by Marc Cameron
“Half a mile back,” Thibodaux said. “We’re comin’ up on Montgomery and Harley now. I got the doc with me.”
Jericho started to ask about the prisoners but decided he didn’t care. He had his hands full with the Night Rod and miles of flesh-eating pavement.
Focused as he was on the fleeing Zafir, Quinn didn’t see the black pickup screaming up from behind until it was almost on top of him.
Ride like everyone is on crack and trying to kill you. It was a mantra he and his brother had repeated to each other hundreds of times growing up in a motorcycle family. His father had drilled it into both of them as boys. As it turned out, the approaching pickup had exactly that in mind.
Quinn leaned hard to his right, scraping a metal foot peg on asphalt as he took the sharp turn into the tree-lined park. Moving too fast to react, the oncoming truck shot past the intersection. It slammed on the brakes, tires squealing and smoke pouring from the rear of the vehicle as the driver threw it into reverse and tore backward toward the turnoff.
In the vibrating side mirror Quinn saw the pickup pass the intersection, then slide to a stop on the gravel shoulder, only to peel out and turn to fall in behind him again, pouring on the gas.
Quinn gritted his teeth. On the bike, he’d have the advantage of maneuverability and speed, but the truck could make mistakes. If Quinn made one, he’d go down and at these speeds that would spell disaster.
He cursed himself for not expecting something like this. Kalil had had more than one person backing him up. Zafir would surely have more than the two losers stupid enough to get caught in front of Navarro’s house.
“We have company,” Quinn shouted into his headset as the gleaming silver truck grill loomed larger and larger in his side mirror. “Black Chevy pickup. Newer model.”
“We’re coming up on the park now,” Thibodaux said, worry stitching his voice.
“Don’t fret about me,” Quinn shot back, as the pickup bore down on him. “I lost sight of Zafir about ten seconds ago.” His heart sank as he spoke the words. “He was heading east toward University. You stick with him. I’ll handle this guy.”
Forty feet behind him, the black Chevy closed the gap. In the thick of Trinity Park now, Quinn cut between two trees, leaving the pavement to take a red gravel jogging path to his right. He heard the roar of the big block engine behind him and ducked between a picnic table and a public toilet to avoid getting flattened. Unable to negotiate the narrow pass, the pickup had to go wide, overcorrecting and bouncing across the manicured lawns. Gunfire clattered through the perfect rows of oak trees as the passenger stuck the pug barrel of a submachine gun out the window.
“Don’t worry, Chair Force,” Thibodaux’s voice came across the Bluetooth. “We got Zafir in our sights. He’s going south on University.”
Quinn didn’t have a chance to register the good news. The truck bounced around the stone toilet buildings, coming in at an angle now from the opposite direction. He could see the gun barrel bobbing out the open window as the passenger continued to fire in short, deadly bursts.
Quinn let off the throttle long enough to draw his Kimber and transfer it to his left hand. As the pickup came around the second bank of toilets, he leaned in, riding toward it, keeping a line of picnic tables in between them to avoid getting run down. The Kimber held eight rounds and Quinn used all of them to spray the open window as the two vehicles passed each other like jousting knights.
He didn’t have time for this. Zafir was getting away.
The passenger side of the windshield turned white from the impact of the 10-millimeter rounds. The machine gun tumbled out the window and the shooter collapsed, both arms flailing loosely in the wind.
For a moment Quinn thought he’d hit the driver, but the pickup continued to move, throwing up a cloud of dust. It spun around, coming back for another try.
Quinn downshifted, realizing his gun was dry. The speed and agility of the Night Rod were his only allies. He’d have to stop the bike to change magazines, and in the time it took to do that the Chevy would run him down. Worse, Zafir would be as good as gone.
The chest-thumping roar of an oncoming Harley suddenly shook the trees. Quinn’s head snapped to the left, astounded to see his brother materialize like an apparition from a thicket of cottonwoods, ripping in from the far edge of an open field.
Bo’s lips were drawn back in a youthful grin. His denim vest flapped in the wind. He pointed toward the black pickup as he bore down, making quick eye contact with Jericho. Sizing up the situation, Bo used a technique he called kissing. It was akin to what professional drivers called pitting—using one vehicle to strike another in just the right spot to cause the driver to lose control. On a motorcycle, the move required more finesse—and the result was a little different.
Instead of striking the Chevy, Bo maneuvered alongside it, keeping his bike about three feet away and in the driver’s blind spot. About the same time the driver realized there was another motorcycle in the picture, he yanked the wheel hard over, trying to run down his new adversary. Instead of trying to evade, Bo accelerated, angling toward the pickup and rolling effortlessly over the side and into the bed. He came up on his knees as the Harley tumbled out of control and slammed into an oak tree with a sickening crash.
Before the driver could react, Bo shot him three times through the back glass. He looked up at Jericho, who now rode alongside the bouncing pickup, nodding toward the twisted remains of the motorcycle with a grimace.
“Don’t try that with my bike!” Bo yelled above the wind. The truck was already beginning to slow. “Now go! I’ll take care of this.”
“Tell me you have eyes-on, Jacques.” Jericho took to the pavement again, racing through the Botanical Gardens and turning east again to try and cut the gap between himself and the others. He caught the green light at University and flew into the intersection heading toward the spaghettilike maze of highways a block to the south. Quinn knew that if he was on the run, that’s the direction he’d go. He gambled that Zafir would do the same, scanning the trees and side streets. Cars moved lazily up and down the four-lane under the glare of a morning sun. They showed no evidence that a motorcycle had just sped past.
“Jacques!” Quinn called out again as the maze of buttressed overpasses and sweeping concrete ramps loomed in front of him. “Coming up on the freeway now. You’ve gotta tell me which way to go!”
“West! West!” Thibodaux’s gumbo-thick voice flooded across the Bluetooth in Quinn’s ear. “Take a left on the West Freeway, then keep left onto I-30. We’re still on the freeway running alongside. Doc’s runnin’ the GPS. She says we got another ramp a mile or so ahead where we can join you.”
“You still have eyes-on, right?”
“Roger that,” Thibodaux said. “We’re on the road above him. Can’t get to him from where we are, but I can see the son of a bitch plain as day, rippin’ down the interstate like he don’t have a care in the world.”
“Stay with him,” Quinn said, leaning the bike hard right to follow the signs toward Interstate 30. “Get Megan to call 911 and report him as a DUI—”
Quinn had to swerve to avoid a tow truck that drifted into his lane, narrowly missing a TEXANS DRIVE FRIENDLY sign post. Directly ahead, a gray-haired man in a black BMW sedan slammed on his brakes for no apparent reason. Quinn cut the bike back to his right again, finally finding a clear lane. If Zafir and his men didn’t kill him, one of these city drivers seemed bound to.
Desperate for information, Quinn called out to Thibodaux again. “I’m taking the access ramp now. Tell me if he gets off the highway.”
“You got it, beb,” Thibodaux said. “He’s still below us. Another half a mile and we’ll be right on top of him. We’re gonna lose sight of him for a sec, but he’s got nowhere to go... .”
“I’m on the interstate now.” Quinn called out the exit numbers as he shot by them.
“You’re a mile behind us,” Thibodaux said.
Quinn poured on the thrott
le, thankful for the Night Rod’s powerful Porsche engine. Merging onto the four-lane interstate, he sped past a Texas Highway Patrol unit working radar on a pullout. He glanced down at his speedometer and grinned when he saw the needle bounce over a hundred and twenty. The state black-and-white fishtailed on the pavement, throwing up a curtain of gray smoke as it fell in behind. This was one way to make sure he had some backup.
The siren wailed mournfully as Quinn took the inside lane to fly around a swaying tandem tractor trailer. Wind from the big rig shoved him around like a rag doll and he sped up to one-thirty-five to move around quickly. The highway trooper was in a regular Chevrolet Impala instead of one of their interdiction Camaros so he had a little trouble keeping up.
Thibodaux’s frantic voice suddenly crackled in Jericho’s ear. “We got two marked cop cars gettin’ in behind Zafir... . Looks like they’ve spooked him... . He’s doubling back! Repeat. He’s coming back at you!”
“On the other side?”
“Smack dab at you, beb!” Thibodaux said. “Into oncoming traffic. Maybe he’ll wreck and solve all our problems for us.”
“We can’t be that lucky,” Quinn spat, more to himself than the Cajun. He let off the gas, allowing the Highway Patrol car time to catch up as he scanned the road ahead. Traffic had slowed to seventy-five with the trooper’s siren screaming in the background. Jericho had to weave the bike in and out between the rapidly congesting packs that had only moments before been well spaced along four lanes of interstate. Without a helmet or even a pair of sunglasses, he was well aware that a piece of flying gravel could blind him—or even knock him off his speeding bike. Remnants of a blown-out tire or any other road debris that happened to be in his path would have deadly consequences. He leaned into the wind and rolled on more throttle, pushing the dangers out of his mind.
They were nothing compared with what he had to do next.
Zafir’s motorcycle suddenly appeared in the distance, growing quickly from small speck on the horizon. Horns blared. Cars and trucks parted like the Red Sea before Moses, swerving in both directions to avoid the oncoming missile.
With both Harleys traveling over eighty miles an hour it wouldn’t take long to close the distance between them. Instinctively, Quinn tightened his thighs, squeezing them against the tank of Bo’s bike. He’d made the mistake of firing his pistol dry and was left with few options.
Traffic opened up on the wide highway as the two men bore down toward each other. Zafir was hunched forward, leaning over the handlebars as far as he could, as if riding on a sport bike instead of the big cruiser he’d stolen after his gunfight with the Denizens. His head snapped up when he saw Quinn, recognizing him instantly as an enemy.
Quinn let off the throttle, slowing to seventy but aiming the Night Rod directly at the oncoming motorcycle.
Distorted by buffeting wind, the Arab’s face pulled back into a tight smile, as if he knew what was about to happen. As it turned out he had no idea.
With each bike traveling over seventy miles an hour, it took them less than two seconds to close the hundred yards between them. Quinn released the left handgrip to snatch the Masamune blade from the scabbard in the small of his back. A fraction of a second later, he pressed on the right grip, leaning away as he passed the other bike. The men’s knees missed each other by mere inches. Quinn kept his left arm extended, holding Yawaraka Te’s gleaming blade at head height, parallel to the blur of passing pavement.
He felt a shudder as the sword connected with Zafir, but at such speed was unable to turn and check his accuracy without dumping the bike. He heard a grinding crash and the squeal of a dozen car brakes as highway traffic screeched to a halt. It took him another hundred yards to bring the Night Rod skidding to a stop on the inside shoulder.
The Highway Patrol car slid to a halt on the loose gravel behind him. Sidearm drawn and dead-steady, the aggressive trooper bailed out like an enraged guard dog and screamed for Quinn to drop his blade.
Quinn let the sword fall, gritting his teeth when he heard the seven-hundred-year-old steel ring against the pavement. Still straddling the bike, he raised both hands high over his head. He could feel the trooper’s pistol trained directly at his back.
“You freeze right where you are, ninja boy!” the lawman boomed. The “or I’ll kill you” was implied.
“I’m a federal agent,” Quinn yelled over his shoulder, keeping his hands in the air.
“Is that a fact?” the trooper said, his voice icy with professional calm. “So, the feds are hiring ninjas now to go on sword patrol? Frankly, mister, I don’t care who you are. You better have a damn good reason for chop-pin’ that sombitch’s head off.”
Thibodaux and Mahoney came up on the eastbound lanes and screeched to a stop on the far shoulder. “He’s one of the good guys,” Thibodaux called out, his hands in the air so as not to alarm the trooper any more than he already was. Quinn turned his head just enough to see Mahoney running toward the tangled wreckage of the red Harley where it was piled up along the guard rail. She’d taken the time to throw on a protective hood and gloves but wore no other safety gear.
Two more black-and-whites skidded to a halt on the gravel shoulder. Now that he had more guns on the scene, the original trooper finally allowed Quinn to lower his hands and show identification.
“What the hell is OSI doing hacking people to death on my highway?”
“We need to get a perimeter set up around the body,” Quinn said, nodding toward the center of the interstate. He watched from a distance as Mahoney stooped to examine the wreckage. “I know this seems odd, but we need to locate the head and make sure no one gets near that either. This guy has some seriously contagious diseases.” Quinn looked at the three troopers, capable lawmen all, but none over thirty. He thought they might not even know what hemorrhagic fever was. “The stuff he has makes swine flu look like diaper rash.”
“Well, why didn’t you say he was sick?” the first trooper on the scene scoffed, looking at Quinn through narrowed eyes. “That’s a damn good reason for chop-pin’ someone’s head off with a sword... .”
Quinn ignored him. He put the Night Rod on its center stand and started to walk toward the wreckage, where Zafir’s body was plainly visible. Surprised to see Megan stand and remove her protective hood, he broke into a run, adrenaline still pumping from his wild ride.
Twenty feet away he noticed all the blood had drained from Mahoney’s face. “What?” he said, slowing to a trot. “What is it?”
Megan closed her eyes, raising her face toward the sky. Her shoulders were shaking. “Zafir Jawad lost his fingers during the first Gulf War,” she said. “This guy still has the stitches from where his were amputated no more that two weeks ago. He’s a decoy. We let the real Zafir get away.”
CHAPTER 49
Zafir smiled to himself as he drove. Surely Allah the merciful smiled upon his mission. One of the sheikh’s servants, a man named Isam, had called to warn him.
The Americans knew. There were people waiting at Carrie Navarro’s house. It made sense that Farooq would send someone to watch over him, someone to protect him from such things and ensure he was able to complete his assigned move in the Game. Zafir gripped the wheel of his rental car until his fingers turned white and pondered the bravery of such men. Their death was now a certainty—if not from the duties of protection, at the very least from the ensuing plague. Such was the purest of devotion to Jihad.
Navarro had now gone into hiding. He cursed the infidel Jericho for finding the photographs. It had been stupid to leave them in the lab ... but who would have imagined someone making his way into the Kingdom undetected? Zafir consoled himself with the fact that in the end, none of that would matter. Photographs or not, millions of infidels would ultimately die a horrific death from the virus he carried within his body. A smile spread over his face at the thought, but turned into a shiver as considered what the illness would do to him first. He reached in his pocket to touch the small vial of poison that would
rescue him when the pain was too great to bear. In the mirror he saw beads of sweat on his brow and wondered if he might not be contagious earlier than Suleiman had believed.
Zafir pulled over at a highway rest area on the edge of Fort Worth to look at Gail Taylor’s iPhone. He’d spent months learning everything there was to know about Carrie Navarro while she’d been his prisoner. There was no place for her to hide. He used the remaining fingers of his disfigured hand to punch a name into the search engine just as Gail Taylor had showed him. He caught a whiff of her heady scent again on his collar, but pushed it from his mind. In no time he found the address he wanted and entered that into the GPS on his dash. In Iraq or the Saudi Kingdom finding the specific address of a person might take days and require the torture of many relatives. The Americans made it so easy. Sophisticated technology cut away privacy like an well-sharpened axe.
Zafir put the car back into gear and pulled out of the rest area to join the flow of interstate traffic heading west, into the sun. Finally so near his goal, he felt a familiar stirring, a warm rush, low in his belly. Very soon, Navarro would experience indescribable agony. She would die—but it would not be the virus that killed her.
CHAPTER 50
Carrie couldn’t stop her hands from shaking. The walls of her mother’s three-story farmhouse were beginning to close in around her. She found it difficult to breathe, let alone think. For the first time in five years, she lit a cigarette. The terrifying notion that Zafir Jawad was in the United States was more than she could wrap her brain around. With the help of Dr. Soto, she’d only just come to grips with the nightmares of her past life. Now this man who’d committed unspeakable acts of cruelty for so many months had reared his head again. The mere thought of his face made her retch.
She took a long drag on the cigarette, willing it unsuccessfully to calm her twitching nerves. Christian lay on his belly in front of the television holding his nose at the smoke and watching a Transformers cartoon. Her mother had stepped into the bedroom to take a phone call from a neighbor.
