State of Emergency (32 page)

 

M
arie held the baby tight to her chest. She kept her back to the corner, her knees drawn up defensively. Lourdes stood across the room beside the doorway to the kitchen, swinging the hook and chain in front of her like a hypnotist's watch. Bright red lipstick formed a wicked smirk across the darkness of her face.

Pete perched at the edge of his recliner. The lustful stare in his eyes said he was about to profit from something bad.

“It's time to play our little game,” Lourdes said, speeding up the chain to make it whir through the air.

Marie shuddered. She was past the point of being sick. There was nothing left to throw up, nothing but worry and despair. Pressing her back against the wall, she pushed to her feet. “I'm not going to make this easy,” she said, amazed at the calm in her own voice.

Lourdes's eyebrow twitched, rising to disappear beneath the stark black line of her bangs.

“Funny enough,” she said. “Pete and I had a wager that you would wet yourself when the time came.”

Pete stood up from the recliner, folding his arms across his chest. “And it just so happens that I win,” he said, leering at Marie. “You are braver than she thought you'd be. And that means you and me get to spend a little quality time together before . . .” He chuckled. “Well, you know.”

Lourdes leaned against the wall, yawning as if she was bored.

Pete shot her an annoyed glance.

“What? Are you gonna stay and watch?”

Lourdes threw up her hands, wagging her head. “Very well, I will take the worm for his walk in the woods and come back for Mommy after I am finished with him. . . .”

 

 

Jacques Thibodaux sat on the frozen ground with his back to the toolshed, a scant fifty feet from the back door of the red brick farmhouse. A stubby MP5 hung around his bull neck on a single-point sling. His Kimber rested comfortably on his right thigh so he'd have easy access while wearing his ballistic vest. A heavy patch, matching the rest of his black clothing, covered his right eye.

Palmer had wanted him to sit this one out, but he'd argued that a one-eyed Marine was worth two and a half mortal men and sitting out a mission was not in his skill set.

Palmer grudgingly agreed, assigning Emiko Miyagi and Ronnie Garcia to round out the team because of their experience working together.

Though she was rarely his fan, Miyagi had been the consummate professional from the start. Since Thibodaux had tactical command of the operation, she took direction as though he'd been her boss for years. Each had spent the last ninety minutes creeping up on the house, wearing white parka smocks and pants over their tactical gear so they would blend in to the snow. Kneeling just to the right of the back door, Miyagi had already placed two small charges of C-4 in the jamb and now knelt just to the right, MP5 around her neck, her finger on the detonator.

Ronnie lay belly-down in the snow beside Thibodaux, her eye pressed to the night-vision scope on an M4 assault rifle. Her razor-sharp intellect and tactical savvy made her a perfect third person for the team.

Thibodaux held an iPhone his hand, tilting it back and forth to maneuver a tiny, unmanned aerial vehicle next to the dusty living room window. Known as a Dragonfly, the UAV was not much larger than its namesake. It was intuitive to operate, using the phone's gyro technology to control pitch, roll, and yaw and sliding a thumb up or down to climb or descend. A micro camera and laser microphone relayed video and sound back to the Bluetooth headsets of all three operators.

None of them liked what they were hearing.

 

 

“I won the bet fair and square,” Pete said. “You have to give me some time with her.”

“You will have plenty of time to do what you need to do,” Lourdes scoffed. “Make certain you are finished with her before I return—”

“Stop it!” Marie hissed. “No one will touch my baby while I'm alive.”

Pete smirked, unbuckling his belt. Lourdes laughed softly. She let the hook and chain slither from her hand to the floor, then took a black revolver from behind her back. Her face fell into a pinched frown.

“Make no mistake, my dear. We will touch whatever, whenever we please,” she said. “Shall I explain to you how this will go? First, I will shoot you in one knee. While you flop around in pain, thinking it cannot possibly get any worse, I will shoot you in the other knee for good measure. I will then allow you to experience that pain for a few moments before I very gently and against your hopeless sobs, peel the little worm from your pitiful grasp.”

Marie breathed in short pants. She and Simon were dead, that was a given—but how they died was not yet written. She'd do what this evil woman didn't expect. She'd take the fight to her, force her hand, and take away the fun of torment.

The crash of breaking glass took a moment to register. Out of habit, Marie shielded Simon from the sudden noise. Lourdes turned toward the sound. Pete held up his pants with one hand, reaching toward the recliner for his pistol with the other.

A half second later the room exploded in a brilliant flash of light. A sudden woofing bang shook the paint off the ceiling and rattled the dishes in the kitchen. A series of muffled pops filled the smoky room. Blinded by the intense flash, Marie was vaguely aware of someone standing in front of her, shielding her from the events unfolding only a few feet away. As her vision began to clear, one of the biggest men she'd ever seen came into focus.

A black patch covered one eye.

Emiko Miyagi blew the door an instant after she tossed the weighted flash grenade through the living room window. Thibodaux rolled through the opening, peeling left to cover the woman and her baby while Garcia and Miyagi engaged the two bad guys. The idea was to take them alive if possible. Peter De Campo had gone for his weapon, forcing Garcia's hand. A string of nine-millimeter rounds to his chest from her MP5 dropped him instantly. He was thought to be a minor gun thug hired by Zamora strictly for this part of the operation, so was likely to be of little help regarding Baba Yaga.

Lourdes Lopez was a different story. Her name popped up in government databases almost as often as Zamora's. Though she hadn't been with him in Florida, the two appeared to be a team. Miyagi saw to it that she was taken alive—barely.

Her first two shots had taken out the sullen woman's knees. Two follow-up bursts destroyed each elbow.

“We are in America!” Lourdes screeched writhing on her back in a pool of blood. “You cannot just let me die.”

Miyagi stood over her for a long moment, her smooth face emotionless. At length, she knelt to apply four windless-style tourniquets, one over each bicep and another above each knee.

Thibodaux gathered a trembling Marie and her baby in his big arms, attempting to shield them from all the bloodshed. The sight of little Simon made him think of his own boys.

Marie pushed him away so she could see.

“I need a hospital,” Lourdes moaned, looking fearfully at the tourniquets. “If you leave these on me without attention I will lose my limbs. I will be helpless!”

Miyagi nodded, a tender smile on her lips.

“As a matter of fact, you will,” she said. “But in this life one must often depend on the kindness of strangers.”

Marie reached up to touch Thibodaux's arm.

“Matt?” she asked.

The Cajun shook his head. “We're still looking for him. I need you to think hard and tell us anything you might have heard that could help us find your husband and the men who have him.”

Marie nodded toward the hallway. “We talked on the computer every day until . . . a few days ago. I'm not sure how many. They all run together.”

“You're one smart lady,” Ronnie said. She cleared the chamber of Pete's pistol before slipping it in her waistband. “The photo you texted to your cell phone gave us the GPS coordinates that led us here.”

Marie brightened. “So Matt figured it out.” She kissed Simon on top of his head, tears flowing in earnest now. “Daddy figured it out,” she said. “Did you hear that, buddy? Daddy saved us.”

“Your pathetic husband,” Lourdes coughed. Her low groan carried across the room like a bad smell. “He was not the kind man you thought him to be. . . .” she gasped, vindictive even in defeat.

Miyagi grabbed the hateful woman by her collar and propped her roughly against the wall. Her useless arms flopped to her side, starting a fresh flow of blood and bringing a bloodcurdling wail.

“How's that cruelty thing working out for you now?” Thibodaux shook his head in disdain. “Karma's only a bitch when you are one your own self.”

 

L
anding gear squawked on the tarmac an hour and ten minutes from the moment the little green jet jumped from the dense Bolivian jungle.

As small as Aleksandra was, her hips dug into Quinn, cutting off his circulation and jamming him against the Spartan cockpit. Thankfully his legs had fallen asleep halfway into the flight.

Fuentes flipped open the cover during the back-taxi, allowing in a warm but welcome ocean breeze. A squad of six crewmen in green coveralls swarmed the aircraft as the screaming engines wound down.

On the tarmac, Quinn checked his phone and found he had six missed calls from Palmer. Kanatova took out her own phone, but Quinn shook his head.

“I'm not sure it would be a good idea for you to call your people on this,” he said, bracing himself for the onslaught of nails and knees he'd received at Zamora's party.

“The battery is dead.” She shrugged, handing the phone to him. “Take it if you wish, but you needn't worry.”

Quinn believed her sincerity, but took the phone anyway. He checked the battery, then gave it back to her.

She took it, smiling. “All we have been through and still you do not trust me.”

Quinn shrugged. “You would do the same if this was unfolding in Russia.”

There were dozens of spy apps available to turn almost any smartphone into a bug. But it was much easier than that. Turning on the auto-answer, then deactivating the ringer and vibrate functions transformed an ordinary cell phone into an inconspicuous listening device. Any operative would know better.

Aleksandra slipped the useless phone in her pocket and sighed. “I would never call my people on this. They would take a week to get a plan together and another to receive the levels of approval needed to implement the plan—and that's if they wished to become involved.”

Quinn gave her an understanding smile and pressed the speed dial for Win Palmer.

The national security advisor began talking the instant he picked up. “The photo you sent came through a half hour ago. Quantico's already got a hit through facial recognition. Tamir Mukhtar, a soldier they believe is attached to al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula under Yazid Nazif.”

“Nazif,” Quinn mused. “That makes sense.”

“And here's the most interesting part,” Palmer said. “Nazif has a cousin who drives a cab in Houston.”

“I'm assuming FBI has eyes on that cousin?”

“In the next hour Houston, Texas, will have more feds than oilmen,” Palmer said.

“Targets?” Quinn asked, then mouthed,
Houston, Texas,
to Aleksandra in an effort to mend fences from his earlier showing of mistrust.

“The Martin Luther King Jr. parade is less than four days out,” Palmer said. “It's on par with the Rose Bowl parade in size—a juicy target. Listen, a Bone left Abilene two hours ago. I spoke to the pilot personally and told him to put a boot in his bird's ass. Expect him on the ground in . . .” He paused, doing the math. “Less than ninety minutes. I want you and the Russian in Houston helping out on the search as soon as possible.”

“Roger that,” Quinn said. “We'll be ready.”

Officially known as the Lancer, the B-1, or B-One, was often called the Bone. Officially, it could reach speeds of Mach 1.25—over nine hundred miles an hour. At that rate they would make the trip from northern Peru to Houston in three hours and change.

“Call me back when you're in the air,” Palmer said and ended the call without another word.

Quinn turned to Aleksandra, who tapped her toe on the tarmac beside Fuentes, the A37 pilot.

“May I offer you a place to wash up and something to eat?” Fuentes looked back and forth between the two of them. “We have excellent facilities here on base.”

“That would be welcome.” Quinn nodded. “I wouldn't mind a glass of water that didn't come out of a length of bamboo.”

Aleksandra smiled, her freckled nose crinkling in a way that belied her ruthlessness. “I could use a quick shower, even if I have to put these dirty clothes back on.”

“I am sure we can find something for both of you,” Fuentes said.

Quinn glanced at the Aquaracer on his wrist. “Lead the way, sir,” he said. “But we'll have to hurry. Our ride will be here before we know it.”