Marc Cameron - National Security

“This is like something out of the movies, Jane,” Kip said, looking somber without his trademark sparkling grin.

“Here we are,” Jane said as the photograph came up on the screen. “Authorities aren’t saying where he’s supposed to be or where he’s going, but the man is identified as…”

A bite of cheese sandwich fell from Carrie’s gaping mouth. Her bare toes clenched at the carpet.

“Zafir!” she cried. “NO… I can’t…”

“… of Middle Eastern descent,” Kip continued. “Zafir Jawad is missing three fingers…” Kip and Jane kept up their banter. Carrie heard nothing but the whoosh of blood pulsing in her ears.

“You’re hurting my leg.” Christian wriggled to escape Carrie’s fingernails on his thigh. Squirming around to face her, he looked up with an olive complexion and deep-set eyes identical to the man staring at her from the television.

A thousand bees buzzed inside her. Her skin crawled as if writhing in a bed of poisonous snakes. Trembling so hard she worried she might crack a tooth, Carrie reached for the phone beside the couch. It rang as her finger brushed the receiver.

She screamed, memories of months of torment and pain flooding her system like an illness. If Zafir was in the United States, she knew exactly what he was after.

In her lap, Christian began to cry.

16 September, 0130 hours

Jericho opened his eyes when Winfield Palmer’s Bombardier Challenger touched down in Texas with a puff of smoke and a muted squawk of tires on tarmac. Designed by Bill Lear, the CL 601 had roughly the same cruise speed and only slightly less range than a Gulfstream IV-the more famous sister jet on which every spy in the world of fictional espionage seemed to fly. This particular CL 601 was registered to the Federal Aviation Administration. Just as Quinn and Thibodaux served as Other Governmental Agents, the Challenger was an Other Governmental Aircraft-one thing on paper, but quite another in point of fact. The pilots were paid through the FAA payroll system, but took their orders from the Director of National Intelligence. Without a very close inspection, both pilots and aircraft would blend in with the thousands of other boring cogs of the civil service gears that made up the unwieldy bureaucracy of the United States government.

The sleek plane bounced once, then settled into a smooth ground roll. The seats were plush-comfortable leather that leaned all the way back for long overseas trips. Teetering on the razor’s edge of complete exhaustion and delirium, he’d collapsed into a dreamless sleep as soon as the jet had jumped off the ground at Langley. A two-hour nap had done little but add to the kinks in his spine and the unshakeable feeling that he was walking around with his head inside a barrel of crude oil. He tried to swallow but felt as if he had a mouth full of talcum powder. Accustomed to the freedom of the wind on his motorcycle, airplane air was among Jericho’s most hated substances.

Blue taxiway lights shot by the windows as the jet rolled into Fort Worth and past Alliance Airport’s iconic snow-cone-shaped control tower.

After the photo of Zafir went public, there had been no shortage of leads. Thousands of people phoned the number to say they’d seen the fugitive. Some even claimed to be him. Agents from virtually every organization in the government took part in trying to locate the fugitive (though none of them knew the real story beyond that he should be considered a highly “toxic” target). There was no way to check all the tips, but they couldn’t stand by and do nothing.

Then, call screeners sent forward a report from a Border Patrol agent in South Texas who said one of his prisoners had seen the photograph on the television while in the hospital after having his eye cut out by a “devil bandit” on the banks of the Rio Grande. According to the agent, the prisoner had nearly broken his handcuffs trying to get out of his bed when he saw the picture on the news. He swore this was the man who had cut out his eye and sawed the head off his friend.

Moments later, the call had come in from Carrie Navarro and they finally had something to go with.

“One-thirty in the morning.” Thibodaux yawned. “That’s two-thirty in my brain. I know we’re tryin’ to save the world and everything, but I feel like I’ve been stomped to death.”

Mahoney gathered up the sheaves of notes she’d worked on during the flight and stuffed them in a black ballistic nylon briefcase. There was no attendant to lord over their safety, and she stood to take a bag out of the overhead while the plane was still moving. “Can I ask you something, Jacques?” she said, holding a pen in her mouth as she worked the compartment’s latch.

“Fire away, l’ami.” The Cajun yawned again, holding both arms above his head like huge goalposts as he gave a shivering stretch.

“You don’t cuss very much for a Marine,” she said.

Thibodaux grinned as he unfolded himself out of the plush leather seat. “My child bride only allows me five non-Bible curse words a month.”

“Yeah, but she’s back at Cherry Point,” Quinn said. He straightened his pistol and situated the Masamune blade at the small of his back. “How’s she gonna know?”

“Let me tell you somethin’.” Thibodaux raised an eyebrow, as if he alone held the knowledge of a dark and dangerous secret. “I can’t count the times I’ve looked death square in the yap, but none of that scared me near so much as that little Italian woman between my sheets. Believe me, beb, she’d know.”

Quinn leaned in so Mahoney couldn’t hear him. “You do realize that shit isn’t a Bible word?”

“Really?” Thibodaux said, wide eyed. “Dammit!”

Through the windows, Quinn could see a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter as the Challenger slowed. Strobe lights flashed in the night. The rotor turned, spooled up and ready to go. Men in blue jumpsuits moved toward the belly of the 605 before it had even stopped, ready to unload the duffel bags of gear at the first opportunity.

“The chopper will take us to the helipad at Texas Christian University,” Quinn said, leaning on the back of his seat to watch the chopper out the side windows. Even in the shadows he could make out dark semicircles of sweat on the men’s coveralls. He braced himself for the Texas humidity, knowing it would hit him in the chest like a wet towel. “Palmer has a car waiting for us at TCU,” he said. “Navarro’s house is just a few miles from there. He’s set up a place for us to do our surveillance in a vacant house across the street.”

Bouncing in her Nikes with a contagious buzz, Mahoney seemed to have a limitless reservoir of perkiness. Quinn was relieved she showed some level of human mortality when she actually rubbed her eyes and yawned like a lioness, wide and long enough he could count the fillings in her teeth.

“Sorry about that,” she said, putting the back of her hand to her mouth as the yawn turned into a full-body stretch. “We’ve got less than eight hours left… if we’re lucky.” She looked down the aisle at both men. “I could be dead wrong about the timeline, you know. Even as we speak, Zafir could be spreading this thing like some kind of Johnny Ebola Appleseed.”

“What else can we do?” Quinn arched his back, trying in vain to pop his spine.

“I’ll tell you what.” Thibodaux fished a protein bar out of his camouflage backpack and ripped it open with his teeth. “Once we locate Zafir, the most sensible thing to do would be to drop some napalm on his ass-toast him and the germs that rode in on him.” He swallowed the bar in three bites and washed it down with a gulp of water from the SIGG Aluminum bottle he carried everywhere.