few minutes longer.

“I hired a new girl at work,” she said.

“Do I know her?” Bedford asked, as much to hear his wife’s voice as to learn about any new employee. He’d never really thought about it, but these little “afterward” talks were something he’d missed.

“Not unless you’ve had a pedicure in China.” Marta yawned. She threw her arms above her head in a shuddering stretch. “She just arrived in the U.S. and needed a job. Her name’s Haifa.”

“Haifa doesn’t sound Chinese.” Bedford took a long look at his wife across the pillow. He had to pee but couldn’t quite bring himself to leave her.

“She’s something else besides Chinese.” Marta shrugged. “Anyway, customers are eating up these pedicures. You should try one.”

“I thought you warned me about letting foreign women touch my feet.” Bedford swung his feet to the floor, wincing as his hip brushed across the sheets. Naked, he craned his neck to try to see what was causing him so much pain. “Whew!” he gasped, swaying like he might pass out as he moved to the closet mirror. It felt as if something had stung him right above his tailbone. “Take a look at this, sweetie. I can’t really see what it is.” He flipped on the overhead light, then turned so Marta, too, could see.

She sat up in bed, letting the sheets slide off.

“Oh, my heck, Richard.” She whispered the strongest language that ever came out of her mouth. “That’s the biggest boil I’ve ever seen. You should have Doctor Todd take a look at it.”

“Hmmm,” Bedford said, still craning to look for himself. “First you want some Chinese woman to touch my feet and now you want the man that married your sister to check out my butt.”

“This is serious, Rick.” Marta put on her best pouty face. “Abraham Lincoln’s son died from a boil.”

“It was his grandson,” Bedford corrected. “And the poor kid died from complications after doctors lanced his boil—which is exactly what your cutthroat brother-in-law will do if I go to see him.”

“You can’t see it, but I can,” Marta said. “I’m making you an appointment for tomorrow morning.” She pooched out her bottom lip as a sign that any further argument would be futile.

“Okay, okay,” he said, hobbling to the bathroom, appalled that he was beginning to move like his dairyman father. He cleared his throat to hide a cough. “Set it up. This is probably just all the crap I absorbed in Afghanistan working its way out of my system.”

He coughed again. This time it was a rattling, phlegm-filled cough that he was unable to hide. Maybe a visit to the doc wasn’t such a bad idea.

 

K
im’s heart stopped twice on the frantic ride between the Academy and the hospital. The paramedic at the wheel of the ambulance bypassed the closer St. Francis in favor of the Level II trauma center at Penrose Hospital just off I-25, south of the Academy. By the time they crashed through the ER doors with her strapped to the gurney, Kim had lost roughly a third of the blood in her body.

Emergency room staff had pushed her straight through to surgery. Quinn found himself scraped off as she went through the stark double doors. He couldn’t help wondering if that was the last look he’d ever have of her, covered with bloody sheets and surrounded by stone-faced medical personnel.

She’d been in there for hours and Quinn had yet to bring himself to sit down. Instead, he paced, staring out the windows and beating himself up, oblivious to the fact that he wore only his dress blue slacks and a blood-soaked T-shirt that made him look like he’d been on the receiving end of a messy appendectomy. He could focus on nothing.

An orderly brought him a towel, and Quinn did the best he could to wipe Kim’s blood off his hands and face. There was little he could do about the sodden T-shirt.

At the far end of the room, a young couple huddled together under the buzzing television, waiting for their child to get out of some procedure. The woman shot furtive glances at Quinn and whispered repeatedly to her husband. After a short time, the man walked slowly toward Quinn.

Breathing heavily, with no intention of getting into a long conversation over his present circumstances, Quinn wheeled with the beginnings of a snarling grimace.

The man stopped, then held out his jacket on tentative hands. “Here,” he said simply. “Take this. You need it more than I do.”

Quinn forced a half smile as he accepted the fleece. No matter how much he’d scrubbed with the towel, Kim’s blood still rimmed his fingernails and stained the back of his hands.

“Thank you,” he said.

“No worries,” the man said over his shoulder, already retreating toward the safety of his wife.

Quinn shrugged on the jacket and zipped it up to cover the blood. He was thankful that he’d met one of the rare, decent people in the world who didn’t feel compelled to dish out advice. He looked up at the sound of a chime. Measured relief washed over him as Thibodaux and Ronnie got off the elevator with two men. OSI was a relatively small organization, especially when it came to officers. Quinn knew the detachment commander at the Academy but wasn’t familiar with either of these agents. One, an African American man in his mid-twenties, wore 5.11 khakis, a blue OSI polo, and a light cotton jacket. The other, older by a decade, had a blond goatee and wore pressed jeans. The senior man’s sport coat was tailored too close to hide the fact that he was wearing a pistol on his left side.

Garcia snaked her arm around Quinn, oblivious to the blood. They’d all been close enough to the action that each looked as though someone had taken a red paintbrush to their clothes. The stains stood out starkly against Garcia’s bright yellow dress. She snuggled next to Quinn, offering physical and moral support. He returned the gesture, arm around her waist, hand on the swell of her hip, to draw her even closer. Thibodaux raised the brow over his functional eye. Like a good partner, he said nothing, waiting instead for Quinn to fill them in about Kim’s condition on his own time.

The African American agent extended his hand. He looked fresh out of the OSI Basic in Glynco. “Mr. Quinn,” he said, shaking Jericho’s hand. The formal title of
Mister
when addressing an agent who was an officer allowed OSI personnel, whether they were enlisted, officers, or civilian, to leave everyone’s rank a mystery in the event their investigation led them to question a superior. “I’m Special Agent Torrance, Field Investigations Squadron here at the Academy. This is—”

“Mike DeKirk, FBI,” the agent in the sport coat said, cutting him off. He had a strong Texas accent, which put a frown on Thibodaux’s face as soon as he heard it. Texans had a way of ruffling the Cajun’s feathers.

Jericho shook their hands. “Thanks for coming so fast.” He glanced up at Thibodaux, filling him in. “They’ve had her in surgery for a while now. I’m still not sure what’s going on. Is Camille still okay to watch Mattie?”

“No worries, l’ami,” the Cajun said. “She can drop off the boys with the Bruns and bring Mattie over when you give the word.”

Jericho nodded. “I’m sure Kim will want to see her as soon as she wakes up.”
If she wakes up
. . . He pushed the thought out of his mind.

DeKirk cleared his throat. “I hate to interrupt, but as you know, time is of the essence in these cases. Is there anything you can tell us that might help find who did this?”

Quinn took a deep breath, started to say something, then changed his mind. “I really wish I could.”

“Nothing at all?” DeKirk pressed—as any good investigator would. “Does your wife have anyone that might want to hurt her?”

Quinn shook his head.

“I know it’s difficult,” DeKirk shrugged. “But I need you to think. Anyone at all, jealous boyfriends—maybe any of your old girlfriends—”

Agent Torrance shook his head. “Might not be the best time to worry with that,” he said, nudging DeKirk.

“And how about you, Mr. Quinn?” DeKirk said. For some reason,
Mister
sounded much less polite when it came from the FBI agent’s mouth. “You have any enemies?”

“I’m sure I have a few,” Quinn said.

“Care to go into any detail?” DeKirk shrugged. “This shooter was a professional. You need to tell me what you know.”

“Listen,” Quinn said evenly, keeping his voice low so the young couple across the room couldn’t hear. “I know you’re just doing your job, DeKirk. Believe me, I want to catch whoever did this worse than you—”

“Do you, Quinn?” DeKirk’s eyes narrowed. “Because it seems like you’re holding something back. It looks to me like you don’t give a shit if your ex-wife’s shooter gets away.”

Quinn took a deep breath, held it, gritting his teeth. Ronnie touched his arm, surely feeling he was about to explode.

“Come on.” Agent Torrance put up a hand again. “This isn’t the time or place.”

DeKirk glared at the young agent. “Don’t tell me about time and place.”

Thibodaux took a half step forward, closing on DeKirk with his intimidating height. “We all get the good cop bad cop thing,” he said, voice flat. “But you press this now, while it’s still touch and go with Kim’s surgery, and it’ll be good cop, flat-on-his-ass cop.”

Quinn counted to ten before speaking.

“I will tell you everything I know, but I’ll have to get you cleared first. Then I’ll need everything you have on this.”

“Not the way it works, Quinn,” DeKirk said, dispensing with the
Mister
. “You know that. In situations of terrorism, the Bureau has the ball. Somebody shot your ex. I feel for you, I honestly do, but you’re way too close to this. OSI can do a joint investigation if they want, but I seriously doubt your command will let you be part of it. Now calm down and tell me what you know.”

Quinn’s nostrils flared. The man was only doing his job. And yet Quinn felt the pressing need to hit someone, so it might as well be DeKirk.

Thibodaux snatched up a
Sports Afield
magazine from the lobby chair and borrowed a pen from Agent Torrance. Scrawling something quickly on the back cover, he held it up toward the FBI agent in a hand the size of a pie pan, trying to mediate. “Little suggestion here, DeKirk, why don’t you get ahold of your boss’s boss’s boss and have him give this number a call. They will verify that you should cooperate with us. That way, we won’t all have to pee on everything to mark our territory.” The big Marine gave a smug grin. “How ’bout that?”

“Whose number is this?” DeKirk eyed the magazine.

Thibodaux shrugged. “Ask your boss.”

“I thought you were just Air Force OSI,” DeKirk scoffed.

“I am,” Quinn said.

Fuming, the agent whipped out his cell phone as if it were a weapon. He ripped the back page off the magazine and stepped away to make his call just as a tall man in green hospital scrubs walked through the double doors from surgery.

He wore a black cloth surgeon’s cap imprinted with red chili peppers. A mask hung around his neck and paper booties from the OR still covered his shoes.

Quinn felt his heart in his throat when the surgeon smiled a noncommittal smile. It was closemouthed, but hopeful—certainly not the smile of someone with horrific news.

Ronnie Garcia reached to take Quinn’s hand in hers, squeezing it tight.

“She’s stable,” the doctor said. “It’ll be a few minutes before they get her settled in recovery. She’ll be groggy but you can see her.”

Relief and guilt washed over Quinn. “Thank you, Doctor,” he said.

“There are some issues we need to discuss.” The surgeon folded long fingers together at his lap. “She lost a lot of blood.” His eyes shot sideways, almost imperceptibly. It was just for a moment, but Quinn saw it and braced himself for what was about to come next.

“The bullet was moving extremely fast when it hit her,” the surgeon continued. “There was a massive amount of hydrostatic damage to the nerves and surrounding tissue. Rounds like this tend to tumble.” He shook his head as if recalling the damage—impassive, clinical. “We tried our best, but there was no way to save her leg.”

Quinn’s mouth hung open, stunned. He nodded stupidly but said nothing. What could he say? Kim’s nightmares for him had now fallen on her.

“If it helps,” the surgeon went on, his voice calm and earnest without a hint of condescension, “I’m an old Air Force surgeon and I’ve seen hundreds of wounds like this one. I could have had an OR table set up right beside her when she was shot and we still wouldn’t have been able to save that leg.”

He put a hand on Quinn’s shoulder. “Son, you had about three minutes out there to keep her from bleeding to death. You did a hell of a job. I’ll get her set up with a good rehab and prosthetics guy, a friend of mine. He can work miracles.”

 

 

Special Agent Torrance cleared his throat as the surgeon walked away. DeKirk stood next to him, seething like a smoldering coal. Apparently the phone call had done the trick, but he wasn’t happy about it.

Agent Torrance spoke first. “We don’t have much yet, sir, but you get all we have.”

Quinn said nothing. The last thing he wanted to do was turn this into a turf war.

“The shooter abandoned the rifle in a tree that looks like the shooting platform,” Torrance went on. “A heavy-barreled Remington 700 MLR in .338 Lapua.”

“Hmmm.” Quinn mulled the information over. It was no wonder Kim had lost her leg. MLR stood for Medium Long Range rifle. The .338 Lapua had been purpose-built as a sniper round, capable of sending a 250-grain bullet downrange at a thousand meters per second.

“Looks to have some custom work done on it,” the young OSI agent said. “But nothing outside the realm of what a neighborhood gunsmith could do.”

“I’m sure you won’t find any prints,” Quinn said. “It takes a professional to make a shot like that.”

“My thoughts exactly,” DeKirk said, finally calm enough to join the conversation. “We interviewed a bunch of German tourists at the Visitors Center who said they saw an Asian woman walk down the trail from the woods near where we found the sniper rifle. They describe her as small but strong looking, maybe in her mid-twenties. One guy said she had”—he consulted his notebook—“
den bösen Blick
.”

Torrance nodded. “I did a Google search. It means ‘evil eye.’ Anyway, a quick review of the security tapes looks like she knew where the cameras were. We have her walking down the trail and through the Visitors Center lot, but she never lets us get a view of her face. She must have parked in a spot without a camera, because we lose track of her after that.”

“What about cameras at the exits?” Quinn asked.

Torrance smiled. “That’s where we got something. Seven minutes after Major Moore called in the shooting, a white Hyundai Santa Fe left through the North Gate with an Asian female behind the wheel. She had a ball cap pulled down low so we didn’t get much of a shot of her face, but the LP comes back to a rental company out of Colorado Springs. The clerk there says it was rented by someone named”—he consulted his notes—“Roku Yamamoto.”

“Hmmph.” Thibodaux scoffed. “That’s fittin’. Isoroku Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor.”

“Anyway,” DeKirk said, unimpressed by the Cajun’s knowledge of history. “I put a BOLO out on the car. I have Colorado State Patrol scouring the highways north and south of here. Denver and Cheyenne airports are on alert as well. But I gotta tell you, trying to locate someone when our only description is ‘Asian female’ gives us pretty grim odds.” He narrowed his eyes at Quinn. “So, what I really hope is that you can give me something else to go on. You know of any Japanese women who’d want to hurt you?”

Quinn shook his head. “No,” he said honestly, but stopped there.

“Look,” DeKirk forced a tight smile. “Believe me, I understand the whole ‘need to know’ thing. Hell, I’m with the FBI. The Bureau practically invented the shutout. But I’m not one of the counterintel spooks. Someone attempts to assassinate a civilian on a military installation, so it falls to me to investigate. I happen to be a damn good investigator—and all I want to do is catch this person. Here’s my card. If you find yourself in a spot where you can help me do it, give me a call. Otherwise . . . these guys can fill you in on the damn little we know.” He shrugged. “I hope your ex gets better soon.”

Torrance gave Quinn his card as well, noting his cell number written on the back. “Call if you need anything, sir. I’ll have my reports in I2MS today, so you’ll have access to everything I do.”