Day Zero

by Marc Cameron

  Ukka’s mouth hung open. “You’re going to swim down the Yukon River breathing through a piece of garden hose?”

  “Float would be more correct,” Quinn said. “You don’t swim in the Yukon.”

  “No shit.” Ukka rolled his eyes.

  “I’m open to better ideas,” Quinn said, not relishing the thought of the frigid water.

  Ukka sat completely still, just looking at him. Over the last five months in the village, Quinn had learned that Eskimos did a lot of talking using nothing but their eyes—and Ukka’s eyes said Quinn had gone completely insane. Finally, the big man spoke.

  “I’m getting cold standing out here in the rain,” he said, “and I’m a damn Eskimo. You know that water was ice a couple of weeks ago, right?”

  “I know,” Quinn said.

  “You’ll be lucky if your muscles aren’t too cramped to hold a gun after you been in the river two minutes—let alone fight those other guys. And that’s if the current doesn’t carry you all the way down to Alakanuk.”

  Quinn shrugged. “Like I said, I’m open to another suggestion. But it better be quick because these guys seem to be pretty rough on their hostages.”

  “Just go then,” Ukka snapped.

  “Outstanding.” Quinn put a hand on his shoulder. “Start shooting in five minutes. I’ll see you inside the Kwikpac in six.”

  Waves of heavy fog drifted in from the north, providing intermittent concealment as Quinn worked his way along the muddy road behind a row of gray wooden shacks, broken snow machines, and four-wheelers. Everyone had sought shelter inside when they’d realized what the government contractors were up to. Faces pressed against foggy glass windows, wide brown eyes flicking messages from stoic faces as they wished him luck. Village dogs, chained to plastic barrels or old vehicles, barked from the stress in the air, but stopped when they recognized Quinn as a regular.

  Cresting a small hill on the road that led out to the airport, Quinn figured he’d made it far enough past Myrna Tomaganuk’s house that the pilot hiding beneath it wouldn’t be able to see him. Stooped at the waist, he moved quickly in a diagonal line down the gravel bank toward the churning water of the Yukon. The area on the upriver side of the willows was steep and he slid the last ten feet as if standing on ball bearings, landing with a splash in the sloppy gravel soup where current ate away at the bank. June in western Alaska was equivalent to spring in the lower forty-eight. A stiff breeze that had felt bracing while they’d been out fishing, now whipped the surface of the river into a frothy chocolate chop. Just three weeks before the area had been a sheet of solid ice. Shattered logs, some as long as a tractor-trailer, littered the river’s edge. Great portions of land from upriver, complete with Medusa-like root-balls and moss-covered bank had been scoured away by slabs of ice during the recent breakup and bobbed in the eddies like small islands.

  Quinn kicked off the rubber boots and stashed them in the willows, hoping he’d be alive to come back and get them later. Contrary to popular belief, he wasn’t worried about the Xtra Tuffs dragging him to the bottom. In calm water, they would have merely filled and become neutrally buoyant. But the Yukon was anything but calm, so the boots would yank him around as they worked with the current like small parachutes around his feet—likely pulling him to the middle of the river and a watery grave.

  The lower Yukon had seen three drowning deaths since breakup in this season alone. Two were men out getting logs and one was a little girl from Emmonak, another Eskimo village downriver. Like many of the children in bush Alaska, she’d lived all of her nine years surrounded by lakes and streams and one of the largest rivers in the world, but had never learned how to swim. The bodies of all three had been carried off by the current to be found hung up on some snag, miles away from where they’d drowned. It was foolish, he knew, but though Quinn didn’t fear death, it filled him with a certain cold dread that his bloated corpse would be tossed around by a river, then impaled on a bunch of deadfall for days while the ravens pecked away. He shook off the thought. Picturing his own death was a bad start to any operation.

  He wished he’d had on his hiking boots. The Lowas might have slowed down his kicking ability underwater, but he’d spent many hours swimming in boots during training and as a combat rescue officer, or CRO, in an earlier Air Force life. And when he reached the fish house, a fight in boots would certainly be more pleasant than one in bare feet—but it couldn’t be helped.

  His teeth already chattered from the effects of near constant adrenaline coupled with the chill of a nonstop drizzle. Barefoot and dressed only in his long merino wool sweater and khaki pants, he waded quickly into the water with the length of hose clutched in his hand. Employing the MP7 while navigating the Yukon’s persistent current would be foolhardy, so he left it slung over his back to keep the sling from becoming tangled with any submerged deadfall and debris.

  Frigid water lapped at his belly, driving the air from his lungs as surely as a hammer to his chest—but easing the ever-present ache in his kidney. He folded his arms tight and clenched his muscles, much like the grunt of the Hick maneuver fighter pilots used to counteract the effects of g-forces in flight. Compressing blood to the core of his body around his vital organs, he gave his system a quick five count to get over the initial shock of the cold.

  With water temperatures just fifteen degrees above freezing, Quinn figured he had maybe ten minutes before his hands began to cramp into unusable claws. The fish house was a little over half a football field away. Ventilating with a couple of deep breaths, Quinn slipped noiselessly into the swirling currents, his body a toothpick in the jaws of the mighty Yukon.

  He floated more than swam, navigating with just his head above the water, conserving energy as best he could, tensing to keep blood and vital warmth in his core. Rather than fighting the unyielding grip of the huge river, he used small strokes, adjusting his direction of travel instead of trying to make speed. The current was far faster than he could possibly swim and his puny efforts would do nothing but make him tired and colder than he already was. Quinn had learned as a small boy that, in the wilderness, a man is merely a hairless, clawless bear—weak and inconsequential without his wits. There was nothing like floating nearly naked in a river the size of the Yukon to drive that point home.

  Roughly two minutes after entering the river, Quinn rounded the new barge docks and leaned toward the bank. Thirty seconds later, he grabbed the transom of an aluminum skiff that was tethered alongside the fish house.

  Rain pattered on the surface of the river.

  Arms shaking with cold, Quinn tucked the length of hose back into his belt in case he was discovered and needed it to slip away underwater. He grabbed the wooden rungs of the newly built two-by-four ladder on the wooden dock that ran the length of the Kwikpac building, adjacent to the skiff. Still half in, half out of the water, he waited, his head just below the bottom of the dock. Another minute of intense shivering and Quinn wondered if he’d even be able to haul himself up the ladder at all, let alone fight.

  Water dripped from his eyes as he glanced down at the Tag Aquaracer on his wrist. Six minutes since he’d left the fuel shed. He felt sure the men in the building directly above him would be able to hear his chattering teeth, even over the constant slosh of the river. Clenching his jaws in an effort to stop the noise, he prayed for Ukka to start shooting soon.

  Chapter 13

  Las Vegas

  The humorless government machine that was TSA prodded Tang along as it had his wife, demanding he stand just so in order to scan his body for weapons. He had no doubt that the chemical sensors would scan his camera bag, but the portion of the device he carried was small and innocuous by itself—barely five ounces of material.

  He made it through security with little more than a condescending nod from the harried TSA officers.

  Ma Zhen called their plan the Honey Plot, pointing out that it took twelve bees, each bringing in a small droplet of nectar at a time, to produce one teaspoon of honey.
Like Tang, Ma was Hui—Muslim Chinese. He was also a gifted bomb maker.

  The five members of Tang’s group would each pass through security with only a small portion of the device. That meant five chances for discovery, but the minuscule amount of contraband made the odds that any individual would be caught extremely low.

  Tang and Ma Zhen and a half-Uyghur man named Hu all carried PETN, a powerful, but low-vapor explosive secreted away in specialized Ni-Cad camcorder batteries. The batteries had been sealed by the man from Pakistan to Ma Zhen’s specifications. Earlier that day, they had laid out all the components on the bed at the hotel. Tang had marveled at the workmanship of the batteries. They even had enough juice to power the camera for a few minutes if officials wanted to make certain they were operable. These were not batteries from some backroom workshop. The man from Pakistan had contacts in the manufacturing company or possibly even a government. They had now proven they could hide small quantities of PETN and were certainly good enough to conceal the powdered metal carried by Gao Jianguo, the fifth and final member of the team. He was a thuggish brute with a sloping forehead that hinted at the diminished capacity of his brain. He spoke of jihad in vague terms that made Tang wonder if he even knew what the word meant.

  Tang stopped just past the screening checkpoint long enough to put on his belt and replace his wallet and wristwatch. A hundred feet from the gate, he could see the forlorn face of his wife as she sat facing the window, staring blankly at the plane that would see them out of their despair.

  Ma Zhen sat alone on the row of black chairs behind Lin. He stooped forward, making notations in a small notebook. He was always writing something, as if he knew he should be in a university taking notes rather than masterminding the destruction of a commercial airliner.

  Ma was a young man with thick, black-framed glasses and the large goiter of one who’d missed some vital element of his diet when he was a child. When he was just seventeen, Ma had seen his father and grandfather dragged into the street and executed by Chinese troops for the crime of nonviolent protest against majority Han Chinese encroachment in the traditionally Muslim Hui regions of Xinjiang. According to the man from Pakistan, both of the older men had been scholars, learned but quiet souls who espoused compromise and believed in a peaceful solution to all things.

  After the murders, Ma’s maternal grandfather—a man with only two fingers on his right hand and copious scarring on his neck and face had taken him aside and taught him the ways of bomb making. Ma had excelled at chemistry and physics and so was able to build on the concepts the old man taught him, making devices that were smaller and far easier to conceal. They were also much more powerful. His mother passed away from grief the following year, her dying wish that he would avenge his father.

  The man from Pakistan had found him while he was still in mourning. Ma had seen the opportunity to be a dutiful son and followed without question on the path that had led him here, with Tang and the others.

  Exhausted all the way to his bones, Tang dropped his camera bag on the floor and collapsed into a seat beside his wife. There was no consoling the poor woman, so he did not even try. He let his gaze wander down the wide terminal hallway past the shopping kiosks and milling crowds. The final member of their group, Hu Qi, would clear security soon and be along with his portion of the explosive for the device. Fifty meters away, the dimwitted Gao slouched in front of a slot machine. Tang watched as the muscular stub of a man dropped coin after coin into the machine, pressing buttons and spending money as fast as he could.

  A strange sense of peace fell over Tang as he leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Soon, they would all board flight 224 for Los Angeles with all their portions of the device—and none of them would ever need money again.

  Chapter 14

  Alaska

  Trailing streams of frigid water, Quinn hauled himself up the ladder the moment the methodic flat cracks of Ukka’s Winchester began to moan across the surface of the river. Feet shuffled on the plywood floor above, tromping to the uphill side of the fish house as the men inside moved to see what was happening, surely hoping their cohort had bagged their intended target.

  Quinn took a moment to flex his hands open and shut in an effort to make certain they still worked before he moved at a crouch across the back receiving deck. Unfortunately for him, one of the contractors, a young man with sharp features and beard as dark as Quinn’s, was savvy enough to periodically check over his shoulder during the sound of gunfire.

  Quinn was far too cold to give up the ground he’d gained by jumping back into the water to escape. He was unlikely to survive it anyway. Instead, he raised his rifle and charged straight ahead, bent on attacking through the other man. The bearded contractor followed suit, firing his own weapon as he closed the distance.

  Jericho’s first two rounds went low, jerked downward by his still shivering muscles, but the third round caught the startled contractor on the point of his knee, tearing through muscle and bone.

  It was possible to fight past any number of horrible wounds during the intense heat of battle, even one that would eventually prove fatal, but a shattered kneecap was difficult to ignore. The contractor stumbled forward, flailing out with his gun hand in an attempt to catch himself. His leg hinged the wrong way, folding backwards as if he’d been felled by an axe.

  Quinn was vaguely aware of April John lying in an unconscious heap in the far corner of the room beside a stack of rubber fish tubs. He couldn’t tell if she was alive or dead and, for the moment, it didn’t really matter. He put the wounded contractor out of his misery with two rounds to the face as he turned to acquire the second man.

  Apparently intent on the shooting outside, this tall brute of a guy had taken a moment to register that they were being attacked from the river. He was completely bald with deep lines in his forehead that made him look like he had two snarling mouths, one below and one above his deep-set eyes.

  The big man’s size belied his speed and agility. He bolted forward, drawing a pistol as he moved, intent on blowing Quinn’s head off.

  Still fighting the effects of hypothermia, Quinn was a fraction of a second late bringing his own weapon around from finishing off the first contractor. Again, he pressed forward, closing the short distance between them to the bald guy with his shoulder, reaching him just in time to shove the pistol out of the way. A volley of shots hammered into the roof. The rattling clap of gunfire was deafening in the small enclosure, making Quinn, who still had what felt like half the Yukon River in his ears, feel like he had a barrel over his head. He could tell the big guy was yelling something as he fought, but couldn’t make out what it was.

  He’d somehow managed to swat the pistol away, but the bald giant now had him trapped in a tight clinch. Struggling for breath, Quinn drove his knee repeatedly into the bald man’s groin. It appeared to do little damage, but at least kept him from snapping Quinn’s back.

  The cold water had sapped Quinn of more of his strength than he’d realized. Reflexes and muscles that had served him so well in past conflicts refused to obey. The bald man’s hand snaked up, snatching the barrel of the MP7 and attempting to twist it sideways. He couldn’t quite bring it around to shoot Quinn, but drew the sling tight enough to restrict the blood flow in his neck.

  Seeing stars, Quinn pummeled the man’s ribs—to no effect. He abandoned thoughts of using the rifle, his hand flailing instead for the Severance at his side. The blade slid from the Kydex sheath with a satisfying click. Quinn lashed out, left-handed, across the man’s thigh, slicing flesh, but missing anything that might have ended the fight.

  The contractor howled in pain, shoving Quinn backwards as if he was on fire, but hanging on to the MP7’s sling. Quinn stumbled back and down, allowing the sling to slide over his head. Grimacing at his stupidity for giving up the weapon, he swung the Severance’s heavy blade in time to knock the rifle out of the big man’s hands. It skittered across the plywood floor.

  Ignoring the flashing bla
de, the contractor rushed forward with a furious roar, driving Quinn backwards against the unforgiving edge of a stainless-steel cleaning table. Quinn pushed upward at the last moment, catching the hard edge against his buttocks instead of his kidneys. He rolled backwards, lying on the table to plant his bare feet in the belly of his attacker, shoving him. It bought him the split second he needed to regain his balance. Razor-sharp fillet knives, abandoned on the table by the fish processers, clattered to the floor.

  The contractor was on him again in a flash, swatting away the Severance before Quinn could bring it to bear. Quinn rolled out of the way, ducking under the other man’s arm as it fell in a devastating blow that sent Quinn reeling backwards, past a wash rack and into a tub filled with a slurry of water, crushed ice, and gutted salmon. The snot-slick fish broke his fall but made it impossible to regain his feet with any speed. Swimming in dead fish, Quinn hooked a ten-pounder through the gills and flung it at the bald contractor.

  The big man sneered, staring down at an apparently defeated target. His eyes darted around the room. The rifle was fifteen feet away in a grimy puddle. The pistol was lodged under the cleaning tables on the other side of his dead partner. Instead of going for either of the guns, the contractor scooped up one of the long fillet knives that cluttered the cleaning counters.

  Chest heaving, sweat and fish slime dripping from his nose, the bald giant hovered over Quinn.

  “Now I’m gonna hand you your ass,” he growled.

  Never much of a talker when he fought, Quinn answered by giving the man a face full of frigid water from the wash hose that hung down beside his tub of fish.