Brute Force

Chapter 28

Quinn flashed a benign smile at the harried female officer behind the Croatian immigration desk. Thankfully, their arrival coincided with that of a packed Alitalia Airbus and United flight carrying a large television production crew, so he and Song were able to blend in with the crowd. Quinn had trimmed his dark beard back to stubble so he looked slightly different than the photo Song had taken of him in the hospital — not a bad deviation. Things that were too perfect and stories that were too pat were all the more likely to raise suspicion. The immigration officer glanced up at him, incredibly stone-faced for such a young woman who could not yet have been thirty. She perused him a moment, then studied the Australian passport that Song had provided.

“Business or pleasure, Mr. Martin?” she asked in accented English, raising the passport to compare the photograph with Quinn’s face.

“Here on holiday,” Quinn said, turning up the volume on the smile. Whether it was based on fact or not, the world expected Australians to be a hard-drinking and good-hearted lot. For whatever reason, people trusted someone with an accent from down under. Song had chosen Australian passports for two simple reasons — Australian citizens did not require entry visas in most countries around the world, and more important, they did not plan to visit Australia. A paramount rule — tradecraft 101 when traveling on fraudulent documents — was never to enter a country using that same country’s papers. The look, feel, and security features were too well-known — and it was far more likely the home country would have a list of stolen passports in their database.

“Welcome to Croatia,” the young woman said, sliding back his passport, then flipping her fingers toward the long queue. “Next!”

Quinn took a moment to worry about how effective the Chinese government was at manufacturing false passports — and wondered how many “Australians” were in the United States, preparing for coming war. He saw Kevin Bursaw standing outside customs and filed the problem away as something to mention to Palmer later — if he lived through the next few days.

“That’s him,” Quinn said as Song pulled her suitcase up to walk beside him and they approached a smiling man. “I told him you were my girlfriend, but he has an inkling of what I do, so expect a little bit of eyebrow raising.”

“Of course,” Song said. She looped her arm through Quinn’s, naturally, as if she belonged there.

“Hey, buddy,” Bursaw said, careful not to call Quinn by any name. He was a broad-shouldered man, well over six and half feet tall, with a brooding black goatee and a polished bald head. He smiled and enveloped Quinn in a back-slapping brotherhood handshake common to men who’d fought side by side. “Let me help you with your bags.”

“I got mine.” Quinn nodded at Song’s roller bag. “And she’s pretty particular about hers.” In truth, Quinn’s bag was stuffed with clothing Song had cobbled together at the last minute to alleviate suspicion at Croatian customs if they were searched. Normal people traveled with more than a knife.

“We’re parked outside.” Bursaw pointed with an open hand toward the far lot, out front and across from the taxi stands. He lumbered along, looking a little thicker around the middle than he’d been as an outlaw biker.

“Married life’s been good to you,” Quinn said, waiting until they reached the car to discuss anything important.

“It has indeed,” Bursaw said, rubbing the belly beneath his T-shirt. “A beautiful wife who knows her way around the kitchen, two great kids, and a father-in-law who hasn’t beaten me to death yet.” He pressed a button on his key fob and the lights flashed on a dark blue Mercedes minivan. He lifted the rear hatch and tossed the suitcases in back. “Business is booming too. We got a big tour group staying with us right now so you’re lucky we have a room for you. It’s crowded but that’s also a good thing because Petra always cooks up her famous janjetina s ražnja on the last night of any tour — which happens to be tonight.” He kissed the tips of his fingers. “Petra makes the best lamb on a spit this side of… well, anyplace. You’re welcome to join us. Couple of oddballs in the group, but by and large, just a bunch of folks who like to ride.”

“That would be nice.” Quinn opened the back door for Song, then took the front seat. “It all depends on how the day turns out. Did you happen to see the guys I talked to you about on the phone?”

“I did.” Bursaw left airport parking to pull out onto the narrow two-lane and head northwest toward Dubrovnik. Scrubby limestone hills rolled up above them to their right. The Adriatic stretched out in a deep blue blanket to the left. “They got here about two hours ago.”

Quinn felt the surge of adrenaline at being so close. He shot a glance at Song. Her mouth was set in a flat line.

“There was something though,” Bursaw said. “Those two Chinese guys you wanted me to watch turned out to be three Chinese guys.”

“Three?” Song said.

“Yep.” Bursaw glanced over his left shoulder before passing a Russian Lada that belched an endless cloud of gray smoke. “A local guy named Anton Scuric picked all three of them up and headed north. Scuric’s bad news. His grandfather was Ustashi during World War II. He somehow escaped being hanged for war crimes and was able to teach young Anton everything he knew.” He shot a glance at Quinn. “You know about the Ustashi?”

Quinn nodded. “They out-Nazied a lot of Nazis when it came to cruelty in the name of nationalism.”

“The ISIS of their day,” Bursaw said. “Killing people with hammers, sawing off heads — they were really big on the whole beheading thing. The stories my father-in-law tells me…” He gave a little shudder. “It would curl my hair if I had any.”

“So,” Song said from the backseat, gazing out the window in thought. “This man, Anton Scuric, he is very much like his grandfather, the Ustashi?”

“In a lot of ways,” Brusaw said. “I’m sure he’s handy with a hammer, but it’s the smell of money that moves him, not nationalism. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the breakup of Yugoslavia opened up a lot of opportunity for people who had the right mix of savvy and meanness. I gotta tell you, there are people here in Eastern Europe who have elevated smuggling to a fine art — guns, drugs, girls, kids, cigarettes…. You name it and shitheads like Scuric can figure out a way to get it where it needs to go. And, they’re not afraid to stomp anyone who gets in their way.”

Song leaned forward now, over the seat between the two men. “Where does this man Scuric hang his hat?”

“That’s the problem,” Bursaw said. “He’s a smuggler, so he’s a slippery one. He’s got safe houses and holding spots in the mountains from here all the way up the coast to Pula. He’s successful enough so I’m sure he’s got stash sites in Italy as well. Cops know all about him. You can check with them.”

“We’d better handle this off the books,” Quinn said. “Let’s say this guy Scuric took someone you cared about. Where would you look for him first?”

Bursaw thought for a minute. “He’s got a big boat he calls the Perunika. Keeps her anchored about twenty kilometers outside the city. I’ve seen him taking party girls back and forth in his little raft when I was going by on the bike. I’ll draw you a map.”

“How will I recognize him when I see him?” Quinn asked.

Bursaw laughed. “You couldn’t miss him if you tried. Just find the ugliest dude in the room and that’ll be him. Got a haircut like mine but his face is… I don’t know, all crooked and shit, like somebody stomped on him as a kid.”

The Bursaws’ three-story inn of whitewashed stone sat in the lap of a small valley. Scrubby oaks dotted the limestone hills. Twin girls — four years old if Quinn did his math correctly — played in a tire swing under the canopy of a huge beech tree to the right of the inn. Beyond the tree, an older man with a snap-brim driving cap carried a set of tires over his shoulder into an open shed that served as a stable for several motorcycles. The entire scene was awash in dazzling sunlight. People, buildings, and hills glowed with the hazy aura of a colorized photograph.

The little girls’ mother stepped out of the inn through an open side door the moment the van rumbled up on the cobblestone driveway. Flashing a toothy grin at Quinn, Petra Bursaw walked toward him shaking her head and drying her hands on an apron. She was tall, almost six feet, with auburn hair and eyes blue-green as if they’d been dipped straight from the Adriatic. As talented with a wrench as she was in the kitchen, she wore a loose mechanic’s shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans under the apron.

Petra induced a flurry of giggles from the twins when she reached Quinn and crushed him in an all-enveloping hug. Grabbing him by both shoulders, she held him back at arm’s length.

“Just making sure you are intact,” she said, giving him a motherly once-over. A Baltic accent — that sounded somewhere between Italian and Russian — added spice to her flawless English. “The life you lead has a way of stealing bits and pieces.”

“Of your soul,” Kevin Bursaw said, like he knew more than he admitted.

Quinn chuckled but let the comments slide. There was no way to argue with them anyway. Instead, he introduced Song to Petra.

“She’s pretty,” Petra said, winking. “I like her.”

Quinn looked at Song, who merely smiled and left any explanations to him.

It didn’t matter. There was no time for lengthy explanations anyway. “Bo says you have the BMW rental concession here,” he said to Bursaw. “You have an extra GS laying around?”

“Afraid not,” Bursaw said. “They’re all out with the paying customers at the moment.” He flicked his hand toward the shed. “Follow me. I figured you’d want something comfortable anyway since you’re riding two up. I took the liberty of having my father-in-law get the GTL ready for you.”

Quinn looked at the monstrous ivory BMW touring bike parked on a center stand under the edge of the shed — all 800 pounds and 1600 ccs of her.

“That’s not a motorcycle,” Quinn said under his breath. “That’s a space station.” The bike was big, but it was flashy, liable to stand out more than Quinn wanted. Behind the monster was another, smaller bike covered with a soft cotton sheet. He could just make out the shining black front fender and the outline of a fat round headlight. “Is that what I think it is?”

Bursaw grinned like a proud father and gave Quinn a smiling nod as he pulled back the cotton cover. “A 1972 Toaster Tank.”

Quinn ventured farther into the shed to get a better look at the shiny little bike. A BMW 75/5 sported a 750 cc engine and carried nearly five gallons of fuel in a tank that gave the bike its nickname because of a resemblance to the kitchen appliance. His voice grew quiet, almost reverent. “This one would fit the bill.”

“No way.” Bursaw shook his head. “Not the Slash-5. I just got her rebuilt.”

“Kevin,” Petra chided. “How often does Jericho come to visit? Let him take your precious bike. What’s the worst that could happen?”

“Oh,” Bursaw said, “that just shows how little you know. He’ll probably be trying to do a Steve McQueen over some barbed-wire fence by sundown.”

Petra waved her husband away. She clucked at him in Croatian with the universal tone understood by husbands the world over. “My father will get you the key,” she said to Quinn, before turning to Song. “I have helmet and a jacket that should fit you, my dear.”