The Deceived

by Brett Battles

  “You know how it is, Quinn.”

  The best lies are those hidden in truth. How many times had he heard that over the years? Not just from Durrie, but from almost everyone in the business.

  “I’ll bet his wife doesn’t have anything to do with it at all, does she? Somebody else would have stepped up to take advantage of his death.”

  “Will step up. But that’s not my part of the operation,” Jenny said. “Good luck convincing anyone of that.” She paused. “Thank you for helping expose those who were following me. Oh, and delivering me the congressman. That was extra special.”

  “Wait,” Quinn said. “Tell me. Did you enjoy killing the man who loved you?”

  “The man who loved me was going to expose me. I couldn’t let that happen. Goodbye, Quinn.”

  “Jenny?” he said.

  Nothing.

  She had either removed her gear or just wasn’t talking. Quinn let go of the gun, and pulled his own microphone off his collar and crushed it between his fingers.

  “Believe me now?” Tasha said.

  “What are you?” he asked.

  “CIA,” she said.

  “Your presence is too small. You should have people swarming all over the place on this.”

  She looked over at him. “I’m off the books. Deep. There was...a concern they would know we were onto them.”

  “They?” Quinn said. “LP again?”

  She nodded.

  There was no time to ask another question as Quinn spotted Orlando at the curb. He quickly pulled over and jumped out of the car.

  Nate was lying on the ground, unconscious. His shoulder was soaked in blood, but it didn’t look life threatening. So had Orlando reacted like it was—

  Then he saw it.

  His face paled and he could feel the bile moving up his throat. It wasn’t that he hadn’t seen gruesome in the past. His life was full of images that would make most people sick for weeks.

  This was different. This was his apprentice.

  Nate’s foot was crushed and twisted 180 degrees backward. The shin was also pulverized up to the point where the remaining bone had ripped through his apprentice’s skin.

  There was blood, too. A lot of it.

  “He was still conscious when I got here,” Orlando said. “Barely. I think they rammed into him. Crushed him against this car.”

  The side of the vehicle next to Nate was smashed in. Quinn imagined Nate trying to jump out of the way, but not being able to completely clear the oncoming car’s path.

  Without another word, he and Orlando picked Nate up and carried him to the taxi. Tasha had gotten out and had opened the rear door.

  Once Nate was settled, Quinn handed Orlando his phone. “Call Ne Win. He’ll tell you where to take Nate. Then tell him to have a

  couple men meet me at Esplanade Park.”

  “You’re going after her?” Orlando asked.

  “I have to,” Quinn said.

  “I know. God, I’m sorry. I...I—”

  “Just go. Nate needs help.”

  “But how are you going to find her?” Orlando asked.

  Quinn glanced for a second at Tasha, then looked back at Orlando. “Markoff ’s message.”

  “I should be putting you in jail,” Tasha said.

  They were in a Toyota Crown Quinn had hot-wired. Quinn was driving again, while Tasha sat next to him. They were heading toward a rendezvous with one of her people. Tasha had called ahead, asking for the device Quinn had told her they needed. Now, though, it sounded like she was having second thoughts.

  “You’ve injured several of my men. Federal officers. You’ve hindered a terrorist investigation, which pretty much means you’re dead. So why shouldn’t I arrest you?”

  He said nothing. She already knew the answer. Without Quinn’s help, the congressman was as good as dead, and Jenny would have disappeared.

  After several seconds, Tasha asked, “Are you sure this is going to work?”

  “No,” he told her.

  “That’s just great.”

  A few minutes later, they approached the corner of River Valley Road and Clemenceau Avenue.

  “There,” Tasha said, pointing at two men standing off to the side.

  “No games,” Quinn said. “And no following, either. If they do, I’ll know.”

  Quinn pulled the car to the side of the road but kept rolling slowly forward, never bringing the vehicle to a complete stop. He dropped a hand down to his lap where his SIG lay waiting. “Roll down your window. Have them toss it inside.”

  Tasha did as he asked. The two men started walking with the car, keeping pace.

  “Are you all right?” one of the men asked.

  “Fine,” she said. “Just give it to me.”

  The other man leaned down to get a better look at Quinn. “I thought he was one of the—”

  “He’s okay,” Tasha said. “He was working undercover. NSA.”

  “He’s not coercing you?”

  “No.”

  The first man handed her something through the window.

  “I’ll check in soon,” she said.

  As they drove off, Quinn kept an eye on the rearview mirror in case anyone was following. But they seemed to have gotten away cleanly.

  Tasha held up the device she’d been handed. “What are we looking for?”

  “Cell phone ID.”

  “You really think her cell phone’s traceable on one of these?” The tracer they’d just picked up would never work on a scrambled signal.

  “Not her phone,” Quinn said.

  He gave her the same ID number Markoff had scrawled on the inside of the container he’d died in. The transmitter Quinn had taken out of the vase at the Quayside was sitting in his bag in the car Jenny had stolen from him. As long as she hadn’t switched vehicles or dumped the bag, they’d find her.

  “I’ve got a signal,” she said. “It’s east of here. At least a couple of miles.”

  That was good. It was the same direction they needed to head in to meet up with Ne Win.

  “Tell me again why you’re here,” Quinn said.

  “I told you, I’m running an off-the-books op. Protection for the congressman.”

  “Protection? Or are you using him as bait?”

  She had no answer for that.

  “Who’s your handler?”

  “I...I’m working directly for the DDNI,” she said. The Deputy Director of National Intelligence. “No one else in the chain. Just him, then me.”

  “What about the Director?”

  She shook her head.

  “Does the Deputy Director suspect the Director’s part of the LP?”

  “There’s no way to know,” she said. “It’s safer not to involve him at this point. Like I said, no one else knows what I’m doing.”

  “What about the men you’re working with? The men working protection for the congressman? That family in Jenny’s house in Houston?”

  “I was given the okay to tap a few CIA resources, but only ones I trusted completely. It limited what I could do.”

  “Why destroy Jenny’s homes?”

  “We searched them thoroughly, thinking there might be something we could use to lead us to her LP contacts. Something that would help us crack into the organization. But there was nothing. My boss wanted to send them a signal. Let them know they were being hunted.” She paused. “When you showed up, I thought you were one of them. That’s why I waited. I knew you’d come back.”

  “But you destroyed the house.”

  “The incendiary device was on a timer. But there was a backup trigger on the window.”

  “In case I returned,” Quinn said.

  “Yes.”

  “So you were just going to let your explosives take care of me, is that it?”

  “That was the plan,” she said matter-of-factly. “But then I wondered if maybe we could use you. Maybe you knew something more that might get us closer to her.”

  Quinn’s mind went back to that
moment in Houston, right before the house was destroyed. “You moved. Right as I was starting to open the window.” He shot a quick glance at her. “You tried to distract me. Get me to move away from the house.”

  “And it worked.”

  When they got to Esplanade Park, Quinn spotted Ne Win and his men standing on the curb.

  “We’re switching cars here,” Quinn told Tasha.

  “Who are these guys?” she asked, once they were parked behind Ne Win’s car.

  “Friends.”

  “I could have brought my men.”

  “Well, I brought mine,” Quinn said. “Come on.”

  Tasha wasn’t the only one who didn’t seem pleased with the arrangement. Quinn could tell as soon as Ne Win saw her he wasn’t happy either. But unlike Tasha, he kept his thoughts to himself.

  They squeezed into Ne Win’s sedan. Then got onto the East Coast Parkway heading toward the airport.

  “Did you find the body?” Quinn asked.

  Ne Win swiveled around to look back from his seat up front. He eyed Tasha for a moment, then shook his head. “No. But,” he said, then paused, “we did find where the body was supposed to be.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gun there. Spent cartridge. A few other items. Everything looking perfect. Only no body. No blood.”

  Of course. Jenny had abandoned her original plan. She’d prepared the site, but the need to kill the faux assassin had gone away as she’d adapted to her new plan.

  They drove for another five minutes, leaving the main part of the city behind them.

  “We’re getting close,” Tasha said, looking at the device in her hand. Then, a mile later, “There.” She looked toward the right side of the road, then back at the signal tracker. “I think we just passed it.”

  There was a turnoff ahead. “Take that exit,” Quinn said.

  While they were pulling off the parkway, the driver said something to Ne Win in Mandarin.

  Ne Win said something back, then looked at Quinn.

  “What?” Quinn asked.

  The look on Ne Win’s face was somber. “I know where they go.”

  “Where?”

  But Ne Win just shook his head and turned back toward the front.

  Once they were on the side road, there was a strong scent of ocean in the air. The sea was close now, a strip of land separating it from the road they were on. Quinn noticed several large compounds on the strip, most filled with dozens and dozens of shipping containers, stacked and protected by fences topped with razor wire.

  Quinn could feel the skin at the base of his neck tingle. He realized he, too, had a pretty good idea where Jenny had taken her hostages.

  After several minutes, Ne Win told the driver to pull the car to the side of the road and park as close to the brush as possible. As soon as the car was stopped, the old man looked back at Quinn and Tasha.

  “We’re almost on top of the signal,” Tasha said. She looked up from the tracker at the old man. “How did you know?”

  Ne Win didn’t even smile in response. “We walk from here.”

  The sign in front of the compound read Kwan Shipping. But instead of entering through the front gate, the man who had been driv-ing—Ne Win said his name was Lian—led them through the brush along the east side.

  The day had gone gray, the clouds over the island now dark and heavy with rain. Quinn could feel the moisture beginning to gather in the air in anticipation of the regularly scheduled afternoon rain.

  “Our first priority is freeing the hostages,” Tasha whispered to Quinn. “Then we take Jenny. I want her alive.”

  Quinn kept his eyes on the path ahead of them, and his mouth shut.

  “She’s the link to LP. We need to know who her contact is,” she said. “Understand?”

  He glanced over. “Sure. I understand what you want.”

  He looked away, then sped up a little so they were no longer walking abreast.

  About one hundred and fifty feet away from the road, Lian led them out of the bushes and up to the fence that surrounded the compound. There was a place where the barrier had been cut apart and then pulled back together and held in place with several thick wires. The other man began untwisting them.

  “You went in this way last time?” Quinn asked.

  Ne Win nodded.

  As soon as the last of the wires came off, Ne Win’s men pulled the fence apart so everyone could pass through.

  The compound was dense with shipping containers. Some had names on the side, some had none. Quinn even saw a few marked baron & baron ltd., like the one Markoff had been in.

  Ne Win tapped one of his men on the shoulder and motioned for him to scout ahead, but Quinn stopped the man before he left.

  “I’ll do it,” he whispered.

  “I’ll go with you,” Tasha said.

  Quinn shrugged, then left the others behind and entered the metal maze. He could hear Tasha behind him, stepping lightly on the sandy ground.

  Ahead and a little to his right, he heard a voice. He couldn’t make out what was being said, only that the speaker was male, and the words sounded like English.

  Quinn looked at Tasha and held a finger to his lips. The glare she gave him back told him there was no need to emphasize the obvious.

  He took the next aisle right, then zigzagged toward where the sound had come from. Again Tasha followed.

  Ahead a car door slammed shut.

  Quinn could see an open area beyond the final stack. The noise had come from there.

  He eased forward until he was only a few feet from the end. He could feel Tasha peering over his shoulder.

  He turned his head. “Wait back there,” he said, the words barely audible. He nodded in the direction they’d just come.

  “Uh-uh,” she murmured.

  “Now,” Quinn said.

  Her jaw tensed, but a few seconds later she pulled back and retreated to the end of the row.

  Quinn returned his attention to the clearing. It looked to be about fifty feet wide and was lined on all four sides by more of the metal boxes. There were narrow passageways between each row, with only one wider break. It was off to Quinn’s right and was large enough for a truck to pass through. The front gate, Quinn assumed.

  He moved right to the edge, tilting his head so he could see around the corner of the container. The Mercedes sedan that he and the others had taken to the Maxwell Food Centre was parked in the middle of the clearing.

  There were four people near the car. Two were on their knees, their hands clasped behind their heads. There was no mistaking them.

  It was Congressman Guerrero and Kenneth Murray.

  Jenny was standing in front of them, a gun in her hand. Behind them was a man Quinn had never seen before. But he was willing to bet it was the same man who’d showed up at the Quayside during the blackout. There had been two people then. One had been young and was sitting in the car when Ne Win’s man had spotted them. With her short hair and slight form, Quinn was also willing to bet the young man had been Jenny.

  Quinn took a deep, silent breath. For over a week, he’d been trying to help Markoff ’s girlfriend and discover who had left Markoff to die. But the person he was after was also the person he’d been trying to help. Jenny had never cared about Markoff. She’d only been using him. And when that usefulness had run its course, she’d disposed of him.

  And now she had played Quinn like she’d played Markoff.

  Only Quinn wasn’t going to be played anymore.

  Jenny said something to her partner, then started walking toward the stacks that lined the rear of the compound.

  Quinn pulled back until he reached Tasha. Further down the aisle, he could see Ne Win and his two men waiting. Quinn held up one finger, then motioned for someone to come to him.

  Ne Win tapped Lian on the shoulder.

  “Take my position here and keep an eye on them,” Quinn whispered directly into Lian’s ear as soon as he got there. “If it looks like they’re goi
ng to kill one of the hostages, take the shooter out.”

  Lian nodded.

  Quinn reluctantly motioned for Tasha to follow him, then began moving off to his right. Within moments, they reached an intersection of a path that ran along the back side of the compound. It led toward the section Jenny had entered moments earlier.

  Quinn leaned around the edge of a container. He could hear footsteps in the distance, down one of the intersecting aisles. At this distance, he couldn’t tell exactly which direction they were going in.

  “Wait here,” he said to Tasha.

  “No,” she replied.

  “I don’t need you getting in my way.”

  “I don’t give a shit what you need,” she said. “I’m the one who’ll be bringing her in.”

  He knew whatever he said she wasn’t going to listen, so he made his best guess which aisle Jenny had gone down, and began running toward it.

  He stopped when he reached his target aisle, got as close to the edge as possible, then listened. It was quiet, no steps at all. Did she hear us? he wondered.

  He looked over his shoulder past Tasha, half expecting to see Jenny standing there waiting for him to notice her. But there was no one there.

  There was the crunch of sand under a shoe, then again. The steps had returned. They were at least fifty feet down the new path and moving away from Quinn’s position. Then the feet stopped again and were followed almost immediately by the sound of metal on metal.

  He’d heard the sound before, recently, though it seemed like years ago. It was the sound of the doors of a container opening.

  After about ten seconds, the doors shut again, and the footsteps returned. Apparently, Jenny was looking for something specific. Not cargo; these containers would all be empty.

  No, she was looking for the perfect tomb, he realized. An unfitting resting place for a presidential candidate.

  Instead of following her, he turned in the other direction and led Tasha toward the clearing.

  Nothing had changed. Guerrero and Murray were still kneeling on the dirt, and Jenny’s man was standing watch behind them.

  Nothing had changed, that is, except Quinn’s angle. He was now behind the watcher.

  He listened and was immediately rewarded with the sound of Jenny’s footsteps still far away.