Act of Terror

by Marc Cameron

  “Major Tara Doyle, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST!” A muscular Air Force OSI agent wearing khaki 5.11 pants and a black ballistic raid vest stepped from behind the wheels of a nearby F-22 Raptor, Sig Sauer pistol at high ready.

  Doyle spun, fillet knife in hand, but Ronnie Garcia rose up from her hiding spot behind the aircraft tug and hit her in the face with a crescent wrench.

  The queen of West Texas bitches fell like a sack of wet sand. Garcia winced from the exertion, gritting her teeth against the searing pain in her back.

  Moments later, the brightly lit hangar swarmed with OSI agents in black vests and thigh holsters. Everyone present had personally worked with Quinn and, for one reason or another, had his complete trust.

  “We need to get a copy of the weapons load-out,” Garcia shouted. “Whoever signed for this payload of bombs is in this along with Doyle.”

  “Got two dead in the back room,” an agent who’d been a year behind Quinn in the Academy yelled from across the open hangar. He stood at the door wearing a pair of blue nitrile gloves. “They got their pants around their ankles and their throats cut from ear to ear.” The agent shook his head. “It’s a mess.”

  Garcia, still holding the wrench, looked down at the smear of fresh blood across the front of Doyle’s flight suit. “You really are a bitch,” she said.

  One of the agents, a tan Colorado native named Judson who’d spent time in Iraq with Quinn, knelt to roll a moaning Doyle onto her stomach so he could handcuff her. He looked up at Garcia as he closed the cuffs with a ratcheting zip.

  “You better sit down,” he said. “You look pretty pale.”

  Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come along considering what she’d been through. But she was just stubborn enough that whatever the cost, she wasn’t about to let a couple of holes in her back keep her away from something this big. In truth, Garcia thought she might be sick to her stomach at any moment.

  “I got her,” a beefy man with mussed blond hair said as he took off his navy-blue sports coat and draped it over Garcia’s shoulders. The sleeves of his white button-down were rolled up to reveal a black octopus tattoo on his forearm. “Let’s get you back to the hospital, young lady. My big brother would never forgive me if I let anything happen to you.”

  Garcia swayed on her feet, slumping into his arms.

  Two Quinns ... it was almost too much to fathom.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Quinn gunned the Ducati, shooting over the lip of the Osprey’s metal ramp. As he was accustomed to the longer travel in the GS’s suspension, the 848 jarred his fillings, landing with a stiff thud on the hard-packed soil of the ball field. His spinning tire gained traction almost instantly. Thibodaux, not to be outdone, revved his big GS Adventure, coming up even with Quinn on his right.

  Palmer had briefed Quinn about the raid on the F-22 hangar at Langley. It calmed him some that Bo had been there to help look after Garcia.

  That left the loose ends of Badeeb and his unknown acquaintance to clean up.

  “We’re en route to Chinatown now.” Linked to Palmer via encrypted cellular, Quinn spoke into the mike inside his helmet.

  “Outstanding,” Palmer said. “The problem is, with this sleeper jet jockey out of the picture, the president is determined to attend the wedding.”

  “That’s not a good idea, sir,” Quinn said, splitting traffic to cut between two lanes packed full of bumper to bumper yellow cabs. “There has to be more to this than a single pilot. What about the brother?”

  “He’s clean. Got several extended relatives from the reservation in Montana who vouch for him. Even has a couple of baby pictures and a footprint on his hospital birth record.”

  “Still,” Quinn said, downshifting to shoot around a moving van. “It doesn’t pass the smell test. A target as ripe as that wedding has to have two shooters pointed at it.”

  “I’m painfully aware of that,” Palmer said. “I even used your little ditty on the boss—‘see one, think two.’ I’m afraid he remains unconvinced.”

  Quinn swerved sharply, countersteering around a puttering delivery boy whose bicycle was piled head high with takeout boxes from a Chinese restaurant.

  “Understood. We’ll be at the newsstand where Badeeb bought cigarettes in less than a minute. I can already smell the fish shops... . I’ll call you when we have something.”

  “Tally ho, beb,” Thibodaux’s voice came across Quinn’s earpiece, as they turned the bikes out of the honking, chaotic traffic of Bowery and into the cramped and twisting alley of Doyers Street. Gaudily painted green, yellow, and red brick buildings with rusted, zigzagging fire escapes rose up on either side of the narrow pavement, giving the place a kaleidoscope-tunnel-like atmosphere.

  “See the guy with the cigarette under the neon sign?” Jacques pointed with his chin as he rode. “He look like our Pakistani doc to you?”

  “Roger that,” Quinn said. His eye caught the movement of another dark figure striding purposefully through the door of a yellow six-story brick halfway down the block. He only caught a glimpse, but the upswept pompadour of black hair and the sure movements told Quinn this was the Evil Elvis in the photograph.

  Badeeb stood in the grimy shadows under the tattered sign of the hand-pulled noodle shop. Even in the dim light, his oval face shone with perspiration. Twin black pebbles stared back from an enveloping haze of smoke from the cigarette that hung from his lips. He seemed oblivious to a couple of motorcycles, intent instead on the man who’d just disappeared into the yellow building.

  “You got Badeeb?” Quinn gave an almost imperceptible nod of his helmet.

  “Matter of fact I do, beb.” Thibodaux rolled on the gas and tore down the narrow street. Just before he reached Badeeb, he extended his left arm like a jousting knight—directly at the startled doctor.

  The cigarette fell from Badeeb’s lips a split second before the armored knuckles of the Cajun’s huge right glove obliterated his nose.

  Quinn grabbed a handful of front brake, squeezed until he felt the back end lighten, then pushed forward with his legs to bring the bike onto its front wheel in a sort of reverse wheelie known as a stoppie. Rolling on the front wheel, Quinn used his body weight to throw the back wheel around, executing a snap hundred-and-eighty-degree turn. It was a move he’d practiced with his brother hundreds of times on a slew of different bikes. Bo called it their patented “going-the-other-way maneuver.”

  Quinn hit the gas as soon as the little red Ducati’s rear wheel settled back on the pavement. Smoke flew up in a whirring rooster tail while the tire found its grip. As his head whipped around he watched the door to the yellow brick building swing shut behind the dark Elvis.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  Mujaheed Beg paused inside the building, sniffing the stale air. He hadn’t lived this long by rushing headlong into things—not even simple jobs like strangling old women. For this, he would use his old friend, the wire garrote. At least that would bring some enjoyment. He’d not been able to employ it on the congressman’s mistress—too much blood. Such a thing wouldn’t matter in the dark, cage-like atmosphere Li Huang called home. Residents were unlikely to notice a dead dog rotting in the hallway of such a place, much less a little blood on the stained wooden floor.

  People hacked and coughed behind low walls up and down the narrow corridors as if the place were a tuberculosis ward. The strangled gurgles of a dying woman would draw no attention at all. Under the sullen light of a dusty hallway bulb, any blood that made it under the doorway would be hard to identify until long after Beg was gone. In any case, most, if not all, of the rabbits in this warren of rooms were illegal aliens and were highly unlikely to call the authorities—even to report a murder.

  A long stairway gaped upward to the Mervi’s right. The chattering riot of a Chinese game show, sirens from police dramas, and dramatic dialogue of historical romances tumbled down from the black hole above, mixing with the sour smell of human confinement. It was early enough in the evening that mo
st of the inmates—that’s how Beg thought of them—were still out working the sidewalks or stuck in a basement sweatshop sewing the sleeves on clothing for American consumers so they could proudly say they bought products made in the U.S.A.

  Halfway down the smoky hall, an old man with wisps of gray hair like moldy cotton candy squatted, backlit by a grimy window leading out to the fire escape. A hotplate of boiling noodles and fish bubbled on the floor beside him. Like the rest of the place, he reeked of day-old alcohol and sweat.

  Li Huang’s wooden door was just beyond the old man, under an exposed row of radiator pipes that ran like monkey bars across the stained ceiling.

  Beg put a hand inside the pocket of his jacket, feeling for the wooden handles and reassuring coil of sharp wire. He walked past the old man, considering whether he would have to kill him or not on the way out. The old man was bony and frail as a stalk of drought-parched wheat, and such a thing wouldn’t be hard.

  Li Huang normally stayed at one of the Badeebs’ much more comfortable homes on Long Island or in Pennsylvania. Out of an abundance of caution—and to get her in a place that he could more easily have her killed with no link to him—the doctor had asked her to hide in this horribly filthy hotel used by Chinese Snake-heads to hide their illegal human cargo until they paid off their debts.

  State prison inmates had larger accommodations. Each room was barely six by eight feet, topped with chicken-wire mesh in a halfhearted attempt to discourage thieves. Devoted to terroristic jihad—she called it sheng zhan—Li Huang had readily traded her middle-class home for this wretched place that smelled like a restaurant trash Dumpster—all for the sake of keeping her dear husband’s plans safe.

  And now that same husband had sent a very deadly man to kill her.

  Beg knocked on the flimsy, hollow-core door, feeling more of a rush than he’d anticipated. Perhaps it was the fact that he had shared tea with this woman dozens of times while he’d discussed plans with her husband.

  The door creaked opened a crack to expose one rheumy eye and the glint of charcoal hair.

  Knowing that she would surely have a weapon, Beg didn’t wait to be invited in. The door gave easily to his weight and Li Huang fell backward in the tiny room, slamming her head against the edge of the wood two-by-four frame that made up her simple bed.

  Li Huang flailed out as she fell, knocking over a rickety bedside table and sending a ceramic reading lamp crashing to the bare wooden floor.

  Trembling fingers reached up to touch the knot where her head had struck the bedframe. They came back red with blood. Narrow eyes flitted back and forth around the room looking for a nonexistent escape route as Beg slowly took the wire garrote from his pocket. He grasped the wooden handles in each hand. Li Huang was a proud woman. She would not be a screamer as some were. He could take his time.

  Staring up at him, her nostrils flared. Her tongue flicked against her lips, snakelike.

  “Why?” she demanded, though the stricken pain in her eyes said she already had her answer.

  Beg shrugged. There was no need to explain.

  “My husband sent you?” Cold realization flushed across her face.

  Beg bounded forward without speaking. He grabbed a handful of hair and jerked her away from the bed. Instead of fighting back, she threw a hand to her throat. Beg couldn’t help but shake his head. Such a weak defense would do precious little good against the unforgiving wire noose. This would be over much more quickly than even he had anticipated. The doctor was right, he thought, as he zipped the razor-sharp wire tight. She did smell like old fruit.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  Quinn left the Ducati at the curb and sprinted up the short concrete stoop. He didn’t have to look back, trusting that Thibodaux had already sacked up Dr. Badeeb.

  Removing his helmet, he gripped it in his left hand as he pushed open the door. Having the Arai gave him a good cover story if someone stopped him, and it made for a formidable weapon if he had to whack someone in the running lights without killing them.

  Once inside the door he entered a dim lobby with chipped tile. The rusted mail cubbies along the wall to his left were covered with old bits of tape displaying the numbers of the rooms—but no names. A long staircase ran up to a dark hallway to his right.

  Moving by instinct over intellect, Quinn padded quickly up the stairs, right hand covering the butt of his Kimber. The cry of a squalling baby met him at the top. Cell-like rooms lined the wall to his left; chicken wire covered the dusty windows facing the street on his right. The cloying desperation of the place reminded him of his time in the fake PRONA prisoner-of-war camp in SERE school.

  The only other soul in the hallway was an old man squatting beside a boiling pot. Quinn raised an eyebrow in the universal sign for: “I’m here to help if you want it.”

  The old man sat back on his haunches, heels flat on the floor as he stirred the steaming soup. He said nothing, but his watery eyes flicked up the dark hall.

  A strangled cry two doors down confirmed the dark man’s location. Quinn had heard the sound all too many times before. It was woman—and she was dying.

  Bounding past the boiling pot of fish, Quinn shouldered his way through the door to find his target, full Elvis pompadour hanging low across his brow from his exertions with the thrashing old woman in front of him. Li Huang had thrown a boney hand to her neck, but the thin garrote wire had already bitten deeply into the exposed flesh. Blood spilled from the terrifying wound as if from a fountain. The front of her tan cotton blouse glistened dark red.

  The killer looked up with a start. He bared white teeth and tossed his head to get the hair out of his eyes. He gave a sudden yank on the garrote, severing one of the woman’s fingers and giving the deadly wire more access to the vital arteries and windpipe. The finger landed with a sickening thump on the floor next to her trembling leg, its manicured nail clicking against the wood.

  Quinn swung his motorcycle helmet like a war club, connecting with evil Elvis’s forehead. The man staggered backward, releasing his grip on the garrote so it slipped off Li Huang’s neck. He sprawled against the low wooden bed with the weapon, glinting with fresh blood, dangling in one hand. Quinn dragged the injured woman toward the door. She slumped against the wall, clutching her neck with both hands in a vain attempt to stem the flow of blood.

  Elvis bounced back from the bed, regaining his feet in an instant. Pressing forward, he flicked the wooden handle of the garrote at Quinn like a whip. He pushed the fallen lock of black hair out of his face and stood breathing for a long moment, lip twitching into a half sneer. A heartbeat later, he sprang, rushing forward and causing Quinn to regret not shooting him as soon as he’d entered the room.

  Both men tumbled backward, out the flimsy door and into the narrow confines of the hall. They crashed into the chicken-wire wall in a writhing heap, pulling the wire away and exposing dusty, distorted glass of one of the floor-to-ceiling windows. The soup man abandoned his hot plate and scuttled into the dark recesses of the corridor.

  Quinn used his opponent’s momentum against him, grabbing a fistful of cloth at both shoulders and hauling him face-first into the glowing red coils of the hot plate. He yowled in pain as the element seared his cheeks, branding him with concentric circles. The pungent odor of scorched flesh and singed hair filled the hall as he rolled away, reversing directions quickly to come after Quinn again. As they crashed together, he stomped on Quinn’s injured foot as if he sensed the weakness.

  Riding on waves of nauseating pain, Quinn was barely able to keep from vomiting. Somehow, his hand caught the warm wood of a garrote handle. He flailed with the other, connecting with the opposite handle that the dark Elvis still clutched in his fist. Locked in a clench around the deadly garrote, they stood face-to-face, gasping, close enough Quinn could smell the soapy scent of the oil in his hair.

  Quinn cursed himself again for not shooting the man in the first place. He felt himself fading. Exposure to extreme altitude, cold, torture, and la
ck of sleep piled on in a relentless scrum of crushing fatigue.

  Dark Elvis sensed the lapse of strength and reacted with instant fury. He shoved forward with powerful legs, driving Quinn backward toward the hazy light of the fire escape window.

  Fighting dizziness, Quinn leaned in for a split second, remembering his jujitsu instructor’s credo: When pushed, pull. He wanted to be certain his opponent was fully committed. Without warning, he gave way, pedaling backward to bring the evil Elvis with him. Quinn’s fists shot in and upward, crossing in front of the surprised man’s throat before looping the taut wire up and over his head of slicked hair.

  Quinn let his right leg collapse under his butt as he used his opponent’s momentum to drag him along. Rolling backward on his shoulders, he planted his left foot in the other man’s gut, throwing him in a forward somersault over Quinn’s head.

  Glass shattered, raining down on the combatants as the force of the dark man’s momentum propelled his body through the chicken wire and out the window.

  Quinn gripped the ends of the garrote, feeling the sudden heavy tug as his opponent’s weight slammed against the wire. The handles suddenly grew light in Quinn’s hands. He rolled to his side, fearing the wire had broken and expecting to continue the fight.

  Instead, Dark Elvis’s head landed in the dim hallway with a sickening thud, black eyes squinting, fallen pompadour sulking across a furrowed brow. His body lay in a heap outside the broken window on the rusted fire escape grating.

  Pounding footsteps brought Thibodaux bounding up the stairs, pistol extended and ready in his beefy hand. He slid to a stop, staring in slack-jawed disgust.