Time of Attack (17 page)

B
ack in the cruiser, Quinn turned down a quiet residential street, listening to converging units on the handheld radios. By the time help got to the stranded officers he was ten blocks away. He pulled up next to two boys sitting on the hood of a late-model Corolla and commandeered their car with little trouble. He sped away in the Toyota, leaving the boys minus their cell phones but with a war story about the time a wanted cop-killer stole their car.

Quinn ditched the Corolla a block from the Franconia Springfield Metro station but skipped the train in favor of a cab. The subway would be crawling with cops and bristling with security cameras. He told the cabbie to take him to the Comfort Inn in Chantilly, Virginia.

Palmer kept a room rented near Dulles where both Quinn and Thibodaux kept bug-out bags with cash, extra weapons, and burner cell phones. Quinn knew his photograph would be flashing through the blogosphere and over every news program in the country in a matter of minutes. Authorities were not likely to find out about his connection to Palmer anytime soon, so the hotel room and bug-out bag would be safe for the time being. He didn’t plan on stopping there for any length of time. Just long enough for Miyagi to meet him with the new ID and passport.

He still had to go to Japan. Being wanted for murder would make it more difficult—but all the more necessary.

He told the desk clerk he’d rented a room earlier but had forgotten the key and ID in the room. She sent security up and they found an ID in the side table drawer with Quinn’s photo under the name Irving Walstrom. She made him another key and slid it across the counter.

Once inside the hotel room, he sat on the edge of the bed, staring at one of the burner phones. He’d lost all his weapons during the arrest. Pressing Thibodaux’s number, he lay back, closing his eyes to try to relax.

The gunny wouldn’t recognize the number, so Quinn wasn’t surprised when he didn’t answer. He hit
REDIAL
. Two calls in quick succession meant something was up.

“Hallo.” The big Cajun’s guarded voice was a welcome sound on the other end of the line.

“Jacques,” Quinn said, “it’s me.”

“Hey, beb,” Thibodaux said. A baby squalled in the background. “You okay?”

“Not really,” Quinn said. “Listen, there will be some folks coming around to look for me, FBI maybe. I’m not sure.”

“Tell me where you are, l’ami, and I’ll come get you. Palmer will work this out.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said, “maybe not. You’ll see what I mean very soon.”

“Whatever,” the Cajun said. “Let me come and get you. We’ll handle this. I been to handlin’ school.”

“I have to get out of town, Jacques.”

“You’re breakin’ my heart, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. His voice fell stern as if he was talking to one of his sons. “Meet me and let me help you out.”

“Listen, Jacques,” Quinn said, “it’s against the law to lie to a federal agent. Helping me out could seriously screw up your security clearance—if it doesn’t get you thrown in jail.”

“Are you shittin’ me?” Thibodaux seethed with frustration. “You’re in trouble, and you think I’d give a rat’s ass about my career!”

Quinn was sorry for even calling now. “I’m not dragging you into this.”

“After all you already dragged me into?” the Cajun scoffed. “You wanta be a turd, go lay in the yard—but you know better than that . . . you truly do.”

“This is too dangerous—”

“Easy now, Superman,” Thibodaux cut him off. “That’s your biggest problem. You know that? It honestly ain’t your job to take care of the whole damn universe. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a pretty fair hand at takin’ care of my own self.”

“Jacques, you have to listen to me. This is bad.” Quinn swung his feet off the bed. “They’ll be monitoring your phone, watching you, questioning your family, whatever it takes to find me.”

“I don’t give a shit if they crawl up our collective orifices, there ain’t a Thibodaux among us who’d give you up.”

“It’s safer this way,” Quinn groaned. “Do me a favor and let Ronnie know I’m laying low for a while.”

“Man, oh, man!” Thibodaux whistled. “You gotta reconsider not callin’ her yourself. Badass babe or not, the girl’s feelin’ sort of fragile about your relationship at the moment.”

“I can’t,” Quinn said. “It’s too dangerous.”

“There you go again, puttin’ on the big red S.”

“Will you call her for me or not?”

“Whatever.” Jacques sighed, still not happy. “Anything special you want me to tell her?”

Quinn paused for a moment. “Tell her to be careful.”

“Seriously, beb? You’re on the run for your life and all you can think to say to your sweetheart is ‘be careful’? Son, remind me to pass you a slap when you come in from the cold. ‘Be careful’ . . . I swear . . .”

“Well,” Quinn said, not knowing what else to say. “
You
be careful.”

“I love you, too, l’ami.” Thibodaux gave a dismissive laugh. “I love you, too.”

Q
asim Ranjhani stood at the window of his small apartment in the peaceful area of Lahore known as Johar Town, south of the medical college where he’d done postgraduate work. He gazed over the top of McDonald’s and Boston Pizza while he listened to the phone at Yanagi Pharmaceutical ring for the fifth time. Heavy traffic thumped past on Canal Bank Highway. Things were changing in Pakistan, and not for the better.

And now, no one was answering his calls.

With the four-hour time difference, it was just after 1:00 p.m. in Japan, and Ranjhani could not comprehend why no one would be on hand to pick up the phone. He was about to hang up, when a familiar male voice came on the line.

“
Moshi moshi
.” The voice gave the traditional Japanese greeting, assuming the call came from inside the country.

“Oda-san,” Ranjhani said, still tense with agitation that he’d been made to wait for someone to answer. He spoke English rather than his native Punjabi dialect of Majhi. His mother had seen to it he’d learned to speak English correctly, and his father, though a proud Pakistani, had felt it important he learn Arabic to better understand the Koran as it had been dictated to Muhammad by Allah Himself.

“Ahh, peace be unto you, Doctor,” Oda said, switching to English. “To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?” Ranjhani thought of him as a smiling viper. For a merciless killer, the man was always extremely polite.

“I am checking on my investment,” Ranjhani said, taking a long breath through his nose to calm his nerves. It did no good to let such a man know you were angry. He was not intimidated and prone to violent outbursts himself. “I have to say, I grow tired of speaking with your subordinate. I understand there was a problem with your project in Virginia. I wanted to hear about it from you personally.”

“Everything is fine. I assure you,” Oda said, a smile in his voice. “A minor inconvenience.”

Ranjhani sniffed, holding back his emotions. “I am sure I do not need to remind you what this minor inconvenience has done in the past.”

“No.” Oda’s voice turned ice cold. “You do not need to remind me. You pay my organization extremely well because we have certain skills—skills at which we excel. Our honor depends on it.”

“Honor?” Ranjhani gave a nervous chuckle in spite of himself. “I have always understood there was no honor among thieves.”

There was deadly silence on the line, so long that Ranjhani feared the man might have hung up and come to kill him.

At length, Oda spoke. “Then you are fortunate that I am a killer and not a thief. The whole of American law enforcement will help us put an end to our problem in Virginia once and for all. Do not concern yourself with trivial things. I have good news.”

“Good news would be welcome,” Ranjhani said, unconvinced.

“The American scientists have arrived. We have demonstrated our process and made them to feel quite at home. I am confident all four will be pleased with the results of our tests this afternoon.”

“That is good news,” Ranjhani said. “So, you believe we will remain on schedule?”

“I not only believe it, Doctor,” Oda said. Ranjhani could again envision the man smiling. “I am certain of it. That is what you pay me for. The first batch of two hundred fifty thousand doses of your . . . vaccine is ready now. The gun is loaded. The tests will allow us to pull the trigger. In the meantime, the Americans grow complacent. The time has come to, as they say, turn up the heat.”

 

 

One call ended, Ranjhani punched another number and walked to his bureau on the other side of the room while he waited for the phone to ring. Two polished wooden boxes, each roughly the size of a brick, sat beside his billfold and wristwatch. The sight of them added another jolt of excitement.

“Hello?” Lee McKeon picked up.

“Things in Asia are moving forward.”

“That is good,” the governor said, his voice noncommittal. He was with someone.

“I know you are uncomfortable with a meeting,” Ranjhani said, looking at the boxes. “But it has become a necessity.”

“Is that so?”

“Indeed,” Rahjhani said. “I have something for you that I must deliver with my own hands.”

 

“N
o doubt in my mind. I could do it.” Deputy U.S. Marshal August Bowen drummed strong fingers against the two extra Glock magazines on his ballistic vest and watched for a reaction from the tall blonde in the seat in front of him. He rubbed a dark goatee with the other hand, as if amused. Oakley Half Jacket shades covered his eyes in the backseat of the Ford SUV.

“I’m gonna call bullshit on that,” Deputy Mitch Lucas said from behind the wheel. He had a voice like a blender grinding ice. Overworking his upper body in the gym and neglecting his tiny legs had earned Lucas the nickname Chicken Hawk in the squad room. It was no secret that he didn’t care much for Bowen. “You’re saying you could proposition her on duty and not get arrested?”

Born and raised in Florida, Samantha “Sammy” Willson had come to seek her fortune in D.C. when she got out of college, and worked with the Metropolitan Police vice unit for a time before she’d joined the Marshals Service. Her previous life made her a perfect fit for the Sex Offender Investigations Coordinator, or SOIC, for the office. In particular U.S. Marshal fashion, SOICs hunted down unregistered sex offenders before they could offend again.

She pointed a knife-hand up the road as if calling in an airstrike. “It’s another half mile. Donaldson’s house is the gray clapboard on the right. He has dogs but the informant says the’re friendly.” She glanced over her shoulder at Bowen. “No way, Gus,” she said, her Florida drawl rolling off her tongue. “Cute turns creepy when you hit on me while I’m working vice. Oh, yeah, you’d go to jail.”

All three deputies were similarly dressed in khaki cargo pants, dark polos, and heavy ballistic vests that were outfitted with all manner of pouch and pocket to hold extra pistol magazines, Taser, radio, flashlight, and plastic flex cuffs. They were military-looking, olive-green things with more MOLLE webbing than any of them had gear to fill. In addition to their basic load of weapons and ammo, each carried an oblong trauma kit the size of a fat sub sandwich. A tab bearing the deputies’ blood type was affixed to each vest over the right shoulder.

“I’m telling you, I could do it, Sammy.” Bowen grinned. He was just under six feet tall and big enough the backseat felt cramped with all the tactical gear. Eight months trudging through the Hindu Kush with his Recon Scout team had hardened his physique and weathered his skin. The experience had also turned his muddy-river hair prematurely silver gray at the age of thirty-six.

“Okay,” Willson said. “Imagine I’m on the street wearing my spandex shorts and a halter top—”

“I do that all the time.” Lucas licked his lips.

“Shut up, Mitch,” she said, then focused on Bowen, fluttering her eyes to get into character. She popped her gum and heaved her chest. Her sex appeal was strong enough to punch straight through the heavy ballistic vest. “Hey, sugar,” she said. “You want a date?”

“You know,” Bowen said, “I think I would love a date.”

“Gotcha!” Lucas said, leering sideways at Willson. He had the eyes of a man who kept someone tied up in his basement.

“Hang on.” Bowen raised his hand. “We haven’t talked about anything illegal yet.”

“Okay, sugar.” Willson nodded, resuming her character. “I don’t date for free, you know.”

“I know.” Bowen peered over the top of his Oakleys, shrugging as if he was a little embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I’m doing a series of figure drawings and I need a model for an hour or so—”

Willson’s mouth fell open.

“Wait, wait, wait.” Lucas tapped the steering wheel with the flat of his hand. “You want to draw her naked?”

“Come on, Sammy.” Bowen grinned. “What would you say?”

“In reality,” Willson said, nodding, “I’d say shove off, you weirdo.”

“And, you owe me lunch,” Bowen said, hand on the door as they neared the target house. “It’s a tried-and-true technique.”

“Seriously?” Willson turned half around in her seat to stare at Bowen. “You mean to tell me you’ve hired a hooker?”

Bowen nodded.

“Jeez Louise,” Willson scoffed, grabbing her seat belt. “I thought we did backgrounds to weed out guys like that.” The deep red of her fingernails stood out in stark contrast to her tactical gear.

Bowen grinned, as if such a thing made perfect sense. “Sitting on her butt eating bonbons while I did a few sketches was a heck of a lot better than her normal routine. An undercover cop would just tell me to get lost. They wouldn’t sit for a nude drawing.”

Willson looked at him for a long moment, then raised an eyebrow to make a face like she just might consider it. She shook away the thought and put her game face back on.

“Donaldson’s house is right up there before the intersection.” She faced forward in her seat again. “We got over ten thousand images of explicit child porn the last time—some of them of kids as young as four. But remember, he’s not only a pervert, he’s a runner—and a fast one at that.”

A haggard blond woman in a green Hawaiian muumuu stood by a group of mailboxes at the corner fifty meters ahead, watching the Ford approach.

Willson pointed at the driveway past the woman and on the other side of the road. “That’s Donaldson’s place there.”

“Keep driving.” Bowen tapped the headrest behind Lucas. His cell phone began to buzz in the pocket inside his vest. He ignored it.

“What?” Chicken Hawk Lucas shot a glance in the rearview mirror.

“Trust me,” Bowen said, looking intently at the road. “Just drive on by.”

“Go ahead, Mitch.” Willson shrugged as the SUV passed the row of mailboxes and the staring woman. “It can’t hur—”

Bowen flung open his door, smacking it into the haggard blond and sending her flying in a blossom of arms, hairy legs, and flowered Hawaiian patterns. He bailed out before the SUV came to a screeching stop.

Bowen grabbed a handful of dress and a flailing arm to haul Frank Donaldson to his feet. The bright green muumuu hung off a hairy shoulder. Blood poured from a gaping split in his forehead where the doorpost had impacted him.

“How’d you know?” the addled man asked, kicking at the ratty blond wig that lay like roadkill in the gravel.

Bowen ratcheted the handcuffs tight and pushed the prisoner against the side of the SUV to pat him down.

“Uncle Sam’s all-expense-paid trips to the Middle East,” he said. “I’ve seen a lot of guys in man-dresses.”

Bowen’s cell phone rang for the fourth time in as many minutes. Convinced Donaldson wasn’t hiding anything but a black bra and a pair of matching lacy panties, he handed him off to Lucas and Willson before answering. He recognized the number.

“Yes, Chief?”

“Bowen,” Chief James Ragsdale said, as if he was speaking around the stub of one of his favorite cigars. “Director wants to see you at fifteen hundred hours. Anything I should know about?”

Bowen shot a wary glance at the wounded prisoner. “No,” he said. “I don’t think she would be aware of anything.”

“Good,” Ragsdale barked. “Do me a favor and put on a suit before you head over.”

August Bowen snugged a red-and-blue-striped power tie against the top button of a starched white shirt and popped his neck from side to side.

Sammy Willson sat at her desk, situated so it butted up to his, and stared at him with a little more than awe. “The director of the United States Marshals Service doesn’t just call in PODs to chat,” Willson said.

They’d dropped Donaldson off at the jail and returned so Bowen could get changed for his meeting.

A POD was a
plain old deputy
—no rank, just a simple silver star. And that was just where Deputy Bowen wanted to be. His mother, who ran the Republican Party in Flathead County, had asked him if he wanted the presidential appointment so he could carry a gold badge as the U.S. Marshal of Montana rather than be a lowly deputy. He’d told her thanks but no thanks, giving the age-old reply of deputy marshals, content with their lot in life—“a gold badge is given, a silver badge is earned.” So, he’d gone to Glynco for training, done his time in Billings, and had recently transferred to the Eastern District of Virginia five months before to get a feel for life in a bigger office—and to be near his doctor girlfriend.

Bowen looked at his watch and sat down.

“Whatever it is,” he said, picking up the drawing pad on his desk. “She doesn’t want to see me until three. I have a few minutes to clear my head.”

Bowen’s pencil whispered across the paper as he put the finishing touches on a sketch of a court clerk named Roslyn. After his last Reserve deployment as a Scout to Afghanistan, the Army shrink had told him to use his art when he was working things out in his head. An audience with the director was certainly something he needed to work out.

“Maybe she’s giving you a Director’s Award for something you did overseas,” Willson said. Out of her tactical gear it was easier to see that she was not only tall but extremely fit, with a quick smile and curvy build that made prisoners turn flirty when she moved them to court. At first blush bad guys on the street thought she might be a pushover. Half a second into any confrontation and she showed them the error of such thinking. There was a no-nonsense air that Bowen found . . . comfortable—like a favorite kid sister.

“Pleeeease.” Mitch Lucas scoffed from three desks over, tucked into the back corner of the squad room, farthest from the supervisory deputy’s office door. “They don’t give you a Director’s Award for being a hero in the military. That’s the Army’s job.”

Bowen smiled, half-entertained, half-disgusted. The little Chicken Hawk was a decent enough deputy. He worked his shift in court, hooked and hauled prisoners without too much whining, and did a fair job of finding fugitives with his computer. But Lucas let it be known at every turn that he felt sidelined by Bowen’s presence. Bowen got the good details. Bowen got the good warrants. Bowen got the girls.

Everyone else suffered for not being Bowen.

Lucas turned back to his computer. “What exactly were you decorated for anyway?”

“You know, Mitch,” Bowen groaned, tossing his pencil on the desk. He leaned back in his chair in an effort to pop his back. “Heroic shit.”

“Who you drawing now?” Lucas pecked away, apparently feeling it was his duty to harass the new guy. “Another court clerk with big ti—”

“Hey now!” Bowen cut him off, eyes still closed in midstretch. “You’re about to cross the line, Mitch.”

Sammy Willson backed away. She turned to Lucas, shaking her head in warning. Lucas sat still, thinking things over. Both deputies had seen what Bowen did to people on the street when they, as he put it, “crossed the line.” It wasn’t pretty.

“How about you go f—”

“That’d be crossing the same line,” Bowen said, cutting him off.

Lucas’s hands slipped away from the keyboard. “Who gets to decide where this line is that you’re always talking about?”

“I do,” Bowen said. “And I draw it close so I don’t have to reach very far to slap the shit out of a bully.” He stood to leave, shrugged on a dark gray suit jacket, and winked at Willson. “And when, not if, I do, I might get days off, but I doubt they’d fire me. Hell, maybe they’d give me the Director’s Award. Apparently, being a half bubble off from the war earns me a fair bit of leeway.”

 

 

Sammy Willson frowned. “You’re an idiot, Mitch.”

“He thinks he’s God’s gift to the Marshals Service,” Lucas said.

“My daddy had a dog like you when I was little.” Willson sighed. “He was a pretty good dog, too, chasing away panthers and keeping snakes out of the yard. Trouble was, he kept trying to bite everybody that came to visit.”

“What happened?” Lucas smirked, but still half interested.

“He bit the wrong guy one day and got himself shot.” She nodded at Bowen as he disappeared through the front door of the office. “I’m tellin’ you, Mitchell. That’s the wrong guy.”