Field of Fire

Chapter 50

Beaudine carried their two backpacks down the gravel incline to Ruben’s skiff, thankful that this particular boat didn’t require a wax toilet ring to stay afloat. The Mercury outboard, shiny and black amid the falling snow, didn’t hurt her confidence either.

She watched Quinn as he stood on the bank and tried to use snow to rub away some of the blood that covered the front of his coat and the thighs of his wool pants. It did no good, other than to leave him with a pile of pink snow and a damp jacket. Ruben had given each of them a pair of overwhites — basically a cotton parka shell complete with hood. Beaudine thought they looked like Halloween costumes made out of bed sheets but she understood the concept of camouflage.

Quinn gave up on his scrubbing, covering the stains with the overwhites instead before helping Ruben shove the boat into the deeper water of the Kobuk. Aluminum scraped on gravel as the current caught and nudged the stern. Quinn hopped over the side without a word and sat down, holding the rifle across his lap.

Not overly talkative for the two days since Beaudine first met him, Quinn had grown quieter since he killed the Russian by the sweathouse.

Beaudine had known, even as she watched Quinn creep from the willows with the knife in his hand, that the Russian had to be killed. He and his friends were marching through the village murdering everyone in their path. She was supposed to provide over-watch, ready to back up Quinn with a quick shot if things went bad, but even if it hadn’t been her job she would have looked. Like the hypnosis brought on by watching a gruesome car wreck, she’d been unable to take her eyes off of Quinn as he snuck up behind the man. It seemed so innocent, one man tiptoeing up behind another in the falling snow, like a college boy playing a prank. She didn’t turn away when Quinn plunged the blade into the Russian’s neck. They were facing away, but the tremendous spray of blood and the silent struggle as Quinn arched his back and held the big man upright while he died… The brutality was unspeakably awful. Beaudine’s breath came faster just thinking about it. She found herself wondering what sort of a human being was capable of committing such violence, even in the name of good. Such an act had to leave an indelible mark. The Russian would be no less dead if Quinn had shot him. It was a blot against the state of humanity, she supposed, that gunning someone down could somehow seem civilized, even when it was the right thing to do. She found herself feeling profoundly sorry for Quinn — and profoundly grateful that he was willing to do uncivilized things. The four men he’d killed in the last two days were all equally dead, no matter his method — but this last one had hurt him.

She’d grown up around the scent of death and regret. It was an easy thing for her to recognize.

Quinn gritted his teeth while he rifled through his pack for a packet of Betadine. He’d decided to use the time during the short ride to keep a painful but relatively minor problem from becoming something debilitating.

“Forgive me,” he said, “but I’m going to have to get indecent here for a minute and clean up this wound.”

“I think we’re past that,” Beaudine scoffed. “And Ruben won’t mind. You think I don’t realize you changed my undies for me when I was half frozen.” She took the foil packet of antiseptic and knelt in the floor of the boat.

“That looks bad,” she said, grimacing when Quinn dropped his pants and pulled the long johns down to expose his injured thigh. “I count twelve pellets.” She bent closer squirting a little spray of the rust colored Betadine on each wound, then dabbing up the excess with a wadded piece of gauze. “They make a pattern like Orion when you add them to these other scars you have.”

“Great,” Quinn said.

“I’d be happy to try and dig them outta there,” Beaudine said, looking up at him.

“Thanks, “Quinn said, pulling up the long johns before she had a chance to wipe up the rest of the Betadine. “I’m good. They say President Garfield might have lived if his doctors wouldn’t have tried to dig the bullet out.”

“Suit yourself,” Beaudine said. She dipped her hand over the side to wash it in river spray, and then settled back in her seat at the bow of the boat with the rifle.

“Nearly there,” Ruben said from the tiller.

Considering the gravity of their mission, the ten-minute journey up the Kobuk felt agonizingly slow. Quinn grabbed his pack and prepared to jump the moment Ruben kicked the outboard into neutral and raised the shaft out of the water so he didn’t ding the prop in the shallows. Apparently, one broken shear pin was enough for him.

The ATV was hidden in the shadows behind the rustic plywood cabin under a brown tarp and a layer of spruce boughs cut from nearby trees. Four inches of new snow added to the camouflage. It would have been impossible to see if Ruben hadn’t been along to show them where it was.

In this case, the “Honda” was a forest green 400cc Arctic Cat ATV. The seat was just big enough for two, but the relatively small machine was designed for one, so Quinn kept as much weight as he could forward, lashing both packs and the Lapua rifle across the metal rack over the front wheels. This would help guard against tipping over backward when they climbed hills and had the added benefit of letting him keep an eye on his gear. Important things had a tendency to rattle off and get left behind, and out here losing a piece of equipment could have nasty consequences.

Using the mantra that if it wasn’t on his body he didn’t have it, Quinn kept his war belt with the Kimber and Riot around his waist and dropped five extra rounds for the .338 Lapua in the pocket of his wool shirt.

He threw a leg over the ATV and settled in behind the handlebars less than fifteen minutes after they’d beached the skiff. The Arctic Cat wasn’t a motorcycle, but considering the slog through wet snow and bog that was ahead of them, he was glad to have it.

Ruben’s secret trail cut north as it left the cabin with dark spruces rising up on either side from the undulating path of virgin snow to form a sort of tunnel through the forest. Behind Quinn, her arms wrapped around his waist, Beaudine hummed some nonsensical child’s song. Had they not been pursuing a case of deadly nerve gas, it could have been an enjoyable ride.

It had been sometime since anyone used the trail and Quinn had to get off several times to push and tug deadfall out of the path. Eventually, they turned back to the east and broke out of the trees into the open.

The tundra wasn’t frozen solid, even in the snow and cold, leaving the ground boggy and difficult to negotiate. Heavy clouds and a steady snow made for poor visibility — turning everything around them gray or white. In the open, with no trees to guide him, Quinn had to concentrate to maintain a heading and keep from getting stuck.

Beaudine’s humming changed to “Froggy Went a Courtin’.” Quinn wondered if she even realized she was doing it. He hadn’t heard the song in ages, but the beat matched the bump and tumble of the ATV’s tires on the trail and he enjoyed the break from their heavy mood. Even through the humming Beaudine kept her head up, scanning the horizon for Zolner or Volodin. Quinn could tell by the way she moved that her brain was going a million miles an hour. There was certainly a lot to think about. The U.S. had been attacked twice with poison gas. Beaudine had investigated two break-ins, witnessed bloody gunfights at the lodge and in Needle, been in a plane crash, watched Lovita die beside a lonely river, nearly died herself of hypothermia, watched Quinn tear out a man’s throat — and then kill another with a sniper rifle.

“You okay?” she suddenly asked. Her voice a husky whisper in his ear.

“I’m fine,” he said, wishing she would go back to humming.

“Okay,” she said, sounding unconvinced. “It’s just… stuff like that back there, it can change you. That’s a fact.”

“I’m good, really,” Quinn said. The truth was, he felt like leaning out and puking on the trail, but he didn’t have the time. He chalked it up to fatigue and pain as much as anything. One thing was certain — he didn’t want to talk about his feelings.

Millions of falling snowflakes erased the horizon line leaving the white landscape to meld with a milky gray sky. They skirted dozens of lakes with rings of ice just beginning to form around their edges. Bumps of low-bush blueberry and scrub willow lined small streams, the smallest of which had already frozen over, spreading across the tundra like white veins.

“Maybe we should have just taken the river?” Beaudine nuzzled in closer to his back. “I mean, it goes to Ambler too — and we know that’s where they’re going.”

“The river does go to Ambler,” Quinn said. “But everyone says this guy Zolner is supposed to be a hunter. Volodin and his daughter might not even make it to Ambler. We need to intercept them en route. If that package Volodin took from the lodge was nerve gas…”

“And I thought this assignment was a bullshit job,” Beaudine said. “Listen, I hate to be a nag, but when’s the last time you put somethin’ in your belly?” She surprised him by passing up one of Lovita’s salmon strips.

Quinn thanked her and took the fish, feeling the oil warm him as he chewed. He was about to ask for another when he heard the shot.

Chapter 51

The grizzly bear was small, not quite a year old, but even small bears could knock over an ATV — or at least cause a startled driver to do so. Kaija sped up at the flash of brown on the tundra ahead, blinking her eyes as her subconscious and conscious minds came together to agree on what she was seeing. It took her a moment more to remember that small bears almost always came with a big bear in tow, a bear with big claws and a big protective attitude about the little bear.

Kaija cut the handlebars sharply to take a trail around the cub, but the left front wheel dropped into a rut causing the nose to dip. Kaija and her father flew forward. Both were too slow to give up their grips and pulled the machine over with them as they fell.

Her father got to his knees and adjusted his glasses, wiping snow and grass off his face. Kaija scrambled quickly to peer around the overturned ATV, looking for the bear.

Still in its first year of life, the curious cub sat back on its haunches square in the middle of the trail less than fifty feet in front of the wrecked ATV.

“Go!” Kaija whispered, willing the thing to move rather than actually giving an audible command. She’d heard far too many stories of good Russians who’d been torn to pieces by the giant bears of Kamchatka. Though she was certain American grizzly bears would prove to be more puny, she had no desire to face even a lesser mother bear.

“Please go!” she said again, louder this time. She tried to add more force but the words just came out wobbly and without commitment. Adrenaline threatened to buckle her knees and she struggled to gain control. “Please…”

The mother bear padded across the snow toward the yearling. Her thick fur had to be three inches long, and blonder than her baby’s, with chocolate legs and a dark, sincere face. Layers of fat, laid on for winter, rolled on her shoulders and buttocks as she waddled up and sat beside her cub. She turned her head from side to side, sniffing the wind and staring at the ATV with tiny pig-like eyes.

“Get out of here!” Kaija said again, almost screaming now. The snow had stopped but the change in the weather brought a breeze that chilled her down to her bones. “Please, we mean you no harm.”

The mother bear gave a single woof and rose onto her hind legs, forelimbs up and paws exhibiting long, scimitarlike claws.

Kaija jumped at the sound of her father’s voice behind her. “Leave us alone!” he barked.

She took her eyes off the grizzly long enough to glance over her shoulder and see that he’d retrieved the rifle from the scabbard on the overturned ATV. Her hands flew to her ears as a deafening boom shook the air beside her head.

The mother bear remained on her hind legs and turned her head from side to side at the sound of the shot. The bullet had come nowhere near her. If it frightened her, she certainly didn’t act like it. Dropping to all fours, the grizzly gave another woof and nipped at her cub to get it moving north at an easy, ambling gait.

Fuming, Kaija clenched her jaw and wheeled to face her father. The old fool was actually smiling. He held the rifle in front of him like some Hero of the Soviet Union.

“I have saved us, kroshka,” he said.

“You idiot,” she spat, waving him forward. “Put that gun away and help me get this machine back on four tires.”

Volodin slumped. “But Kaija, my dear…” He looked as though he would break into tears at the slightest nudge.

“You have killed us, my dear Papa.” She gave a derisive laugh. Her mother had been right about this man. He was at once the most brilliant and densest man she had ever seen. “How can you not be embarrassed? We were fortunate that the snow hid our tracks and now your shooting has told the world exactly where to find us.”

Chapter 52

Quinn was off the Arctic Cat as soon as he heard the shot. He yanked the cord that held the Lapua in place and held it in one hand and the pack in the other, sprinting forward to put some distance between himself and the ATV.

“Wanna tell me where we’re goin’?” Beaudine said, hustling after him with her pack and the AR-10.

“The four-wheeler isn’t camouflaged against the snow,” Quinn said. He tugged at the fabric of his over whites. “We are.” He dropped the pack in front of him and knelt down beside it, feeling himself begin to sink into the cold wet mush of the tundra as soon as his knee hit the ground. Ignoring the chill, he put the rifle to his shoulder and began to scan through the scope in the direction he thought the shot had come from.

It was difficult to get a bearing from a single shot, especially on the open tundra where sound spread like a flooding tide across the vast openness. He went on instinct, and the direction he’d first turned his head when he’d heard the distant report. Quinn guessed it to be a medium power deer rifle, maybe a .30.30. It was absent the massive concussive boom that would have come with a round as big as the CheyTac Davydov said Zolner used. He’d heard no crack-thump, so the shots didn’t appear to be coming in his direction.

“I’ve got him,” Beaudine said from where she knelt on the tundra next to Quinn. Her voice was muffled against her gloves as she held the binoculars.

“You mean them,” Quinn said, glancing over so he could see which way to swing his scope. “Volodin and his daughter?”

“No,” Beaudine said, “I haven’t found Volodin yet. I mean Zolner — or at least some guy setting up to shoot with a big-ass rifle.”

Quinn backed off the magnification on his scope to get a wider field of view and then scanned back and forth until he found what Beaudine was looking at — a man kneeling to deploy the bipod on the fore-end of a very large rifle.

Grabbing his pack, Quinn took out a small notebook and the stub of a yellow pencil. He left the bipod on the Lapua folded flush with the barrel, opting to rest the fore-end on the pack in front of him instead. Once it was situated like he wanted it, he settled down behind the scope, belly and legs pressed against the wet snow, pencil in his teeth.

He zoomed in the magnification on the scope to get a better look now that he had a target. There was always a chance that this guy could be some Inupiaq hunter out for caribou — but Quinn doubted it.

“Follow his line of sight,” Quinn said as he put the crosshairs in his reticle and counted the number of hash marks that bracketed the man’s torso. The snow had slowed, but errant flakes still made it difficult to see across the wide-open space. “See if you can locate who or what he’s setting up on.”

“Already on it,” Beaudine said, putting the binoculars to work.

“Let me know when you find them,” Quinn said, running through the litany of formulas he’d learned a decade before when practicing extreme long-range shooting. The DOPE — or Data On Previous Engagements — that the Lapua’s previous owner had written in the small notebook went out to 2000 meters — well within the capabilities of the rifle, but far beyond anything in Quinn’s confidence level, especially now, beaten down, half frozen — and severely out of practice. For a blustering killer, Igoshin appeared to be a meticulous record keeper when it came to his shooting data. Quinn could understand the numbers but he didn’t read Cyrillic so he double-checked everything with Beaudine and made pencil notes in English in the book. The DOPE was measured in meters, which was crucial to know, since that dictated the formula he would use to figure the range using the milliradian divisions on the crosshairs of his scope.

“Anything?” he said to Beaudine, in an effort to keep her relaxed and communications open while he alternately scribbled notes and peered through the scope. Zolner appeared to be going through the same process of calculating a firing solution on Volodin’s position, wherever that was.

“Hold your horses…” Beaudine’s voice trailed off as she scanned. “Got ’em. Looks like they wrecked their four-wheeler… ran it into a ditch or something. Too bad for us they’re up and moving around though. Hard to say for sure, but it’s gotta be them — older guy and a female. They’re having some difficulty getting the machine pushed back onto four wheels.”

“I need to borrow a sock,” he said, holding out his hand but keeping an eye on his target through the scope.

“A what?”

“A sock,” Quinn said again. “It’s okay if it’s wet. Just hand me one from your pack. Quickly.”

“Okay, okay,” Beaudine said, tugging her pack closer so she could search through it. She passed him a damp wool sock and gave a slow shake of her head. “To each his own. Weird to find out you got this particular fetish now.”

Quinn chuckled. “You sound so much like Jacques.” He handed back the sock as soon as she gave it to him. “Do me a favor and fill that up with dirt and sand… anything you can scrape up and put in it. Gravel will be better, but not snow if you can help it.”

Still kneeling, she snatched back the sock while Quinn watched the man at the other end of his scope hunker down beside his rifle, clearing a level spot for the bipod. The .375 CheyTac was a large gun, capable of shooting flatter and much farther than even the .338 Lapua. On open ground with nothing to use as cover except the ATV, Quinn’s only chance against an experienced shooter behind such a rifle was to take the first shot and make it count.

“I think I put some caribou shit in there,” Beaudine said, handing back the sock. “You can keep it after this.”

Working quickly, but surely, Quinn removed enough of the slurry of dirt and rock that he could tie an overhand knot in the top of the sock. He shoved this grapefruit-size beanbag under the butt of the Lapua. With his right hand on the pistol grip and ready to work the trigger, he folded his left across his chest, gripping the sock of gravel and pulling the stock into the pocket of his shoulder. Alternately squeezing or releasing pressure on the sock, he was able to adjust his point of aim by lowering or raising the angle of the rifle.

Davydov had said his boss was a big man, describing him as two meters tall. That put him over six and a half feet. Quinn estimated someone of that height would be roughly 48 inches kneeling. Squeezing the sock, he moved the Lapua’s point of aim so the crosshairs of his reticle were centered at the base of Zolner’s knees, estimating the Russian’s kneeling body filled nine tenths of the gap between the crosshairs and the first mil-dot.

“Now it’s time for that weaponized math,” he said.

“This is just great,” Beaudine grunted. “And I told my teacher, Mrs. Umholtz, I would never have to use math.”

“Seriously,” he said. “I need your help checking my work. What’s forty-eight times twenty-five point four?”

Beaudine took her cell out of her jacket pocket and punched in the numbers. “Twelve hundred nineteen point two,” she said. “You’re figuring how far away he is using the scope?”

“Right,” Quinn said. “Now divide that number by point nine and that gives me approximate range in meters.”

“Thirteen hundred fifty-four point six,” Beaudine said. Groaning, she stretched out on the soggy ground next to Quinn. Both elbows on the ground in front of her, she raised the binoculars back up to her eyes.

Quinn took a deep breath. “Nearly a mile.”

“Okay, I’ve got Zolner,” she said. “So now you just dial in that distance on the scope and shoot him?”

“I wish it were that simple,” Quinn said, as much to himself as Beaudine. “At this distance I have to account for a lot of variables… My brain is too fuzzy, so I’m gonna need you to use your calculator.”

“Damn you, Mrs. Umholtz,“ Beaudine said. “Looks like math can be a life or death…” Her voice trailed off as she studied something through the binoculars. “Hang on, Zolner’s up to something.”

Quinn watched through the reticle as the Russian shifted his position so his rifle was pointed toward them.

“What the hell?” Beaudine said. “How could he have seen us?”

Quinn kept his eye on Zolner, who seemed to be scanning with the CheyTac’s scope. “Check on Volodin and see what he’s up to,” he said. “But move slowly and don’t stand up. There’s a chance Zolner is just looking for us. The Arctic Cat will stand out, but our overwhites will make us hard to differentiate from the snow at this range.”

Beaudine inched around, her belly making slurping sounds against the wet tundra as she stayed pressed flat to the snow. “Okay,” she said at length. “The girl is looking in our direction through a set of binoculars. She must have been checking for anyone tailing her and saw the four-wheeler.”

“And Zolner followed her line of sight,” Quinn said. “Listen. Forget about her and scoot back around here to help me. Be careful you don’t bump my arm. This cold is making me shaky enough as it is.”

“Got it,” she said, giving him a thumbs up.

“And if you don’t like math you’re gonna have to suck it up, because I guarantee you he’s doing some pretty heavy calculating right now.”

Beaudine lowered the binoculars long enough to rub her eyes before raising them again. She gasped at what she saw. “I think he’s got us!”

Quinn took a deep breath, settling deeper into the freezing muck and willing his body not to shiver.

“Okay,” he said. “Here we go. It’s simple addition and subtraction for a firing solution from this point — and the last one to get the right answer wins a bullet.”

Quinn consulted the recorded figures in the notebook, adding and subtracting clicks in elevation and windage on the numbered turrets of the scope as he worked through the variables of bullet drop, ambient temperature, air pressure, wind, bullet spin, and even the rotation of the earth. It took time, but at eight tenths of a mile, small mistakes meant big misses. Outgunned and in the open, Quinn knew he would have one chance to get things right.

“Not tryin’ to make you nervous,” Beaudine said. “But you better hurry up. This guy is up to somethin’.”

A distinct crack slapped the ATV thirty meters to the left of where they lay in the snow — followed two seconds later by a hollow boom.

“Quinn!” Beaudine’s voice rose in pitch and timbre. “He just shot our ride.”

“He’s going to be on us fast.” Quinn took a quick glance through the scope, and then scrambled to finish the last of his calculations. “When I say move, don’t ask why, just follow my lead. Fast.”

Chapter 53

Zolner fired once at the ATV knowing his shot was on target as soon as he pulled the trigger. The vehicle’s motor was still warm, and the stark white heat signature was easy to locate through the FLIR thermal imager. Rolling slightly away from the gun, he pressed the rubberized binocular skirt of the device to his eyes and began to scan again. Snow showed up like a negative image in the viewfinder, with things that were cold displayed as dark gray or black.

“Nice try,” he muttered to himself in English when he found the shining white blobs of two human heads and shoulders. They thought to conceal themselves with camouflage. Zolner’s heart-rate quickened when he saw they had a rifle and it was pointed directly at him. This was interesting indeed.

He’d ranged Volodin and the girl at 1810 meters, but whoever was following them looked to be considerably closer. Exchanging the FLIR for a laser, he ranged the other shooter at 1326 meters. He set the rangefinder on his pack and rolled in behind the CheyTac again. With careful deliberation, he began to make the minor adjustments from his shot at the ATV. At this distance the solid copper projectile would drop over 1200 centimeters and take almost two full seconds before impact. It was not a particularly difficult shot, but a great deal could happen in two seconds.

Chapter 54

Colonel Rostov sat on the edge of the tarmac in the backseat of Lodygin’s boxy black ZiL 41047. He’d been so concerned about putting the gas mask on when he arrived he hadn’t taken the time to notice the car for what it was. A staff limousine before the captain had commandeered it from the back of a lonely fleet-storage lot outside Moscow, the teak trim had long since faded. Dark stains stood out against the tired beige leather. The scuffs of three decades of use by Soviet generals — and judging from the footprints on the ceiling, at least one general’s acrobatic mistress — scarred the inside of the creaky sedan. Rostov toyed with a mark in the carpeting with the toe of his shoe and discovered it looked very much like a bullet hole. Exhausted, he fell back in his seat and closed his eyes, resting his hands on his belly. If scabby carpet and sagging leather could talk, there would certainly be some stories in this car.

Outside the ZiL, a cold gray wind blew in from the sea, buffeting the sedan. Bits of trash and gravel skittered across the broken pavement of the dilapidated airport. Rostov listened to the moaning wind and pulled his wool coat up around his ears. He leaned forward, telling the driver to turn up the heat. The slender conscript glanced in the rearview mirror and nodded, never quite making eye contact. A little conversation would have warmed the car, but officers did not speak with conscripts.

Bundled in his greatcoat, Rostov turned to stare past his reflection in the window at the lights of the approaching Cessna business jet used by General Zhestakova. His knee began to bounce spontaneously as the plane touched down. The driver, noticing the movement, glanced in the rearview mirror again, and then looked quickly away.

Rostov was not by nature a nervous man, but emissaries from the director of GRU did not come to lounge around the samovar and chat of world affairs over a tea and jam. When General Zhestakova sent an envoy, any message was most often given in what the Americans called “Blunt Force Trauma.” Rostov knew this all too well. He had delivered many such messages as a young operative of GRU.

Rostov waited for the Cessna to roll to a stop and the turbofans to go quiet before stepping out of the ZiL. He stood in the wind with his hands folded in front of him, Astrakhan wool hat pulled down low over his ears. He did not have long to wait for the aircraft door to open.

Rostov’s heart calmed when he saw the emissary was a woman. A redhead, which could certainly pose a problem, but still a woman — so all was not completely lost. At least Zhestakova had not sent someone to break his legs or throw him out a window.

“FSB,“ the young woman said when she reached the sedan. “Aleksandra Kanatova.”

So that was the game, Rostov thought. The general had sent someone from his brother-in-law’s side of the house to test the waters before doing anything rash. This one was small, shorter even than his teenaged daughter and fully a foot shorter than him. Rich mahogany red hair hung in shoulder length curls from beneath her blue fox ushanka, in stark contrast to the crisp white of her down ski jacket. An alluring crop of freckles splashed across a button nose. Golden green eyes gleamed with an intensity that surprised even Rostov, who was surprised by little, least of all women. He wondered if they might not even enjoy their time together in Providenya.

“I am told there is a girl with information about the Black Hundreds,” Kanatova said, getting straight to the heart of her visit.

Rostov nodded toward the Cessna. “You have no luggage?”

“This only,” Kanatova said, holding up a brown cardboard file folder.

Rostov held open the door to the backseat of the ZiL. “We must get you out of the wind, my dear,” he said.

Kanatova smiled as if grateful for the chivalry. “What you must do, Colonel, is take me to this young woman. I wish to question her at once.”

The population on the dilapidated base was purposely kept small, with little movement outside prescribed times when American satellites were not passing overhead. Most of the buildings were vacant, so the handful of officers and senior enlisted men had their pick of quarters.

Captain Lodygin had chosen the wing of a deserted barracks at the back of the compound.

“This is the confinement area?” Kanatova said, nodded her head as she got out of the sedan.

“No,” Rostov said, waving at the drab concrete building on the outskirts of the base. Its back to the perimeter fence and barren mountains, the barracks was separated from the other buildings by a gurgling stream that contained more sewage than water. “Lodygin is a loaner. This is where he prefers to live.”

The FSB agent stopped at the bottom of the concrete steps, her hand on the peeling paint of a metal rail. “Captain Lodygin keeps prisoners at his residence?”

Rostov motioned for the driver to stay with the car, wondering how to couch his answer so he did not sound too callous and scare away the young redhead. In the end, he decided that if she was an agent for the FSB, she should be capable of handling unvarnished truth.

“Captain Lodygin is an interesting soul,” Rostov said. “But his methods have, thus far, yielded results. He does not have an interrogation cell in his home so much as he lives in a room off the interrogation cell.”

Kanatova nodded thoughtfully, seeming to chew on this information as she made her way up the stairs and through the twin metal doors. Their footsteps echoed down a long tile hallway that was covered with a thin patina of glacial dust and lined on either side with wooden dormitory doors every three or four meters. There was a forgotten emptiness to the place, like a condemned prison. Rostov caught a whiff of strong cleaning solution as they walked — and something else he could not quite identify.

“You have been to this place before?” Kanatova said as they neared a pool of light that spilled from an open door at the far end of the passageway.

“No,” Rostov said. “The captain has only described it to me.”

“Most interesting,” the FSB agent said. “Where are the guards? Why have we not been challenged?”

“I am not certain,” Rostov said honestly, as they reached the open door. “We will have to inquire.”

They found Lodygin sitting at a small metal table in front of a bowl of soup, addressing a young woman across from him with a spoon. He was dressed in his uniform trousers and a T-shirt, but his tunic and light green shirt hung over the back of a chair beside him. The young woman across from him wore a thin cotton shift. She dipped a spoon into a bowl of soup identical to his and put it to her mouth with a shaking hand. Soup drizzled back into the bowl and she stared at Lodygin and went through the motions of eating without ever opening her mouth. Dark hair hung on trembling shoulders in greasy matted strands. Providenya saw little sun this time of year and everyone was pale, but the girl looked as though the life had been drained from her body. Her hands were free but a chain connected a bruised and bloody ankle to the leg of her metal chair. The chair appeared to be bolted to the floor.

Rostov was immediately struck with the foul odor of the well-used toilet bucket in the corner. He had to concentrate to keep from retching when he saw the metal ring affixed to the back wall above a thin prison mattress. A single filthy sheet for bedding was crumpled at the end, sopping up a spill from the bucket. Torn underwear, now little more than sad pieces of cotton and elastic lay on the tile next to the mattress. The sight of them made Rostov want to vomit.

“Colonel!” Lodygin said, jumping to his feet. “I wish you would have informed me you were going to visit. I would have made myself more presentable.” He gestured toward the girl with an open hand. “Our Rosalina has been very cooperative in the last few minutes, so she earned some much needed nourishment.”

The girl convulsed at Lodygin’s every word, a look of hopelessness in her sunken eyes such as Rostov had never seen. For the first time, the colonel noticed a short wooden truncheon on the table, resting on top of a pair of flaccid latex gloves beside Lodygin’s soup bowl.

Kanatova ignored the girl, looking instead at the captain. “So, this Rosalina has provided you information on the Black Hundreds?”

A smile crept over Lodygin’s face. He walked around the table to stand beside the girl and stroked her hair with the back of his hand. “She has told me a great deal about her friend Kaija Merculief, who is involved with this Black Hundreds.”

“I do not care about Kaija Merculief,” Kanatova spat, apparently lacking in patience. “We require information on the Black Hundreds group. I will need to speak with this girl myself.”

Rosalina threw back her head in despair. “Kaija is a friend from school only,” she sobbed. “I do not know about any Black Hundreds—”

Without warning, Kanatova drew a black H&K pistol from beneath her down jacket and shot Lodygin in the center of his forehead.

“I believe you,” she said.

Chapter 55

“Now!” Quinn said, scooping up the rifle. He grabbed the pack and sock with his free hand. “Follow me. Move, move, move!”

Quinn counted strides as he ran, knowing that each bounding step put approximately one meter of distance between himself and Zolner. He stopped when he’d widened the gap twenty more meters and immediately dropped the pack on the ground. Settling in behind the scope, he squeezed the sock to bring the crosshairs of his scope where they centered on the Russian’s prone body. He took two full breaths, giving his nerves a quick moment to settle, then exhaled, pausing at the bottom to send the round in the stillness of his respiratory pause. He didn’t wait for impact but worked the bolt and fired again, using the same hold.

The .338 Lapua’s two-and-a-half-second flight gave Quinn time to get back on the scope before the projectile made it to the target. He’d seen Zolner fire as well, but the shot had fallen far short, kicking up a shower of snow just past the imprint where Quinn had been set up before. It would have been a hit.

“Hot damn, Quinn, you hit his rifle,” Beaudine yelled, binoculars to her eyes. “Bet he’s never had anybody shoot back at him like that. Have you, Mr. Worst of the Moon?”

The first shot from the Lapua sent up a splash of mud a foot in front of Zolner as he adjusted to Quinn’s new location. The second, still traveling 1200 feet per second, slammed into the ground a few inches closer and then bounced, striking the big CheyTac in the metal stock. At first Quinn thought the round had been a hit on Zolner, but the greater likelihood was that the solid round had sent up spalling from the metal rifle stock on impact along with fragments of copper. It was impossible to tell through the scope at over 1300 meters, but from the way Zolner rolled away, it looked as though he’d been struck in the arm and face.

Zolner was up and running by the time Quinn could send another shot his direction. As good as he was, shooting of any kind was a perishable skill. A moving target at nearly a mile away proved to be impossible to hit. The Russian didn’t even pause when he reached his ATV but sped away after Volodin.

“Can you believe that?” Beaudine said. “He just abandoned his fancy gun.”

“Smart,” Quinn said, sitting up to brush the tundra muck off the front of his jacket and pants. “What’s the doctor doing?”

Beaudine swung the binoculars around. “They’re long gone,” she said. “Must have gotten their machine tumped back on its wheels.”

A quick check of the Arctic Cat showed Zolner’s round had come in perfectly under the front fender and clipped the oil line. The machine was oil cooled, which meant it was out of commission. There were two extra quarts of oil under the seat, but the rubber hose was too short to reuse once the damage had been trimmed away.

“I can fix it,” Beaudine said, holding up one of the empty .338 Lapua cases and the file from her Leatherman multi-tool. “It’ll take a minute, but I can do it.”

Quinn nodded. “We can saw the end of the empty and use it as a hard splice. You’re pretty handy to have around.”

“Like I said, the only thing close to happy times I had with my daddy was when we were fixin’ engines.”

“He taught you to use the empty rifle bullet as a fix?”

“Hell, no.” Beaudine frowned. “If we would have had guns and bullets around the house I woulda shot the son of a bitch a long time ago. He just taught me to use what we had on hand.”

“Okay then,” Quinn said. “If you don’t mind doing the fixing, I’m going to pour some more antiseptic on my thigh. I’m pretty sure the stuff I was laying in back there came out of the south end of a north-bound caribou.”

Beaudine handed him the brass shell casing and Leatherman. “Your hands are stronger. It’ll go faster if you do it. In the meantime, drop your pants, and I’ll take care of your antiseptic again. It’s the least I can do since you sewed me up.”

Quinn did as he was told, sitting on the edge of the Arctic Cat with his pants and long underwear pooled around his boots. He held the empty rifle case against the handlebars with one hand while he sawed first at the narrow-necked end of the cartridge with the Leatherman file. He’d work on the primer end next. Beaudine opened a new packet of Betadine and began to pour it on each spot where the shotgun had hit his thigh.

“Lucky for you, she was using birdshot.”

“I’ll say.” Quinn concentrated on what he was doing to keep from wincing. It was not particularly delicate work, but he had to move the file evenly back and forth on the brass shell casing, working to form a tube that could be inserted in between the broken oil lines.

“You’re sure you don’t want me to try and get at them?” Beaudine offered again.

“No, thanks,” Quinn said. “Better concentrate on fixing this. We slowed Zolner down but he’s not going to be far behind Volodin and the girl. He might even catch them.”

“If he doesn’t bleed out.” Beaudine grinned. “I still can’t believe you actually hit him.”

“Technically the bullet bounced into his rifle and then hit him.”

“At three quarters of a mile, a hit’s a hit,” Beaudine said.

Quinn stopped filing long enough to look up and stare across the empty tundra. “Anyway, this Worst of the Moon doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to bleed out.”

Beaudine squatted beside the Arctic Cat, trimming the oil line with a pocketknife. “Everybody bleeds out,” she said.

Quinn turned and looked at her over his shoulder, first at her face and then at his thigh. “We didn’t.”

Chapter 56

Colonel Rostov felt as if his guts had turned to jelly as he watched a thin whisker of smoke curl from the barrel of Kanatova’s H&K P7. He carried a Makarov pistol in a regulation flap holster on his hip, but the way this woman summarily shot Lodygin without warning… Rostov knew there was no way he could get to his weapon before she shot him as well.

Rosalina, reduced to a bundle of nerves from her recent treatment, lost control of her bladder at the gunshot, and fell forward across the table, knocking the soup bowl to the floor.

Instead of shooting Rostov as he expected, Kanatova returned her pistol to the holster and produced a handcuff key from her pocket. “Don’t just stand there,” she said as she stooped to free the girl’s ankle from the chain. “Take off your coat.”

“My coat…?”

“Give me your coat!” Kanatova snapped, causing the colonel to shrug the thing off as if it were on fire. “Now turn away. The poor thing deserves some privacy.”

Rostov turned slightly, but kept an eye on the FSB agent in his peripheral vision, smart enough not to show his back completely, but concerned enough that beads of sweat began to pop up on his bald head.

“Come, my dear,” Kanatova said to the girl. “We must get you clean and into warm clothing. Do you live with your mother?”

“Yes.” The reply was hardly louder than the peep of a bird.

“How long have you been here?”

“I do not know,” Rosalina said. “Two days, I think.”

Kanatova’s green eyes shot daggers at Rostov. “Your poor mother must be worried sick. I will call and let her know you are with me now.” Arms around the shattered girl’s heaving shoulders, she turned again to Rostov. “I have seen what I was sent to see, Colonel.”

“You will take the girl with you?”

“I will,” Kanatova said, drawing her closer as if she were a beloved younger sister. There was a fierceness about her that made her seem to glow, even in the dimness of Lodygin’s dismal room.

Rostov shook his head, feeling some measure of control return to his spirit. He was after all, a colonel in the GRU. “And what of Captain Lodygin?”

“Dump him in the sea,” Kanatova said, her freckled nose drawing into a tight sneer. “I do not care. It is apparent Lodygin was a sadistic bastard and that is what I will report to General Zhestakova. The man had no business questioning young women about such sensitive subjects — much less being in charge of your project.”

“I assure you, I did not know of his proclivity—”

“Is that so?” Kanatova said, tilting her head as if passing judgment. She turned to look at Rosalina. “My dear, have you ever seen this man before?”

“No.” The girl shook her head. “Only the other one.”

“Very well.” Kanatova shrugged. “In that case, Colonel, I must ask you to return me to my plane.”

Rostov put a hand on the edge of the table to keep his knees from buckling. “Of course,” he said. “Yes… of course.” He could think of nothing else to say. She had made it quick, and, in a manner, kind, when she’d killed Lodygin, just as General Zhestakova said it should be.

A stocky woman with her gray hair piled high in a tight bun swung her elbows as if she were marching when she walked out from the plane to meet Aleksandra Kanatova beside the old ZiL. The woman carried a bright blue wool blanket and wrapped it around the girl’s shoulders like a loving grandmother. Rostov nearly collapsed in relief when Kanatova returned his greatcoat. The FSB would not go to the trouble of returning a coat if they meant to murder someone.

“Mrs. Dudkov will look after you, my dear,” Kanatova said to the girl, patting her on the shoulder as the matron escorted the girl to the plane. “I will be along in a moment.”

“Thank you for your assistance in this delicate matter, Colonel Rostov,” Kanatova said when the girl was safely out of earshot and boarding the plane. “Finding information on any plans the Black Hundreds have regarding Novo Archangelsk is paramount to all else. Do you understand?”

“I do,” Rostov said. Some of his bluster had begun to seep back in now that he knew he would survive this encounter. “You bought an incredible amount of trust from the girl when you rescued her from Lodygin.”

“Yes… Lodygin,” Kanatova said as if the name was bitter on her tongue.

“I assure you,” Rostov stammered. “I was only interested in the information he brought me. I knew nothing of his activities with the girl.”

Kanatova smiled, giving him a sly wink. “Oh you knew, Colonel. You knew all too well.” The smile bled from her face. “The important thing is that you did not take part in those activities.”

“Quite right,” Rostov said, squirming, fighting the urge to tug at his collar for more air. “The girl trusts you now. That is good. She will tell you everything she knows, I am sure.” He felt as if he was on the verge of collapse by the time she extended her hand. She was a civilian and did not salute, but it made sense that she would offer to shake hands.

Kanatova nodded a curt good-bye and turned. The same cold, gray wind that had brought the terrifying redhead to Providenya tugged at her hair as she walked back toward the aircraft. Rostov felt as if he could draw a full breath for the first time in hours.

Ten yards away, Kanatova stopped suddenly, patted the top of her bare head and turned, smiling.

“I am a fool,” said. “My ushanka, I have forgotten it in the car.”

Eager to see her on her way, Rostov turned and bent into the back door to retrieve the blue fox hat. He’d just leaned across the seat when he felt the cold steel of Kanatova’s pistol at the base of his skull.

Rostov pitched forward at the shot, knees slamming against the pavement, arms trailing at his sides. The young conscript behind the wheel came around and helped Kanatova lift the body, shoving the lifeless lump into the back seat, head down on the floorboard.

“Your ushanka,” the soldier said, nodding toward the blue fox hat, still on the seat. Wisely, he did not offer to bend forward and retrieve it.

“I have others,” Kanatova said waving her hand at the ZiL. “I will leave the disposal of the body to you then.”

The young soldier gave a curt salute and hurried around to the driver’s seat. A moment later, the black sedan crunched away over the broken pavement, its grim interior heavier now with the stain of another dark story.

Chapter 57

It took two hours, a cup of spare gasoline, and three tries to get the oil cleaned off the broken hose well enough so that Gorilla tape could hold both ends over the makeshift .338 Lapua cartridge splice. Thankfully, Zolner’s bullet had destroyed nothing but a piece of plastic fender and the rubber oil line.

The clouds gave way to a bluebird-clear sky, but with the cloud cover went the insulation that held any semblance of warmth close to the earth. The snow began to crust under foot. Water and mud froze into solid ice. Though the sun offered little in the way of warmth, it seemed to be everywhere at once. The glare bouncing off the crystalline landscape was like a dazzling field of diamonds.

The after-effects of the adrenaline dump from the sniper versus sniper battle with Zolner began to take its toll both on Quinn and on Beaudine by the time they got the ATV started an hour later. Wet clothes and plummeting temperatures made it impossible to get warm, but Lovita’s akutaq helped stave off hypothermia. Even Beaudine bowed to the reality that the sweet fatty confection was necessary to stay alive.

Quinn drove, grateful for the relative warmth of Beaudine’s body clamped around his back as they bounced over the frozen tundra. As uncomfortable as it was, the freezing ground made for much easier going and cut the chances of getting bogged down. He intersected the trail to Ambler less than ten minutes from the time they fixed their oil line. It was easy to follow since both Volodin and Zolner’s machines had passed over the mushy ground before it began to freeze. They left behind great tracks of now crystalizing mud, like a dotted line through the snow.

“You think he’s still out there?” Beaudine said, arms tight around his waist.

“Zolner?” Quinn said. “I’m sure of it.”

He took the Arctic Cat northeast on a meandering route over hummocks of willow and berry bush, bitten red by frost and bent with snow. The Kobuk River was somewhere to their south, blocked from view by thick pockets of spruce- and scrub-covered hills.

“He ran off and left his gun though,” she said. “That’s a good sign.”

“Maybe,” Quinn said, eyeing the wide-open tundra around them. Zolner had a duffle on the back of his ATV, and he didn’t seem like the kind of man to carry a single weapon. He was still a threat that would eventually need to be dealt with.

They crossed a myriad of braided streams that tumbled down from the Kobuk Mountains to the north. Most were shallow with water gurgling under silver edges of ice that crept out from the banks. Two of the streams proved deep enough to splash over their ankles, soaking their socks and driving the aching cold deeper into their bones. With no time to stop and build a fire — and nothing to burn anyway — they pushed on, hoping Ambler, and the case of poison gas, lay within their reach.

After an hour of bone-jarring riding, the trail turned abruptly east. The willow bushes became thicker and spruce trees began to appear with more regularity. Open tundra finally gave up to thick forest as they arced gradually southward toward the river. The ruts grew deeper and side trails from other ATVs began to crisscross the main route, disappearing into the trees. The dense forest made for chilly shadows but provided welcome relief from the glare of sun on snow. Quinn rode past four deserted cabins. His body craved the warmth of shelter, dry clothes, and a fire, but he kept his thumb on the throttle. Volodin was close — and if he was close, so was the gas. The thought of Zolner waiting somewhere in the shadows was a constant worry and kept Quinn’s mind off the cold.

It was late afternoon when they rode past a pair of ravens pecking at an old diaper in the Ambler landfill.

“This is where it gets dicey,” Quinn said, his head on a swivel.

“Is that what I think it is?” Beaudine said, through chattering teeth, her cheek pressed against his neck for warmth.

“The town dump,” Quinn said. “Keep your eyes open. Zolner has to know we’re following him.”

“Gotcha,” Beaudine said. She pointed through the trees toward a low hill to the east. “Looks like the top of a cell tower.”

A rush of hope surged through Quinn’s body, like a glimpse of the finish at the end of a grueling race. Reality tamped back the elation. Survival was now slightly more probable, but they were a long way from the tape.

“Palmer,” the President’s national security advisor said when he picked up.

“It’s me, sir,” Quinn said, giving the specific and pertinent details first. In written briefs and oral situation reports, Winfield Palmer was not a man for small talk. He preferred a BLUF — Bottom Line Up Front type of report. The niceties could come later if there was time. There never was. Quinn spoke as he rode, coming into town from the northwest. He stayed right at the angled T intersection to head into the village of Ambler. A left would have taken him to the gravel airstrip.

Spattered with mud from head to foot and shivering to the point of convulsions, they drew stares and giggles from a gang of runny-nosed school children riding their bikes over a homemade jump in the snow. Quinn smiled and waved as he began to brief Palmer.

“We need fast air transport out of Ambler ASAP. Volodin and his daughter are ahead of us but we’re not sure—”

“But you’re okay?” Palmer interrupted him, giving an audible sigh of relief. The display of uncharacteristic emotion made Quinn grin despite the cold.

“We are both in working order, sir,” Quinn said, leaving out information about Lovita’s death until his final report.

“What the hell happened out there?” Palmer said. “You’ve been out of commo for a day and a half. In case you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of a shit-nado. I am in dire need of decent intel if you have any to spare.”

And, he’s back, Quinn thought, recognizing the brash Winfield Palmer he knew and loved.

Quinn brought the national security advisor up to speed as fast as he could, using a considerable amount of energy to keep his cold-soaked brain in focus. For all he knew, it was all babble and Palmer was preparing to have him committed for mental observation.

He kept an eye out for any sign of Zolner or Volodin as he rode. He’d not gotten a good look at either, but suspected they would stand out as much as he and Beaudine did in a village of just over two hundred Inupiaq natives.

“I’ll call you back as soon as I know more, sir,” Quinn said. “I need to hunt up the local tribal or village police officer first.”

“Very well,” Palmer said. “I’ll contact Special Agent Beaudine’s supervisor so we can de-conflict and task the Bureau folks in Anchorage.”

Quinn was glad to hear that the call to align different agencies and resources would come from Palmer’s office. Moving assets in the Bureau could be like trying to turn the Queen Mary at full steam. It could be done, but not quickly.

“And the ride out of Ambler?” Quinn pressed.

“It may not be pretty,” Palmer said. “But I’ll get you something.”

Quinn dropped the phone in his jacket pocket and pulled over beside two blond women walking up the road in front of a long beige building that had to be the school. One of the women looked like she could be the other one’s aunt. Both were white and each wore the same type of insulated XTRATUF rubber boots. Neither looked native to Ambler.

“Hello,” Quinn said, bringing the Arctic Cat to a stop and killing the engine. “Have you seen an older Russian man with a young blonde woman? They would have come into town in the last two hours or so.”

Both women shook their heads.

“We just came from the school,” the younger one said. She was pretty, round faced, and looked like many of the first-year bush teachers Quinn had met, exhausted but brimming with innocent hope.

Quinn nodded. “Is there a TPO or VPO in town?”

Some villages had Village Public Safety Officers trained by the state, others opted for a Village Police Officer or Tribal Police Officer over which they had a little more control. Good, hard working folks for the most part, TPOs and VPOs didn’t have as stringent a background requirement and might very well be an eighteen-year-old kid — armed with nothing but a Taser and their wits.

“Hon,” the older of the two women said. Quinn guessed she was in her mid forties and from somewhere in the south. “You need the health clinic, not the VPO.” The longer she looked at Beaudine, the more her face pulled back in horror.

Quinn turned to check Beaudine and realized he’d become accustomed to seeing her with a black eye and what she’d started calling his “Frankenstein Treatment.” He doubted he looked much better. They were both covered in tundra muck, oil, and blood.

“We were in a plane crash,” he said honestly. “Other side of Needle.”

“FBI.” Beaudine gave the women a wink with her good eye. “If you do run into the Russian man, don’t approach him, okay? Just find us.”

“Is he dangerous?” the older teacher said.

“He is,” Beaudine said. “Look, I don’t want to be rude, but it’s really important that we find a woman named Polina. Know her?”

“Everybody knows everybody in this town,” the younger of the two women said. “Polina’s married to our shop teacher.”

“They live in a little yellow house over by L.J.’s store,” the older teacher said. “He’s still coaching basketball, but she should be at home.” She waved at a young Native man approaching from the opposite direction on a red Honda ATV. His broad smile was framed with wispy chin whiskers, and he wore a dark gray uniform shirt that was easily three sizes to big.

“Hey, Lois,” the young man said. “What’s up?”

Lois introduced him as Clarence, one of her former students before becoming the Village Police Officer. From his youthful face, Quinn figured it hadn’t been that long ago.

“Clarence,” Lois said. “These guys are with the FBI. They need to talk to Polina.”

Clarence’s brown eyes flew wide. “FBI? No shit?” He grimaced. “Sorry about the language, Miss Lois.”

Beaudine nodded.

“We don’t get many FBI guys all the way out here,” the VPO said, passive and absent any guile. “What happened to your face?”

“Plane crash,” Quinn said again. He knew it wouldn’t be the last time they had to explain.

“How about you?” Beaudine said to the VPO. “Have you seen a older Russian man with a young woman in the last couple of hours.”

“I heard some guys at the fuel depot talking about a goofy Russian,” Clarence said. “I never seen him though. Maybe he caught a flight out. We’ve had a couple of planes come and go today.”

“How many?” Quinn asked, shooting a glance at Beaudine.

“Three,” Clarence said. “One to Anchorage, one to Fairbanks, and another that flies the downriver milk-run to Kotzebue. You want me to take you to the fuel depot? Irving Briggs is the one who was talkin’ about the Russian. You can ask him.”

Quinn mulled over the idea of Volodin already being on a flight out with the gas. “I think we’d better start with Polina.”

Beaudine nodded in agreement.

“I’ll show you her house,” Clarence said, preparing to make a U-turn on his ATV. “But I ain’t goin’ in. Polina yells too much.”

Chapter 58

Homes in the Arctic were not simply weatherworn — they were weather-beaten, weather-savaged. Polina’s sad frame house sat well back from the gravel street, tucked well back in the willows. The scrubby trees did little to protect the paint job from driving winds, and anything that had once been yellow was now bleached and sickly tan.

Quinn considered having Clarence watch the back door in case Volodin or Zolner happened to be inside and tried to duck out. In the end, he decided against it for exactly the same reason. The Village Police Officer seemed like a great kid, but he was young, inexperienced, and unarmed — no match for the likes of Zolner or anyone else who put up much of a fight. Quinn gave the VPO his cell number and asked him to go and check with the local air-service agent to see if Volodin or Zolner had caught one of the flights out. In truth, it was probably better to have the kid out of the way.

Quinn removed the bolt from the Lapua and shoved it in his jacket, not wanting to leave the rifle unattended with all the roving kids on bikes — or an enemy who happened to come up behind him. A weapon like the .338 in the hands of Zolner would prove disastrous.

There were several sets of tracks leading to and from the front door of Polina’s little yellow house, some from different adults, some from kids.

“I got blood,” Beaudine said, AR-10 in hand. She nodded to a trail of bright red droplets, stark against the white snow.

Quinn saw something else in the snow and scanned ahead looking on either side of the house, Kimber out and at his side.

“Caribou,” he said, nodding to a pile of rib bones.

Beaudine gave an audible sigh of relief. “Good,” she said. “I guess.”

A dog that looked like a cross between a Corgi and a German shepherd trotted out from under the steps on the stubby legs common to village mutts with generations of inbreeding. Quinn dropped it a piece of salmon skin he had in his pocket and moved through the willows toward the house.

Beaudine kept her distance, moving so she could see Quinn as well as behind the house. Quinn was about to knock on the front door when a woman backed out onto the slanting plywood porch, facing the door as if to lock it as she left. She had the bronze skin of an Inupiaq. The rich purple fabric of her Native kuspuk was pulled tight from her pregnancy.

“Whatcha doin’?” the woman asked when she turned around, eyeing the Kimber in Quinn’s hand. She was not so much intimidated by the gun as she was put out that he had it pointed toward her.

“Police,” Quinn said. “We need to talk to Polina.”

The woman gave a heavy sigh. “That’s me,” she said.

Beaudine moved up quickly at the appearance of the pregnant woman. “Is Kaija here?”

“Kaija?” The young woman held her belly when she laughed. “Kaija’s in Russia.”

“Nice try,” Beaudine said. “We followed her into town.”

“Well, look for yourself,” Polina said. “She’s not here. Whatever you do, I gotta sit down. My back hurts.”

Quinn checked the bathroom and the two small bedrooms as soon as he walked in and found nothing but piles of clothes on top of old mattresses laid out on the linoleum floor.

Polina lowered herself onto the tattered orange couch and told them her story. According to Polina, her mother was Siberian Chukchi, Native cousins to Alaska’s Arctic people. Her father had been a Russian schoolteacher who immigrated to the United States when Polina was still young. She’d known Kaija in grade school, and the two had hooked up again recently over the Internet via ICQ.

“But you haven’t seen her?” Quinn asked, fighting the urge to sleep brought on by the enveloping heat of Polina’s oil stove. He kept his mind awake and busy studying the girl’s face for the micro-expressions that would tell him if she was lying. Her almost constant swaying movement and apparent discomfort from her pregnancy made reading her all the more difficult.

“She sends me packages sometimes,” Polina said. “To the lodge where I work. But I haven’t seen her.”

“Why doesn’t she just send them here?” Beaudine asked from a wooden chair from the nearby dinette. Quinn could see from her heavy eyes that the warm confines were getting to her as well.

“My husband gets jealous of Russian friends,” Polina said. “He’s a teacher at the school.”

She had an answer for everything. It was either a well-rehearsed lie or the simple truth. Quinn had yet to make up his mind.

“You have no idea where she’s going?” he said.

“Sorry,” Polina said, stuffing a hand between her lower back and the couch.

“It would be better if you kept your hands were we could see them,” Quinn said.

Polina pulled her hand back but she said nothing.

Beaudine moved forward to the edge of her seat. “We’re going to need—”

Prone to the jerkiness of the completely exhausted, both she and Quinn jumped when his cellphone rang in his jacket pocket.

Quinn answered the call.

“Is this that FBI guy?” a tentative voice asked. It was Clarence, the VPO.

“Go ahead,” Quinn said.

“I got someone here you’re gonna want to talk to,” Clarence said.

Quinn shook his head to focus. “We’ll be down there in a few minutes.”

“Okay, bye,” Clarence said.

“Hang on,” Quinn said before the VPO could hang up. “Who is it that we’ll want to talk to?”

“Tell me your name again?” Clarence asked the person he was with. His voice muffled as if his hand covered the phone. “Okay, I got it,” he said when he came back on the line. “He says his name is Kostya Volodin.”

Chapter 59

August Bowen tipped his rickety wooden chair against the wall of the Golden Dragon Chinese restaurant and took a sip of his bubble tea. Outside, East Broadway seemed to overflow with a flood of wide-eyed tourists. A gaggle of a half-dozen blue-haired women in matching sweaters stopped under the glare of the evening streetlights to peer in through a large picture window at the split pig’s head and smoked duck carcasses hanging on metal hooks. Bowen was pretty sure two teenagers were buying heroin from a tout selling knockoff designer purses right outside the door.

Ronnie Garcia sat across the table chasing a pot sticker around her plate with a pair of bamboo chopsticks. Thibodaux looked up over a steaming bowl of noodles, his visible eye blinking as if in deep thought. None of the three were the type to sit with their back to the door so they crowded in at the wooden table, yielding the actual “gunfighter seat”—the chair with its back to the wall — to Bowen since he was the only bona fide lawman of the group.

“You know you’re not fightin’, right?” Thibodaux said at length, pointing at Bowen with his chopsticks.

“What do you mean?” Bowen said.

“I mean tapioca bubble tea ain’t a meal,” Thibodaux said. “It’s a damned dessert. Since you’re not actually gettin’ in the ring it’s okay for you to eat real food.”

“I guess,” Bowen said, letting his chair tip forward so it was flat on the floor. “I thought I’d better be ready just in case…”

Garcia’s eyes narrowed, all judge-like. “I get the impression you want to fight this moron.”

“I kind of do,” Bowen said, “if I’m honest. It would give us a chance to draw out whoever it is that’s after him.”

“He knows who’s after him,” Thibodaux scoffed. “We’ll get that info from him directly. You gotta try some of this soup.” He waved the elderly waiter over and ordered another bowl of hand-pulled noodles, this one for Bowen. He dug into his own bowl again once the waiter had shuffled off with the new order, talking in between bites and slurps, using his chopsticks to drive home his points. “We got no obligation to the Ortega brothers for this. I mean, what the hell is a mismatch anyhow? It ain’t a fight, it’s a circus, and Daux Boy worked out too many hours in the gym to be part of some sideshow.”

“You’re more fired up than I am,” Bowen said.

“I doubt that, Gus Gus,” Thibodaux said. “Cause I’m thinking you can’t stomach what you saw goin’ on with the poor girls back at that titty bar and you’ve done assigned a shitload of righteous blame for all of it to Petyr the Weasel.”

“Maybe so,” Bowen said. The big Cajun had a point. Cheekie’s was nothing more than a front for the modern slave trade. There was no gray area in an operation like that.

“I get it,” Thibodaux said, apparently reading the deputy’s mind. “I really do. Somebody’s gettin’ a boot in the ass and it might as well be our boy, Pete. But MMA’s different than boxing, cher. There’s rules, but you don’t want to be screwin’ around in the octagon. You liable to find yourself with your jaw wired shut and eatin’ nothin’ but your damned bubble tea.”

“I can take care of myself, Gunny,” Bowen said.

“No doubt,” Thibodaux said, pointing to Bowen’s split lip with his chopsticks.

Garcia heaved a heavy sigh, and when Garcia heaved a sigh, Bowen thought, it was a magnificent thing indeed.

“You could take him,” she said. “He’s big, but he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.”

“That ain’t the point,” Thibodaux said, slurping a big bite of noodles. “We’re grabbin’ him as soon as he shows. That’s all there is to it.”

“If Maxim would ever let us know where the fight is supposed to be,” Bowen said. “‘An undisclosed location in Chinatown’ doesn’t give us much to work with.”

“I gave him the number for my burner.” Garcia checked her watch. “He’s supposed to call anytime.”

“Makes sense with an illegal fight,” Bowen said. “They call and let us know the when and where at the last minute. Nearly impossible for law enforcement to pull a raid together.”

The waiter brought Bowen’s noodles and another can of Diet Dr. Pepper for Garcia.

“Once he calls,” Thibodaux said, “we’ll set up outside the location and grab Petyr while he’s still on the street. You’re not even gonna see the octagon.

Bowen tore the paper off a pair of bamboo chopsticks and pulled the bowl closer. The soup did smell good, and if he wasn’t going to get the opportunity to put some hurt on Petyr the Wolf, he might as well see what had Jacques slurping so loudly.

The Cajun’s phone rang, causing everyone at the table to freeze.

A wide smile spread over Thibodaux’s face as soon as he answered. “L’ami! She hasn’t killed you… Yeah… Okay…”

The smile vanished from the big Marine’s face. He grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket and took notes on a napkin while he listened to the other end of the conversation. Garcia leaned in close, trying to hear, bouncing so much Bowen thought she might fall out of her chair.

“Okay,” Thibodaux finally said. “We’ll make it happen. I got someone here who’s dyin’ to talk to you before you go… You bet… Be safe, Chair Force.” He passed the phone to Garcia who snatched it away and fled to the far corner of the noodle shop.

Thibodaux leaned in, lowering his voice. “Turns out Petyr’s daddy is behind the gas attacks,” he said. “Or at least the chemist who’s invented the gas itself. Calls it New Archangel. Quinn has him in custody. Seems Petyr’s got a sister who might be runnin’ the whole show. She was able to give them the slip and is on her way to Anchorage now, probably with enough gas to kill a gob of people. We’re supposed to see if Petyr’s tied up with her in some Russian Nationalist group called the…” He consulted the notes he’d scrawled on the napkin. “The… Black Hundreds or some shit. They could be using Islamic State proxies.”

“ISIS working for Russia?”

“Not on purpose,” Thibodaux said. “You know how it is, proxy warriors are always the last to know who they’re fightin’ for.”

Bowen looked out the window, past the smoked duck carcasses, trying to put it all together. “Petyr doesn’t fit the profile of a terrorist…”

“Maybe not,” Thibodaux said. “But there’s something else. I guess his daddy’s mind is slippin’, poor bastard. Petyr could be in league with his evil sister — or the old man might have accidentally sent him some of the gas labeled as growth hormone…”

“So Petyr’s got some of this New Archangel stashed away somewhere?” Bowen took a deep breath. “He was carrying that yellow duffle pretty close when he came into Cheekie’s.”

“Odds are this dipshit doesn’t even know what he’s got.” Thibodaux said. “He’s just dammed lucky he hasn’t dug into this batch of his daddy’s stuff yet. His sis probably sent her Black Hundreds nationalists or Islamic State cutouts to retrieve the gas. It would make sense they’d try and cover it up by removing the bodies from the Dumpster.”

“So we’re supposed to grab Petyr,” Bowen said. “Find the nerve gas his father accidently sent him, and pick up anyone else trying to get the gas…

Garcia walked up. “And we need to do it fast,” she said, handing Thibodaux his phone and holding up her burner. “Maxim called. The fight goes down in some tunnel under Doyers Street — in half an hour. He’s texting me directions.”

“The Bloody Angle?” Thibodaux closed his eye.

“What’s the Bloody Angle?” Bowen asked.

“Doyers Street,” Thibodaux said, drumming his fingers on the table, thinking. “Sharp angle makes it the perfect place for an ambush. Many a Chinese gangster met his death by hatchet on that street around the turn of the century. Quinn and I did some work there a couple of years ago. We heard rumors the gangs had a bunch of old escape tunnels.” He grabbed his phone and began to punch in numbers, pausing just long enough to pull Bowen’s noodles away from him, tapping on the bubble tea instead. “Looks like you get your wish.” He put the phone to his ear, winking at Garcia. “We’re gonna need our own gang to make this work. Lucky for us, I got one on speed dial.”

Chapter 60

Captain Amy Munjares, the pilot in command of the Air Force C-21, was a slender brunette who reminded Quinn a little too much of his seven-year-old daughter, Mattie. The easy swagger with which she made her way down the boarding stairs was well earned, evidenced by the fact that she’d used every inch of Ambler’s 3000-foot gravel runway to bring her airplane to a stop that didn’t involve a flaming wreckage.

The C-21 was a military version of the sleek Learjet35 with wingtip fuel tanks and twin Garrett turbofan engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage. Capable of speeds over five hundred miles an hour, the plane would get Quinn and Beaudine back to Anchorage in a hurry. Landing one of the hot little airplanes out here was akin to racing a Ferrari down a dirt road. This particular plane was based at Scott AFB in Illinois and primarily used for medevac missions. It had been a rest day in Fairbanks on its way back from a training run to Yokota Air Base in Japan when Winfield Palmer had snagged it.

“Captain Quinn?” Munjares said when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

Quinn nodded. “Thanks for the pickup.”

“Getting in was the easy part.” Munjares gave him a sly wink. “I have to find a little girl’s room and offload some coffee. We need to lighten the load any way we can if we want to make it off this little postage stamp of a runway. How many of you are there?”

“Five.” Quinn nodded to Beaudine, Kostya Volodin, and an itinerant Public Health nurse he’d pressed into service to check over Beaudine’s wounds during the flight to Anchorage. A reluctant Clarence had gone to retrieve Polina on his four-wheeler.

“Not a chance,” Munjares said. “I’m two thousand feet shy of the runway I need to get this bird off the ground. I can maybe carry four counting the Trooper.” She walked toward the lonely set of weathered buildings set just off the gravel apron. “Go ahead and board,” she said over her shoulder, leaving no room for argument. “Lieutenant Halsey will get you settled in.”

“Trooper?” Beaudine said about the time a tall man in the light blue uniform shirt and navy slacks of an Alaska State Trooper appeared at the door of the airplane. He situated a flat brimmed “Smoky the Bear” hat over close-cropped sandy hair and started down the boarding stairs.

“Aaron Evans,” he said, hiding a grimace when he saw Beaudine’s wounds. “AST. I guess I’m your reinforcement.”

“They just sent one of you?” Beaudine said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“I was stationed in Kotzebue before Fairbanks so I know the folks out here on the river.” Evans smiled. “And you know what they say, ‘One riot, one trooper.’”

“Oh, no you don’t,” Beaudine said, puffing up like she might explode. “That’s ‘One riot, one ranger.’ Don’t you be co-opting Texas expressions.”

Trooper Evans shot a save-me glance at Quinn. “You must be Special Agent Beaudine.”

“Well, that sucks,” Beaudine said, deflating at once. “You recognized the bitchy one as me…”

“Not at all,” Evans said. “My boss told me you were injured. Before I took this job, I was a firefighter/paramedic. The powers that be asked me to ride with you and do double duty as another gun who could take care of getting you patched up. There was a whole separate aircraft with the Trooper Swat Team on their way out here, but when you sent word the Russian girl had already departed for Anchorage they got diverted down there to assist APD.”

Quinn told the relieved Public Health nurse that she didn’t have to fly out after all and then called Clarence on his cell. He and Beaudine followed Trooper Evans back up the stairs with a dejected Kostya Volodin between them. Lieutenant Halsey, a smallish man with a crew cut, sat in the right seat of the cockpit, reading emails on a tablet computer. He welcomed them aboard and told them to sit wherever they wanted.

The plane was set up with a single blue leather seat on either side, with the front two facing aft — back to back with the pilots — while the remaining four faced forward. The interior was comfortable but cramped, and everyone but Beaudine had to stoop to walk down the narrow aisle.

“Change of plans on Polina,” Quinn said when the Village Police Officer finally picked up. It gnawed at his gut that he’d left Kaija’s friend out of his sight, but he chalked it up to fatigue and the hot pursuit of Volodin.

“Good, ’cause she ain’t at her house,” Clarence said over the phone. “I’ll check at the store. Maybe she’s over there.”

“Pick her up when you find her,” Quinn said. “Just hold her at your office. Lock her up if you have to. We’ll get another Trooper plane out here to bring her to Anchorage.”

Clarence groused about it, but agreed.

Trooper Evans grimaced. “I don’t envy him,” he said, helping Beaudine get Volodin buckled into the rearmost seat on the right side of the airplane. “His office is just a broken desk in a leaky warehouse and his lockup is a folding chair beside that desk. And Polina’s not the easiest woman to deal with.” He shrugged. “You work with what you got out here in the village.”

“Okay, ladies and gentleman,” Captain Munjares said five minutes later from the left seat of the C-21. The twin turbofan engines whined as she back-taxied the airplane down the rough gravel to the far north end of the strip getting every inch of usable runway she could. “We’re going to take off to the south. We got a little headwind so that helps. Thankfully, I burned off some fuel getting here, but full disclosure, if it looks like we’re using the road at the end of the runway to get airborne, it’s because we’re actually using the road at the end of the runway.”

Quinn took one of the seats facing aft so he could keep an eye on Volodin, but in truth he was going to have a difficult time keeping his eyes on anything. He sank into the soft leather and felt his worn-out muscles begin to relax one by one. He imagined them looking like the frayed strands of horsehair on his daughter’s violin bow. The wounds in his thigh ached as if they were on fire, but the pain pushed back his fatigue and helped him focus on what he needed to do when they landed in Anchorage. Volodin sat mutely, staring out the window. The picture of a broken man, he seemed to have no idea where his daughter had gone, only that she was in possession of twelve canisters of New Archangel — which according to him, was enough to kill all the inhabitants of several city blocks.

Captain Munjares spooled up the twin turbofan engines once she reached the end of the runway, causing the little jet to rumble and shake in place. Facing aft, Quinn put on a headset and turned in his seat to watch the two pilots get ready to take off. They had their intercom isolated, so he couldn’t hear them talk but watching them work together made him think they might actually get out of this alive. After going over a series of checklists and systems, Munjares craned her head to look out the front windows at the short runway one last time. She took a deep breath and gave her co-pilot a thumbs up. He nodded and returned the gesture. A moment later Quinn was thrown forward against his harness as the airplane rocketed down the gravel strip at full power.

There comes a moment of commitment in every takeoff when the pilot has gone too far to abort without crashing beyond the end of the runway. Munjares got her bird going so fast so quickly that she was committed from the moment she started her roll. Pedal to the proverbial firewall, Munjares yanked her airplane off the runway seconds before she reached the tree line, taking them up at such an extreme angle that for a few seconds Quinn found himself suspended against his seatbelt, looking down from above Volodin and the Trooper. Beaudine was in a similar position beside him but she kept her eyes clenched shut.

Swagger notwithstanding, the relief was evident in the young captain’s face when she turned around and gave a thumbs-up to Quinn.

“That was some impressive flying, Captain,” Quinn said into his microphone, meaning it.

“Thank you, sir,” Munjares shrugged off the compliment.

“Don’t sir me,” Quinn said. “I’m a captain just like you.”

“No, sir,” Munjares said. “You’re a captain who knows the President. He called my boss personally to get me to make this flight.”

“It’s the mission,” Quinn said. “Not me personally.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” Munjares said. “I’ve been told to floor it. We should touch down in Anchorage in forty-one minutes. Forgive me for saying so, but you look like you could use a nap.”

Quinn would have laughed if it hadn’t been so true. He peeled off the headset and looked across at Beaudine. “Do you know the Special Agent in Charge of the Anchorage office?” he asked, watching the agent’s eyes flutter and flinch with exhaustion and the pain that had been unmasked by the relative comfort of the airplane.

“Michele Pond,” Beaudine said. “She taught a couple of classes at Quantico when I was there. Nice enough for a bosslady, I guess.”

“Let’s give her a call,” Quinn said. “According to Palmer she’s running the show in Anchorage. We need to make sure we’re all on the same page when we hit the ground.”

Beaudine took her phone out of her pocket and shook her head. “My battery is about toast,” she said.

Trooper Evans worked his way up the narrow aisle carrying an orange plastic box marked “Trauma Kit” and knelt on the floor in front of their seats. “You’re pretty dehydrated. How about I start a couple of IVs and get some fluids going while you make your calls,” he said. “You both look like you’re the type of people to keel over dead before you’d quit.”

The Trooper was quick and proficient at starting IVs and had good dextrose drips going on both Quinn and Beaudine in a matter of minutes. Beaudine borrowed his phone, punched in the number for the Special Agent in Charge of the Anchorage office of the FBI, introduced herself, and then put the phone on speaker. She leaned back in her seat while she talked, allowing Trooper Evans to clean and dress the wound on her face.

Inside the sterile interior of the airplane, Quinn was able to catch a whiff of his own odor. He gave kudos to Trooper Evans for not gagging when he started the IVs.

A secretary answered the call, but Michele Pond picked up immediately afterward, sounding gracious and accommodating — two characteristics Quinn had not found common to high-level bosses at many federal agencies, much less the FBI. It was apparent that Palmer had told the Special Agent in Charge to bring Quinn up to speed since a person in her position would not normally brief a junior agent and the representative of another agency. It was impossible to tell from her voice, but Pond sounded professional and more “mission” than “ego” oriented.

“Kaija Merculief’s plane landed a half hour before we got your call,” Pond said. “She’s in the wind but hasn’t boarded any planes out so we think she’s still in Alaska. We’ve distributed a copy of her passport photo to everyone under the sun. APD has set up an incident command post. My office has committed all thirty-six field agents. We’re coordinating with Troopers, DEA, ATF, U.S. Marshals, and the Forest Service. All in all, I’d say we have nearly six hundred boots on the ground.”

“What about Zolner?” Quinn asked.

“Your Worst of the Moon is cagey,” Pond said. “We have a record of his charter from Ambler to Fairbanks. After that he disappeared.”

“There are dozens of small planes coming and going out of Fairbanks,” Quinn said, thinking out loud.

“And we’ll eventually find which one he took — if he’s not holed up in a Fairbanks motel with a hooker.”

“I don’t think so, boss,” Beaudine said. “From what we’ve seen of Zolner, he’s not the type to abort a mission until he has what he came for.”

“I hope you’re wrong,” Pond said. “We have enough to worry about without some ghost sniper. DIA has heard of a shooter named Feliks Zolner but no known photos exist. We have a BOLO out on a six-foot-eight guy with blue eyes. So far it’s only netted us a federal judge who got pretty angry when APD put him face down on the sidewalk. Anyway, that’s where we are on Zolner. Our first priority is to lock down a target.”

“Understood,” Quinn said. “Since she can’t get out of state, Merculief will want to do the most damage she can with the gas she has. That means she’ll look for population density. What day is it?”

“I gotta tell you, Quinn,” Pond said. “That doesn’t exactly engender confidence.”

“Ma’am,” Beaudine said, nearly coming out of her seat. “With all due respect, it’s easy to lose track of time when you’ve been through what we’ve been through.”

“You’re right,” Pond said, showing an incredible amount of humility for someone with the terrible cosmic power of a Special Agent in Charge. “It’s Friday.”

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Quinn said. “What do we have going on as far as events?”

There was a shuffle of paper on the line as Pond referred to a list.

“We’ve narrowed it down to four likely targets. There’s a production of The Little Mermaid at the Performing Arts Center, something called The American Forum for Citizenship at the Dena’ina, a punk rock concert at the Alaska Airlines Center, and an Aces hockey game at the Sullivan Arena.”

Quinn glanced up and saw Volodin was listening intently.

“Doctor,” Quinn said. “Did your daughter mention any of those places?”

A tear ran down the old man’s cheek. “I am sorry,” he said. “She did not.”

“Okay,” Quinn said, speaking back into the phone. “The last two attacks were televised. The hockey game will have news cameras.”

“It will,” Pond said. “My media liaison tells me local affiliates have news crews at both the Dena’ina event as well as the rock concert. That leaves The Little Mermaid as the only thing we can mark off in that regard.”

“A lot of kids there,” Quinn said. “Makes for an awfully appealing target even without the cameras.” He resolved to call Kim as soon as he hung up and make sure she stayed home with Mattie for the night.

“Each of the other attacks used only one canister,” Pond said. “We have to consider the possibility that Merculief got help. They could split up and hit multiple targets — or hit no targets at all and just wait and smuggle the gas out of state.”

“True,” Quinn said, knowing they weren’t going to get that lucky. Volodin had been clear that his daughter hated America and capitalism in general. She would want to use the gas at her earliest opportunity, one way or another.

Volodin cleared his throat. “If I may,” he said. “If my daughter does this horrible thing, it will be spontaneous, not well planned. My Kaija did not know we were leaving Russia until I destroyed some of the Novo Archangelsk.” He rubbed his face, his hands still cuffed, looking like he might break into tears. “She is so full of hate…”

“We really have no choice,” Quinn said, looking back at the phone. “We have to put people at all four events.” He looked at his watch. It was five minutes to seven. “What’s APD think about evacuation?”

“It’s a topic of discussion,” Pond said. “The fear is that once we play our hand, Merculief will deploy the gas before we can locate her. So far APD has blocked off access to each venue so no new people are getting in. Those already there are none the wiser… unless they snap to the fact that all the cops and federal agents at these venues have gas masks strapped to their legs.”

A sudden thought crossed Quinn’s mind, and he looked up at Volodin, snapping his fingers to get the dazed man’s attention. “What did Kaija and Polina talk about?”

“Polina…” Volodin smiled. “She is a nice young woman. Very close to having her baby, I think.” He gave Quinn a sly wink. “But I am not that kind of doctor.”

“What did she and Kaija talk about?” Quinn asked again.

“Oh…” Volodin shrugged. “This and that. She did not look very happy to see us.” He looked around the airplane then down at the handcuffs in his lap. “Have I done something wrong? Where is my daughter?”

Quinn turned back to Beaudine and the phone. “I’m not sure if Polina is involved in the gas attacks or if she’s just helping a friend.”

“I know Polina,” Trooper Evans said.

“Yeah, we’ve met her too,” Beaudine said, “and she’s a liar.”

Chapter 61

August Bowen had carried a fight strategy of one form or another in his head from the time he started Golden Gloves in junior high school. Fighting was about working the angles, especially against a stronger opponent, but it was mostly about heart — and Bowen knew he had plenty of that. Unfortunately, brute strength and meanness sometimes trumped even the strongest heart.

It had been difficult enough to find the location for the fight, an eight hundred square-foot storage area off a maze a level below the famed Doyers Street tunnel. A rusted sewer line over a foot in diameter ran along the outer cinderblock wall. One of Bowen’s high school coaches had warned him that he had a tendency to focus on the negative before a fight but the low ceilings and the lingering odor of rotten eggs made it impossible not to imagine a burst pipe. There was no way the two hundred plus fight fans who’d answered Maxim Ortega’s invitation would be able to scramble out of the tunnels before the underground cavern filled with sewage and they all drowned. He kept the little nightmare to himself and tried to focus on the match.

Volodin had arrived first and had stowed his yellow duffle before anyone had a chance to lay eyes on him. Agents from several alphabet soup agencies were already filtering in through the tunnels, placing bets to blend in, and looking for the duffle. No one knew exactly how much of this New Archangel gas Petyr had, but the powers that be weren’t taking any chances. As far as Bowen knew, half the people in the crowd were agents of the federal government — and that suited him right down to the bone. There was a chance that Volodin or his associates would deploy the gas at the fight but the general consensus was that the two hundred ne’er-do-wells clamoring for violence three stories under the belly of Chinatown didn’t make for a very appealing target. Still, terrorists who didn’t put much value on their own lives could easily deploy the gas out of desperation.

Surprisingly, the Ortegas had invested in an actual chain-link octagon and mat for their illicit operation. Twenty-five feet across, the padding on the support posts was more duct tape than foam, and the black vinyl chain-link was worn down to the steel in several places. The mat itself was far from level, with hills and valleys at each seam. Rust-colored bloodstains, from what looked like the remnants of a massacre, covered a five-foot section of the mat near the blue corner. It was a stark reminder of what was about to happen in the ring. Three portable halogen work lights illuminated the area, making it possible for the hungry crowd to see every drop of blood.

Flanked by Thibodaux and Garcia, Bowen bounced and shuffled on his feet to stay loose as Maxim Ortega introduced the fighters using a portable megaphone. Thibodaux had been right about the circus atmosphere of a mismatch. The faces in the crowd ran the gamut from Wall Street executives, Chinese business owners, and a sizable number of wise guys from Knickerbocker Village. Most of them had surely bet on Volodin, the odds on the Russian were so low that most in the crowd were just hungry for blood — and they didn’t particularly care whose it was.

Maxim Ortega stood in the center of the mat as he introduced the fighters in an over-enunciated voice like he was trying to imitate Howard Cosell.

“In the blue corner, wearing black trunks, weighing in at one hundred eight-two pounds, standing five feet ten inches tall, the challenger, August, Baby Bear, Bowwweeeennn.” Bowen had unwisely left his fight name up to Ortega.

Bowen’s prematurely silver hair made many in the crowd call him an old man. But it was obvious from his physique that if he was old, he was in incredible shape. Well muscled, though not overly so, he was built more like a decathalete than a cage fighter. A prominent pink scar, the visible portion roughly the size of a football, covered the lower ribs on his right side — a badge of war earned from an explosion near Mazar-i-Sharif. The unseen portion of the wound covered his right thigh — and a good portion of his psyche.

Crowds don’t root for relative unknowns, so even those who’d ventured a bet on Bowen, answered his introduction with a chorus of hardy boos. Thibodaux told him to forget about the rabble, and dabbed a tiny bit of Vaseline on his eyebrows while Ortega continued his blaring theatrical intro.

“… In the red corner, wearing blue trunks, weighing in at two hundred and forty-one pounds and standing six feet three inches tall, a hometown boy from Brooklyn, Petyr, The Wolf, Voloooooodin!”

The crowd erupted, cheering for their hero as he danced around the inside of the octagon, waving massive arms over his head to egg them on. He flexed his chest, making the eight pointed star tattoos bounce on his pectoral muscles as he growled and leered, pounding his gloved hands together. Bowen was not easily intimidated, but this guy looked twice as big as when he’d come into Cheekie’s.

“Whatever you do,” Thibodaux said, “do not meet this clown head on.”

Garcia squirted a jet of water in Bowen’s mouth and stuck the guard in his mouth like she knew how to work a corner.

The brunette ring girl practically bubbling out of a red bikini held up the Round 1 card and began her circuit around the inside of the octagon. Volodin reached out with his glove to touch her but she swatted him away.

“Good luck, mango,” Garcia said as Bowen spit into a bucket. “You got this.”

“Don’t listen to her,” Thibodaux said, just before the air horn sounded. “Remember what I said. No head-on fightin’. That guy’s gonna eat your children.”

Bowen knew he was in trouble fifteen seconds into the five-minute round. Volodin shot in around both legs and took him straight to the mat, driving the wind from his lungs and nearly putting him in an arm bar. Bowen was able to roll out and scramble to his feet, dazed, and a hair wiser. The takedown did little but embolden the Russian, and he tried to rush in again after a couple of feinting jabs. Bowen understood feinting jabs more than double-leg tackles, and he tagged The Wolf on his blocky chin with a wicked jab hook combination. It would have dropped a lesser man, but Volodin shook it off. It was clear he didn’t want to get hit again though and kept his distance, circling and looking for an opening. The two men traded jabs for a time, with Volodin executing several devastating kicks to Bowen’s left knee, effectively chopping him down like a tree, one whack at a time. Each kick made the deputy feel as though he was trying to walk out a Charlie horse, all while someone was trying to take his head off.

Eventually, Volodin kicked and jabbed enough to work Bowen back against the cage. Thibodaux yelled at him to “circle out!” and stay away from the other fighter, but Bowen could hear little beyond the whoosh of blood in his ears.

Volodin used the backstop of the cage to his advantage, crashing in suddenly to smear the deputy into the chain link. With much of The Wolf’s two hundred and forty pounds centered against his chest Bowen found it impossible to draw a breath. Fleeting images of sparky stars began to swirl in his head, and for a moment, he thought his entire body might be strained through the chain link like a sieve. He got his legs wrapped around the Russian’s midsection and somehow had enough presence of mind to keep his hands up to defend himself, but he knew it was going to be over soon.

Bowen felt the referee’s body wedging in between him and Volodin, and for a moment, thought the fight had been called. The sound of the air horn signaling the end of round one worked its way into Bowen’s brain as he took a lungful of air. Volodin stalked off to his corner while Bowen clamored to his feet, certain that the reprieve was only temporary.

“What are you doin’ out there, Gus Gus?” Thibodaux asked, dropping a stool in the blue corner so Bowen could sit. “I told you to roll out. No head-on shit. Got me?”

Bowen nodded, saving his breath.

Garcia gave him a squirt of water. “No word yet from any of our guys on the duffle,” she said. “You still good?”

Bowen nodded, working to calm himself and take advantage of the full sixty seconds of rest. He was in better-than-average shape, but going all out for five minutes took its toll, and he could feel his legs turning rubbery. He had to do something to finish this quickly.

“Stop treatin’ this like a contest,” Thibodaux said. “You’re job is to stay alive until we get what we need.”

The warning buzzer sounded and the ring girl came through holding up the Round 2 card. In a repeat of the first round, Volodin reached out to grope her. She tried to bat his glove away, but he managed to get his meat hooks on her hips and yanked her backward onto his lap. Laughing derisively, he grabbed her breasts from behind before she was able to wriggle free and run from the ring with her card. Had it been a sanctioned event, he would have been disqualified, but in an underground fight, the behavior went largely unnoticed by everyone — except August Bowen.

Thibodaux and Garcia exited the ring and watched Bowen go straight at Volodin.

Garcia’s hand shot to her mouth. “What’s he doing?”

“Exactly what I told him not to.” Thibodaux grinned. “My bad. Gus Gus don’t know how to fight any other way but head-on. I’m guessin’ the righteous wrath of Bowen is about to rain down on Petyr the Wolf for his bad behavior.”

And indeed it did. The Russian danced sideways at the deputy’s rapid attack, still cocky, circling around to throw another low kick. Rather than trying to outbox him, Bowen bent his knee and let the kick slide up his leg, catching it with his left hand while he drove forward with his right, tagging Volodin in the chin. He could have executed a single leg takedown — and ended up on the ground, which was the Russian’s domain. Instead, Bowen let the leg fall as he pressed in, raining jabs and hooks from a half-dozen different angles at the Wolf’s head and face. Some landed, some didn’t, but Bowen kept the punches coming, causing the Russian to duck and raise his guard enough to expose his ribs.

A hook shot to the liver is one of the most devastating blows in boxing. Bowen had eaten more than his share — and come away from every one thinking he’d rather take a ballpeen hammer on the chin. Digging in, he drove a powerful left into Petyr’s unprotected side, digging in to the man’s ribs and causing his eyes to roll back in his head. His hands dropped and Bowen hit him two more times in the face before the Russian collapsed to the mat. Bowen moved in for more but the ref waved him off.

It was over.

Thibodaux ran into the ring followed by Garcia who had a cell phone to her ear.

“They have the duffle,” she said. “The Bureau and NYPD Emergency Services just sealed the exits. A couple of likely Islamic State dudes are in custody — evidently here to grab the nerve gas.”

Thibodaux took a pair of cuffs out of his back pocket and pulled Petyr Volodin’s hands behind his back.

“Any… Russians… in custody?” Bowen said, leaning against the ring to catch his breath while he peeled off the gloves. Ortega tried to raise his hand as the winner but the deputy swatted the man away and told him to get lost.

“Maybe Black Hundreds,” Garcia said. “I’m sure our guys are rounding up more as we speak.”

“Russians?” Petyr groaned, his battered face pressed to the mat. “It’s Anakin’s men, here to stab me in the liver.”

“Well, don’t it suck to be you,” Thibodaux said, dragging The Wolf to his feet.

Chapter 62

“That wasn’t my fault,” Captain Amy Munjares said when she bounced the C-21 onto the runway at Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson. “That was the asphalt…”

Special Agent Khaki Beaudine looked out the window at the lights of Anchorage. The fluids and sugars from the IV had worked better than a jolt of caffeine — and the jolt of caffeine from the onboard coffee hadn’t hurt either. She very nearly forgot her rule about no public tears when she realized they had made it back to civilization — even if she did smell like an outhouse that had been doused with blood and oil then set on fire. Quinn sat across from her, talking to their welcoming party on his cell while Trooper Evans removed the IV catheter from the back of his hand and covered the spot with a cotton and a piece of clear tape.

“I’m assigned to the two of you,” the trooper said as they taxied toward an open hangar off the flight line. “There’s supposed to be a patrol SUV here waiting on us.”

Both Quinn and the Trooper waited for Beaudine to exit the airplane first.

Beaudine put a hand over her brow and squinted at the incredibly bright lighting inside the hangar. The waxed concrete floor was white and immaculate, adding to the glare. She’d known Quinn’s daughter and ex-wife would be there to greet him, but the way he’d talked about her, Beaudine thought the daughter would be older. To her surprise, a little girl with long dark hair waited at the bottom of the boarding ladder. A small blond woman, pretty, but with a fierce face, stood beside her. She wore long pants but the ankle of a metal prosthetic was clearly visible above her hiking shoes.

Aunt Abbey’s rifle in one hand, Beaudine hitched her pack up on her shoulder and gave the women a tentative wave. She could smell the wonderful odor of shampoo and body lotion before she even reached the ground.

“We brought you some clothes,” Mattie said, grinning. It was remarkable that this beautiful little girl didn’t scream when she saw the horrific wound on Beaudine’s face. Instead, she held out a pair of folded blue jeans and a black T-shirt. “Mom had some unopened packs at home. Daddy said you’re about her size.”

Kim handed Quinn a black leather jacket before pulling him in for an enveloping hug as if they were still married.

“Sorry about the stench,” he said.

“You’ve smelled worse,” Kim said, backing away, her eyes welling.

Trooper Evan’s phone chirped. He picked up and then handed it off to Beaudine. “Your boss,” he said.

It was Special Agent in Charge Pond. Beaudine’s phone had fully charged on the airplane, but the SAIC only had the Trooper’s number.

“Yes, ma’am,” Beaudine said. “I’m putting you on speaker.”

Pond gave a quick rundown of all the security measures that were being put in place at the last minute — a testament to the adaptability of a population of Anchorage who knew they had no one else to count on for the first thirty-six hours of any emergency.

“Still no sight of Feliks Zolner,” she said. “We’ve blasted out a photo of Kaija Merculief over emails and internal databases. Every gun-toter in Alaska who’s ever even heard of the JTTF is either standing post or out looking for this girl.”

“Any luck narrowing down the venues for possible targets?” Quinn said. He kissed his daughter on the top of her head.

“The ones we discussed are all soft targets,” Pond said. “What’s your take on the play at the Performing Arts Center? It fits the profile of the football-game attack in Texas. The place is packed with families and kids. We’re going to evacuate the building when everyone gets up for intermission in a little over half an hour.”

“Good idea,” Quinn said, rubbing his face in thought. “Tell me about the thing at the Dena’ina Center?”

“The American Forum for Citizenship,” Pond said. “Turns out the Forum is sponsoring a state competition for youth. Something called Students for Civic Action — or SCA. About three hundred middle school and high school students from all over the state are competing — add the parents and teachers to that, and it’s a pretty juicy target as well. That’s the place APD accosted the federal judge they thought was Zolner.”

“Is he still there?” Quinn asked.

“He wanted to stay but the Marshals talked him into leaving. Wasn’t too hard when they reminded him what the gas did to the people in Dallas.”

“I’d like to check out that site,” Beaudine said. “The new Black Hundreds hates everything the West stands for. American citizenship and civic action seems like something Kaija would want to stop.”

“She’s right,” Quinn said. “That would make a statement. Trooper Evans said he’ll drive us. The Performing Arts Center is just a block away. We’ll check the Dena’ina first, then head over and watch for her when you evacuate the play.”

“Very well,” Pond said, ending the call.

Quinn kissed his daughter on the head again before picking up the duffle of fresh clothes his ex-wife had brought him and heading for the men’s room.

“I guess I better go change too,” Beaudine said. “Hate to look at myself in the mirror though.”

“Hang around Jericho for too long and you’ll get wounded,” Kim said.

“I’m not wounded,” Mattie said, frowning at her mother.

Kim shot a glance at Beaudine. “He said you looked out for him out there. Thank you.”

“I would have died eight times without him,” Beaudine said.

“Maybe so,” Kim said. “But it keeps him going when he has someone to save.”

Two Anchorage Police officers wearing navy blue jackets and black wool watch caps against the cold October evening allowed Trooper Evans through the roadblock on D Street outside Fifth Avenue Mall. A Kevlar helmet was clearly visible inside the open door of one of the cruisers, within easy reach. Each officer had a three-foot hickory baton in a ring on his belt beside the black bag that contained a gasmask. “Hats and bats” meant they were prepared to get serious about the roadblock. Beaudine couldn’t help but think how much less civilized civilization felt since she’d seen it last.

APD had roadblocks at all four possible targets, but they’d cordoned off an area of twenty-five city blocks in order to conserve manpower while grabbing both the Dena’ina and the Performing Arts Center inside the perimeter. There was still no mass evacuation at this point. They just weren’t letting anyone inside.

Trooper Evans took his SUV through a secondary roadblock as he turned off G Street and parked in a loading zone on Seventh Avenue in front of the Dena’ina.

“We’re dealing with nerve gas here,” Beaudine said as she got out of the backseat. “We have plenty of plain clothes agents inside. There’s no need for you to go inside.”

“Nice try,” Evans said, giving her an easy grin. “But you’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m an Alaska State Trooper. We blend in around here like the postman.” He nodded to a very green looking APD officer posted at the entrance. “Plus, it’ll keep you from having to show your badge all the time.”

The exterior of the Dena’ina Center was essentially a wall of windows all the way up to the top floor, three levels up. Even before they went inside, Beaudine could see the crowd of people packed into the lobby and reception area. Proud parents posed for pictures with their children in front of a life-size copy of the Constitution along the far wall. Exhausted adults took the time, after what must have been a long day of competition, to drink mock champagne and recharge. Beaudine estimated there were at least two hundred people in the lobby alone. Some program must have just ended upstairs, bringing a steady flow of flushed youth and beleaguered adults down the escalators.

Quinn turned as soon as they got inside. “Who’s the agent in charge here?”

Beaudine looked at the note she’d scribbled on her hand. She was so tired she didn’t trust herself to remember. “Margot Fischer,” she said. “A supervisory agent with the Bureau.” She stood on tiptoe trying to get a better look at the faces in the packed lobby, then nodded toward the elevators just across from the entrance. “We need to get to higher ground.”

“Agreed,” Quinn said, pushing his way past a table of teenage boys wearing white shirts and American flag ties. “The elevators are this way. See if you can get Fischer on the phone. This place looks ripe to me.”

“Think we should evac?” Beaudine asked.

“I’m all for that,” Trooper Evans said. “If I was going to pop gas for maximum effect, this would be the place.”

“Let’s take a look from up top first,” Quinn said, turning in front of the elevators. “Something’s bothering me. Dr. Volodin says his daughter has become extremely anti-Semitic. From what I read on the plane, the Black Hundreds are all about a pure, white Russia.” He turned to push the elevator call button. “Why would Polina help out in such a cause? And if she’s so prejudiced, why would Kaija Merculief link up with a Native?”

Trooper Evans shook his head. “Polina isn’t native.”

“What?” Beaudine took a step back.

Evan’s scrolled through his phone. “I worked the Kobuk for three years while I was stationed in Kotzebue. Polina Stewart is as gussaq as they come.”

“She’s white…?” Beaudine said. “But… we talked to her.”

“We talked to someone.” Quinn looked at the trooper. “Pregnant, early twenties, little birthmark at the corner of her lip.”

The elevator door opened and they stepped aside for a dozen spit-shined youth on their way to the reception in the lobby.

“That’s Ruby Ingik,” Evans said. “She’s Polina’s best friend so I’m not surprised she covered for her.” He held up his phone to show a photo of a pretty brunette in front of the faded yellow house in Ambler. “This is Polina,” he said. “Easy to recognize her from the half-shaved head.”

Beaudine let out a deep sigh. “So we’re looking for a pregnant woman with an undercut…”

They stepped onto the elevator.

Quinn pressed the button for the third level. “If she’s even preg—”

The distinctive crack of a rifle from the floors above cut him off at the same moment the elevator doors slid shut.

Chapter 63

Quinn’s hand dropped to the grip of his Kimber the moment he heard the shot. His first reaction was to try and get back off the elevator, but his gut told him to move toward the sound of the gunfire.

“Sounds like Kaija Merculief is down,” Trooper Evans said, head cocked to the side, listening to his radio earpiece.

“Where?” Quinn asked. The elevator chimed as it passed the second floor.

“Bottom level,” Evans said. “She was dressed like the staff serving at the lobby reception. No word who got her yet. And no sign of the gas.”

“We need to evacuate,” Quinn said. “And get that picture of Polina out to everyone. I’m betting she’s still out there.”

“Roger that,” Beaudine said.

“I’ll send you the photo,” Evans said. Since he was in uniform, he stood at the door, ready to make a hole in the crowd that would surely be fleeing the sound of the shot. When the elevator doors slid open, it wasn’t a crowd they faced, but the cold blue eyes of Feliks Zolner.

The Russian grabbed the trooper by his collar and pulled him straight into a brutal punch in the jaw. Evans sagged, staggering forward and falling to one knee as he tried to regain his footing. Directly behind him, Beaudine rushed in, knocking Quinn sideways in the close confines of the elevator. Zolner was a foot and a half taller, but he was startled by her presence and earned himself a solid slap to the ear before he was able to swat her away. The feisty FBI agent grabbed his arm, rolling up in a ball and kicking out with both legs at the Russian’s exposed gut. He bellowed, more in frustration than pain and slammed her against the edge of the elevator door like a hammer, scraping her off but losing his backpack in the process.

Keeping up his momentum, Zolner rushed into the open elevator, driving Quinn backward and upward, shoving his head and shoulders through the opaque plastic ceiling. Kimber in his hand, Quinn raised both arms to protect his head and face from the metal support structure as the giant Russian slammed him upward again and again.

A thin piece of steel frame hooked on the right arm of his leather jacket, yanking the Kimber from his hand and leaving him suspended from the top of the elevator like a punching bag.

Head above the ceiling, Quinn wondered why no one was helping him. Pulling upward in a frantic effort to unhook himself, he twisted and kicked to keep Zolner at bay. He heard a chime above the throbbing of his own pulse and felt the telltale lurch as the car began to descend.

Still suspended and trapped by the heavy leather of his jacket, Quinn spun in a full circle, narrowly avoiding a slash to his own throat on the jagged plastic of the demolished ceiling. The Kimber lay right in front of him on a metal ceiling support, less than an inch from the edge, one good nudge away from falling into the elevator. Quinn knew if the Russian got his hands on the pistol while he still hung like a side of beef, it would be over in an instant.

Quinn doubled his efforts and pulled up with his right arm, straining against exhaustion and the old wounds in his shoulder and ribs. Below, Zolner must have seen blood weeping from the shotgun-pellet wounds. The Russian began to pummel him mercilessly in the thigh. Sick to his stomach from wave after wave of pain, Quinn clawed for the gun with his free hand, missing it by a fraction of an inch, but gaining enough of a handhold on an upright metal strut that he was able to unhook his sleeve.

Quinn hit the floor hard, bending his knees but feeling it in his teeth. He was able to keep his feet but Zolner towered over him, raining down sloppy but powerful blows. His back to the cold wall of the elevator, Quinn covered up, blocking the blows with his elbows and forearms. The Russian had ten inches of height, a good foot of reach, and seventy-five pounds on Quinn. A glancing right hook slid off his hand and into his forehead, staggering him and shoving him sideways. He followed the motion toward the corner, dragging his feet so as not to get them tangled in the process.

The corner could be a friend and force multiplier in close-quarter battle. It gave Zolner a diminishing V in which to attack and protected Quinn from the wide and ungainly haymakers the big Russian seemed to favor. This forced Zolner to bring his attack straight in.

When Zolner committed with a left jab, Quinn parried, stepping into the shadow of the much larger man and punching downward into Zolner’s unprotected groin. The blow was surely nauseating but had the added shearing effect from the angle. The Russian roared, bending forward in pain and putting his chin in perfect line for Quinn’s left uppercut. The blow would have finished the fight on a lesser man but Zolner lashed out with both hands, catching Quinn in the ear by accident with a massive left paw.

Quinn fell back to his corner arms up, looking for a new angle of attack. He caught a look of something he hadn’t expected in Zolner’s eyes. It wasn’t fear. Quinn was not sure the big man had the capacity to fear. Zolner was unsettled. Just as a shooter needed a respiratory pause before a shot, a fighter had to be settled — fully joined in battle.

Zolner was a bully and he was big. His previous opponents were surely little more than victims of a quick gunshot or beat down. There was a good chance that no one had ever had the audacity to fight back. The taste of his own blood was something new and it was clear in the Russian’s eyes that he wanted to be finished with it.

Sloppy as he was, Zolner moved like a machine, with each ungainly punch packing just as much power as the last. Quinn felt himself fading and knew he had to do something to even the odds. He’d fought taller opponents before, and found that if he couldn’t bring them down to his level, he could usually use parts of their body to climb up and get a good choke or strike.

Waiting until Zolner stepped forward with another left jab, Quinn pushed off the wall to step onto the top of the Russian’s exposed calf muscle, intent on climbing up his body and enveloping him in a choke. Fatigue and pain made him a fraction of a second too slow and Zolner grabbed him around the hips. Roaring what were surely Russian curses, he battered the ceiling again and again with Quinn’s head and shoulders. Shards of broken plastic ripped Quinn’s jacket and cut his head and neck, raining down on Zolner. Arms up in an effort to fend off the metal ceiling supports, Quinn saw the Kimber on the third trip up.

In the fog of battle, everything but getting his hands on the pistol fell away from Quinn’s mind. It took him two more trips through the ceiling, but he was able to grab it on the way back down. Without pausing, he flicked the safety down with his thumb and shot Zolner in the top of the head.

The elevator doors opened at the first floor to a phalanx of blue. APD officers in gasmasks poured in around him. Quinn let the Kimber fall to the floor and raised his hands. The hydrostatic pressure of a 10mm round through the top of Zolner’s head proved devastating. Blood and bits of the Russian covered Quinn’s chest and belly. Even his face felt moist. Two of the officers dry heaved into their masks.

“Federal Agent!” Quinn muttered, dazed from exhaustion and the after-effects of adrenaline.

One of the officers stepped in to grab Quinn by the shirt and drag him out of the elevator, away from Zolner’s lifeless body. The officer passed Quinn off to someone else, then secured the pistol.

“Get your hands behind your back!” The second officer said, putting a thigh lock on Quinn’s neck. His voice was tense, disembodied from the gasmask filter.

“I’m… I’m a… federal…” Quinn said, his words garbled gibberish in his ears. “Beaudine? Polina? Gas?”

“FBI!” Khaki Beaudine’s Texas accent cut through the fog of Quinn’s mind.

He was vaguely aware of her pushing her way through the uniformed officers to stoop down and help prop him against the wall.

“Polina?” He asked again, trying to get to his feet.

Beaudine patted his arm keeping him down. “She’s done, Jericho. She was about to deploy the gas. I had to shoot her with the .22 rifle Zolner had in his pack. It’s the same gun he used on Kaija.”

“Wait,” Quinn said. “Zolner shot Merculief, and you shot Polina?”

“Yes and yes,” Beaudine said. “Polina was bent over the gas canisters down in the lobby. I didn’t have a choice. That shaved undercut made it easy to spot her.” She gave a somber shake of her head. One of the sutures above her eye had pulled through the skin during her altercation with Zolner. “She’s not going to make it, but an ambulance is taking her to Alaska Regional now to try and save the baby.”

“The New Archangel?” Quinn muttered, feeling the dark edges of the world creeping in around him. Repeated bashing against the elevator ceiling had taken its toll.

“APD has it in hand,” Beaudine said, patting his shoulder again. “With the eight canisters Jacques got in New York and the dozen in Kaija’s case, that makes the twenty Volodin said were out there.”

Quinn swayed for a moment, staring into her face, grinning stupidly. “Ha,” he said, before his world went black. “You just did math…”