Time of Attack (10 page)

 

M
arta Bedford woke at three in the morning to Rick’s snores. Between his frequent training with the Army and the sheriff ’s office and now his deployment, she had grown accustomed to being unaccustomed to him each time he returned. If he was gone more than a month it took her several days to get used to his movements beside her in bed and the little noises he made in his sleep.

But this time was different. He’d never been a snorer, and, though she could overlook even that, the way he moaned hurt her heart. The first night after he’d gone to see her brother to take care of the boil, she’d shaken him to make sure he was all right. Of course, he’d said he was fine. Rick Bedford wouldn’t admit pain if he drank a glass of molten lava.

She slipped out from under the covers and went into the bathroom, waiting to turn on the light until she’d pulled the door shut behind her.

Staring into the mirror, she grabbed a handful of straw-blond hair and pulled it toward the ceiling, shrunken-head fashion. Blue eyes, normally bright, stared dully back beneath drooping lids. Her face was beginning to break out like a teenager, and she was getting a sty that would soon turn her into a squinty cyclops. The girls would really get a kick out of teasing her for that. Thankfully, her mother had agreed to take her granddaughters for a few nights while Rick tried to shake whatever this was that had him down.

She grabbed two aspirin from the medicine cabinet and swallowed them with a cup of water, grimacing at the pain in her throat. If this kept up Marta would have to ask her mother to watch the shop as well as the girls.

She looked at her watch—3:15—and mulled over the idea of going to the clinic. She knew she should—but nobody, least of all a wife and working mom of two teenagers, had time for that. Besides, she’d just had her forty-year checkup and been deemed, as her brother-in-law the doc joked, fit as a thirty-nine-year-old.

What she needed was a good, long sleep.

She saw the first sore when she reached to put the aspirin back in the cabinet. Gritting her teeth, she raised her arm to look in the mirror. A swollen red boil stared back like an angry eye. Two more bumps, red but in earlier stages, dotted her armpit.

“This is going to suck,” she muttered as she dabbed at the boils, feeling the fevered tenderness and tight pink skin. She hadn’t gone in the room with Rick when he’d had his treated the day before. The whole process of lancing a boil was just too medieval for her. She’d had her own experience with it shortly after the girls were born. That one had been much lower and more intimate than Rick’s. It involved an extremely painful and incredibly embarrassing procedure she’d hoped never to repeat—lying naked from the waist down, facedown on the table, while the doctor lanced and pinched her butt cheek to drain the awful thing. She remembered vividly the dull ache in her jaw from gritting her teeth and the perfect sweat imprint of her body on the paper cover of the exam table.

By the time Marta made it back to bed, Rick sounded as if he was trying to breathe through a clogged snorkel. She rolled up next to him, ignoring her own pain, and put an ear against his chest. Something wasn’t right. She’d never heard of boils being catchy like this—but they both had them. It sounded like Rick was getting pneumonia. And now, her throat was killing her.

 

S
himoyama Takako took great pleasure in the simple, Zen-like design of the things that surrounded her. She had few friends, but at least two of the girls she knew as a child had mothers who practiced ikebana, the art of flower arrangement. That was well and good, but Shimoyama had found such an art constraining. There was so much more to arrange in the world than flowers.

She knelt in front of the low table in her spacious room, palms flat against the cool lacquered top. Her notebook was open, the ivory pen forming a perfect diagonal across its pages. Her metallic cell phone case and dangling fuzzy charm lay at the tip of her fingers, faceup. The design of it all was a work of
wabi sabi
—art and beauty in the mundane—and set Shimoyama’s heart at ease.

Taking a quick breath, she pressed a number into the phone. Someone of less focus might be tempted to toy with the gun when they were forced to make such a nerve-racking call. Shimoyama took comfort in the simple focus of looking at the weapon.

“Ah, Auntie,” the man said on the other end of the line. Her superior was exceedingly polite, if not actually kind. He’d once called her his lover. Now, it was auntie, if only to prove she no longer held her previous position. “I hope you have good news.”

“If you have a moment,” Shimoyama said, willing her voice not to crack—from sorrow more than nerves.

“Of course, Auntie,” the man said. She imagined him as a huge spider, beckoning with one of eight whiskered legs while he grinned at her from a dark corner. “Please, go ahead.”

Shimoyama licked her lips.

“The business with our mutual friend in Las Vegas did not go as planned.”

Though the man said nothing for some time, she could feel his mood darken over the phone.

“Yes,” he said, “I have heard that very thing.”

“The Pakistani was late in his arrival,” Shimoyama said. She took some solace in the fact that the blame did not rest entirely with her people. Her employer would surely have required more than a finger if that had been the case. “I fear Quinn had a very short window of time to speak with the American.” Shimoyama crossed off another note in her book with a perfectly straight line of black ink.

“What do you intend to do about him?”

“The Pakistani?” Shimoyama nodded to herself.

“Not the Pakistani,” her employer snapped. “I am speaking of Quinn. It will please me greatly, Auntie, if he were dead before nightfall.”

“These matters are fluid,” Shimoyama said, sounding more sure of herself than she was. “But I have another contact working on that as we speak.”

“I hope so, Takako-chan,” he said. “For your sake.”

Shimoyama’s heart leaped in her breast. Not because of the threat, but because he had called her by her given name, something he had not done since he had loved her, so many years before.

 

Q
uinn stood beside a squat Japanese lamp carved of gray stone, watching. The contest, or more correctly, the spanking that Emiko Miyagi was giving Jacques Thibodaux, did little to take his mind off Kim.

Palmer had summoned him back to D.C. after the incident in Las Vegas with the curt order to go to Miyagi’s and wait for his call. Quinn hated waiting more than he hated neckties. It made him feel like a racehorse trapped in the gates. But wait he did, at Palmer’s order, and while he waited, he trained.

They’d already run several miles as a warm-up that morning. Chasing the sun, Miyagi called it, trying to run a prescribed course through the Mount Vernon neighborhoods before the sun peaked over the tree line to the east. Quinn was in excellent shape but never turned down the opportunity to rest during one of Mrs. Miyagi’s killer workouts. Apart from being entertained by the big Cajun’s swordplay, it gave him time to breathe—and think.

Kim wouldn’t be able to travel for several more days, so she and Mattie had stayed behind in Colorado. Before he left, Jericho made certain a full complement of security from OSI and the El Paso County Sheriff ’s Department surrounded them in concentric circles of security, each layer going outward bristling with progressively heavy weapons.

Quinn’s parents had flown in and that was what really calmed him. His mother had raised two of the wildest sons in Alaska and knew how to handle herself. In truth, she’d never been a huge Kim fan, but Mattie had won her over from the first moment she saw her in the hospital. Quinn’s father, a commercial fisherman, was an aloof, quiet man. He felt the good Lord had given him a finite number of words, so he did his best not to waste any of them. He was also the toughest human being Quinn had ever met. Even tough men could be killed, but it did Quinn’s heart good to know that his father was there, watching over things.

A rattling clash of wood on wood drew Quinn’s attention back to the moment. He watched as Miyagi chased the big Marine in a tight circle over the frosted grass.

The fact that Jacques only had one good eye made no difference to Emiko or the Marine. In battle, weakness had to be overcome or it brought defeat—and both of them knew it.

It would have been a mistake to call what Miyagi taught
defensive
tactics. Tactics they were, but due to the nature of their jobs, much of what she taught was offensive in nature—and no one Quinn had ever met was better than taking the battle to the enemy than Emiko Miyagi.

She’d dispensed with the more traditional martial arts uniforms, reasoning that they needed to learn to fight in the same clothing they wore in everyday life. In this case, that meant khaki slacks and polo shirts. Miyagi wore a long-sleeve Under Armour shirt beneath her polo, black to match the hair she kept pulled back in a high ponytail like some sort of medieval Mongol warrior. Thibodaux’s khakis, like Quinn’s, were stained at the knees and butt from repeated contact with the ground over the last half hour. The birds were just waking up in the surrounding oaks and sycamore trees and there was enough sun to give them light, but not nearly enough to chase away the clammy cold of a Potomac morning.

The big Cajun moved forward in his attack, feet sliding through the brown grass with a lightness that belied his mountainous size. Shouting a chilling war cry that was combination Marine Corps charge and martial arts
ki-ai
, Thibodaux brought the wooden sword crashing down toward the tip of Emiko Miyagi’s head.

Most anyone else would have wilted at such a ferocious attack, but Miyagi turned deftly to the side. Barely five feet tall, she was a mouse to the six-foot-four Cajun. In that same instant, she raised her own wooden sword so both hands were high above her head, letting the tip fall so her blade ran diagonally down her arm and shoulder, deflecting Thibodaux’s sword along its length toward the ground. Her movements were small, no greater than they needed to be, but were filled with such surety and force that her thick ponytail swung back and forth, brushing either side of her face as she moved.

Thibodaux leaned forward a hair farther than he should have as his sword hissed downward. Quinn grimaced, feeling pity for the big Cajun. He saw what was about to happen.

Keeping a high grip, Miyagi wheeled her sword in a great arc, bringing it up, then down, directly into Thibodaux’s centerline, before he could raise his again. She stopped an inch above his forehead.

“Shit!” Jacques said, freezing in place, his sword still pointed at the ground.

“Do not fret,” Miyagi said. “You would have felt little pain had it been a live blade instead of a
bokken
.”

“Yeah,” Thibodaux said. “That’s just what I wanted to hear. I know it’s supposed to help our footwork, but this Louisiana boy just don’t do swords.”

“You fight mixed martial arts.” Miyagi stepped back, sword held high and back at her shoulder like a baseball player in the batting box. “Add blade work to the mix.”

Thibodaux was in fact an MMA champion, fighting under the name Daux Boy.

He bowed, conceding defeat. “Thank you for the lesson.”

Miyagi’s agate-brown eyes shifted toward Quinn. It was the only cue that it was his turn to receive more instruction. They might rest. She never did.

“Do me a favor and kick her ass,” Thibodaux said under his breath as the two men passed. The Cajun slouched beside the stone lantern, nursing his wounded pride.

“Yes, Quinn-san,” Miyagi said. “Please. Show Mr. Muscleman how it is done.” The mysterious Japanese woman had taken to Quinn right off, but for some unknown reason, she had no love lost for Jacques.

Wooden bokken in hand, Quinn circled slowly, eyes intent on Emiko Miyagi.

“The objective,” Miyagi said, always teaching, “is to
feel
exactly where your blade is in relation to your body at all times.”

She strode forward, cutting down at Quinn. He used the same hands-high, tip-down technique she’d employed on Jacques to deflect the blade, first from an attack to his right, then immediate follow-up cuts to his left and then his right again. Wood cracked against wood, echoing off naked trees that surrounded the training area in Miyagi’s five-acre backyard, just a stone’s throw from Mount Vernon.

Apparently satisfied that he understood that particular block and the footwork that went with it, she retreated a few steps.

“When you scratch an itch,” she continued, her breath calm though she’d just tried to beat him to death with a stick, “you do not pause to think where your hand is located. You simply know. This is what you want with the blade. Notice I do not say the handle of your sword. I speak specifically of the blade. When you know where it is at all times, you may use it more effectively.”

She held her bokken low now in one hand and to her side so it trailed behind as if she was dragging it. She stood straight, hips loose and ready to move.

Quinn held his blade upward, a mirror image of hers. It was a technique she’d taught them called
tsuki no kage
or
moon shadow
, where the opponents mimic each other’s movements, looking for an opening.

Eyes fixed on each other, the two circled slowly, feet shuffling in the dead grass of winter in Miyagi’s walled retreat. She’d been training both men for a year and a half now, knocking off rough edges and filling in blanks left by traditional instructors.

The life of a hunter-killer had taught Quinn to be a natural skeptic, but he’d learned enough from this five-foot-tall, 115-pound enigma that if she said she could teach him how to fly, he would put his faith in her and jump off the roof. He had, of course, been beaten over the course of his fighting career, but not nearly so often and with as much consistency as Miyagi had been able to do it.

Thibodaux pointed out after one of their sessions that a hundred pounds of the woman was badass muscle—and fifteen was fighting heart.

Miyagi advanced without warning, bringing her sword around to thrust at his belly.

Quinn stepped to the side, seizing the opportunity to bring his blade down in an attack of his own now that she had committed herself.

Instead of countering, Miyagi continued her forward attack, striding past so she was directly behind Quinn. His sword hissed by her, missing by a fraction of an inch. He raised his arms to attack again as he turned, but he felt her spin behind him, grabbing his shoulders with both hands to swing her feet and legs upward and under his raised armpit. Her thighs clamped around his neck, muscular buttocks in the air. Her body hung straight down in front of him. He tried to raise his blade, but she swatted it away. With Miyagi inside his guard, there was little he could do with the cumbersome long sword. She bore down with her thighs, squeezing as he spun to throw her before she cut off all the blood to his brain. A half breath later, her wooden dagger touched the ribs under his heart.

He tapped her back to let her know he realized she had won. Her rump would have been more convenient, but he thought she might have used the dagger to greater effect had he tapped her there. She relaxed her legs and dropped to the grass, rolling to her feet with her wooden sword still in one hand, a wooden dagger in the other.

“Please remember,” she said as she stood, “just because you hold a sword, does not mean it is the only weapon you can use to win the battle.” Her voice was calm, absent the breathlessness even Quinn felt after such a bout.

Quinn bowed and walked over to Thibodaux to grab a drink from his water bottle.

“I told you to kick her ass”—the Cajun frowned—“not let her strangle you with it.”

 

 

The morning held on to its chill but Miyagi and both men were bathed in sweat.

She kept them going from the moment they arrived back at her house. Most of the training occurred on the five acres of traditional Japanese garden that was tucked in the hardwood forests behind the house, all of it surrounded by high walls of imposing gray stone.

After sparring and prior to yoga, Miyagi had changed into black tights and long-sleeve leotard of the same color. The men wore loose T-shirts and running shorts.

Inverted now in a yoga headstand, Miyagi craned her neck to look up at her two charges, brown eyes glinting in approval when they landed on Quinn but going dark when they fell on Thibodaux. Neither man was sure how old she was. She had the force of will common to mature women, a teacher who’d learned much in all her years, but her smooth complexion and physical vigor suggested she was much younger. When they sparred, Quinn guessed she was in her mid-thirties. When she spoke of strategy and combat philosophy, he thought she might very well have been a contemporary of Miyamoto Musashi, the sixteenth-century Japanese swordsman.

Emiko Miyagi had a way of tailoring each workout to coax out the last drop of sweat. Swimming, running, sparring, more running, and more sparring generally took up at least two hours before she settled in to her favorite pastime of contorting their bodies into complicated and often painful yoga positions.

It would, she assured them, train their bodies and minds to be more resilient and aware. Quinn had to admit that he seemed to heal a little faster since he’d taken up the training.

Generally, the yoga portion of their morning saw her leading them through a
vinyasa
—or series of poses that flowed from one to the other on measured breaths. But, above all other poses, Miyagi preferred a variation on
sirsasana
, a headstand on her forearms with her back arched and knees bent so her feet were poised directly above her head. Thibodaux called it the Evil Scorpion and groused about it to no end, coming close, but never quite getting it right.

Inverted like Miyagi and Thibodaux, Quinn should have been clearing his mind. Instead, he let it wander.

So far, Winfield Palmer had avoided talking to him. There was no doubt the national security advisor was upset. Quinn had screwed up and become embroiled with local authorities. The Speaker of the House was in serious condition—though his wounds were far less serious than Quinn had supposed—and Palmer had been forced to call Vegas Metro PD and the governor of Nevada in order to smooth their seriously ruffled feathers.

“Very well,” Miyagi whispered, pulling Quinn out of his thoughts and signaling the end to the morning torture.

Bending gracefully at the waist, she lowered her feet to the grass and stood before the two men, waiting for them to do the same. She arched her back, looking up toward the sky so the dark corner of a hidden tattoo peeked above the scoop neck of her leotard. The mysterious ink had been at the center of many a discussion led by Thibodaux in late-night camps in various corners of the world. Neither man could tell what it was, only catching glimpses during workouts—and neither wanted to be caught staring at this badass woman’s chest. Quinn never would hazard a guess. Thibodaux, keeping his thought process streamlined, decided it was an evil scorpion—just like the yoga pose he couldn’t do.

“Thank you for your work.” She bowed deeply in turn to each man. Her voice held only the slightest hint of a Japanese accent. “Quinn-san,” she added, turning toward him. “Mr. Palmer would like to have a word with you on the telephone, but he won’t be available for another twenty minutes. May I suggest you both take advantage of the traditional bath while you wait.”

“I got a school thing with the kids,” Thibodaux said, situating his eye patch. “Camille insists I go when I’m anywhere near home.”

“As you wish,” Miyagi said.

Quinn sighed at the thought of a long soak. The prospect of a traditional Japanese bath sounded inviting. Mrs. Miyagi had allowed him to use it before, and he found the wood-fired cedar tub a cure-all for many ills physical and mental. What he did not look forward to was the talk with Palmer. The national security advisor had been unavailable since the incident in Las Vegas. Quinn, accustomed to direct access to his boss, had felt cut off and even a little betrayed at the isolation. Now, after the emotional dust had settled and he was able to see what a scene he’d made on who knew how many cameras, he was certain the conversation would be even more one-sided than usual.