Flight 12: A Jonathan Quinn Thriller

CHAPTER 3

Nothing was like the silence of being alone with a corpse. Even in the middle of one of the largest cities in the world, where the hum of life never stopped, the quiet was so all encompassing it could overwhelm those unprepared. For Quinn, though, it was a sensation he knew well, an old acquaintance he ran into time and again.

He looked down at the body. Over the years he had become an expert at reading the dead. And though he might not have known them in life, he could easily see who they’d been.

The courier had a kind face. Pretty in that girl-next-door kind of way. She might not have turned every head when she walked into a room, but many would have looked her way. She had probably entered the secret world the way most did — recruited by someone who had seen something in her. It was how Durrie had recruited Quinn, and how Quinn had recruited Nate. The excitement of the job and the chance to see the world had probably appealed to her. Whatever her reasons for saying yes, they had all led to this — death in an undersized park on a late New York night.

“What happened to you?” he asked under his breath, once more unable to quell his curiosity.

A courier’s job was a deceptively dangerous one. Years could go by without a problem, but all it took was that one time when the courier carried something others would do anything to obtain. Tune had said the girl’s bag was missing, so that was probably the case here. But Quinn wondered, as he touched the box in his pocket, if her killer had missed what he or she had come for.

Nate had said the box fell from her sleeve.

Quinn hesitated, knowing he should leave it alone, but he couldn’t stop himself. He pulled out his pocketknife and cut a slit in the plastic wrap just large enough so he could work her hand and wrist out.

Her jacket had a large, folded-back cuff. Perhaps the box had fallen into it when she’d been shot. As he turned it down, he detected a stiff band of plastic inside the cuff. Not something he’d like in a jacket, but he wasn’t exactly up on the latest fashions. The underside of the cuff was covered in a soft fabric a few shades lighter than the rest of the jacket. At first, there didn’t appear to be anything unusual, but as he ran a finger along the seam where the cuff folded, he found several stitches missing.

He slipped his finger into the gap and discovered that the hole wasn’t there because of wear and tear, but it had been purposely created as the opening to a small pocket.

He retrieved the box and moved it through the slit. A perfect fit. He also realized this explained the stiff plastic. When the cuff was folded up, the band would hide the presence of the box from a quick search.

He heard another car enter the street so he quickly put the box back into his pocket and reinserted the woman’s hand through the hole in the plastic. When the vehicle stopped next to the park and popped open its trunk, he knew it was Nate.

As soon as his partner was out of the car, Quinn tossed him the duffel bags, then went back and hoisted the woman over his shoulder. He carried her back to the fence and handed her across.

“Got her,” Nate said after he’d slipped his arms under the woman.

While Nate put her in the trunk, Quinn hopped the fence and climbed into the driver’s seat. Lying in the wheel well on the passenger side were the car’s license plates — Nate having done the job the way Quinn had trained him. If someone spotted them, all the witness would be able to tell the police was that they had left in a dark sedan. And how many of those were in New York City?

The trunk clicked closed, and as soon as Nate jumped into the passenger seat, Quinn shoved the car into DRIVE and sped off.

Both men were silent for the first several blocks, listening for sirens, but the city remained at rest. When Quinn felt they were safe, he pulled into an alley and stopped so that Nate could reattach the license plates. Back on the road, Nate switched his phone to speaker and called Daeng, but the line rang until the voice-mail message came on.

“Call Orlando,” Quinn told him.

Three rings. “Come on!” Orlando answered. “Just because you’re three hours ahead of me doesn’t mean it’s not late out here, too.”

“We’ve got a situation,” Quinn told his girlfriend and partner back home in California.

“What do you mean, ‘situation’?” she asked, all business now. “I thought you were done.”

As he always did, Quinn had copied her on the completion notification he’d sent to the client.

“Helen called,” he said.

Silence. “She called you directly.” Orlando’s voice was dangerously calm.

“Yeah.”

“Well, isn’t that nice? What did she want?”

The work agreement they had with Helen was that all assignments would go through Orlando, the de facto operations manager of the team.

“She had something here in New York she needed us to take care of.”

“She knew you were there?”

“Yeah. Apparently she found out through Annabel.”

“This just keeps getting better and better. I hope you told her no.”

“If I had, we wouldn’t be in a situation.”

She took a deep, annoyed breath. “Spill it.”

He quickly told her what had happened. “I don’t know what’s going on with Daeng. See if you can find him and help him out. You might also want to call Helen and let her know she’ll have to pull a few strings if the police grab him.”

“Oh, I’m calling Helen. Don’t you worry about that. Is there anything you need?”

“If you have time, it might be helpful to know who killed the courier.”

“Why? You expecting trouble?”

Quinn hesitated. “Maybe.”

Nate looked at Quinn, his brow furrowed. “Something I should know?”

“I think that chip you found could have been what they were after.” He described the hidden pocket in the woman’s cuff.

When he finished, Orlando asked, “Do you know her name?”

“No. But Helen should be able to tell you.”

“She might not be interested in sharing that info.”

“I’m sure you can convince her.”

“I’ll snap a picture of the girl and text it to you as soon as we’re done,” Nate said.

Orlando sighed. “All right, I’ll see what I can do. One request — try not to take any more jobs before you finish the one you’re on.”

She hung up.

“I don’t think she’s happy,” Nate said.

“Figure that out on your own, did you?”

Getting their hands on the courier had been easy for Morgan and Fischer. Their employer had learned where the handoff was to take place, allowing them to arrive in the area first. After identifying the man the courier was to meet, they had shoved an ice pick into his heart and then dumped his body in a trash bin several alleys away from the exchange location. After that, it was a simple matter of taking the dead man’s place.

The plan hadn’t been to kill her, only to get the chip she was carrying. The fact that she was dead was her fault. All she had to do was believe they were her contacts and everything would have been fine. But the bitch was too suspicious, and Fischer had been forced to use his .22 before they could get close enough to choke the life out of her.

That should have been the end of it. They should have been back at their hotel already, resting up for their midnight flight to Rome, where they would deliver the chip to their client, Nicholas Loban.

But Fischer had taken the courier’s bag without searching it or the woman first, assuming the chip was inside. Morgan had gone through the bag while Fischer was driving them back to the hotel.

When they realized the chip wasn’t there, they had rushed back to the park, hoping the body hadn’t been discovered yet. Morgan was, at first, pleased not to find a battalion of police swarming through the area, but what he spotted a moment later was worse.

A couple of pros were watching the park. If Morgan hadn’t taken the time to do a drive-by first, Fischer would have likely blundered right in and been shot dead by now. How someone could be so talented with a weapon and yet so clueless when it came to spycraft, Morgan had never been able to figure out. If not for Fischer’s skills, Morgan would have let the assassin walk into an early grave years ago.

After parking on a neighboring street, they worked their way onto the roof of a building a few hundred feet away from the body so they could get a better idea of what was going on. Not long after they settled in, one of the two pros left the park and picked the lock of a nearby restaurant.

“Must be hungry,” Fischer had said.

Morgan knew better.

A little more than thirty minutes later, a man walked onto the street below them and headed for the restaurant. From the way he seemed to take everything in, Morgan knew he was another pro.

The door was locked when he tried it, but as he walked away the guy who’d hidden inside came out. Two more men crossed the street to join them, then the guy from the restaurant led the three newcomers to the park. Though the trees blocked much of what was happening from Morgan’s view, it became apparent when the two original men left that some kind of shift change was on.

Morgan didn’t think the new men were there just to watch, though. Why send three to do a job two or even one could handle? Body removers, he thought. It was the only thing that made sense.

One of the trio — the Asian guy — left, while the other two stayed with the body.

Morgan pulled out his phone.

“What are you doing?” Fischer asked.

“Lighting a little fire.”

He dialed 911, special software in his phone scrambling his caller ID.

“Nine-one-one, where’s the emergency?”

Morgan gave the operator the address of the building across the street. “There’s a Japanese place on the first floor. Some men just broke in.”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah. The doors are open now.”

“How many people?”

“Four, I think.”

“Can you describe them?”

Morgan purposely said nothing.

“Sir, can you describe the men who went into the restaurant?”

Morgan waited another beat before saying, “Hello? Can you hear me? Are you still there?”

“I’m here, sir. Can you describe—”

“Hello? Hello?”

He disconnected the call.

“What good is that going to do?” Fischer asked.

“Just watch.”

A few minutes later, an SUV pulled onto the street. A quick check through the binoculars revealed the driver was the Asian guy, but he barely made it half a block before a police car turned onto the road behind him. Something about the SUV must have caught the cops’ attention because their lights flashed on. Suddenly, what the police probably thought would be a routine traffic stop turned into a chase, and within seconds, both cars were gone.

That hadn’t gone exactly as Morgan had envisioned. Still, one of the men was out of the picture now, which was definitely a good thing. Morgan was contemplating calling the police again when a second squad car showed up. This time the cops searched the street, though they stopped short of going all the way to the park. As soon as they left, the two men who were with the courier’s body made their move.

That was the fire Morgan had been hoping to light.

He tapped Fischer on the shoulder and headed quickly for the fire escape.

Less than a minute later, they rounded the corner in their Mercedes, headlights off, just in time to see the other vehicle pull away from the park.

I got you, Morgan thought.