“Don’t forget, Jericho,” Palmer said. “We need to take Badeeb and his wife alive. See who the other guy is. Do me a favor and try to keep from killing him.”
“If at all possible, sir.” Quinn nodded.
“Make damned certain it is possible,” Palmer said. “I’m pretty sure the president will go against my advice and come to the wedding no matter what the Secret Service or I say. He keeps reminding me that the terrorists have won if they get to dictate where we do and do not go…” There was a sudden blip on the phone-another call. “Hang on a minute…”
Quinn and Thibodaux sat, geared up and ready, on their bikes. The heavy rear ramp lowered the last few inches with an agonized hydraulic whine. Dust and litter swirled into the back of the aircraft as Palmer came back on the line.
“Jericho? You still there?” His voice was breathless, heavy.
“I am,” Quinn said, feeling a rise in the pit of his stomach.
“Jericho,” Palmer said. “It’s about Garcia.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY
Tara Doyle wiped the airmen’s blood off her hands and threw the wad of paper towels in the trashcan. A swatch of red painted the chest of her flight suit and the V of her neck. She didn’t bother with that. The smell of blood helped her focus on the matters at hand.
Her entire life, at least from the time she was nine years old, had been lived for the next few hours. The years of study, the decades of pretending to love her adopted family, to care for this country of dogs-it all led up to her actions this one night.
“I will cut the throat of the whore that is the United States of America,” she chuckled out loud to the cavernous hangar. “With one of her very best airplanes…”
Walking toward her jet, she had a fleeting thought of Jimmy. He’d been a toddler when her American parents had taken him in from the Indian reservation in Montana, too young to know she too was adopted. A good confidant-he’d caught her crying on so many occasions and come in to console her without once asking her why. She shook the thought from her mind. None of that mattered now. He was one of them, nothing more than a means to an end, someone to vouch for her citizenship and make her background more believable. She had to remind herself of that. Jimmy Doyle deserved to die like the rest of them-
“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.
