Brute Force (23 page)

 

“W
hat do you think Petra’s father did to afford such a yacht?” Song said, sitting beside Quinn on the plush leather settee. It was U-shaped and took up much of the spacious salon. She’d taken a shower as soon as they’d boarded the boat and her hair was still wet and shone like obsidian under the wall sconce above her head. Bursaw was up with his father-in-law, just visible through a narrow hatchway, eerie silhouettes in the muted red light of the wheelhouse as they steered the forty-seven-foot cruiser through the black waters of the Adriatic.

“He seems comfortable enough running at night with no lights,” Quinn said. “So I have a guess.” He sat on the long side of the settee, at a right angle to Song, knee to knee.

Quinn’s father had owned several fishing boats over the years. They were beamy things, working vessels, and they weren’t cheap, but compared to this one they looked like a wall tent next to a five-star hotel. Quinn guessed it was at least a million-dollar boat. Pricy for a man who helped his son-in-law tend to motorcycle tires. Quinn didn’t care.

Petra was in the forward cabin, down a short flight of stairs beneath the wheelhouse, trying to get her daughters to sleep after all the commotion. Quinn and Song had the salon to themselves.

Quinn rubbed his eyes, willing himself to stay awake. He’d always been fine when he was moving forward, running or riding toward a goal, but waiting sapped his strength more quickly than a fight. He looked at his watch. It was well after midnight. That put it after seven a.m. in China. It was no wonder he was exhausted. Including his time under anesthesia in the Kashgar hospital and the catnap he’d taken on the flight into Croatia, he’d gone over forty-eight hours on less than six hours of fitful or drug-induced sleep.

Song stared blankly across the interior of the boat, miles away and locked in thought.

“We have to check in at the airport in just over three hours,” he said. “Bursaw says we’ve still got a good two hours on the boat. You should catch some sleep.”

Locks of damp hair mopped the shoulders of the clean white T-shirt.

“Why do you do this?” she asked, still staring off into space.

Quinn raised a brow. “What do you mean?”

“You know . . .
this
.” Song waved both hands around in a flourish. “This thing we are doing.”

“I—”

“I do it because my government says I must,” she said. “I think you do it because you can.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said.

“Please forgive me,” she said, letting her head fall sideways so she was leaning back against the cushion but looking at him. “We Chinese can be very direct. What I mean to say is that you do this because you are capable.” A single tear had formed and then dried on her cheek, as if it had given up.

She stretched her legs, staring at her feet, still bare from the shower. They were small for her height and Quinn was surprised to see her toenails were painted a girlish pink. “I do not think I was cut out for this type of work.”

“You seem exceptionally good at it,” Quinn said.

Song took a deep breath and opened her mouth to speak before looking away as if she’d changed her mind.

“You played the violin in high school?” Quinn offered, hoping to get her to talk some more about her past, to learn more about this woman in whose hands he was placing his safety.

“I did,” she said, turning back to him and shaking off whatever funk had been about to overwhelm her. “And now I do not.”

Quinn started to mention her incredible performance at the Bursaws’ party, but decided it might open up old wounds. Instead, he changed his tack. “You promised to tell me more about the Black Dragon.”

“Indeed.” Song slumped in her seat, seemingly relieved to discuss anything but her past. “It’s a shoulder-fired weapon resembling one of your American Javelin or Predator antitank missiles. I cannot divulge the specifics of the design, but it delivers a warhead capable of fifteen times the destructive power of an equivalent weight of a conventional high-explosive charge.”

“Thermobaric?” Quinn asked, committing every word to memory so he could make a record later.

“I am afraid so.”

Having any sort of explosive shot at you was bad enough, but thermobaric devices were particularly unpleasant. An explosive charge dispersed a cloud of fuel—like fluoridated aluminum or ethylene oxide. Anyone near the ignition point would be obliterated as the vaporized fuel used existing oxygen in the air to explode. Thermobaric devices tended to burn a fraction of a second slower than conventional weapons. The pressure wave in any enclosed space, along with the vacuum that followed, took care of anyone else, rupturing lungs, crushing internal organs, and destroying the inner ear. Blindness was not uncommon, but as devastating as the small devices were, the shock and pressure caused little damage to the brain so the victims were left blinded and conscious for seconds or even minutes while they suffocated to death.

“What’s the size of the missile?” Quinn said.

She chewed on her lip, eyes twinkling in the diffused light of the boat. “Classified.”

“We’re past that,” Quinn said. “I need to know so I can figure out possible targets.”

“Approximately twenty kilos,” she sighed.

Quinn did the math. If the entire device weighed just shy of forty-five pounds, the warhead itself was likely to be well over twenty. The Marines had taken out entire mansions in Iraq with a single eighteen-pounder from a Javelin—and Song said this one was even stronger.

“What’s the fuel?”

“Really,” she said. “That is secret informa—”

“If we plan to stop this, I need to know what you know.”

“Beryllium,” she said at length. “This device is a prototype, but believe me, it functions even better than the designers had hoped.”

“I have to make a phone call,” Quinn said, checking the time on his Aquaracer. “It will take us almost a full day to reach Seattle. I have friends who can work on this from that end.”

Song sat up, hands folded at her knees. “If your government finds out that such a weapon will be used on US soil, I am afraid war is a forgone conclusion.”

“There’s a fine line between war and peace,” Quinn said, almost to himself. “We are bound to cross it many times before we’re done.”

 

T
hibodaux braced himself in the doorway as Camille snapped out of her stupor and scrambled off the bed to launch herself into his arms.

“You’re home!” She burst into tears, burying her head against his neck. “I can explain all this, you know.”

Thibodaux patted her on the back and winked across her shoulder at an embarrassed Kim, who still stood at the foot of the bed with the leather belt hanging limply in her hand.

“Don’t you worry about it,
ma chère
,” he said. “I’d like to think we have the sort of relationship that if you came home and found me straddlin’ a hairy, fat man, you’d trust I had my reasons.” His grin turned sour when he focused on the man in his bed. “I’d say Joey B’s the one who has some ’splainin’ to do.”

Camille pulled away. “So you do know him?”

“Joey, Joey, Joey . . .
Zeerahb saleau!
” Jacques nodded, giving Benavides a long, burning glare: “Disgusting, sloppy thing. What have you gone and let these gals do to you? I mean this is some kinky shit.”

Joey’s face twisted as if in agony and he began to bawl like a baby.

Camille put a hand on Thibodaux’s chest. “Don’t you want to know what happened?”

“I do,” Jacques said. “But not in front of the sob-slobberer. Hang on a sec.” He towered over the bed and yanked the gag out of Joey B’s mouth. “Okay, shitbird, you have bled all over my sheets. You know what that means?”

Benavides shook his head, tears pressing between his lashes as a pitiful squeak escaped his lips.

Thibodaux leaned in close so he was only inches from the man’s face. “It means I gotta buy me a new mattress—and this mattress means a lot to me. There ain’t much to keep me from shooting you in the eye if you make another peep without permission. Understand?”

Joey nodded emphatically but kept his mouth shut.

“
Boop!
Right there,” Thibodaux said, putting the tip of his index finger to Joey’s clenched eye. “Keep that in mind.”

Camille all but collapsed into her husband’s arms as they left the bedroom with Kim leading the way.

Jacques chuckled softly. “What are you ladies planning, armed up like that with gun belts and such?”

“Hon,” Camille said, taking her husband’s hand. “They have Ronnie Garcia.”

 

 

Jacques stood while both women collapsed back on the couch. Camille explained everything with a gush of emotion.

“
Oo ye yi
,” Jacques said under his breath when she was finished. “You girls did good.” He shook his head and shot a glance toward the TV room. “The little boogs are gonna need some therapy, but I’m so proud of you.” He looked at his watch. “Y’all can go ahead and stand down.”

“What are you going to do about Ronnie?” Kim asked.

“Well,” he said, “I’m working on a plan and it involves our little cupcake in there.”

“I’m not going to like it, am I?” Camille said.

“Probably not, Boo,” Thibodaux said, tipping his head toward Benavides, “but he’s not gonna think too much of it either.”

 

 

Fifteen minutes later, Thibodaux stood in the living room holding the handle to a large black rolling duffel that contained all his scuba gear. He kept everything in the bedroom except for the tank, to keep his boys from boogering up the sensitive gauges and regulators.

Joey B slouched beside him, head down, dressed in a pair of sweats and a T-shirt. The women had cut away his clothing looking for weapons, and they were the only things Jacques had that would fit him.

Camille looked up with terrified eyes when she saw that Benavides was no longer restrained.

Jacques held up his big hand to calm her. “Don’t worry, Cornmeal. He knows I’m lookin’ for a reason to put a boot in his ass.” He smacked Joey on the back of the head. “Go ahead,” he said. “Say what we talked about.”

“I’m sorry,” Benavides whispered. “I apologize for making you stab me in the hand.”

Thibodaux raised the brow over his good eye. “And?”

“And for making you knock me out with a jar of pole beans.”

Jacques kissed his wife good-bye and gave Kim a hug because that’s the way he did business. He told her Jericho was fine the last he saw him—though that wasn’t really true since he’d just been stabbed with a poison pellet and was being held prisoner in a Chinese hospital. He figured Kim was too fragile to hear the piddly details.

“That feels better,” Benavides sniffed as he walked through the garage and opened the passenger door to get into his Audi sedan. “Apologizing—making amends—that’s the first step, right?”

Jacques froze in his tracks, a half step behind the greasy IDTF agent. “I wanna ask you something,” the big Cajun said. “What was it you intended to do to my bride after you drugged her?”

Benavides hung his head. “Look,” he said. “I’m really, really sorry. I swear. I’ll resign from the Task Force.”

Thibodaux shook his head. “Not ’til you help me get my friend back.”

“I just can’t.” Benavides began to blubber again. “I can’t go out to the boat. Mr. Walter gets back tonight.”

“Look at me, cupcake.” Thibodaux snapped his fingers. “You come to my house thinking to drug and do Lord knows what to my wife. Helping me get Garcia back is your only chance to save your worthless ass—and it’s a slim one even then.”

Thibodaux’s cell phone buzzed in his vest pocket. He held up his hand to silence the blubbering IDTF agent. He spoke for a moment before hanging up and returning the phone to his pocket.

“That was my badass Japanese friend.” He smiled. “She’s meeting us in Salisbury. I think you’re gonna really like her. She’s a buck-twenty soaking wet but seventy-five pounds of that is balls. . . .”

The phone rang again almost as soon as he put it away. A wave of relief flooded over Thibodaux as he heard Quinn’s voice on the other end of the line. Quinn filled him in quickly on the trip out of China, a weapon called the Black Dragon, and the need to get to Seattle.

“We won’t be able to get there for another nineteen-plus hours,” Quinn said on the other end of the line. “I could use some eyes and ears ahead of us—and I need the blue go-bag I keep stashed in the hotel.”

“I hear you,
l’ami
,” Jacques said, “but we’ve kinda got us a little situation here.” He motioned for Joey B to start the car and begin driving. The “I’ll-shoot-you-in-the-ass-if-you-try-anything,” was implied with the glare from his good eye.

“Your signal’s cutting in and out,” Quinn said, his voice crackling with static. “I can barely hear you. Can you get someone to ship me the duffel by Gold Streak if you’re not able to bring it out? I’ve tried to call the others, but I’m not getting through to anyone.”

“I said we’ve got a situation,” Thibodaux said again, louder this time. He filled Quinn in, doing his best to assure him they’d get Ronnie back—though both of them had seen enough friends die to know some rescues went well and others devolved into catastrophic shitstorms of death. He smacked Joey B on the back of the head when he hung up, for no reason but to keep him on his toes.

 

R
onnie felt like she’d been in the cage for days. Fear, pain, the glaring white light, and the constant thrum of the boat’s auxiliary engine kept her from getting anything but fragments of nightmare-filled sleep. She busied her mind working through every method of escape she could think of. “Look broken but stay strong,” became her mantra—to make her captors think they had beaten her.

“You can do this,
chica
,” she sniffed, dragging herself out of the pity party she’d been having and working to channel a healthy dose of inner fury. She lay on her back, studying a tubular steel bar that was suspended from a pulley on the ceiling. Handcuffs were affixed to either end of the bar with strong U bolts. She followed a heavy cable from the center of the bar, over the pulley, then back down to an electric winch on the far bulkhead. A dozen different scenarios and possible uses for the awful thing ran through her mind, but she shoved them away, trying to focus on the immediate situation.

She’d been over every inch of her cage, noting the wire ties and brackets that held the six panels together. When she was a little girl, her father had a small hunting dog he kept in a kennel much like the one where Ronnie found herself now. The dog hated the kennel and eventually, when left to its own devices for long enough, figured out the weak spots in the chain link and gnawed and pulled and tugged until it escaped.

The cameras located at each corner of the room made it difficult to work overtly on any portion of the cage, but Ronnie found that by rocking back and forth and periodically twisting her hair like she’d lost her mind, she could cover her movements and work one of the metal wire door ties back and forth without any of her guards rushing in to check on her escape attempt. She imagined them slouching in front of a bunch of fuzzy monitors while they whiled away the hours surfing porn. The fact that they were working for the IDTF identified them as less than the cream of the crop from any of their respective heritage agencies.

The squeak of the metal hatch sent Ronnie cringing to the back corner of her cage, as far away from the door as she could get. The redheaded
GQ
and the older one, whom she’d learned was named Gant, stooped to come in and swung the hatch shut behind them. Each carried the cattle prod they used to “soften her up” prior to letting her out to go to the bathroom—which was nothing but a filthy five-gallon bucket next to the V formed by the bow of the boat.

Both men attacked their duties with gusto, laughing and cursing as they applied the metal probes through the wire mesh of her cage. Once she’d writhed and screamed for what seemed like hours, beaten down to their satisfaction, Gant unlocked one side of the gate and dropped in a set of handcuffs.

“Mr. Walter is on his way,”
GQ
said, giving Ronnie a crackling jolt to the rump as she hustled by on her way to the bucket. “These little shock sticks will be a pleasant memory compared to the shit he does.”

The men leered and giggled like idiots while Ronnie did her business in the bucket. She walked back with her head higher when she was finished, holding the cuffs up for one of them to remove.

“Nope,” Gant said. “Not until you’re back inside.”

Ronnie groaned but complied, bending to climb back in the cage and bracing herself for the swift kick that Gant always gave her. For some reason, he seemed to have it in for her worse than
GQ
. The younger agent held the cattle prod under his arm and squatted to take off her handcuffs as she held her wrists out through the half open door. Ronnie gave him a sidelong glare and silently whispered, “Watermelon,” once she caught his eye.

It meant nothing. Ronnie’s father had taught her to mouth “watermelon” over and over when she didn’t know the words to a song. Several boys in college had thought she was flirting with them. There was something, they said, about the way her tongue flicked across her teeth when she said it. It worked on
GQ
as well, because he did a double take and looked like he was having a hard time swallowing when he locked the cage. She guessed he would come back as soon as he got rid of Gant.

Twisting her hair with one hand as soon as the hatch squeaked shut, she used it to form a curtain to block her work on the metal hinge tie from the view of the cameras. She bent it back and forth until her fingers bled.

Thankfully, it took nearly two hours for
GQ
to return, and by that time, Ronnie had worked the metal enough that she felt sure it would snap if given the right amount of pressure.

He wasted no time, getting straight to the point. “What was it you said to me before?”

“I have to go to the bathroom again,” Ronnie said, tongue to her top teeth as if she was saying “watermelon” again.

“Nice try.” He sneered. “You had your chance. If you need to go, do it in there.”

Ronnie bowed her head, avoiding eye contact for fear her true emotions would bubble over and she’d scare him off. She’d purposely ripped the top of her scrubs a good foot down the center during her last bout against the cattle prods and she breathed deeply for effect. The sight of her heaving chest should cloud the kid’s mind. “Mr. Walter isn’t going to want me all filthy,” she said. “Come on. Please?”

“You know this is going to cost you?”
GQ
fished in his pocket for the key.

“Maybe you should go get that other guy,” she said, retreating a little from his hungry gaze.

“We’ll be fine,” he said, his voice thick and gravelly. “Just you and me.”

“What about the cameras?”

“Forget the cameras,” he said. “I’m the one watching them. There’s nobody there to bug us. Now put these on.” Like he’d done each time before,
GQ
unlocked one side of the door and opened it just wide enough to drop in the handcuffs.

Garcia planted both feet against the other end of the door and kicked as hard as she could the moment the cuffs hit her hands. It took her two tries but the entire door fell away, slamming into
GQ
’s legs at mid-shin. She scrambled out of the cage, using the handcuffs like a pair of brass knuckles and swinging with deadly accuracy at the kid’s jawbone. Stunned, he pedaled backwards, blinking in dismay. Ronnie followed up with a low tackle, driving him backwards and taking him to the floor. His head slammed against a vent pipe with a satisfying thud, but he was still moving and far from finished.

A cold rush of adrenaline—and the sure knowledge that she was fighting for her life—kept Garcia moving with a burst of renewed energy. But adrenaline could only do so much, and she realized as soon as
GQ
began to fight back that she had very little in the way of reserves. She had to finish this quickly.

Falling face-first into
GQ
’s chest, Ronnie made a grab for the Scorn tucked into his belt. Her hand brushed the grip as he bucked his hips, rolling her onto her back and reversing their positions before she even knew what was happening. Her hands were trapped between them, low but unable to get to the Scorn and too far from his face to claw his eyes out. She tried to post a foot and throw him, tried to use the momentum of his movements against him, taking advantage of the power in her legs, but nothing worked.

“Just relax, babe,” he said, chest pressed to hers, panting in her ear. She could smell the cheese crackers on his breath. “It might even be fun if you’d quit jumping around.”

Garcia turned her head so she didn’t have to look at him. She’s been too slow to keep him from getting his hooks in—latching his feet around her lower legs and allowing him to rest the weight of his entire body low on her belly while still keeping his hands free. He planted a palm on the metal floor, slamming his right fist into her jaw. A shower of sparks exploded inside her head, but to her surprise she didn’t pass out.
GQ
was mean, but he wasn’t particularly good at hitting.

Momentarily rejuvenated by the realization that she was still alive, Ronnie put all her energy into bucking her hips, throwing
GQ
just high enough so she could work her hand down to his crotch. Miyagi called it “squeezing the kiwis.” Ronnie decided it would be more productive to twist and pull.
GQ
’s eyes flew wide. A curdled growl spilled from his lips as he hit her again, pressing down to stop the squeezing.

“You fight like a girl,” he groaned, laughing through a twisted grimace as the pain of her attack began to ebb. “Girls always go for the nuts. . . .”

Garcia smiled. She’d given his kiwis a good enough squeeze he hadn’t felt it when her other hand moved to the Snake Slayer. She’d already pulled it from his waistband and cocked it before
GQ
realized she wasn’t still trying to tear off his balls.

“I guess you’re right,” she whispered as she pulled the trigger, sending four rounds of .36 caliber buckshot ripping through his belly, destroying his diaphragm and turning his right lung into Swiss cheese. “I do fight like a girl.”

She’d shoved the little derringer directly into
GQ
’s flesh under the point of his breastbone when she pulled the trigger. His organs absorbed the lion’s share of the report, expanding gas and burning gunpowder doing nearly as much damage as the buckshot.

GQ
gurgled, pushing himself away as if Garcia was on fire, backpedaling to get distance from whatever had bitten him. His mouth hung open and he looked down at the blossom of blood forming on his shirt. Ronnie pressed her advantage as he gathered himself up to scream for help, driving him backwards with a hard smack to the temple with the heavy barrel of the Snake Slayer. She could have shot him again, but wanted to save the second round for whoever was on the other side of the door.

Fearful he had the cattle prod or some other weapon in a back pocket, Ronnie slapped away his pitiful attempts to fend her off. She fell against him and grabbed the Scorn with her left hand. The hawklike blade cleared the Kydex sheath with a welcome
snick
. In the same fluid movement, she drew the knife across the inside of
GQ
’s thighs, slashing viciously with all the speed and violence she could muster. Clothing, flesh, and arteries zipped and tore before the razor-sharp blade. With both femoral arteries cut and half a lung gone,
GQ
struggled for only a moment in a rapidly growing pool of his own blood before blinking his vaporous eyes for the last time.

Ronnie rolled gasping onto her side, Scorn in one hand, Snake Slayer in the other, blinking up at the bright light above her. Even the suspended metal bar was not quite as terrifying now that she was free of her cage.

Taking a brief moment to catch her breath, she moved to the hatch, bouncing up and down on her feet to regain movement and circulation after the endless hours of confinement. She had no idea what or who was on the other side, or if they’d heard the gunshot or
GQ
’s dying cries. What she did know was that she was going to get off this boat, even if she only had a little hawkbill blade and single shot in her pistol.