Day Zero

by Marc Cameron

  The raft began to fill as more and more passengers slid down from the groaning plane, crowding around Quinn and his daughter and helping to keep them warm.

  Captain Szymanski’s Mayday call was picked up by a passing FedEx 747 and relayed to Flight Following in Anchorage. The emergency locator beacon on the wounded Airbus began to transmit an emergency signal as well as their position as soon as she hit the water.

  Two hours after the crash, three fishing boats from St. Paul Island, Alaska, arrived and began to take on the most seriously injured. Aircraft began to overfly the site and other boats arrived a few at a time. Scores of passengers had life-threatening injuries so Quinn and his daughter stayed on the raft and waited their turn. Jericho urged Foss to go on the third boat, but she refused.

  A rusted green hulk that was a Russian fishing trawler was the seventh ship to arrive. The name of the vessel was written in Cyrillic so Quinn couldn’t tell what it said, but he recognized Carly the flight attendant riding in a dinghy deployed to ferry passengers from the damaged plane to the ship.

  She waved at Quinn when she saw him, then leaned over to say something to the man at the helm of the dinghy. The man, a fisherman in a wool turtleneck and faded yellow foulies, turned the little boat toward their life raft.

  His dinghy looked full, so Quinn tried to wave them on.

  The driver said something in Russian. Carly shrugged, and then translated for him.

  “Not sure what this means but he says your friend from Argentina said you should come with us.”

  “Tell him I knew her better in Bolivia,” Quinn said, smiling at Aleksandra Kanatova’s efforts to get him and his daughter to safety. Russian spy ships often masqueraded as fishing trawlers. She must have gotten word to one that was nearby when she’d heard that the plane had turned back toward the US, fearing an incident. When she’d found out the plane had gone down, she’d dispatched it to pick up Quinn.

  He passed Mattie across the gunnel to Carly, and then helped Madonna Foss over before cramming himself in among a dozen shivering passengers.

  Ten minutes later, Quinn stood along the rail of the Russian ship, beside Carly and Foss. He held Mattie in his arms. All were wrapped in wool blankets given to them by the crew. The ship’s physician was seeing to a man with a compound fracture, but promised to look at Foss’s injuries next.

  “You did good out there,” the air marshal said, shaking her head as she looked across the gathering chop at the mangled wreckage. “I didn’t realize what was going on until I saw you go all Hannibal on that dude.”

  Quinn looked down at Mattie, who slept against his chest, and shrugged. “Man’s gotta do . . . Anyway, you know the rest.” He looked over the side of the ship at the Cyrillic writing to change the subject. “What’s the name of this ship?”

  “Retvizan,” Carly said. “I heard someone in the crew say it was named for an old warship. Fitting, from the other things I’ve heard them talking about.”

  Quinn gave a little shake of his head, but Foss saw it. “Come on,” she said. “I got ears. I know you’re not who you say you are. I don’t care if you’re a Russian spy. I’m just glad to be out of that airplane.”

  A Russian crewman brought out a satellite phone, and handed it to Quinn. It was his friend, FSB agent Aleksandra Kanatova.

  “Would you look at that.” He heard Carly laugh as he stepped away with the phone. “We’re all missing our shoes. . . .”

  Epilogue

  Washington, DC

  Old Executive Office Building

  Vice President McKeon slammed the receiver down on his desk phone and buried his face in his hands. Winfield Palmer and Virginia Ross had both disappeared. Eighty-seven passengers on Global Flight 105 were dead or missing. Witnesses from the wreckage recalled seeing several men with children, but Quinn was still unaccounted for. McKeon would assume nothing until he had a body to prove the man was dead.

  He snatched up the phone again, ordering his secretary to get him the commanding officer of the I Marine Expeditionary Force.

  Thirty seconds later, Lieutenant General Race Craighead came on the line. He wasn’t an “inside man” as McKeon had come to call the moles put in place by his father, but Craighead had his eye on a job with the Joint Chiefs, and wanted it badly enough to hop if the administration told him to.

  “What can I do for you, Mr. Vice President?” the general asked.

  “I’m aware of a certain gunnery sergeant,” McKeon said, “whose skills are being wasted pushing papers at Quantico. I’d like to see him put to better use, say in some forward operating area in Afghanistan.”

  Two hours later, Jacques Thibodaux found himself standing tall in the colonel’s office at Marine Corps Headquarters and Service Battalion at Quantico.

  “I don’t know who you pissed off, Gunny Thibodaux,” Mike Wilde, the battalion colonel, said from behind the desk in his sparsely furnished office. Thibodaux’s senior by only a couple of years, the commanding officer looked much older, with thinning gray hair and an even grayer disposition.

  “Proud to serve, sir,” Thibodaux said.

  “Stand at ease, Gunny,” Wilde said, getting up to shut the door. “I’m a friend of Win Palmer’s, if that means anything.”

  Thibodaux nodded his head, but said nothing.

  “The administration is trying to pull a little Uriah the Hittite shit with you. You know what that means?”

  Thibodaux nodded. “My wife’s a Bible girl,” he said. “David sent Uriah into battle, and then withdrew in the heat of it, so he’d be killed and David could have his wife, Bathsheba.”

  “Exactly,” Colonel Wilde said. “But Marines aren’t that way. Are we, son?”

  “No, sir,” Thibodaux said, smiling. “I expect if Uriah would have gone to battle with a bunch of Marines, he’d have come back alive and kicked David’s ass.”

  “Precisely,” Colonel Wilde said. “So, we’ll ship you off, just like the administration wants us to. According to Palmer, you have a friend over there who could use your help.”

  Glen Walter turned south off K onto 16th Street, heading toward an appointment at the White House. He was just a half a breath away from a bullet and he knew it. That Japanese girl was much more than McKeon’s assistant. Walter could smell it on her. If anyone tried to kill him, it would be her. He’d managed to lose Virginia Ross and seven men on the same day. The men were of no consequence to the administration, but the media and his superiors had more of a conscience than the Vice President, so there would be a flurry of questions that could very well throw his anonymity, and thus his ability to do his job, in jeopardy.

  He’d just passed the Hay Adams hotel and was approaching the back entrance to the White House grounds when his phone rang. He took the call via Bluetooth on the speaker of his Crown Victoria.

  “Mr. Walters . . . I mean Walter,” the voice said, shaky with tension and excitement.

  “What is it?” Walter said. He took a left on H to make another block, in no hurry to see the Vice President and his little Japanese assassin girlfriend.

  “Sir . . . this is Gant,” the caller said. “You know that Cuban girl you’re looking for?”

  Walter slowed the car. His hands gripped the wheel until his knuckles turned white. “Go on.”

  “She’s riding a motorcycle heading north out of Beltsville. . . .”

  “Do not lose her again,” Walter said, nearly coming out of his seat. “I’ll get you some air support right away.”

  “I won’t let you down, sir,” Gant said.

  Walter hung up, turning toward Logan Circle and Highway 1. The Vice President would just have to wait.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  The list of people I need to thank grows longer with each book. I find myself returning to the same group of experts, and then adding more as I seek out help on more and more subjects. My friends Steve Arlow, Sonny Caudill, Nick Hefner, and John Janes offered tremendous help and insight into the mysteries and vagaries of flight and flying in
large commercial aircraft as well as small bush planes. Steve Symanski helped me with mechanical aspects of airframes, FOD’s and such. Arlis Hamilton let me bounce ideas about explosives off him and nodded quietly when I got something close to correct. As always, I have taken certain literary license with the specifics of things like security procedures, where to put a bomb on an airplane, etc. because I’m not in the business of writing how-to books for terrorists. There are already plenty of those on the Internet. I hope, though, with the help of all these great resources, I’ve been able to add enough verisimilitude that folks in the know will nod and say, “Yeah, that’s pretty danged close.”

  As is my habit, I consulted with my friend and jujitsu sensei Ty Cunningham regarding the fight scenes. A big thanks to Ray, Ryan, Mike, Lori, Doug, and all the folks at Northern Knives for giving me a place to talk blades, guns, fighting, and war stories.

  The Yup’ik Eskimos on the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta in Western Alaska are a tough people with an incredibly rich culture. I am proud to have friends among them—Perry, James, Nathan, and Clayton to name a few.

  My editor at Kensington, Gary Goldstein, my agent, Robin Rue, and her assistant, Beth Miller, continue to be great friends and mentors in this daunting business.

  And, of course, my hat goes off to the men and women of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations and my old friends at the United States Marshals Service who provided me friendship and grist for the writing mill for decades.

  And finally, to my dear bride, who gave me two gifts the first year of our marriage: a ballistic vest, and an electric typewriter, so I could chase after both of my dreams.

  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2015 Marc Cameron

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PINNACLE BOOKS and the Pinnacle logo are Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-0-7860-3527-4

  First electronic edition: February 2015

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3528-1

  ISBN-10: 0-7860-3528-5