by Marc Cameron
The rookie looked up at Quinn. “We have units responding from South Anchorage and a Trooper coming north from Summit Lake—”
“Tell them the man on the bike is a good guy,” Quinn said, before flipping down his visor and giving the highway behind him a quick head check. A cloud of smoke rose from the BMW’s rear tire as he rolled on the gas, falling in after the white Subaru.
The GS accelerated quickly, scooping Quinn into the seat as it ripped down the highway. He leaned hard, nearly dragging a knee as he rounded the first corner past the Girdwood cutoff. He pushed from his mind the fact that the only thing that kept him upright were the two rubber contact patches where his tires met the pavement, each about four square inches.
Chapter 2
Quinn’s mind raced ahead of the bike, looking for rocks, vehicles jumping out from side roads, and any other obstacles that could send him over the side of the Seward Highway in a flaming ball of twisted metal and leather.
He toed the Beemer down a gear, feeling the aggressive pull of the engine. The speedometer on the GPS display between his handlebars climbed past ninety and then a hundred miles an hour. The Subaru moved fast, and the red pickup stayed tight on its tail, but Quinn began to gain ground the moment he left the downed officer.
Still a mile back, Quinn watched the red pickup move up as if to pass the little Subaru on a long straightaway. Instead of passing, the larger truck jerked to the right, untracking the sedan and sending it spinning out of control and slamming it against the mountain on the left side of the road. The red pickup flew past, smoke pouring from its rear tires as it skidded to a stop, and them began to back down the middle of the road toward the wrecked Subaru.
Quinn reached back with his left hand, feeling along the metal cargo box until he found a one-liter metal fuel bottle.
He was still a little over a half mile behind the Subaru. At his present speed, the GS would close the distance in less than twenty seconds. It took Quinn a few of those precious seconds to flip the latches that held the fuel bottle in place, but he finally felt it snap and brought the bottle up by his handlebars, holding it tight in his left hand.
Ahead on the left, people began to boil out of the wrecked Subaru, surely stunned. They’d shot a cop, so Quinn still considered them plenty dangerous.
He eased off the throttle but kept the bike moving around forty miles an hour as he neared the man who’d climbed out the driver’s side of the Subaru—the shooter. The man from the red pickup was already engaged in a shouting match with the Subaru passenger, who’d made it out first. Quinn saw the gun in the Subaru driver’s hand when he was still fifty feet away. The sneaker-like Truants would allow him to fight and run better than his usual motocross boots, but he wanted to tenderize the men as much as possible before he even got off the bike.
Quinn goosed the throttle, closing the distance in an instant, bringing the aluminum bottle up just in time to catch the driver in the side of his head with a resounding “tink.” Two pounds of aluminum and fuel traveling over forty miles an hour dropped the witless shooter in his tracks. Quinn let the bottle go the moment after impact, grabbing a handful of brakes and skidding the bike to a hard stop along the asphalt shoulder. He drifted the rear wheel during the slide to bring the back end of the bike around so he was facing his threat.
He got the Beemer stopped in time to watch the driver of the red pickup, an older man with a tweed driving cap, slap the Subaru passenger in the ear with an open palm, driving him to his knees. The female passenger from the Subaru threw her hands in the air, wailing and cursing as if she was being beaten herself, but giving up immediately. Quinn drew his Kimber 10mm from the holster tucked inside the waistband of his riding pants and scanned the area.
The man in the driving cap had drawn a gun of his own and now trained it on the downed Subaru passenger.
“Jim Hoyt, DEA,” he shouted to Quinn. “Retired.”
* * *
The driver of the Subaru, a skinny twenty-something covered with meth sores, looked up at Quinn from were he sat against a slab of rock, a bloody hand pressed to the side of his head. “You could have killed me,” he said. “I don’t know who you are, but I’m gonna sue the shit out of you, mister.”
“Hell of a thing,” Hoyt said. “You’d think a little shitass cop shooter who got smacked from the back of a moving motorcycle would be a little more sedate.”
Quinn raised an eyebrow, wondering how Hoyt knew a cop had been shot.
“Got a scanner in the truck,” Hoyt said. “Heard the description go out about the same time this rocket scientist flew past me.”
There was a no-nonsense air about the Jim Hoyt that made Quinn wonder just what he’d done for the DEA—and how long he’d been retired. A tall woman with long, silver hair and a sliver gleam in her blue eyes introduced herself as Mrs. Hoyt. She’d moved their pickup out of the roadway and now stood beside the open door, arms across the large bosom of her fleece vest. She looked at her husband and shook her head, giving a resigned sigh—certainly a policeman’s wife, accustomed to his behavior.
Quinn and Hoyt worked together to pat down the occupants of the Subaru, lining them up face down in the grass along the shoulder of the road. Bad guys secured, Hoyt stepped up to Quinn, keeping an injured elbow tucked in tight against his body. His cheeks were flushed, and he was obviously in pain judging by the way he treated the elbow. Pain or not, his green eyes sparkled with a mischievous grin. His jacket fell open when he extended a large hand toward Quinn, revealing a sweatshirt bearing a blue Air Force Academy Falcon logo.
“That was some good work back there pitting these guys, Mr. Hoyt,” Quinn said, nodding to the man’s shirt and giving him a knowing wink as they shook hands. “Fast, neat, average . . .”
“Ah.” Hoyt returned the wink with one of his own. “Friendly, good, good,” he said, providing Quinn with the second half of the phrase used by one Air Force Academy graduate to identify another. Taken straight from the Mitchel Dining Hall comment card, Fast, Neat, Average, Friendly, Good, Good were the only acceptable critique freshman cadets were allowed to give on the mandatory Form 0-96.
Hoyt stepped back to give Quinn a more thorough up-and-down look. “Class of seventy-five.”
“Two thousand and two,” Quinn said.
“Oh.” Hoyt rubbed his elbow. “That class.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, “that class.” He decided to steer the subject away from the fact that he’d graduated from the Air Force Academy the same academic year Al Qaeda brought down the Twin Towers and crashed a plane into the Pentagon. “You sir, are a good guy to have around.”
“That was hellacious!” Hoyt grinned, shooting a glance at his wife. “Work as long as you can, son. Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Quinn chuckled, rolling his shoulders to relieve the pain in his ribs as he nodded to the Hoyt’s elbow. “You should probably have that looked at.”
“Don’t worry about him.” Mrs. Hoyt gave a little good-natured scoff. “He’ll be glowing about this for days,” she said. “Best thing in the world for him, getting to mix it up with some bad guys. Makes him realize he’s still relevant.”
A white Alaska State Trooper SUV approached from the north carrying Ronnie Garcia in the passenger seat. Quinn could tell immediately from the frown on her face that something was terribly wrong.
“What is it?” Quinn said when she opened her door. “What’s the—”
Half in, half out of the car, Ronnie waved Quinn over. “Jericho,” she said. “You need to come hear this.”
Chapter 3
Nome, Alaska, 3:52 P.M.
Dr. Kostya Volodin inhaled the smell of popcorn and freedom as he left the windy tarmac along with the other eight passengers and entered through the metal doorway to the air-charter office. The buzz of people chattering in English made him feel heady as if he’d suddenly had a great weight lifted off his chest.
Dressed in a threadbare woolen blazer with patched sleeves and light wool traveling sla
cks that were half tucked in to ankle-high hiking boots, Volodin looked like the professor he had been and not the defector he had become. Gaunt and stooped, Volodin appeared to be much shorter than his six foot two inches. Numerous cowlicks caused his wiry head of gray hair to grow in all directions at once, leaving it in a perpetual state of bedhead.
Across the cavernous hanger, a smiling American Immigration and Customs official sat at a lone metal desk. Russians were accustomed to queuing up for bureaucrats so the other passengers who’d come across the Bering Sea with Volodin lined up without direction. Kaija stopped directly ahead of him, her head moving back and forth, birdlike. He could not blame her. This was her fist trip to America. There was a lot to take in.
At twenty years old, his dear daughter could pass for a much younger woman, but he would always think of her as a five-year-old with a skinned knee, before her mother had taken her away for all those excruciating years. The tail of her blue wool shirt hung to mid-thigh of her faded skinny jeans. Her sleeves were too long and frayed at the cuffs where they swallowed up her tiny hands. Red ankles were dry and chapped above thin canvas sneakers. He could have afforded more, but she would hardly accept a kopek from him.
Youthful lips trembled when she turned to look him in the eye, obviously frightened by something she’d seen. A black wool watch cap topped straw-blond hair that hung around narrow shoulders, framing a stricken oval face. A pair of white earbuds perpetually connected her to the music on her mobile phone, but even in her terror, she refused to remove both of them, leaving one in her ear and the other trailing down the side of her neck. She shook her head, mouth hanging open, the way she’d done when she was a small child. She’d borne the same expression the day her mother—Volodin’s dear Maria—had died.
“What is the matter, kroshka?” Volodin whispered. He put a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling and it broke his heart.
Kaija cast a hurried glance toward the door.
He followed her gaze but saw nothing but a handful of Native people, all dressed in wool and fleece and fur. He saw a few men, but mostly there were smiling women with round bodies and Asian eyes sitting on shabby furniture next to boxes of diapers and cases of canned soda pop in the open bay of the charter office that served as a combination waiting and cargo area. Fluorescent lights hummed in the high ceiling of the tin building, barely cutting through the thin fog of dust that rose into the chilly air.
“We are safe now, kroshka,” he said. “I will inform the Customs Inspector we mean to defect to the United States. He will escort us to the proper authorities. He will give us something to eat and warm clothes.”
Kaija clenched her eyes as if she was about to scream. “They are here, Papa.”
“Who?” Volodin shook his head, still holding the poor girl’s trembling shoulder. “Who is here?”
Kaija brushed a lock of blond hair from her eyes and tucked it up under the wool cap. She’d not been one to worry much with her hair after her mother died the year before. Volodin wondered for a time if she’d even bothered to bathe.
Kaija glanced toward the front of the building again, past the rows of customers waiting for their small charter flights within Alaska.
“You do not see the men?” Her breath came in short, tremulous gasps. “Outside. They are waiting for us. I am sure of it. Colonel Rostov has wasted no time in finding you.”
Volodin chanced a quick look at the door. The front window of the air charter building was covered in grime, but there were indeed two men outside, smoking cigarettes and chatting in the light swirl of blowing snow. The menace in their faces was all too evident. Of course they would be here, ordered to force him back—or kill him, which was the highest of all possible probabilities considering the man who sent them.
Volodin looked at the head of the line. There were now only six passengers between Kaija and the uniformed Immigration agent.
“Do not worry, my dear,” Volodin whispered, leaning down and forcing a smile for his daughter. “This man will protect us.”
“How can you be sure, Papa?” Kaija said. “Is it not possible he has been paid to detain us? He could at this very moment be in league with the men outside.”
Volodin rubbed a tired hand across the stubble on his face. The girl was as wily and wise as her mother. She made a valid point. Americans were brought up to trust people in uniform. In Russia it was quite the opposite—and sadly, the Russian perspective was often the correct one. Anyone could be bought.
It was a Herculean effort to look nonchalant as he scanned the air-charter office for anyone who might be waiting to shoot him in the back of the head. A bullet to the back of the head—that’s the way they’d done it in Mother Russia since the beginning of bullets. Considering the awful things he’d been a part of, a quick shot would be a merciful way to go. That time would come soon enough, but for now, he had to stay alive to take care of his daughter.
Volodin snugged the wool jacket tighter around his neck and used the tip of his finger to push a pair of thick, tortoiseshell glasses back on a large nose. He tilted his head, trying to get a better look out the window without being too obvious.
“You are right, Kaija,” he whispered. “It is KGB.” He kept his voice low in the unlikely event the Immigration officer was one of those rare Americans who spoke something other than English—or was indeed in league with the men waiting outside to shoot him in the head.
Kaija’s already pale face fell ashen. “What did you say?”
“I said you are right, my child,” Volodin said, working to control his breathing. He felt as if the entire world was leaning sideways, and he found it difficult to remain on his feet. He put a hand on Kaija’s shoulder, more to steady himself than to comfort her. “The KGB. They have come for us. I have no idea how they arrived here so quickly.”
Kaija’s gaze dropped to her feet. The fear in her face had been chased way by a look of shame. Instead of someone in mortal danger, she’d become a child whose father made her uncomfortable.
“How is this not embarrassing to you?” She whispered, suddenly much less terrified of the men outside.
A fluttering twitch blossomed in Volodin’s left eye. What was she saying? KGB thugs or not, he hated to embarrass Kaija.
He could see she was still upset but working to control herself. “I am sorry, Papa,” she said. “But there is no more KGB.”
Volodin groaned. What had he said? “Of course I know there is no KGB.” His face flushed red at the foolish mistake. “I meant to say FSB.” The runaway twitch forced Volodin to clench his eye shut. He removed his glasses, and rubbed it with his palm, willing the possessed thing to be still. “FSB . . . or more likely Army. Colonel Rostov’s goons from GRU.” He pronounced it GuRoo.
“What should we do?” Kaija said. Her emotions could change so quickly, from anger to embarrassment to an abject willingness to do whatever he said. Her mother had been just as mercurial.
“I suppose this was always a possibility.” Volodin shoved a shock of gray hair out of his face and replaced his glasses. He glanced toward the front window again.
The taller of the two men waiting to capture or kill them held his cigarette pinched between his fingers the way few Americans would. The other, an older, stockier brute had a tattoo that peeked from the cuff of his tight, European leather jacket when he gestured at his partner, pointing with his own cigarette to make some point. Such tattoos and jackets were favored by members of Russian organized crime. Mafia thugs or government operatives—the titles were not mutually exclusive—the men seemed oblivious to the blowing snow, chatting with each other and conspicuously ignoring the arriving passengers.
Volodin looked up at the round clock above the gate agent for the fifth time in as many minutes. Bony knuckles on long and slender fingers turned white as he grabbed the rumpled canvas duffel and moved forward a few steps with the line.
Kaija had retreated to her music, but her eyes still flicked around the room, a frightened fawn, frozen, but l
ooking for a way to run. She gave a small start when he put a hand on her shoulder again, slowing her long enough to let another Native woman and her two children move ahead of them in the line. His mind was suddenly foggy, and he needed a little time to figure out how not to get shot in the head.
Kaija toyed with the dangling earbud. “Please, tell me you have a plan.”
“I know this must seem odd to you,” Volodin said, keeping his voice low. “But understand, króshka, the colonel has eyes everywhere. It is not outside the realm of possibility that he has KGB assets already in Alaska.”
“FSB, Papa,” Kaija said, muscles in her cheeks tensing. A spark of impatience flared in her green eyes, then subsided.
“Yes, yes, yes . . . FSB,” Volodin muttered. He tried to wave off the mistake but inwardly cursed himself for getting it wrong again. “That is what I mean.”
Kaija took the remaining bud out of her ear and stuffed the white cord in her pocket. “Do you think it is wise to trust this American agent?” Her nose turned up, clearing demonstrating that she did not.
Mind racing, Volodin looked around the hangar for any alternative. The professor knew he’d reached a point of no return. There was no flight back to Providenya. The die was cast, and he had crossed his Rubicon, his only choices now to move forward or perish.
His scientific brain, fevered and worried as it was, began to shuffle and sift through the possibilities, while his eyes dissected the architecture of the hangar. Kaija was maddeningly correct. It would be gambling everything to place his trust in the lone government agent seated at the table. The man was young, with honest eyes—but he also wore a ring, and with a ring there was the likelihood of a family—and with a family came responsibilities, which meant he would need money and might be ripe to accept a bribe to simply look the other way when two KGB . . . FSB operatives dragged away an old Russian scientist and his terrified daughter and stuffed them into the belly of a waiting airplane bound for Russia.
