Marc Cameron - Act of Terror

“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.

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.

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 most 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.