by Marc Cameron
Agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations were well known in law enforcement circles as experts at handling confidential sources. Vehicle surveillance went hand in hand with that particular expertise. As an OSI agent and a veteran of multiple deployments to the “sandy-stans” of the world, Quinn had ample training in both disciplines. Now, as an other governmental agent, or OGA, working directly for the president’s national security advisor, he had plenty of opportunity to put these skills, and others more unique to his personality, to frequent use.
He reached up and opened the face shield on his gray Arai a crack to let in a whiff of crisp winter air. An airbrush of crossed war axes, dripping candy-apple blood, detailed the sides of the helmet. Along with the black leathers and aggressively beaked BMW 1200 GS, it brought to mind Frank Frazetta’s brooding horseback warrior, The Death Dealer. Quinn didn’t mind the comparison. His ex-wife would say he even worked at it.
The neatly spaced trees scattered among the hotels, apartment buildings, and holly bushes of Crystal City had long since given up their leaves. A stiff wind blew from the northeast, shoving Quinn’s bike like an unseen fist and threatening much colder weather. Thankfully, there was no snow.
“What are you up to, Drake?” Quinn whispered to himself, throwing a puff of vapor against the visor of his helmet. He had to suppress the urge to ride up beside the Taurus to shoot the driver in the face. The Speaker had ducked out on his security detail for a reason, and from what Quinn knew of him that meant he was up to something deadly.
Half a block ahead, the green Taurus bore right where the Jeff Davis Highway split to become North Patrick and Henry Streets with Henry continuing south. Quinn fell back two more cars, to merge in front of a black Mercedes coupe, easing into the slower rhythm of the narrow one-way street leading into historic Old Town Alexandria.
The American people might believe Hartman Drake still mourned the death of his devoted wife the year before, but Quinn knew better. He lacked the proof to accuse such a powerful man, but Quinn was certain the Speaker had been responsible for the poor woman’s death. Losing a spouse had gained him sympathy and given him an excuse not to attend the event that should have killed both the president and the vice president—leaving Drake, as House Speaker, the next in line of succession.
Ahead, the Taurus stopped at the intersection on a green light, waiting for a gaggle of well-dressed lobbyist types walking to Hank’s Oyster Bar for a Friday lunch. Quinn brought the bike to a stop, planting his left foot and feeling the familiar horizontal torque of the engine while the group crossed the street as if it belonged to them. Once they cleared the crosswalk, the Taurus turned east on King. Quinn fell in behind, three cars back now, biding his time.
Restaurants, tourist shops, ice cream parlors, and attorneys’ offices occupied the multicolored brick and stone buildings crammed in on either side of the shady street. Many were older than the United States itself.
Hartman Drake took a quick right on the last street before the Potomac River, then whipped into a fenced parking lot beyond a hedgerow and a line of leafless trees. Seldom seen without his trademark French cuffs and colorful bowtie, the speaker wore faded blue jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket. A baseball cap and aviator sunglasses rounded out his disguise. It was common knowledge around Capitol Hill that Drake prided himself on a trim physique and powerful chest. In his mid-forties, he worked out religiously every day in the House gym.
He paused for a moment at the car window to adjust the ball cap and sunglasses. For a moment Quinn thought he was looking for a tail, but soon realized the narcissistic peacock was merely checking out his own stunning reflection. His self-admiration complete, the Speaker retrieved an aluminum briefcase from the backseat before trotting across a park-like lawn, still green from the unseasonably mild winter.
Quinn bit his bottom lip. Drake was heading for the river.
Letting Drake make it ahead for a five-count, Quinn motored his GS into the same parking lot, across the street from the old torpedo factory turned art mall.
He dismounted, peeling off his helmet and kangaroo-hide riding gloves in time to watch Drake pass behind a hedgerow, then through a gap in a wooden privacy fence. Quinn’s cell phone began to vibrate in the inner pocket of his Transit jacket. He unzipped the jacket to give him quicker access to his weapons, but ignored the call, tapping the butt of the Kimber over his kidney, just to make certain it was there. The suppressed Beretta 21A hung in an elastic holster under his left arm. Yawaraka-Te rested upside down along his spine.
Gripping the helmet by the chin guard in his left hand, Quinn strode quickly across the lot, skirting a line of sports cars belonging to the boat owners at the marina beyond the wooden fence. So far, he had the entire parking lot to himself, but a rustle behind the shrubs told him that wouldn’t be the case for very long.
Though Quinn had loved a good scrap for as long as he could remember, he’d learned early on that there was a serious difference between squaring off with someone in a contest and the dynamic, kill-or-be-killed world of close-quarters battle. In simplest terms, combat was nothing more than brutal assault, with one party trying to crush the other.
A certain amount of posturing might precede the actual conflict, but when violence came, it came lightning fast on fist or blade or bullet. If the attacker knew what he was doing, it came from every direction and all at once. Fairness, rules, and linear time flew out the window.
When Quinn was still ten meters from the gap in the hedge where Drake had disappeared, an Asian man in his late teens stepped into view. His shaven eyebrows and short, Chia Pet–style punch perms identified him as a bosozoku—literally violent running tribe—the youthful street gangs who often acted as acolytes to the Japanese mafia. Along with a sullen sneer, he wore baggy red slacks and a white tokko-fuku, the knee-length Special Attack jacket worn by kamikaze pilots of World War II. Boldly embroidered Japanese kanji covered the coat and proclaimed ridiculous statements like: Mother, I have to Die! and Speed and Death are my Life!
The bosozoku planted his feet firmly in the center of the path, blocking the gap, and folded his arms across a thick chest. A six-inch knife blade glistened in his right fist.
Japanese youth gangs were relatively rare in the U.S., and Quinn was surprised to see one in northern Virginia.
Quinn slowed his advance slightly but did not stop, preferring to press the advantage of momentum and psychological force. Knowing Tokko-fuku couldn’t be alone, he whispered his familiar mantra to himself as he walked. “See one, think two.”
As if on cue, two more bosozoku filed through the gap behind their apparent leader. Each of the newcomers carried a wooden baseball bat and wore jeans and white T-shirts as if they hadn’t quite earned the right to wear a Special Attack coat. The last one in line stepped tentatively to Quinn’s right. The boy’s eyes flitted back and forth, shifting just enough to show he wasn’t fully committed to the attack.
Quinn would start with him.
CHAPTER 2
Vitebsk Station
St. Petersburg, Russia
7:12 PM Moscow time
Katya Orlov was in love enough to let herself be dragged through uneven drifts of grimy snow along Zagorodny Prospekt. Her boyfriend, Wasyl, had suggested she borrow her mother’s Sberbank card. It wouldn’t be stealing, he’d assured her, merely a loan they would pay back after he got work aboard the fishing boat.
The columned entries of Vitebsk Station loomed before her, bathed in brightness against the dark night. Slush soaked through her tattered leather boots. She wore thin cotton socks and her American straight-leg jeans did little to protect slender legs from the cold. She’d thought of packing a few things, but Wasyl had said it wouldn’t matter. They could buy what they needed—and they would need little, for they were soul mates.
Rafts of evening commuters, recently disgorged from an outbound city train, flowed in a gray woolen sea. New snow hung heavy on the night air. The greasy smell of sausages and
boiled potatoes drifted from the green kiosks up on the platforms inside the station. As a girl, Katya had thought Vitebsk’s stone breastwork and clock tower made it look like a palace. It was a fantastic place with interesting people—but she’d never met anyone as interesting as Wasyl.
Of course, her mother hated him. It was not because he was nineteen and handsome and three years Katya’s senior—but because he was Ukrainian and often spoke of taking her to Odessa. He was a man with dreams and a real plan to get her out of their drafty flat in Pushkin—where she would surely have to live with her mother forever unless she found someone to marry her. Wasyl promised they would travel by train, rent a berth where they could sleep in each other’s arms and eat eggs and fresh green salads. Once in Odessa they could stay in his rich uncle’s beautiful dacha on the Black Sea. Wasyl had a friend with a fishing boat who’d promised him a job.
It was perfect. All they needed was train fare—and perhaps a little sum more to tide them over.
“There,” Wasyl said, flipping a thick swath of black hair out of his face once they jostled their way through the doors and into the echoing marble main hall of the station. He pointed to a row of ATMs—bankomats in Russian—along the sidewall below a Soviet-era mural of dedicated factory workers and a sweeping Art Nouveau staircase. “We can get the money there.”
The damp heat of so many people hit Katya full in the face. A woman with two toddlers on a dog-leash tether fell in beside them, the little ones in tiny wool coats chattering between themselves. A bent and wrinkled babushka shuffled along beside them, pushing a creaky metal cart and working her way through the crowd toward the same bankomats.
A businessman in a sable hat and long black coat stood at the nearest machine and Wasyl crowded in front of the woman and her jabbering children to make sure he got to the next one first. He flipped his hair again and held out his hand for the Sberbank card.
Katya reached in the hip pocket of her jeans and handed it to him.
“The PIN?” Wasyl demanded, sliding the card in the slot.
“My birthday,” Katya said, the heavy weight of guilt suddenly pressing against her shoulders.
Wasyl sighed. “And exactly when is that again?”
Katya shook her head in disbelief. Surely a true love would remember such a thing.
“Tomorrow,” she whispered, heartbroken.
Wasyl did the math in his head and punched the buttons. The machine gave a faint pop.
Katya thought she heard a child’s worried cry. At the same instant a molten ball of flame erupted from the bankomat, cutting Wasyl, then Katya, in half.
Ninety seconds later
Embarcadero BART Station
San Francisco
Jordan Winters leaned against the train window and shut his eyes against the stark interior lighting. He felt the swaying rumble through exhausted bones. Night shift sucked. By the time he got home his kids had already caught the bus and his wife was headed out to her shift at the hospital. But jobs were as scarce as politicians with backbone and he was lucky to have work at all. To make matters worse, the Pontiac had lost a U-joint the week before, so he’d been forced to take the train and then the bus to and from work. That meant another half hour on each end of his trip if he made the connections just right. At this rate, he got to see his wife fifteen minutes a day and on weekends—if they were lucky and she didn’t have to cover for another nurse.
They made up for it by talking on the phone every day during his commute as soon as he got phone reception. Tuned to the timing of it all, his eyes flicked open the moment he felt the train shudder and began to slow.
“Good morning, bright eyes,” he said, glancing at the older man next to him who gave a rolling eye. Jerks blabbed in public on their phones all the time about much less important things. Trains going outbound from the city weren’t nearly as crowed as those packed with commuters heading in at this time of day, but they were still full enough you could read the paper of the guy sitting next to you, so Winters kept his voice at a respectful level.
“Hey, Jordy,” his wife said. She sounded hoarse. Her cold was getting worse. “How’s my man?”
“I’m fine,” Winters said. He gathered his jacket and moved toward the doors as they hissed open. “You’re sick. Why don’t you call in today?”
“I do feel like crap, baby,” she said. “But you know I can’t call in. I don’t qualify for OT if I take a sick day this pay period and heaven knows we need the money, honey.”
Jordan pushed his way along the packed platform, ducking and dodging the endless tide of morning commuters. He could smell the relatively fresh air of Market Street rolling down the stairway above as he passed the ATMs in the ticketing lobby.
“We don’t need the money that bad,” he lied. “I can pull an extra shift this weekend if I have to.”
He worked his way toward the escalator and what his buddies on the night shift called the “world of the day-worker.”
“I’d better not. . . .” Her voice wavered.
After fourteen years of marriage, Jordan knew that slight hesitation meant he had her. “It’ll be worth it to spend the day with you.”
“That would be nice,” she said, sniffling.
He sweetened the deal. “I’ll stop by that Czech bakery you like before I catch the bus and get you a couple of kolache. That’ll put meat on your bones.”
She giggled. He loved it when she giggled.
“It’s settled then. I . . .” He paused, one foot on the escalator, cursing under his breath. He’d loaned his last ten bucks to Cal at work.
Jordan pushed back from the escalator and through the crowd, past the guy playing his saxophone in front of an open case, toward the bank of three ATMs along the white tile wall. Most people were coming to catch the train so it was easier now that he’d turned around and wasn’t a salmon swimming upstream.
“Oh, Jordan . . . you really think I should?”
“No question about it.” He felt the thrill of getting to spend a few precious moments with his wife—even if it meant feeding her soup and fruit kolache.
With a new spring in his step, he made his way to the ATM just as the headlight from the next city inbound beamed out of the tunnel. Brakes squealed above the din of frenzied commuters, desperate to catch this particular train as if it were the last one on earth. Hundreds of people shoved and jostled their way from the stairs and escalators, flinging themselves into the bowels of the packed station.
Jordan chatted happily with his wife as he put his card into the slot, thankful to be going home.
“You just get better.” He began to punch in his PIN. “I’ll be there—”
A blinding flash of heat and light shoved the words back down his throat.
The initial blast all but vaporized Jordan Winters and everyone else within five meters. Commuters were blown from their expensive loafers and high heels. Their bodies, some intact, some in mangled bits and pieces, hurtled across the tracks in front of the oncoming train.
Above, at ground level, passersby felt Market Street rumble under their feet. A blossom of inky smoke belched from the dark stairwell, carrying with it the screams of the dying and the smell of the dead.
CHAPTER 3
Virginia
Jericho Quinn had been steeped in conflict for most of his life. He’d made a conscious effort to excel at boxing, jujitsu, blade work, and the all-out brawl. The most accomplished fighters would call him an expert—and still, three against one was something he took seriously.
No matter what Internet self-defense gurus taught, a violent encounter against multiple attackers was no simple application of a few snazzy techniques. The slightest mistake could nick a tendon or slice a nerve—and end his career. A larger error could end his life.
“Sticks?” Quinn walked forward, speaking Japanese in derisive tones, as a medieval samurai might speak to a dog. He gestured to the bats with his helmet. “You think to stop me with sticks?”
The apparent leade
r, wearing the tokko-fuku, brandished the knife but kept his feet rooted, not fully realizing the posturing phase was over.
Still ten feet away, Quinn suddenly changed direction, picking up speed before the uneasy kid to the right realized he was the intended target. The startled bosozoku had thought he was working as backup and hardly had time to raise the bat before Quinn bashed the helmet into his face and sent him staggering backwards in a tangle of feet and misgivings.
Quinn spun immediately, crouching to keep his center low and fluid. Tokko-fuku and the second helper moved in a simultaneous attack, slashing wildly with blade and bat. Quinn stepped under a crashing blow from the bat, swinging his helmet in a wide arc as he moved, connecting with Tokko-fuku’s jaw then the second man’s knee. The leader growled, caught only with a glancing blow. The second was driven to his knees.
Tokko-fuku wasted no time pressing his attack, slashing out with the knife in a flurry of blows. At least two landed with sickening scrapes against the crash armor of Quinn’s thick Transit jacket. A wild swing caught Quinn under the eye, slicing flesh but missing anything vital. In the heat of battle, it felt more like a punch than a cut.
Quinn advanced, pushing Tokko-fuku back with the swinging helmet. He didn’t have time for this. Drake was getting away.
To his right, the kid with the bum knee stumbled to his feet, yanking a pistol from his waistband.
Not wanting to alert Drake, Quinn snatched the suppressed .22 from the holster under his arm and put two rounds straight up under the kid’s chin as he stumbled past. The wide-eyed bosozoku clutched at his neck, full of the horrible knowledge that he was already dead.
