Time of Attack (7 page)

 

S
himoyama Takako sat on a flat cushion with her stockinged feet dangling near the heat lamp in the small, pit-like cutout under a low Japanese table. Her home was spacious by Japanese standards, with a full sixteen tatami mats in her living room alone—nearly five hundred square feet.

It was here that she conducted her business, dressed in a traditional cotton
yukata
robe of gray and white, and seated at the traditional warming table with an embroidered quilt draped over her lap. A black Beretta pistol lay at the top corner of the table, angled just so, always within easy reach. Directly in front of her, a small notebook was held open by a delicate ivory fountain pen. Shimoyama pushed gold-framed reading glasses back on her nose, large for a Japanese woman, and pushed
SEND
on her cell phone.

She was tall, with hips that had grown somewhat broader than she would have liked over the years. Strong, almost mannish shoulders from decades of physical training made it difficult to find a yukata that fit correctly. She had all her clothing custom tailored, preferring the older methods and styles that pleased the man she loved, or at least had pleased him at one time.

Now, with graying hair dyed black, a powdered face, and the hydraulic maladies of age wrenching at her joints, she doubted there was much she could do that would please him.

Still, such things couldn’t be helped, and it was not in her nature to let him go without some sort of a fight.

Breathing deeply, rhythmically, she took up the ivory pen and consulted the notebook, while the phone rang.

“Yes,” the voice on the other end answered. There was no polite hello in the greeting, only demands.

She introduced herself, using her best Arabic.

“
As-salam alaykum
.” Peace be unto you.

“Do not even try,” he snapped. “It is not given for a believer to answer such a greeting by an infidel. Your pronunciation is so bad you could be wishing me death.”

Shimoyama sighed to herself. So much for pleasantries.

“Why do I not deal with your superior?” The voice clicked and popped with educated Punjabi English. It was the voice Shimoyama heard in her mind when she’d read Rudyard Kipling in school—before her life had turned so upside down.

“He has asked that I keep you informed,” she said. Accustomed to a more formal structure in matters with superiors, subordinates, and even victims, Shimoyama grimaced at the abrupt nature of this man. She much preferred dealing with others who understood the niceties of simply being Japanese. Even feudal samurai had been polite in their brutality when they struck down someone of lower class.

Kiri-sute-gomen
, they would say:
I kill you, I discard you, I am sorry
.

Had it been up to Shimoyama, she would not have accepted this assignment—no matter how much it paid. These men were devils, erratic in their behavior, completely unrefined.

Nevertheless, the job had been accepted, and now honor demanded it be done well. Honor—reputation—was everything.

“We are on schedule,” she said.

“Good.” The voice on the other end had an aggravated whine to it, like a gearbox winding down. “And, the business in Colorado?”

“The first phase is complete,” Shimoyama said. She placed a small check in the column of her notebook. It was important to keep track of the items on which she’d briefed her superiors and clients. “Our friend is on the way to see to the next portion of her assignment.”

“Very well,” the man said. The voice grew more distant, as if he was engaged in something else as he spoke.

“I must point out.” Shimoyama hesitated. “This does not come without some degree of risk . . .”

“We are aware of the risk.” The man inhaled sharply. “You would do well to focus on your own tasks rather than worry over something you know little about.”

“Of course,” Shimoyama demurred. “I only hope to be of the most assistance possible. If you will recall, we have more than one asset in place. That alone makes for—”

“Recall?” the man said, taking a long, nasal breath. “I will tell you what I
recall
. I recall hearing of some nonsense in Virginia that very nearly brought the Black Mist into the light of day.”

Shimoyama recoiled at the mention of the organization’s name. Black Mist.
Kuroi kiri
, in Japanese. No one associated with it would ever dare speak the title aloud and certainly not on the phone.

“I remember that incident very well.” She glanced down at the inflamed nub on her left hand, where her pinkie finger should have been. The skin was raw and just beginning to heal over the bone at her first joint. Her right hand bore a similar nubbin, though this one was well healed and from long ago. She had run out of little fingers. The next time, penance would be nonexistent.

The three bodyguards she had taken with her to the United States—her only son and his friends—had been sorely lacking for such a task. It was she who had underestimated the possibility for conflict during her meeting with Hartman Drake. She knew full well that her son could be erratic, but she’d not comprehended how bizarre he could be and how such behavior would come so close to ruining everything. He’d paid the ultimate price. It was fortunate indeed that she had escaped such an error with her own life.

“I am sure you do remember it,” the man said, his words clicking like a train on a track. “And I do not particularly care. Frankly, the only thing that interests me is Jericho Quinn’s death. Is that too difficult to understand?”

“No, but I must—”

“See to it then.” The man cut her off, apparently bored with her report. “Call again when you have more information.”

Shimoyama dropped the cell phone on the table. She knew the line was dead. Qasim Ranjhani was not a man for good-byes.

Q
uinn showered quickly at the hotel, taking just enough time to scrub Kim’s blood from his hands and chest where it had soaked through his shirt. He’d shaved for the wedding, but his black beard had already started to form a shadow over his copper complexion—a look that, along with his flawless Arabic, allowed him to blend in in many areas of the world without anyone suspecting he was an American agent.

He pulled on a dark blue polo, khakis, and a pair of well-worn Lowa Renegades that fit more like sneakers than boots. He wanted to be ready in the event he had to run. Press-checking his Kimber 10mm out of habit to make certain he had a round in the chamber, he slid it into the Comp-Tac holster inside the waistband of his slacks and snugged down his belt. A small .22-caliber Beretta with a micro suppressor hung in a leather shoulder holster under his left armpit. Light for any serious work, the diminutive .22 had a specific niche in the world of deadly weapons—it was extremely quiet. Quieter still was the seven-inch blade of the CRKT Hissatsu fighting knife he carried.

His Aerostich Transit Leather motorcycle jacket did double duty, covering the weapons and adding a layer of ballistic armor installed by the national security advisor’s special team at DARPA known as the Shop.

Quinn threw the rest of his clothes and gear in a bag for Garcia to pick up, and made it to the Denver airport in time to hop the afternoon Southwest flight to Las Vegas. He wasn’t allowed to sleep on the plane since he was armed, but wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Closing his eyes when surrounded by a hundred strangers had never been something Quinn could bring himself to do. Reading was out of the question since the shooting, so he sat and stared at the seatback in front of him, letting his mind drift and his body metabolize the residual adrenaline.

The flight squawked onto the tarmac at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport just under two hours later. Quinn’s cabbie was a talkative Romanian named Tiberius who gabbed about his large family and the tremendous opportunities offered by the “U.S. of A.” nonstop during the fifteen-minute ride to the Strip. Quinn gave him a good tip, which, of course the patriotic jabbering had been intended to induce, and got out of the cab in front of the Bellagio, down the boulevard from Caesars Palace so there would be no record of him being dropped off there.

Once Tiberius was safely on his way, Quinn walked into the Bellagio’s spacious lobby and turned right under the kaleidoscope of flowers that hung like an inverted glass garden from the ceiling. Walking easily but with purpose, he could feel the eyes of countless security cameras on his back as he cut this way and that to make his way through the maze of tourists. He counted at least a half dozen different languages from all nationalities—many of them Chinese. Glancing up at one of the small black domes on the ceiling above, he remembered the line from the movie
Ocean’s Eleven
—someone was “always watching” at the Bellagio.

He popped out to flashing neon lights on the north side of the casino and breathed a sigh of relief to be back outside again, even if it meant leaving the crowded hotel for a crowded street.

It was warm, even for Vegas in the winter, though the sun had been down for nearly an hour. Taillights flashed and dimmed on stop-and-go traffic that backed up Flamingo Road all the way to the Las Vegas Strip. Quinn was able to trot between a bumper-to-bumper phalanx of two black stretch limos, a canary yellow Ferrari, and a pearl white Hummer to reach the great cluster of bone white buildings that made up Caesars Palace Casino and Forum Shops.

Looking for any one guest who happened to be staying at a hotel as large as Caesars Palace would normally require a good deal of time and a large surveillance team, but Quinn had an inside man—Adam Norton, of Drake’s Capitol Police protective detail the year before. Officer Norton had pulled Drake’s dead wife from the Potomac River and had a strong suspicion that she’d been murdered. He knew the Speaker’s tastes along with his secrets. Of course, he’d been summarily kicked off the detail shortly after the incident, but Quinn had kept in contact with him for just this sort of event.

As Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hartman Drake was allocated a small protective detail of Capitol Police officers when he traveled. According to Norton, he liked to keep them at a distance during his visits to Vegas so he could spend time with a certain Puerto Rican escort he’d taken up with since his wife had been killed. In the world of dignitary protection, there was often a sort of cat-and-mouse game played by the protector and protectee. People wanted and needed space—but it was that space that could get them killed. It was the detail leader’s job to figure out just how much space was possible to give and still keep the protectee safe from harm or embarrassment.

Quinn made his way through the entry off Flamingo Road, past the bellmen and row of perky clerks at the Diamond VIP check-in desk. He strolled through the Palace casino like a tourist, eyes peeled for Drake. Norton had said the Speaker had a thing for blackjack, and since this was his last evening in Vegas, Quinn assumed that he’d be at the high-stakes tables.

Failing to find Drake anywhere in the Palace section of the enormous gambling complex, Quinn ducked down a narrow, dimly lit hall of dark paneling and crushed velvet cocktail tables, passing under the bulbous wooden breasts of Cleopatra’s barge that hung over the walkway. The din of the crowds and rattling ping of slot machines grew louder as he neared the Forum casino floor.

Quinn’s gut knotted when he finally saw the Speaker. He thought of Kim, of all the blood, and of Mattie, the sniper’s intended target. Pausing to take a slow breath, he pushed any notion of instant revenge to the back of his mind and studied the situation. Palmer was right. There was much more to this than a simple assassination. Otherwise, Quinn knew he would have been the target.

Hartman Drake was seated at the nearest blackjack table, a fat cigar clenched between his teeth. Extremely fit, the Speaker spent several hours each day in the House gym and picked his clothing to show off broad shoulders and a narrow waist. He wore faded blue jeans and a tailored white shirt. Absent his trademark bow tie, it was open at the collar. A gold Rolex hung from the cuff of a navy blue blazer. Behind a cloud of cigar smoke, a derisive smile smeared across his mouth. He was winning.

Quinn kept walking toward the sports book lounge. He ordered a Bacardi and Coke from a roving waitress and watched the Hispanic woman pressed in close beside Drake. She was young, maybe twenty-two, with expressively dark eyes and a wide mouth, heavily covered in crimson lipstick. Gray tights clung like a second skin to slender legs. A bloodred minidress hung off petite shoulders. Her manicured hand, matching her lipstick and the dress, rested on a cocked hip.

Twenty feet away a blond Capitol Police officer with the earnest look of an Iowa farm boy loitered beside the bank of slot machines. A light golf jacket and khaki slacks helped him blend in some with the crowd of gamblers, but the flesh-tone earpiece and clear pigtail radio wire that disappeared at the back of his collar were dead giveaways. The slight bulge on the right side of his jacket would be his Glock. Pale blue eyes looked over the casino floor with mixture of boredom and disgust.

A second agent, older, with an air of experience, sat at a small table near the Forum entrance, nursing a cup of coffee while he watched the crowd.

Quinn’s source said no one on the detail cared much for Drake. They were, however, honor bound to protect him and would give their lives to do so. But in order for them to do that, the protectee had to cooperate in at least some respects.

The Hispanic escort’s hand moved across Drake’s shoulder, caressing, but urging him to hurry. He gave an annoyed shrug, brushing her away. She let her hand drop and dug her toe into the carpet. The four-inch stiletto heel arced impatiently back and forth.

She was getting bored.

Quinn smiled within himself. This was going to be easier than he’d imagined. He knew Drake was staying in the Augustus Tower, but had no idea which floor or what room. He couldn’t very well ask the protective detail, and that same detail would make it nearly impossible to follow the Speaker without hurting one of the good guys.

But now he wouldn’t have to follow the Speaker. He could follow the escort. It was a good bet the call girl had a room nearby, probably on a different floor, so he could sneak away from his detail without having to go very far. She’d leave first—and since Drake was winning, he’d let her.