Act of Terror

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

“Can you put her down in the ball field?” Quinn said into his headset. Thibodaux sat across from him, strapped in to his seat forward of the cargo bay on V22 Osprey.

The pilot, a balding man with smiling blue eyes, turned to glance over the shoulder of his green Nomex flight suit. “I can set her down in the middle of Times Square if you want me to.” His name was Jared Smedley, an Air Force Academy squadron mate of Quinn’s. Smeds had gone on to flight training after the academy, graduating at the top of every class he took. He’d been a flight instructor for the last three years and had been brought in from the Eighth Special Operations Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Florida, to fly overwatch and rescue during the wedding. He gave a thumbs-up to his copilot, a waif of a girl with a blond ponytail hanging out below her flight helmet. She returned the gesture.

He had the swaggering confidence of a pilot and the skill to back it up. Quinn had always found it impossible not to like the man.

Capable of straight or vertical flight, Smedley’s aircraft, the tilt-rotor V22, made insertion possible in areas like Manhattan and Governors Island.

Quinn’s Bluetooth earbud chirped. He moved the boom mike of his headset away and tapped the device. It was Palmer.

“Homeland Security facial recognition just got a hit on an NYPD security camera on Mott Street. Looks like the doctor is buying cigarettes at a newsstand. I’m sending a still to your phone now.”

Quinn took the BlackBerry off his belt.

“Who’s the guy with him?” he asked, turning the screen to show Thibodaux.

“Look at that mop,” Thibodaux scoffed. “He’s Elvis’s evil twin.”

“Don’t know,” Palmer said, an edge to his voice that Quinn could feel. “We have intel that Badeeb’s wife is hiding out in a flophouse off Bowery. Looks like they’re heading to meet up with her.”

“Roger that,” Quinn said. “We’re about to touch down at a ball field in lower Manhattan. It’ll take us about ten minutes to get there on the bikes-”

Dust and leaves flew outside the windows as the huge rotors began to lower the Osprey onto the center of the baseball diamond. One of the two crewmen in the back told them to stand by and activated the lowering mechanism on the ramp at the rear of the bird, giving them a quick exit with their bikes.

Quinn stood from his seat along the bulkhead, working to release the straps on Mrs. Miyagi’s candy-apple-red Ducati 848.

“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.”