Time of Attack (18 page)

B
owen swiped his pass card and drove his black government-issue Dodge Charger into the underground parking lot beneath the Crystal City mall off Jeff Davis Highway. He was old enough to realize he was at the top end of his physical prime but still young enough to try to maximize it. He knew his way around the gym and had boxed during ROTC in college. He’d lost only one fight that mattered and still flushed with anger at the judges and himself when he thought about it for too long.

His girlfriend was a doctor at GW University Hospital, which for all practical purposes meant he lived alone. Though he loved to cook, there was rarely any reason to do much but eat canned soup while he stood at his sink. He kept his prematurely gray hair on the longish side so he could be reminded every morning when he trimmed his goatee that he was no longer in the Army.

Bowen parked the Charger in a vacant visitor space against the concrete wall and checked his tie in the rearview mirror before he went upstairs. Since coming aboard with the agency it had always bugged him that the FBI had the Hoover Building, the ATF had their bunker-like fortress near Gallaudet College. ICE, Interior, DEA, all had their own buildings worthy of Washington, D.C., architecture. But the United States Marshals Service, the nation’s oldest federal law enforcement agency, rented space in a mall.

Bowen took the elevator up to the shopping level, then hung a right in the underground to work his way through the afternoon crowds of government employees and military brass from the nearby Pentagon. The guard beside the nondescript glass doors across from Morton’s Steakhouse checked his Headquarters ID and let him by.

Bowen nodded to a group of black women from Human Resources on their way out for lunch. Being stationed in Virginia meant he’d come to headquarters a few times, so he knew people by face if not by name. They smiled back, chatting happily among themselves, apparently not recognizing him. He jumped in the elevator they’d come out of and pushed the button to the twelfth floor.

Miles Nelson, the Assistant Director for Investigative Operations, was waiting for him in the common area of the director’s suite. A South Carolina native, Nelson gave him an earnest handshake and welcome.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“I didn’t know I had a choice, sir.” Bowen forced a grin.

Nelson laughed, his Southern charm coming through. “You didn’t. Come on. She’s waiting for you.” Accustomed to spending time in the lofty realms of the twelfth floor, the AD put a hand on Bowen’s back and ushered him into the director’s office.

The office was spacious, at least thirty feet across with a separate sitting area and centered coffee table that she must have decided was too intimate for this particular meeting. Rich blue and gold carpeting glowed in the light from the windows along the north wall that offered a panoramic view of Reagan National Airport, the Potomac River, and downtown Washington, D.C. He wondered if people like this had big offices to make visitors feel small. It was sure working with him, a POD with a cubicle and a gun locker.

Director Carroll stayed seated when they walked in, flanked by her chief of staff and the deputy director. She was in her mid-fifties, with a full mane of frosted blond hair that lay perfectly on her padded shoulders. A high-collared wool suit and fist-size gold brooch accented her stern demeanor. The pinched look on her face made Bowen think she might spring from her seat at any moment and shout “Off with his head!” He’d seen few Taliban fighters that looked as fierce.

The chief of staff, a female former chief deputy from somewhere in the Midwest—Bowen couldn’t remember where—smiled, as if to set his nerves at ease. The DD was busy talking on his cell. “Go ahead and have a seat, Deputy Bowen,” the director said, not sounding as ferocious as she looked. “You are wondering, no doubt, why I called you in.” Bowen started to answer but she kept talking.

“AD Nelson tells me you grew up in Montana,” she said, with more of a nasal tone than he would have guessed from her photograph that hung in the Alexandria squad room. “Am I right on that?”

“You are correct,” Bowen said. “Flathead County.”

“He says you’re an avid bow hunter.”

“I am,” the deputy said, eyes looking to Nelson for any sign of an explanation.

“I suppose,” the director went on, fiddling with the brooch on her shoulder as she spoke, “hunting with a bow and arrow requires a good deal of patience and skill . . . Good qualities to have in a deputy marshal.”

“I suppose so.” Bowen gave an obedient nod, wondering where this was going.

“Well.” The director looked him over one last time, as if she hadn’t quite made up her mind until that very moment. “Fairfax County has given us a remarkable opportunity in the form of a fugitive warrant for Officer Chin’s shooter.”

Everyone within five hundred miles of D.C. had heard about some nut job murdering the young police officer. Bowen was sure the D.C. Area Regional Fugitive Task Force had boots on the ground helping find the shooter, but he’d not been involved. So far, they’d kept the identity of the fugitive off the news.

The director went on. “The Bureau has been going round and round with Fairfax County and Main Justice trying to grab this one.” She leaned forward, staring, nodding as if only she held some great secret to the universe. “But I told the attorney general it had to be us.” She pounded the desk. “You want to know why?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Because we have you, Deputy August Bowen.” She smiled. “And the FBI, thankfully, does not.”

Bowen opened his mouth to speak, but an almost imperceptible headshake from the chief of staff stopped him.

“Does the name Jericho Quinn mean anything to you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Bowen said. “We worked together a couple of times on some cases in Montana. I believe he’s still in OSI.”

“I understand you lost a boxing match to him in college.”

Bowen’s neck burned at the memory. He groaned. “Indeed I did, ma’ am.”

“So you know him pretty well.”

“I suppose so,” Bowen said. “He’s an Air Force Academy grad. I was Army ROTC, so there was always a certain amount of rivalry. But I’d have no trouble working with him again, if that’s what you mean. That fight thing was a long time ago.”

“I don’t want you to work with him.” Director Carroll leaned back in her chair. “I want you to hunt him down and arrest him.”

She didn’t say “off with his head,” but the nuance was crystal clear.

 

 

Dismissed with his marching orders, Bowen accompanied Nelson back to his division in the adjacent office tower, with the AD insisting they stop for coffee at a Starbucks across from the barbecue joint in the underground mall along the way.

“Can you tell me what we have on him, sir?” Bowen asked five minutes later when he sank down into Nelson’s plush leather couch. The notion of Jericho Quinn murdering a police officer popped back and forth inside his head, refusing to settle. Still, people did weird things. He knew that from experience.

The Assistant Director for Investigative Operations had a view similar to the director’s. Bowen would have thought the office was huge had he not just been to Carroll’s palatial digs.

Nelson slid an open Bible to one side of his desk and took a folder from the lap drawer. “Well, to tell the truth, we don’t have very much,” he said. “The Air Force seems to have misplaced Quinn’s entire file.”

“Family?” Bowen offered. “Friends?”

“There is that.” Nelson nodded. “Turns out somebody shot his ex-wife at a wedding in Colorado a couple of days ago. She lost her leg. Looks like the shooter may have been going for his daughter.”

That was too big a detail to be unrelated. “Anyone arrested?”

Nelson shook his head. “Nope. But at least OSI still had that incident report. There are a couple of names. One’s a Marine, I believe. That should get you started.”

Bowen took that as an indication he should get right to work.

“But wait.” Nelson grinned. “There’s more.” It was impossible not to like this guy. For one of the top managers in the Service, he was amazingly down to earth, kicked back at his desk and talking with a POD. Bowen couldn’t help thinking he’d like to work for the man someday, if only that didn’t mean being assigned to headquarters.

Nelson held up a clear plastic bag like a trophy. “We have his phone.”

That was good news. People kept all sorts of data on their phones, usually trusting a simple passcode to safeguard their secrets—appointments, e-mails, photographs, and most important to Bowen, friends and contacts. With the information from the phone, he should be able to build a pretty clear map of Jericho Quinn’s recent life.

“It’s encrypted,” Nelson said, sliding it across the desk and moving his Bible back to the center.

“No problem.” Bowen nodded. “I’ll take it to Geoff. He could get a call history off two tin cans and a string. We’ll find him, sir.”

“You’d better,” Nelson said. “Because the way I hear it, there are a lot of folks out there who don’t plan to work very hard to bring him in alive.”

Q
uinn met Emiko Miyagi at an Exxon station east of Chantilly, not far from Dulles, where she gave him an envelope containing three fat rolls of twenty- and hundred- dollar bills, two credit cards, a passport, a Virginia driver’s license, and an airline ticket, all under the name of John Hackman. It was a fitting name, she pointed out, considering his penchant for using a blade.

Since Narita Airport’s entry procedures required a photograph and two fingerprints from each entering passenger, Quinn opted to take a less direct route into the country, flying out of Dulles to Seoul, then taking a domestic hop to Buson before boarding a ferry for the three-hour ride across the Sea of Japan to Fukuoka, where he was to meet Miyagi’s contact.

There were a great many variables, but the passport and other documents were genuine, so they, at least, would not trip him up. One-way plane reservations, purchased the same day of travel, triggered more scrutiny than Quinn wanted and would surely provide a red flag to anyone looking for him after the shooting. Miyagi purchased round-trip tickets and had been able to manipulate the system to make it appear as though she’d purchased them a month before.

“I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this,” Quinn said, taking the documents. “I realize you’re risking your career, and even your freedom. Palmer must be beside himself.”

Miyagi looked at the ground, looking almost girlish.

“He directed me to tell you to call in if I saw you,” she said when she handed over the envelope. “But I would advise against such a thing.”

“Thank you, Miyagi-san,” Quinn said, slipping the documents in his pockets.

“You know my secrets,” she said. “I believe you should call me Emiko. I should also mention something about your contact, my friend, Ayako-chan. She is . . . how should I say this? Given to the wild side.”

“Wild enough to help a wanted fugitive?”

Miyagi smiled, for the first time since before she’d told him her story. “Wild enough that she will likely try to become intimate with you moments after you meet. But I beg you not to judge her. She has been through much.”

“I’m not one to judge anybody.” Quinn scoffed.

“Thank you,” Miyagi said. “Now, I must warn you. If my daugh . . . if Ran continued to progress as she was when I left, she will be an incredibly strong adversary.”

“But I have had you as my teacher.” Quinn shrugged off the warning. “She has missed out on that.”

Miyagi held her breath for a moment, choosing her words carefully. “You are extremely good at what you do. But Oda is . . . very close to perfect in his fighting skill.”

“It’s been a long time.” Quinn shrugged. “He’s older. Maybe he’s slowed down.”

“Perhaps.” Miyagi nodded. “But he was always more skilled than me.” She rolled her lips. “And I am more skilled than you.”

D
eputy August Bowen read over what little information he had in the file while Geoff Barker tinkered with Quinn’s phone, which was now attached to his laptop computer.

Seating at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Academy in Glynco was alphabetical, and Barker had sat next to Bowen during Marshals Basic eight years earlier. He was generally quiet, strong as a bull, and had a tiny Superman curl that hung down across his forehead. All smiles and Georgia charm, he was the kind of kid Bowen would have wanted dating his daughter, if he had a daughter.

He was also one of the smartest people Bowen had ever come across. His small office was crammed with telephone lineman gear, maps of cell towers, and stacks of black plastic Pelican cases containing all sorts of sensitive and secret equipment Barker used to do his job. The screen on some kind of oscilloscope blipped on the table behind him, like something out of a science fiction movie.

“This wasn’t a random shooting.” Bowen shut the thin folder and closed his eyes to think out loud. “You gotta wonder why a sniper would go after somebody’s family. Witnesses say they think the shooter in Colorado was an Asian female. According to this OSI agent’s report, Quinn suspects her of being Japanese.”

“Maybe Quinn went after her,” Geoff said without looking up from his computer. A lifelong resident of Atlanta, his drawl could make him appear slow at first blush, but Bowen had never seen anyone who knew their way around phones and electronic surveillance as well as Geoff Barker. Even in Marshals Basic he’d shown a bent in that direction.

“That’s what I would do,” Bowen said. He tipped his head toward the phone. “So, what do you think? You gonna be able to get in?”

“Dude,” Barker said, still not looking up. “This is high-level government encryption.”

Bowen’s heart fell. “So, you can’t get in?”

“Of course I can.” Barker scoffed. “I write high-level government encryption.” He tapped a few more keys, waited a beat, then looked up with a wide grin. “I’m in,” he said.

“Why would an OSI agent need an encrypted phone?” Bowen mused, half to himself.

Barker’s eyes darted back and forth across the computer screen, studying the contents of the phone.

“The most frequently called number comes back to a V. Garcia . . .” He kept scanning. “Japanese shooter, you say?”

Bowen nodded. “That’s what Quinn thinks, at least.”

“Hmmm,” Barker mused, hitting
PRINT
so Bowen would have a copy of what he was looking at. “There’s an Emiko Miyagi in here. I’ll go up on her number and see what I can find. Meantime, I got contacts with Japan National Police. Work up a BOLO, and I’ll get it over to them.” BOLO was Be On the Look Out—a locater notice, like a wanted poster but with less need for controlled distribution.

“We should make it wide,” Bowen said. “Plaster his photo all over the news over there.” He got up from his seat with a long groan. This whole thing made him feel tired.

“Where you going first?” Barker asked, still futzing with the computer.

“I came here first,” Bowen said. “But now, I’m going to swing by and take a look at that crime scene, get a feel for it, so to speak. I got no love lost for the guy, but this just doesn’t sound like him.”

“Shitty deal, hunting someone who’s supposed to be one of the good guys,” Barker offered, handing Bowen the paper from his printer tray.

“Jericho Quinn’s not a bad guy,” Bowen said. “But I’m pretty sure
good
doesn’t describe him, either.”