C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-THREE
T
he overpowering scent of hand soap and toilet deodorizer hung in the men's room, where Quinn stood along the side wall at the single urinal. The air conditioner blew full force and condensation beaded on the chilled chrome pipes. His mind was occupied with the pleasant image of Veronica Garcia's purple lipstick. To his right was an empty toilet stall. Behind him and to his left was a double porcelain sink.
The three men filed in one behind the other. They gave off the energy of men in a rush, but had to slow down in the cramped space.
The hair on the back of Quinn's neck stood on end as soon as they came through the door. The one in the lead, a muscular kid in a white T-shirt, was nearly on top of him by the time the door swung shut behind the last man in line. There was no time to go for a weapon.
Sidestepping away from the urinal, Quinn closed the gap on the first attacker. He trapped the kid's wrist with both hands and forced his stainless pistol back against his belly. Keeping his hands centered and low, Quinn lunged forward with the full force of his legs, snapping the wrist and causing the kid's finger to convulse on the trigger. The gunshot was deafening against the steel and tile of the restroom. The kid's eyes went wide, blinking in disbelief at the blossoming red stain on the belly of his T-shirt.
A half second later the next man in line hit Quinn in the side of the head with a staggering left hook. His fist felt like a blow from a chunk of granite. Quinn shoved the bleeding kid out of the way, lunging for but missing the pistol as it clattered to the tile floor.
He kept his feet, throwing up a quick elbow to fend off another powerful hook. This guy was older but must have had some boxing training. He rained down blows as quickly as Quinn could block them. Dazed, Quinn saw nothing but fists, each coming fast on the heels of the last.
Roaring like an enraged bear, Quinn drove forward, shoving the older attacker backwards.
“Get off me, Uncle Frank!” the kid behind him yelled, smashed between the door and his companion.
Quinn pummeled Uncle Frank's midsection, keeping him pressed back against the guy behind him, buying time while his mind went into overdrive. All he needed was a moment to get to his own gun. He was in good enough shape; in most fights, the other guy tired out in a matter of seconds.
This wasn't going to be one of those fights.
Uncle Frank rolled sideways, absorbing Quinn's punches as if they were mosquito bites. Given the fresh opening, the younger man behind rushed forward, reaching with both hands for a takedown. He wasn't near the fighter his Uncle Frank was and Quinn met him with a fierce head butt for his trouble. He bellowed, spewing a spray of blood out the newly formed gap where his nose met his brow.
Uncle Frank tried a snap kick, but Quinn moved just in time, avoiding a crippling blow to the side of his knee. The kick hit him in the thigh, sending a wave of nausea through his gut. He exhaled hard, blocking a haymaker from Frank, while he kicked out to fend off the snot-blowing kid. It was like shooing away gnats inside a closet. No matter what he did, they kept coming.
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Ronnie Garcia watched the three men disappear through the front door. The leader, a young man wearing a white T-shirt and faded jeans, carried a folded newspaper. The other two, similarly dressed but with more hair, followed closely on his heels. None of them looked the type to bring their own reading material into a restaurant. There was something about the way the men held their mouths that told her they were up to no good.
She'd spotted the white panel van about the time Quinn went inside. There was a girl behind the wheel, and though Ronnie couldn't make out her features, she felt sure she was involved.
To prove her point, Ronnie stood up from the table. Holding her cell phone to her ear, she pretended to be having an animated conversation and pointed directly at the van.
An instant later, the van's lights came on. Panicked, the girl backed into the car behind her, then sped forward, crashing into Quinn's motorcycle. Beefy as it was, the BMW GS was no match for the heavy van. Metal groaned and sparks flew as she dragged the bike along the pavement, before turning sharply to speed away in the other direction.
Jericho's bike was a twisted heap of metalâbut if Garcia was right, that would be the least of his problems.
She reached the front door in three quick bounds. She flung it open to run headlong into their waiter. The tray of Diet Cokes crashed to the ground. He apologized profusely with his words, but his dark eyes cursed Garcia's clumsiness to the last drop of his Latin blood.
She smiled sheepishly, helped him to his feet, and apologized, explaining she had an urgent bathroom emergency. The waiter's glare softened some as she hopped over the puddle of ice and soda.
Never one to shy away from action, Ronnie bent quickly to draw the tiny Kahr PM nine-millimeter from the sheepskin holster inside her left ankle. She paused briefly in the dim alcove outside the men's room. Greeted by the heavy thuds of a fight in progress, she tucked the pistol close to her side, and shouldered open the door.
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Something heavy hit Quinn in the back of the head just as he popped Uncle Frank in the jaw with an elbow cross.
Quinn staggered, sickened from the blow, fighting to keep on his feet. He grabbed Frank's shoulders and drove a knee repeatedly into the man's groin as a surge of adrenaline chased away his nausea. He spun before the snot blower could hit him again, shoving the older man into his companion.
As if revitalized by some voodoo zombie spell, Frank sprang back into action immediately, soaking up everything Quinn could inflict.
“I'm about sick of this shit,” the kid said, pulling a black pistol from the waistband of his pants. “Get out of the way, Uncle Frank. We don't need to talk to him thâ”
Ronnie Garcia exploded through the bathroom door. She took a split second to survey the situation, and then put two quick rounds in the kid's chest.
Distracted, Frank's eyes left Quinn long enough to allow him to draw his Kimber. Cursing under his breath, the older man lunged for the gun on the floor beside his dying nephew as Quinn shot him.
Garcia kicked the pistol away and played her own gun back and forth, assessing the situation.
All three attackers down, Quinn leaned against the sink, panting. The booming gunfire in the close quarters of the tiled restroom had rendered him momentarily deaf.
When he looked up, Garcia's plum lips made beautiful shapes. He heard no sound but the throbbing whoosh of his own heartbeat.
After a few seconds, he was able to make out partial sentences.
“... hurt, Jeric ... get ... hospital ...”
The disjointed words slowly began to register in his brain.
He grinned stupidly, feeling a little drunk, and took a moment to study this woman who'd just saved his life. Her face was calm, black hair in perfect order, belying the fact that she'd just shot her fourth man in half as many days. Amber eyes locked on him as she canted her head to one side.
“I'm okay,” he said, dabbing at a bloody gash above his brow with the knuckle of the hand that still held his Kimber. He worked his aching jaw back and forth and began to do an assessment to make sure nothing was broken. “I've seen worse.” He let go of the sink, felt his knees begin to buckle, and grabbed it again.
“That's hard to believe,” Garcia said. She nodded at the three men on the bloody floor. Two were dead and a third was unconscious, blowing pink bubbles out a ragged gap of flesh in the bridge of his nose. The flimsy toilet stall lay smashed into pieces.
“Call Thibodaux,” Quinn groaned. “And Palmer ...”
“I will ... of course ...” Garcia's eyes darted from the porcelain urinal to Quinn and back to the urinal again. “But I ... well ...” She looked down her nose at his belt with an impish smile. “Looks like you were a little busy when these guys jumped you. You might want to ... put away your ... pistol... .”
C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-FOUR
Somewhere in Afghanistan
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C
IA paramilitary officer Karen Hunt choked back a mouthful of bile as consciousness slammed into her like a kick in the head. She fought wave after endless wave of nausea, retching against something warm and coarse. Facedown, she blinked burning eyes and tried to stop the swaying motion in her head. She wondered for a moment if she might be on a boat. There was nothing around her but blackness and searing, bone-numbing pain. Rough cords bit deep into her wrists and ankles. Reality sifted back into her brain like grains of irritating sand. It took several seconds to realize she was on the back of a moving animal. The rough wooden packsaddleâand the slow, lumbering gait of the beastâsawed at the tender flesh of her belly just below her ribs.
A heavy blanket kept out not only light, but any semblance of fresh air. The sour stench of yak dung and wet wool cloyed at her throat. Sickened again, she suddenly realized her gaping mouth was pressed directly against the matted hair of the animal.
By slow degree, voices wormed their way in through the rancid blackness. She could make out the thick, phlegmatic tones of men speaking Tajik. Closely related to Persian, it was the common language of the high mountains of Central Asia. Hunt was fluent in Farsi and Pashto. Tajik was close enough she got the gist of what was going on.
Her captors were jubilant men, gloating as they recounted their recent bravery at attacking Outpost Bullwhip. It didn't seem to bother them that a handful of ragtag Americans had killed over eighty of them. They praised fallen brothers who had died as martyrs in the holy fight, and cursed the dead Americans to roast in eternal fire.
Memories of the battle and of Lt. Nelson suddenly rushed back into Hunt's fevered mind. She shivered when she recalled the strange little boy who loved chocolate and smiled ever so sweetly as he spoke of cutting off her head.
The yak stopped abruptly, its bony spine heaving with exaggerated breaths. Hunt tried to use the time to readjust but was strapped down too tightly. She was baggage and nothing else. Her hands and the backs of her calves, which must have extended beyond the coverage of the blanket, were numb with cold and lack of circulation. Karen found that if she strained her neck and pressed her cheek against the side of the beast, she could see a stone-covered path and a splatter of green manure beside a cloven black hoof.
Maybe she was dead and being carted off to hell by the devil himself. It would stand to reason ... if the devil spoke Tajik.
“Cut deep, my brother,” a voice said somewhere to her right. “We reach Big Headache pass by nightfall... .”
A donkey suddenly filled the air with sorrowful braying. Years before, when Karen had first visited the mountains of the Hindu Kush, she'd seen a string of forlorn pack animals with their nostrils slit up each side in a cruel gash. Her father had explained the men who traveled with their pack trains in the highest passes often cut their animals like this. They believed it would help the beasts draw more air in this place they called the Roof of the World.
Karen groaned when the yak lurched forward again, stumbling into a bone-jarring gait. The air grew colder as they climbed and she found herself grateful for the musky layer of warm air that surrounded the animal under the coarse blanket.
When the trail became particularly steep and the yak slowed to catch its breath or pick sure footing, the man walking behind let fly a stream of oaths and curses. His heavy stick struck Karen in the spine as often as it did the yak.
Unfazed, the weary animal continued on, plodding forward at exactly the same gate as before. It had been beaten many times before. She knew her beatings were just beginning.
An eternity later, the yak stopped again, this time on command. Karen strained her ears as shuffling footsteps approached. She heard the thump and scratch of fingers manipulating the cords on the packsaddle.
A sudden blast of light and cold washed over her as the covering was jerked away.
Rough hands tore at the ropes across her back and thighs. At first she thought they'd stopped to give her a break, but one look at these men told her they were not the sort to waste time giving her a pit stop. They'd only paused along the scant excuse for a mountain trial to readjust the saddles before starting a major uphill push.
Towering walls of craggy stone rose into the gray sky. The thin ribbon of trail ahead, wet with heavy fog, wound its way upward disappearing into the same clouds.
Gray sky, gray rock, gray void.
Hunt squinted at the silhouette in a black turban towering over her. The smell of the yak was suddenly a bittersweet memory compared to the foul stench of the man. Only hours before, in the relative safety of Camp Bullwhip, she had joked about the “sweaty-outhouse” smell of insurgents. Now, it made her want to vomit.
As her eyes slowly became accustomed to the light, she could make out the raw, peeling face of her yak driver. He'd been badly burned and wore a rancid bandage that looped over his head and under his chin. The sickening smell came from some form of infection as much as his lack of hygiene. Karen guessed him to be in his late twenties, but he was already missing most of his top teeth.
“
Tik-brik
!” he commanded again in what she realized was English. He wanted her to take a break.
He raised a robed arm and pointed at an outcropping of rocks behind them, along the narrow excuse for a trail. To their right, gray stone rose up for thousands of feet. To their left, the thin band of rubble that passed for a path fell away into a gray nothingness filled with fog and the crash of a river far below.
“You go!” the man ordered again. He carried a roll of pink toilet paper on a leather cord draped over his shoulder. It was a sort of status symbol in a land where many still used a handful of stones to cleanse themselves.
He pointed with his Kalashnikov and tapped the toilet paper with the other hand to get his point across.
The yak heaved a shuddering sigh, relieved to be rid of its load. Hunt began to shiver uncontrollably, blinking to keep her balance on the narrow bit of rock and loose debris. They'd trained her for so many different scenarios back at Camp Perryâbut being strapped to a packsaddle wasn't one of them.
She pointed at the toilet paper with a trembling finger. The man shook his head emphatically and shoved her, pointing his rifle at a pile of rocks that was presumably supposed to serve as her outhouse.
There were other men up ahead along the trail with a dozen other yaks and donkeys. Some of the pack animals bristled with guns; others had tarped loads she couldn't identify. The fog and the way the trail curved made it impossible to see more than twenty meters in either direction. She assumed there were even more men around the corner. The ones she could see were similarly dressed to her toilet-paper-wearing tormentor and, she had no doubt, smelled just as disgusting. They ignored her as if she wasn't there, tending to their animals or weapons.
“You make fast!” the blistered insurgent barked as Karen picked her way around the head-high rock pile fifteen feet away. She expected him to follow her, but was relieved when he stayed at his yak.
She had no idea when they'd give her another chance so Karen took the opportunity to try and relieve herself. Her time at Camp Perryâand other, less well-known sitesâhad trained most of the shyness out of her. More times than she cared to remember, she and the other students had been made to squat on a raised platform with a simple hole cut in the center to “do their business.” Such acts had the effect of either stripping away hang-ups about privacy or pressing them so far back into the psyche that they were bound to cause some sort of mental illness in the future. No matter how many times a moderately well-adjusted woman pooped on a tower in front of fifteen classmates, such a delicate act would always be difficult with hateful men standing a few meters away.
Instead of resorting to stones, she ripped off the hip pocket of her BDU pants to clean herself. It was then she realized her captors hadn't done a very good job of searching her.
Folded in her back pocket, sealed in a clear plastic pouch, was a rayon scarf with an American flag printed on the back. On the other side were printed instructions in six of the local languagesâPashto, Arabic, Farsi, Tajik, and Dariâadvising the bearer of the scarf that they were entitled to a handsome reward if they assisted the American who owned it. It was her
blood chit
, a token to the local populace that she was worth more alive than dead.
Karen searched the other pockets in her baggy BDU pants until she found the stub of an eyebrow pencil. Praising herself for a shred of female vanity, she scratched out a hastily planned message.
“Make fast!” her captor chided again, moving close, but not coming around the rocks. It sounded like “
mekfus
.”
“I'm done,” she said in Tajik, hoping the man would revert to his native language. “Just cleaning.”
She weighted the scarf down with a heavy rock so it wouldn't blow away, but left the bulk of it to flutter in the mountain breeze.
Hitching up her pants, she stumbled quickly around the rocks, working her way back along the edge of the trail before the stinking yak beater could come around and see her message blowing in the wind.
She climbed back on the yak without being told, biting her lip as her captor lashed down the heavy blanket.
She'd heard stories from local women about slavers. But they mostly preyed on young girls. Hunt was dressed in an American military uniform. That would surely make her worth something to someone. She supposed that was why she was still alive.
She shivered, despite the sickening warmth of the yak, and wondered which would be worse, getting her head cut off or living the rest of her life as someone's slave. All she could do now was pray that they were the last in the pack train and someone friendlyâor at least greedyâwould find her note.