State of Emergency

CHAPTER 27

The journey to reach the most dangerous race on earth was a race in and of itself. A ten-hour flight from Dulles to Buenos Aires saw Quinn standing in line for over an hour and a half to clear customs. He checked his phone and smiled when he saw two missed calls from Ronnie Garcia. He called her back, but got her voice mail. His phone began to buzz in his pocket again the moment he made it to the front of the line. A female Argentine customs officer waved him forward, her face stern though her gaudy red lipstick was painted into a smile. There was no way he would answer a cell phone call on her watch. Ronnie was back in class by the time the customs officer was through with him.

From the international airport it was another hour and a half through the city skirting crowds of out-of-work thirtysomethings who marched in what the cabdriver grudgingly called protest del dia, to Aeroparque Jorge Newbery, where he grabbed a domestic hop to Mar del Plata — the starting line of the Dakar.

A day and half after they’d left D.C., the Quinn brothers and Jacques Thibodaux stood with their orange KTM 450 race bike under the white tent along the breezy beaches of Argentina’s third-largest city. Thousands of people had flocked from all over the world to watch the opening ceremonies. The streets were alive with prerace parties and impromptu tangos. Liquor and maté, South America’s ubiquitous tea-like drink, flowed in abundance and abandon. The fragrant aromas of baking bread and grilled lamb, seasoned with just a hint of motor oil, settled comfortably over the crowds.

It was late afternoon and the area was a madhouse of prerace activity. Judges and engineers from the Amaury Sport Organisation swarmed over each motorcycle, Mini Cooper, Hummer, four-wheeler, and monster truck that planned to compete in the Dakar. The ASO was the same organization that sponsored the Tour de France and they had their bureaucracy well established. It was a nerve-wracking process known as scrutineering. Every item had to be checked, from required safety gear and engine size to the noise level of each vehicle’s exhaust.

The contestants had snatched little more than a few minutes of sleep at a stretch over the past days leading up to the race. The additional stress of having their machines scrutinized by the overly discerning eyes of ASO engineers only added to the growing pit in their collective guts.

Quinn trusted Mrs. Miyagi to make certain the KTM conformed to Dakar regulations. The bike was generally stock so there was little chance it would break any rules. Valentine Zamora, on the other hand, was spun into the rafters, spitting and cursing his mechanics in a black soup of Spanish and English.

He stomped back and forth wearing a gaudy Hawaiian shirt and New York Knicks shorts, checking and then double-checking the decibel measurements coming from the muffler of his Yamaha.

“Imbeciles,” he shouted at his two sheepish mechanics. They were the same young men he’d had with him at the track in Florida. “I pay you good money to get the motorcycle in perfect order and this is what you do to me? I swear to you.” His voice was tight and shrill amid all the buzzing chatter from the crowd of competitors and fans crammed inside the spacious tent.

“Monsieur Zamora,” a young Iranian motorcyclist named Navid Azimi tapped him on the shoulder.

Zamora spun, still spitting curses at his staff. “What is it?”

“You needn’t fret,” Azimi said. He pointed to his own bike, a blue and white Yamaha. “I had the very same issue. Your noise levels are just on the edge — easily remedied with a different muffler. I’m sure your mechanics have several in stock.”

Zamora glared at his staff. “Is this true?”

The two mechanics nodded. “Of course, sir.”

Zamora threw up his hands. “Then why didn’t you say so?” His tirade over for the moment, he looked up and noticed Quinn for the first time. A wide smile spread over his face. “You made it,” he said, walking over to grab Quinn’s hand between his.

Quinn didn’t bother to introduce Bo. Blond-haired and blue eyed, there was little chance he would be thought of as Jericho’s brother. Zamora treated his staff as nothing more than a backdrop for the great adventure of his life, so Quinn followed suit.

“If I may be so bold, where is the lovely Ms. Garcia?” The Venezuelan made a show of scanning the crowd behind Jericho.

“She had to check on her friends in New York,” Quinn said. “You know, that little bombing they had.”

“Of course.” Zamora nodded. “I understand the damage was extensive.”

“I guess.” Quinn shrugged “I stay out of that sort of thing. Too depressing. Anyway, good luck tomorrow.”

Zamora canted his head to one side. “I make my own luck.”

“Sounds ominous.”

“It does, doesn’t it? I don’t mean it that way. I’m hosting a party at my chalet tonight. You should drop by for some wine and a cigar.” Zamora put an arm around Quinn’s shoulders. “Because, tomorrow, friendship takes a backseat to the race. Do you understand?”

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Quinn said.

“Monagas will get you the address. Come by anytime after nine. I don’t plan on sleeping until tomorrow evening—”

One of the mechanics called for Zamora to ask him a question about the new muffler. Focused again on the bike, the Venezuelan turned and left Quinn without another word.

Bo walked up beside him while Jacques saw to the scrutineering of the KTM. He wore faded jeans and a gray mechanic’s shirt with a TEAM QUINN patch over his right pocket.

“See those mean-looking dudes over by the ELF oil booth?” He kept his voice low. Blond hair, mussed as if he’d just gotten out of bed, hung just over the top of his ears. Tan from long hours riding his bike in the Texas sun, he was still lighter than Quinn, fair to his brother’s swarthiness, heavily muscled to Jericho’s wiry strength. Both looked as if they could grow a beard in a matter of minutes if they concentrated hard enough, but Bo’s would have been a sandy red to Jericho’s charcoal black.

“Droopy mustaches, look like brothers?”

“They are,” Bo said. “Andres and Diego Borregos. Heard of ’em?”

Jericho nodded, looking sideways at Bo. “The Borregos brothers run one of the largest drug cartels in Colombia. Just how is it you happen to know them?”

Bo chuckled. “Relax, big brother. We don’t run in the same circles if that’s what you mean. I saw their pictures on CNN, that’s all. You’re not the only one in the fam with a spectacular memory, you know.”

“Sorry,” Quinn said, still not completely convinced. “I’m not surprised they’re here. They may even be sponsoring one of the Colombian riders.”

The Dakar was an expensive proposition. The entry fee alone was over twenty thousand and a good rally motorcycle ran well above fifty thousand dollars. Virtually every rider’s bike and riding gear were plastered with ads for Red Bull, ELF, Loctite, Gauloises cigarettes, or some other commercial venture. Though Quinn’s KTM, entry fee, and operational expenses were completely paid by the American taxpayer, the bike still bore a hodgepodge of sponsor stickers so it wouldn’t stand out from the rest.

“Here come the superstars,” Bo grunted, nodding to the entourage of crew and paparazzi that surrounded the two race favorites. Both riding for Team KTM and sponsored by the company, Nick Caine and Raynard Geroux could not have been any more different. Caine, the hulking South African, had an easy smile and lumbering gait that belied the grace with which he rode a motorcycle. He was patient with reporters and fans alike, giving interviews and signing autographs while other racers would stalk off to their trailers for a shower and hot meal. Though his brooding accent made him something of a chick magnet, every press conference saw him teary eyed and blowing kisses to his beautiful wife and baby daughter back in Cape Town.

Geroux, on the other hand, looked and acted like a bantam rooster. Famous for the neatly trimmed soul patch beneath a sneering smile, he strode past adoring fans without so much as a glance and had to be prodded into signing autographs by his handlers. The tabloids made a great show of the fact he was rarely seen with the same swimsuit model two times in a row.

Though few Americans had ever even heard of the Dakar Rally, it was third only to the Olympics and the World Cup in global attention. There were plenty of other great riders in the race. Navid Azimi, the promising young Iranian, had stepped outside the confined social restraints of his country to rocket to the top of the leaderboard in rally races around the globe. Exceptional riders from the United States, Europe, all over South America, and even Qatar filled the race board, but everyone knew the real contest was between Caine and Geroux.

“Congratulations,” Thibodaux said, wiping his big hands on a shop towel as he walked up. He carried a free emergency kit courtesy of the Loctite booth. “We passed the scrutineers with nary a peep of protest.” He threw back his head in a huge yawn that showed his teeth. “Tomorrow’s a big day, l’ami. We could all use some sleep if we’re gonna be alert enough to look for that… missing item.”

“I’ve noticed something,” Bo said, as they maneuvered back to their bike through the press of onlookers who stood in pockets to watch the scrutineering process. “There is an extremely high percentage of classy women in Argentina. I mean every hot pair of legs I see is sticking out of a pair of designer shorts — hardly a pair of cutoffs among them. I didn’t realize it was so European down here.”

Thibodaux yawned again. “I just heard some guy say Argentines are a bunch of Italians who speak Spanish but think they’re British living in France.”

A flash of red by the tent entry caught Quinn’s eye as he threw a leg over the lanky KTM. Less than twenty yards away stood Russian FSB agent Aleksandra Kanatova. She met his eye, then froze for a long moment as if trying to figure out which way to run. By the time he’d started the 450’s engine, she’d ducked out of the tent and disappeared.

CHAPTER 28

Quinn took the long way home, cruising the bike slowly in and out of the crowds in front of the Mar del Plata Naval Base scanning for any sign of Kanatova. As a competitor, he enjoyed a certain amount of celebrity, and spent a good deal of his ride giving high-fives to children as he rode past.

After twenty minutes he gave up looking for Kanatova and arrived back at the rented flat nearly the same time as Bo and Thibodaux, who’d walked back up the hill. The crickets had already begun to sing and the evening gathered in fast around them.

With all the excitement of the race it was nothing short of a miracle that Winfield Palmer had been able to find them a place in the respectable four-plex on such short notice. Only a mile and a half off the beach, it was perfectly located — far enough from the crowds to sleep, close enough to get where they needed to be with minimal loss of time.

Quinn secured the bike inside the garage and sprinted up the long flight of aged wooden stairs to grab the duffel off the bed in his room. The flight from Dulles, coupled with the stress of the race logistics, left him with a sore back and a knot in his gut.

He’d tried Garcia again, but got her voice mail. Feeling like a stalker for calling so much, he left her a message telling her things were about to get really busy, so he’d check in when he got back. He hoped she understood the subtext of the message — because he sure didn’t.

A long run past Zamora’s chalet would be just the ticket to work out the kinks and clear his head.

“Dude, you’re going for a run?” Bo said, rolling his eyes when Quinn walked back down the stairs dressed in loose running pants and a dark blue T-shirt. “I forgot what an overachiever you are.”

“Helps me think.” Jericho shrugged. “And I like to get the lay of the backstreets as soon as practical.”

“The practical thing is to get some sleep.” Bo gave a long, catlike yawn, arching his back so his belly showed under the tail of his wifebeater shirt. “I’m glad it’s you on the bike, Jer. And I won’t be expected to keep up with you.”

“I gotta call my wife,” Thibodaux said, still trying to untangle himself from being crammed into business-class seating for so many hours on the plane. He stood blinking at the door, swaying like a huge tree in the breeze. “What time is it back home in Spotsylvania, Virginia?”

Bo looked at his watch, a TAG Heuer identical to Jericho’s. “We’re two hours later here, so it’s about nine-thirty.”

“Good,” the big Cajun said, moving his head from side to side as he raised his eyebrows. “Kids’ll be fed and bathed. Maybe Camille will be up for a game of escaped convict and the warden’s wife on the phone… ”

By the time Jericho snugged the laces on his Nikes and took a drink from the kitchen tap, Bo and Jacques had already disappeared to their rooms. Jacques’s belly laugh rattled the walls.

A long run was second only to a good motorcycle ride for clearing Quinn’s mind. Beyond the obvious physical and psychological effects, a run got him outside the false sense of security a rented room gave and allowed him to see if anyone had him under surveillance.

Standing in the moist night air on the cracked concrete driveway of the four-plex, Quinn studied a tourist map of the area under the streetlight. He made a mental note of the streets and alleyways around Zamora’s rented chalet less than a mile away.

When he ran at home Quinn usually stuffed the baby Glock 27 in an across-the-chest rig other runners might use to carry a cell phone or energy bars. It was easy to reach in the event of an emergency and snug enough to keep from bouncing around during a sprint. A pretty brunette with a thick Spanish accent had met them with two plain blue Colt Combat Commanders in .45 caliber, one for Quinn and one for Jacques. A proven weapon since 1911, it was still too large to carry on a run, so Jericho left it in his duffel beside Severance.

Unless he happened to be in a war zone, he was often forced by circumstance to be unarmed when overseas. Always happy to have a sidearm or blade, he knew enough not to bank on traditional protection. Weapons were available everywhere if one only knew where to look for them.

Noting the time of 11:40, Jericho turned and trotted into the darkness.

When the Quinn boys were younger, their father had often taken them hunting in areas known for large populations of Alaska brown bear. Rather than letting them hide frightened in the tent cringing at every crack of a twig or crunch in the gravel late at night, the elder Quinn encouraged his boys to step outside and “take a look” at whatever was out there. Likely as not the noise turned out to be a weasel or night bird, but the old man reasoned that if it did happen to be a bear the thin layer of tent fabric was no more than imagined safety anyway. It was always better to see what wanted to eat you. It was a contradiction, but Quinn felt safer in the open than he did holed up in the dark.

A gentle salt breeze jostled the warm night air as Quinn trotted quietly down the dark and deserted streets. Pools of light and raucous laughter poured out from a bar here or a party there. Dakar Village, the ad hoc city within a city three blocks to the east, lit up the night sky. The steady thrum of tango music sulked over the sea wall and coursed between the buildings of Mar del Plata.

Well into his stride, Quinn ran on, jogging uphill to pass two snarling dogs fighting over something in the shadows. A block away from Zamora’s, he slowed to a walk, catching his breath and popping his neck from side to side. His plan was to watch, gain information, nothing more. But planning on violent action and being prepared for it were two completely different things.

The houses in the quiet, upscale district sat on a small bluff overlooking the silver ribbon of beach and the blackness of the southern Atlantic. Lofty trees lined the streets and ornamental shrubs and stone sculptures set off the careful landscaping of the larger lots. Decades old, each was tucked back in the shadows of their own private garden.

It was late and even the most intense of prerace parties had quieting down. Still, Quinn kept to the shadows, keeping up the pretense that he was jogging in case someone happened to look out their window.

He stopped behind a dark blue Volkswagen Passat parked in the street and stooped as if to tie his shoe, watching, straining his ears for signs of more movement.

Zamora’s rented stone block chalet sprawled over a large corner lot. An ornate set of wrought iron gates closed off the wide driveway. Thick tree branches brushed the top of a six-foot wall of gray stone that matched the house.

Hearing nothing but chattering music from a dozen different parties, Quinn shot a glance up and down the street, then sprinted across to the far side of the neighboring house. It was set slightly higher on the hill and might give him a better vantage point.

He vaulted to the top of the wall and scrambled up the adjacent patio roof that overlooked Zamora’s garden. The thorny boughs of a mesquite tree gave him good cover and by pressing facedown against the ridgeline of clay tile Quinn was able to see the man moving along the inside edge of the wall behind a trellis of flowering fuchsia plants.

Quinn relaxed against the cool tile and watched, taking the opportunity to rest. He didn’t have long to wait.

The twin glass doors to the main chalet flung open, exposing the dark garden to a flood of light and sound. Zamora came out, followed by Monagas, who shut the door behind them. Zamora opened his mouth to speak, but the big man raised a small black device Quinn recognized as an RF scanner.

Monagas played the device around the foliage and statuary beside his boss.

In an age where satellites could be tasked with counting the dimples on a golf ball, good guys and bad often grew too dependent on gadgets to keep them safe. Listening devices and long-range weapons were only tools. Entire cities could be carpet-bombed back to the Stone Age, but in the end the powers that be still had to send in a guy with a knife to root out any survivors. All the bug sweepers in the world were worthless if one forgot security measures like drawing the curtains or simply looking up in the trees before speaking.

Satisfied, Monagas returned the RF sweeper to his pocket and nodded at his boss.

“What did you find?” Zamora asked, the coal of his cigar casting an orange glow across his face.

“They have someone in the race,” Monagas said.

Quinn’s breath caught in his throat.

“Who?” Zamora said, his face falling into a dark frown.

“I do not know yet, patrón,” Monagas said.

Quinn felt as if he’d been kicked between the shoulder blades. If Zamora found out who he was there was nothing left to do but pick him up and risk losing the bomb.

“We think it’s someone on one of the British teams,” Monagas continued. “Or maybe even one of the racers themselves. Daudov went to university in the U.K. He has many contacts there who would kill if he paid them well enough.”

The doors opened again and one of the gap-toothed twins came out with a glass of wine, begging Zamora to return to his party. The doors shut behind them, throwing the garden into silence again.

Quinn began to breathe easier. So that was it. The Chechen had someone in the race. That certainly added a new wrinkle. It also meant Quinn needed to keep Zamora alive long enough to find out where he had the bomb.

A movement in the shadows closer to the house caught his eye. Behind a plaster statue of a winged angel a woman crept toward the chalet. Dressed in black, she wore her hair in a sensible ponytail. Even in the shadows, Quinn recognized her as the Russian agent, Aleksandra Kanatova — and she was completely unaware of the bearded man moving through the shadows less than twenty feet behind her. Quinn was too far away to get to her in time — with no way to warn her without alerting Zamora’s men.

He was over the wall in a matter of seconds, lowering himself silently to the soft grass. Picking up a small stone, he tossed it into the bushes behind Kanatova.

On the ground now and separated by hedges, statuary, and darkness, Quinn heard a muffled thump as Kanatova turned to defend herself. There were two distinct pops of a suppressed weapon, then silence. Quinn caught the unmistakable odor of cordite on the breeze.

The door to a detached garage apartment suddenly swung open, spilling a swath of light and the clatter of voices into the garden. Quinn dropped to the ground beside his unconscious opponent and froze. The door squeaked shut and he heard the snick of metal in the darkness. At first he thought it was the safety of a pistol, but a whiff of burning tobacco told him one of Zamora’s men had just stepped out for a smoke. That was good. A smoker would be unlikely to smell the cordite.

Everything seemed fine until the bushes beside the winged angel began to rustle. The movement stopped almost immediately, but the damage was already done.

“Quién es?” Zamora’s man stepped away from the door and into the garden. Quinn heard the unmistakable rattle of a pistol sliding out of a holster. A flashlight flicked on and the beam began to play back and forth among the trees. It was only a matter of seconds before he would see something he didn’t like and call for help.

Quinn pulled a cotton sock from the pocket of his running shorts. It was small, unobtrusive, and easy to carry. Stooping quickly, he scooped up a handful of stones before moving through the shadows. Better than a fist and easy to dump, a sock full of rocks made an excellent and relatively silent weapon.

Zamora’s man moved forward, holding his light in one hand and the pistol in the other. The cigarette hung loosely from his lips and he padded through the darkness muttering to himself as if he didn’t really expect to find anything. The sock full of rocks hit his temple like a lead sap.

Quinn caught him as he fell, lowering him softly to the grass.

“You again?” a female voice said from the shadows. Alexandra Kanatova stepped out, red hair framing her scowling face. “Why do you follow me?”

Quinn pointed at the guy on the ground. “I’m pretty sure he was about to ruin your evening. Who’s the guy with the beard?”

“A Chechen pig.”

“I’d like to ask him some questions,” Quinn whispered.

“Too late for that.” Kanatova’s eyes flicked between the back door of the house and the wall. “He is dead. Someone will come to check soon. We should go.”

Quinn shot a glance at the door. It wouldn’t be long before someone missed the unconscious security man. With any luck they’d chalk it up to an intruder who’d been scared away by the confrontation — so long as they didn’t find a dead Chechen in their garden.

“Do you ever take anyone alive?”

“Rarely,” she said.

Quinn and Kanatova carried the Chechen out the back gate and half a block away to deposit him unceremoniously in the Dumpster behind a wineshop. He had no identification on him and Quinn reasoned that, with all the international media attention, Argentine police would want to keep such a murder quiet until the race festivities were over.

Three streets away, with the safety of added distance, Quinn turned to look at Kanatova in the darkness. She walked with her head bent, hands in the pockets of her jacket, ponytail bobbing with each step.

Kanatova had very likely guessed he was a government agent by now, but giving up the fact that he even knew who she was would make her certain of it. “At the risk of getting kicked in the nuts again,” he said. “I believe we may be after the same thing.”

“Is that so?” She walked on without looking up. Her small shoulders were slightly stooped and she bent forward as if she was pulling a heavy load. For the moment they were heading in the general direction of his rented flat.

Quinn stopped. “Hear me out.”

“Okay,” she said, turning to face him. He stood over her by almost a foot, but she didn’t seem the least bit intimidated. Her hands remained in her pockets and it occurred to Quinn that she had the same gun hidden in there she’d just used to kill the Chechen. All she had to do was pull the trigger now that he knew her identity.

Thankfully, she just stood there, staring up at him, blinking in the darkness while New Year’s Eve revelers shot fireworks in the background. Her English was excellent, but held the hollow slur of a Russian accent Quinn found pleasant against his ear.

“And what is it you think I am after?” she asked.

“This is the second time we’ve run into each other near Valentine Zamora.” Quinn narrowed his eyes. “I know he’s an arms dealer and I also happen to know who you work for.”

“Is that so?” Kanatova gave a wary half smile. “You believe we should work together to achieve our goal?”

“The thought had occurred to me,” Quinn said. He listened to her rhythmic breathing for a long moment as she considered this.

“I suppose the alternative would be us getting in each other’s way at every turn,” she said. “Or… I kill you, but that might prove messy.”

He gave a solemn nod. “It would.”

“Work together?” She stared at his face. “To recover the device?”

“That would be the plan,” Quinn said. “We’re not certain he’s even the one who has it.”

“I am,” Kanatova said without further explanation. “At first I believed it was the Chechens, but the way Rustam Daudov pesters him, he has to be trying to get the device from Zamora. What I do not yet know is where Zamora has it hidden or what he plans to do with it.” She cocked her head to one side. “I find myself at a disadvantage. If we are to be a team, as you Americans say it, I should know who I’m to work with.”

He put out his hand. “Captain Jericho Quinn, United States Air Force.”

Kanatova raised a wary brow. The corners of her small mouth pricked in the beginnings of a smile as she held on to his hand. “An Air Force captain who fights like spetsnaz?”

“It’s complicated,” Quinn said. “But I’ve raced the Dakar before, so I was a natural choice for the assignment.”

“And I see you have other skills beyond racing motorcycles?”

“I boxed a little in college.” Quinn shrugged, working through a plan in his head.

“To play devil’s advocate, as they say. If Zamora has such a device — as we believe he does…” Aleksandra’s voice trailed while she waited for two men wearing red Loctite shirts to stumble past in the darkness, on their way to another party. “… why is he going to the trouble to run this stupid race?”

Quinn had been struggling with the same question. A bomb worth over a quarter of a billion dollars on the black market would make anyone change his plans.

“These old Soviet devices would have at least some level of safeguard, right?”

“That is correct,” Aleksandra said.

“So, in order to use the bomb, Zamora would have to get past those safeguards.”

“And bring the device back into working order.” Kanatova nodded. “They are small and portable, but this fact makes them lightly shielded. Radiation is extremely hard on the circuitry.”

“Ah.” Quinn rubbed his dark whiskers. “It makes perfect sense then. If Zamora values his life, he’s going to be as far away from the bomb as possible while his people get it in working order.” He looked at her, playing the thought over and over in his head before voicing it. At length, he sighed. “Listen, where are you staying?”

“A tent near Dakar Village where the spectators have a large camp. My government does not pay to put me up in fancy hotels with entertainment, caviar, and endless champagne.”

“Mine either anymore,” Quinn laughed. “But we’ll have plenty of opportunity for staying in tents at the bivouacs on the course. Zamora has already seen us together. It won’t be a big stretch for him to assume you came here with our team. We have an extra bed at our place for the night.” He raised a wary brow. “Though, considering who you are, my government would consider it a serious breach of etiquette that I’m even talking to you alone right now.”

“Breach of etiquette?” Kanatova scoffed, resuming her head-down walk. “I am discussing a missing Soviet nuclear bomb with a foreign operative. My superiors would have me shot.”

CHAPTER 29

A hollow pit of exhaustion settled over Aleksandra’s stomach by the time she rolled her sleeping bag out on the low bed shoved back under the angled eaves of the second-floor bedroom. It had taken another hour after they’d left Zamora’s to gather her gear and make their way back up the hill to Captain Quinn’s flat. She’d smiled inside when he’d given her his room and moved his own sleeping bag to the sagging couch downstairs. He was an American white knight — skilled in the brutal arts of violence, but all manners and kindness when it came to women. Her FSB instructors had taught courses about such men — how to manipulate their good intentions and innate trust of womanhood to leverage a proper end to the mission or even turn them as Russian assets.

Still, there was something about this Jericho Quinn’s earnest demeanor that gave Aleksandra pause. It reminded her of Mikhail when she’d first met him. The thought made the pit in her stomach worse.

Dead on her feet with abject mental and physical fatigue, she moved to the small window at the foot of the bed. She leaned against the cool glass with her forehead and looked out over the flickering lights from Dakar city a few blocks away. Her breath threw small patches of fog against the window. Chewing on what was left of her sorry fingernails, she repeated the solemn oath she’d made the night she’d heard Mikhail Ivanovich Polzin had been murdered. “Somewhere out there is the man who killed you. I will find him and kill him, Misha. I swear it. And no one, no matter how kind or earnest, will get in my way.”

CHAPTER 30

It was four-thirty in the morning when Boaz Quinn walked to the door with a bowl of cereal. A swarm of moths thumped against the screen, trying to get to the light. He wore only his boxers and a loose white T-shirt. The angry black octopus tattoo contrasted sharply with the tan flesh of his arm. Assorted scars from blade and bullet mapped the rough-and-tumble life Bo Quinn had led since striking out on his own shortly after high school.

Jericho had already finished a protein and carbohydrate shake that would become his pre-breakfast staple over the next two weeks and sat on a bench by the front door snapping the cam-locks on his riding boots. Thibodaux was outside loading extra tires on top of the support truck.

“There’s a chickaloon in the shower,” Bo said. He slurped placidly on a spoonful of cereal, apparently used to women showing up in surprise places. “She almost cut me when I went in to pee.”

“That’s Aleksandra. She’s working with us now,” Jericho said, giving a brief explanation.

“A Rusky?” Bo gave a long, groaning stretch, holding the cereal bowl out in front of him. “You know how I feel about Russians.”

“I know,” Quinn said. The entire incident — a fight with some drunk Russian nationals talking smack about America during his Air Force Academy parade — had very nearly made it so Jericho wasn’t allowed to graduate. It had become the stuff of Academy legend and followed him his entire career. “Behave,” he chided. “This particular Russian is after the same thing we are.”

Bo held up his spoon and shook it at Jericho to drive home his point. “Did I mention she nearly cut me a minute ago? I thought it was you in the shower. Anyways, I hear Russian women are—”

“Russian women are what?” Aleksandra’s husky voice came from the stairs. She was dressed in a pair of white shorts and a blue and white striped tank top. Red hair hung in damp ringlets around her shoulders from the shower.

Bo waved her off, but shot a “save me” glance at Quinn.

“I’m interested too, brother.” Jericho grinned. “What is it you hear about Russian women?”

“I prefer American women,” Bo grumbled, going back to eating his cereal. “That’s all.”

Aleksandra let the trill of her accent creep fully into her words. “You spend two minutes with a Russian woman and you will throw rocks at American girls.”

Jericho chuckled at that. A woman who could go toe-to-toe with his brother was a rare find indeed.

“Come on,” Jericho said, looking at Kanatova. “You can ride with me to ASO headquarters before the start of the first stage. We need to get you a wristband now that you’re officially a member of Team Quinn or you won’t be able to get into camp every night.”

CHAPTER 31

The British government wasn’t exactly forthcoming about known terror suspects who might happen to be racing under their flag in the Dakar Rally. Palmer had started a process of elimination, and by the time Quinn was at the starting line the first day of actual racing they’d been able to weed down the contestants, leaving them with two possibilities. Both were motorcyclists — Joey Blessington riding a Husaburg and Basil Tuckwood aboard a Honda. Like Quinn, both racers rode as privateers, meaning they had no major sponsor or big team support.

Much of Quinn’s cover story had been contrived by populating the Web with phony information and news releases about his investment business and photos of his thrill-seeking adventures.

Quinn was practical enough to know that completely stopping the flow of information to the World Wide Web was impossible. Even from high school he’d tried to keep his presence in the public venue as shadowy as he could. He refused to register new products that asked for his personal information and steered clear of social networking sites.

Palmer’s team had done a fair job of scrubbing both Quinn and Thibodaux’s online personas, but information invariably popped up. Even pizza delivery companies sold phone numbers and addresses to online people searches. The only way to combat the true information that leaked out was to flood the Web with so much content that the first ten to fifteen pages of any Internet search showed only hits related to the cover identity.

It was the pop-ups that made both Blessington and Tuckwood candidates for the Chechen’s British contact and had drawn Zamora’s attention.

Five pages into a Google search, a Daily Mail article told the story of a Newcastle teen who’d gotten into a fistfight after a rugby match. Since this was his third ASBO — antisocial behavior order — he had been offered the choice of military service or incarceration. Given the secret branches of many governments’ propensity for recruiting redeemed social misfits, Basil Tuckwood was a good candidate.

Joey Blessington was an HR executive for a large oil company based in England, but the sheer lack of information online about anything else he’d ever done made Quinn suspicious of him as well.

Now, all Quinn had to do was figure out which one was the agent and get to him before Zamora or his man Monagas did.

A pink orange line ran along the eastern horizon as if a lid over the black ocean had just been cracked open. Dust and gasoline fumes hung with the excitement of race jitters in the chilly predawn air. Riding gear squeaked and heavy boots crunched on gravel between blatting engine noises. Thousands of people lined the streets to cheer on their favorite riders. Some revelers had been up all night from celebrating the New Year and looked as though they might keel over from exhaustion at any moment in the predawn haze.

The motorcycles would start first, battling not only each other but racing to stay well ahead of the other vehicles, especially the monster trucks that threw up huge clouds of dust that choked riders and left them blind and disoriented.

Each day started with the Liaison, the section of the race where riders rode over marked roads and trails, sometimes for hundreds of kilometers, sometimes just a few. During the Liaison, riders were expected to keep to the speed limit and obey all traffic laws. The Liaison route took them to the Special Stage, where they would leave the beaten track and navigate their way through mountains and desert and monstrous, bike-eating dunes to various checkpoints before racing for the finish. Navigation was done without the aid of electronics, using a paper scroll known as a road book that was mounted on each racer’s motorcycle. Once a rider made it within two kilometers from any checkpoint their GPS would turn on and help guide him in. Each bike was also fitted with an IriTrak, the tracking system that let race officials keep tabs on everyone — as well as a proximity alarm to warn riders if one of the giant race trucks was looming up in the dust to crush them like a bug.

Helicopters would provide oversight on the route, shoot approved media footage, watch for rule infractions, and ensure rider safety.

Each day while racers battled away on the dunes, Dakar staff would strike the tents housing medical, catering, and mechanical support, pack them into trucks, and engage in their own race to the next staging area to set everything back up in a new bivouac before the first riders arrived.

It took a very complicated and intricate dance to make it all work.

Beginning life as the Paris Dakar in 1978, the rally beat its way through the deserts of North Africa until terrorist activity in Mauritania stopped the 2008 race. After that, officials moved the rally to the remote stretches of desert in South America and changed the name to simply the Dakar.

Grueling and deadly as it was beautiful, it was a race made for Jericho Quinn.

Prowling on the KTM, Quinn found the number 121 bike next to a row of portable toilets across the parking lot from the Liaison starting line.

Tuckwood, a tall, lanky fellow with a bobbing walk and thinning blond hair, came out of the green plastic toilet nearest to the bike. His face was ghost pale in the predawn light. He glanced up at Quinn with a wan smile.

“Had too much wine and song last night, I did,” he said with a deep Yorkshire accent. “I’m lucky to be alive, me.”

Quinn sat straddling his KTM, helmet in hand. “I hear you,” he said. If Tuckwood was a hired gun, he was a pretty good actor. Goofy didn’t even begin to describe him — and at the moment he seemed to be suffering from acute discomfort of the lower intestine.

Quinn rolled on, closer to the starting line.

Joey Blessington was a completely different story. Quinn recognized a dangerous man when he saw one. There was a certain air, a heavy confidence about him that said, “I’m not here to fight, but if you insist, I’d actually enjoy the chance to oblige you.”

Quinn shared the sentiment.

Blessington sat on his bike a few yards back from the start, goggles up, ready but relaxed. He periodically scanned the area around him, just enough to stay apprised of possible dangers, but not enough to draw inordinate attention to himself. He kept to himself, but met the other competitors’ eyes and didn’t appear standoffish.

He had to be the one.

Team Quinn stood behind the barrier tape with other support crews just a little closer than the mass of chanting onlookers in the Spectator Zones. Signs for race favorites Caine and Geroux dominated the group, but local favorites from Argentina, Chile, and Peru had their share of screaming youths and handsome Latin women. Jericho pushed thoughts of Veronica Garcia out of his mind as he rolled by Thibodaux and Bo, giving them each a high-five. Aleksandra, to her credit as a professional, leaned across to touch his shoulder, a tender move a female companion might do when her man went off on a race.

“Number one-sixty-eight.” Quinn took off his helmet, holding it in on his lap. He kicked up a foot for the last few moments of rest he’d have for the day. “I think that’s the guy to watch.”

Aleksandra nodded. “You’re right,” she said, her face growing dark. “It is obvious.”

Monagas stood on the other end of the start on the spectator side of the tape, scanning the crowd. If he’d identified Blessington as the threat, he didn’t show it.

Zamora, with the number 159, would be the one hundred fifty-ninth bike to leave on this first day of racing. Blessington would be the hundred sixty-eighth to start and Quinn would follow four bikes later with number 172. Future starts would depend on race results each day, with the fastest times starting first.

“What’s your plan, Jer?” Bo stood beside Aleksandra. A little too close, Quinn thought. Bo was a big boy, though, and could, in theory, take care of himself.

“The important thing is to finish near Zamora,” Quinn said. “That will put us starting near each other tomorrow and on subsequent days.” He shook his head. “The Special Section is a short one today. It’ll be crazy out here, but we’ll be bunched up most of the day. My biggest worry today is getting mobbed by the spectators.”

Bo smacked him on the arm. “Zamora is away,” he said. “You best be getting your game face on.”

Quinn pulled on his helmet and fastened the chinstrap. Lowering his goggles, he gave one last salute to his team and rolled forward to enter the line of bikes waiting to depart down the cordoned-off streets of Mar del Plata.

“How do you read?” he said, his voice muffled inside the helmet.

“Slurred and stupid,” Thibodaux chuckled. “Seriously, bro, you’re five by five. You got me?”

“Loud and clear.”

The communication gear was completely against the rules, but Quinn didn’t plan on trying to win the race. All support teams could track the whereabouts of their racer with smartphones as they made it from checkpoint to checkpoint. With Palmer’s help, Team Quinn had been able to hack into the ASO’s main tracking system for Zamora’s — and now Blessington’s — loca-tion in real time. It would be Thibodaux’s job to keep him in the loop about their respective locations if he happened to lose track.

Quinn took a deep breath and looked down the gauntlet formed by thousands of race fans, volunteers, vendors, ASO officials, security, and Argentine National Police. The sun was just coming up as he made his way to the line along with number 171, a rider from Sweden.

He gunned the KTM’s engine, feeling the power between his knees. Thibodaux’s thick Cajun drawl buzzed inside his helmet.

“You watch yourself, l’ami. There’s a gob of lonely spots out there in the desert where a body could find suddenly hisself very dead.”

CHAPTER 32

Lourdes made it abundantly clear to Marie that the focus of her wrath was baby Simon. Hardly a moment went by that the horrible woman didn’t make a threat or voice some horrific plan as to the particular harm she hoped to do to the helpless child. If Marie wasn’t standing to work the kinks out of her sore back, she kept herself glued to the lumpy mattress, guarding her little boy as he cooed or played or slept. Even when she went to the bathroom she took Simon with her, unwilling to let him out of her sight even for a moment.

By the second day she realized Jorge, the man with the injured leg, was an ally of sorts. Simon was getting restless from being cooped up without fresh stimulation and was beginning to fuss.

They were alone when Jorge limped in from the kitchen and handed Marie a cup of chocolate milk. He wore a dish towel tucked in his belt that was filthy from his dirty hands and constant kitchen duty, but Marie didn’t care.

“Don’t tell Lourdes I’m doing this,” he said. “My sister, Irene, she has a son about this age. Heaven knows they can’t keep quiet this long. It is not the little one’s fault.” He stood and watched as Simon drank the bulk of the chocolate milk, then grinned at him with a frothy brown mustache.

Jorge rubbed the little boy’s head. “Pobrecito,” he whispered, sighing. Poor thing. He leaned in to Marie as if with a secret. “I will tell you thi—”

Footfalls in the hallway made Jorge snatch up the glass and limp back to the kitchen.

Pete came slouching into the room with his hat on crooked and flopped down in the recliner with his cell phone. Lourdes followed, sliding along on the tile floor in stocking feet as if she was actually happy about something. She held an open laptop in her hand.

Marie’s heart jumped at the sight of the computer. She lived for the few moments each day that she could talk to Matt, see his face, and know that he was still alive. The cruel woman hardly let them speak for more than a few seconds, but those were the best seconds in Marie’s day. As long as Matt was alive, there was hope — she clung to that single thought more than any other, whispering it to herself as she drifted in and out of her fitful sleeps.

She pulled herself up straighter in anticipation of seeing her husband. Instead, Lourdes walked right up on the mattress beside her, shoving the baby aside with a rough nudge of her foot. Marie recoiled, pulling Simon into her lap as the awful woman flopped down beside them.

“I found a few news articles for us to read together,” Lourdes said. “I think you might find them interesting.”

Marie clutched the baby to her chest, reading over the top of his head.

RANSOM PAID. COUPLE FOUND MURDERED IN CALIFORNIA CABIN ANYWAY, the headline read.

Lourdes tapped the screen with her finger. “This couple, they have a lot in common with you,” she sneered. “Held captive for a week in the woods… ” Her voice trailed as she looked over at Marie. She smiled an overly sweet smile that had no kindness in it. “They must have held out hope, don’t you think?”

“Stop it!” Marie begged, covering Simon’s ears though there was no way he was old enough to understand.

Pete smirked behind the game on his cell phone. Jorge stood stoically at the kitchen door.

Lourdes pressed closer, her head almost on Marie’s shoulder. “Everyone has hope,” she said. “Just like you. These people sat alone in that cabin and hoped that someone would come and rescue them — as you, no doubt, hope someone will come and rescue you.”

“I said stop it!” Marie screamed. She struggled to catch her breath. “Stop talking to me.”

Lourdes pressed on. “Certainly they made absurd demands, just as you do now.” She snapped her fingers, causing Marie to jump, startling the baby and making him wail as if he’d been pinched. “Quiet the worm,” she spat, getting to her feet. “Anyway, I thought you’d like to see this. Very soon you will have much, much more in common.” She turned to glare at Jorge, who still watched from the kitchen door. “No matter who brings you chocolate milk. Now, shall we call your sniveling husband and let him know you are still alive… for the moment?”

CHAPTER 33

Matt Pollard felt like he was in a sauna. Sweat stung his eyes and ran in rivers down his back. Someone had tacked tattered pieces of mosquito netting to the windows and makeshift screen door of the raised wooden hut, but the effort was rude at best. Wind and heat and, Pollard thought, the persistence of the insects themselves left the screens filled with dozens of ways inside. In between bouts of swatting all sorts of biting bugs, he sat on the edge of his cot, chin in his hands, and tried to decide where to start. There were layers of issues he’d have to deal with to make the thing work — if he decided that was what he would do.

Zamora seemed to think that it was all about defeating the locking mechanism, but that was just part of the story. Nuclear devices needed a high-voltage current for detonation. They got this from a series of capacitors, which were charged by a battery. In some units, these capacitors were part of a safety, if not a security mechanism. It was called “Weak Link, Strong Link.” Every other capacitor might be made of a material that melted at low temperatures, or broke under severe shock or trauma, rendering the device inoperable when subjected to unintended stress.

These safety systems, as well as electronic circuitry for signal control and detonation timing, had to be checked and possibly repaired. Wires were generally unmarked and a single color to make bypassing next to impossible for someone without a manual. On newer bombs, all this would be buried deep within the bomb beneath a tamperproof membrane. Even for someone as intelligent as Pollard, it would take a great deal of time to figure this thing out — if it was even possible — and time was a luxury Marie and Simon did not have.

The seventeen-year-old Guarani Indian girl Zamora had left in charge tapped gently at the threshold of the hut. For a guard, she was extremely polite.

“I have come for the computer,” she said.

“This is wrong, you know,” Pollard said, passing her the laptop. The server, wherever it was, only allowed incoming messages. “Zamora said I could speak to my family every day and make sure they are all right.”

The girl looked at him as if she’d been slapped. “I am sorry, señor. I thought that is what you were doing.”

Her oval face was smudged with soot from the cook fire and a chicory brown complexion set off the perfect whiteness of her teeth. Just over five feet tall, she was solidly built with a tattered green army uniform hanging from square shoulders that were accustomed to hard, load-bearing work. The military blouse looked three sizes too large, and she kept it unbuttoned to reveal a pink tank top underneath. Pollard guessed it was a reminder to herself as much as anyone else that beyond being a soldier, she was also a young woman.

“That woman hardly allows us two words.” Pollard took a deep breath, fighting the desire to smash something. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Lourdes Lopez.” The girl gave an understanding nod. “I will ask Señor Zamora if you might not have another moment or two with your wife the next time I speak to him.”

“Thank you,” Pollard said. He couldn’t bring himself to be too nice to someone who was supposed to be his guard. “But why would you care?”

“Because I know Lourdes.” The girl shivered. “And… other reasons.”

Her name was Yesenia and she was surprisingly pleasant for a teenage girl with crossed bandoliers of ammunition and a Kalashnikov slung over her shoulder. The smell of wood smoke and cooked fish clung to her in the muggy heat.

She traded him the computer for a cup of what looked like ropey potato water. Clutching the laptop in one hand and the sling of her rifle with the other, she stood for a moment as if she wanted to say something, but didn’t quite know how. He’d seen the look a hundred times from students who wanted to discuss their grades. At length she only smiled and nodded at the cup.

“Somo,” she said as she left. “Sweet corn drink. It will cool you and keep you healthy.”

Pollard took a drink and set the cup on the floor. It was actually pretty good — and he didn’t deserve good. Collapsing onto the stiff mattress of his cot, he slouched against the wall. The girl’s gun probably wasn’t even loaded. Zamora knew all too well he didn’t have the stomach for killing teenage girls. He stared at the oblong green case in front of him. He didn’t have the stomach for killing thousands of strangers either — but this lunatic had his family. Did the value of a hundred human lives outweigh the worth of one or two?

Pollard rubbed his face with an open hand. It sounded like something he would ask his class — stupid, worthless questions that meant little outside the theoretical world. In theory, theory should mirror reality, he often told his classes.

In reality, he knew that theory was bullshit.

CHAPTER 34

The oppressive tension and never-ending hours of the Dakar tended to stack up, making mundane tasks like filling up with fuel require intense concentration. Quinn’s triple duty of watching Zamora and trying to locate the bomb during the most dangerous race in the world was beginning to take its toll. Mile ran into grueling mile. By the fifth day he wondered if the Chechens would ever make their move.

Staying behind while keeping Zamora in sight proved to be more difficult than simply outracing the Venezuelan. Quinn was an expert rider and still took two tumbles over the first three days while trying to ride aggressively with one eye on the trail and one eye on Zamora — who seemed to ride with the reckless abandon of a teenage boy who thought he could live forever.

The falls had cost Quinn a sprained shoulder and torn a bit of cowling off the bike, but he pushed on anyway. In truth, he hadn’t gone more than a couple of consecutive weeks out of the past fifteen years without some sort of tear, sprain, or bone bruise to let him know he was still alive.

The pace of the rally itself was bone numbing.

Quinn rose at 5 A.M. each morning to drink his protein shake, wolf down a quick breakfast, and shrug on more than twenty-five pounds of protective gear. With breakfast still sloshing in his gut, he picked up the KTM from Bo, who’d spent much of the night changing oil, assessing tires, and fixing the inevitable mechanical issues that crept into a highly tuned machine when it was rattled and jumped and run at high speeds over rock and sand and gravel.

After loading the scrolled road book that would give him the day’s route, he’d grabbed the Waypoint GPS codes from the boards then raced across the bivouac where he got his time card and prepared for a 6 A.M. start. Battling crowds at gas stations during the Liaison runs, waving at fans, and being manhandled by adoring children at every stop became second nature.

As soon as Quinn started out for the day, Thibodaux, Bo, and Aleksandra struck the tents, packed the support truck, and entered a race of their own to cover as much as eight hundred kilometers over highway and back road — presumably following the speed limit — to reach the next bivouac and set up camp ahead of Jericho. Bo, who had usually worked all night on the bike, slept in the backseat while Thibodaux and Aleksandra took turns driving and keeping tabs on Zamora and Quinn on their smartphones.

Somewhere along the route each day, the Liaison ended for Quinn and he came to a point known as DSS — Departure Special Stage. Ranging from a just a few to hundreds of kilometers in length, there was no speed limit during the special stages. The fastest time — absent any penalties — was the day’s winner. Once the special was over, there was often another section of Liaison back to the bivouac where he would arrive around 6 P.M., make his camp in the blowing dust, grab a quick meal at the catering tent, debrief Bo about the bike’s mechanical issues, take a quick shower, study his road book for the following day, eat a quick second dinner to top off on calories, then stagger into bed by eleven. Even then sleep was hard to come by with the constant hubbub, light, and engine noise of the bivouac.

Some racers resorted to sleep aids, but Quinn had to keep an eye on Zamora. He couldn’t afford to be groggy if woken in the middle of the night, so he accepted a reduced level of awareness throughout the entire day.

The nights were short and the Liaisons were long, but the remote Special Stages were where the Dakar was won or lost. They were also where Quinn expected the Chechens would make their move.

Now he stood on the pegs of his bike, thirty kilometers into the fifth Special. Zamora was ahead, popping in and out of view along with three other riders as they dipped and climbed the rolling camel-colored dunes. His GPS had easily registered the last Waypoint and the road book showed a fairly straight course to the next. One of the media helicopters hovered overhead, getting official video. Their presence set Quinn’s nerves at ease. The Chechens, however desperate, wouldn’t do anything with such an eye in the sky. It was midday. Quinn felt connected with the bike and in the groove of the race. For the first time in five days, he began to enjoy the Dakar.

Without warning, the helicopter banked hard to the left, and flew south, accelerating en route.

Quinn topped the next two dunes with no sign of Zamora. He rolled on more throttle, throwing up a rooster tail of sand, but thought little of the bird’s departure until the speaker in his helmet squawked.

“You there, Chair Force?” Thibodaux’s voice startled him out of riding nirvana.

Quinn coughed, clearing his throat of dust before answering. “Go ahead.”

“Eyes wide, l’ami,” the Cajun said. “I lost Zamora and Blessington’s GPS signals about ten minute ago. It’s been fading in and out, so I didn’t worry until we drove up on this. We got the mother of all wrecks along the Liaison route. Argentine cops are saying a private truck lost control at a crossing, slammed into a crowd of fans and three riders.”

“A private truck?” Quinn dodged a series of hard ruts and worked to get his head wrapped around that kind of an accident. He could hear the sound of car horns blaring in his earphone.

“They’re talking multiple fatalities,” Thibodaux said. “It’s gridlock here and we’re stuck behind a mess. I’m betting every emergency vehicle and helicopter is responding this way. Hear what I’m sayin’?”

“I do,” Quinn said.

“It’s about to get awful lonely out there.”

The Liaisons were crowded with onlookers, and even the more remote Special Sections were generally peppered with fans, some huddled under the shade of a single lonely tree, others lined up with coolers and straw hats, braving the sun in order to catch a glimpse of their favorite riders.

Between the three medical helicopters and assorted media birds, not two minutes went by that there wasn’t some eye in the sky keeping everyone honest and safe.

Until the accident.

Ahead of Quinn, the dunes gave way to hard-packed dirt and gravel washes. He topped the next ridge in time to see Zamora’s bike dart to the right and disappear behind a rock outcrop into a dry riverbed.

The hot dry wind suddenly took on a metallic smell. This was all wrong. He glanced over the handlebars at his road book. As he suspected, the route went straight ahead for another three kilometers.

“Zamora’s decided to leave the course,” Quinn said.

“Watch yourself,” Thibodaux said. “I got your signal on the GPS but still no joy on Zamora. Something’s wrong.”

Quinn watched the two riders who’d been with Zamora pop over a hill to continue straight on the prescribed course. Wherever Zamora was going, he was going it alone.

Quinn slowed to follow Zamora’s tracks at the dry riverbed. There was no sign of the Venezuelan, but he could hear the whine of his bike around the next bend.

Standing in the pegs, Quinn poured on the throttle, wanting to catch up before Zamora lost him altogether. If Thibodaux couldn’t track him, Quinn had no choice but to speed up and keep him in sight.

He caught sight of the bike the moment he rounded the next corner. It was close — and something was extremely wrong. Quinn tried to process the new images at the same moment the front tire of his KTM seemed to fold in on itself, throwing him violently over the handlebars. A cloud of fesh fesh blossomed into the air like gray talc, blinding him as he and his bike slammed into the unforgiving ground.

CHAPTER 35

Yazid Nazif held the phone to his ear and listened to the empty line. He’d tried to connect with the Venezuelan for the last four hours only to get nothing but empty ringing and dead air — not even so much as a message. One would think that when a person was paid almost half a billion dollars they would avail themselves of better communication. Nazif wanted to smash the phone against the wall. This stupid race Zamora insisted on running was beginning to be a problem.

The phone buzzed in his hand with an incoming call.

“Yes.” He smiled inside, recognizing the number. It was Ibrahim, his youngest brother.

Yazid stretched his back and picked up a small cup of coffee from the table before him, letting the familiar scent of cardamom calm his tattered nerves. Things would be all right, he told himself. All would work out. The stone that was cut from the mountain by the hand of God could not be stopped.

“Peace be unto you, my brother.” Ibrahim’s voice was familiar, like the comfortable sound of the gate to their garden back home.

“And you,” Yazid answered back. “I trust things are going well on your end.”

“Very,” Ibrahim said. “I am helping out at the church we discussed. There will be quite a large number attending. I believe you would enjoy the performance if you are able to arrive in time. Still, there are alternatives.”

“You think we should focus on another event?”

There was a long silence on the phone.

“Perhaps,” Ibrahim said at length. “I will text you a photo.”

“Watch yourself, brother,” Yazid said before hanging up. He ran a hand across his bald head and waited for the ping that signaled an incoming text.

“Not bad,” he said to himself, using two fingers to enlarge the photograph of a man with shaggy blond hair standing before a small choir of thirty or so smiling children — all a hodgepodge of race, ranging in age from less than seven to their early teens. They were ripe enough, Yazid’s heart raced when he saw the open auditorium behind the children — with seating for thousands. If Ibrahim had a target better than this, it had to be a ripe one indeed.

CHAPTER 36

Quinn awoke on his side, hands pulled unnaturally behind him. His helmet lay in the rocks a few feet away. He’d landed on his left ear after hitting the fesh fesh — superfine particles of dust that blew along the desert floor to fill in any low spots. Fesh fesh looked like regular ground and ate many unsuspecting motorcyclists if those low spots happened to be more than a few inches deep.

The KTM was somewhere close behind him. He couldn’t see it but reasoned that he hadn’t been unconscious long from the sound of ticking metal as the bike bled heat from the engine.

Quinn tried to push himself to a seated position and realized his hands were tied behind his back. He turned his head slowly and saw Zamora had an even bigger problem.

Ten meters to Quinn’s right, Blessington and another man Quinn recognized as the Chechen from the chalet in Mar del Plata stood towering over a bound Zamora. The Venezuelan’s riding boots and socks had been stripped off. His bare feet had been strapped to the handlebars of his motorcycle — which lay on its side, apparently another victim of unsuspected fesh fesh.

The Chechen spewed something in rapid-fire Russian, kicking Zamora in the ribs when he didn’t answer. The Venezuelan cursed him back, spitting vehemently into the dirt.

Blessington smiled, drawing back a long wooden staff nearly an inch in diameter. He let it hang for a long moment while the Chechen asked another question, then struck cruelly on the sole of Zamora’s pink foot before he had time to answer.

Zamora writhed in pain from the blow, thrashing hard enough to yank the handlebars of his bike sideways. Blessington set down the stick to maneuver the bike and his victim’s feet back into position as a better target.

Quinn knew both he and Zamora were dead as soon as they got what they wanted. He looked around, shifting his eyes rather than moving his head and drawing attention to himself. Behind him, he could feel the heat radiating off the KTM’s muffler. Taking advantage of their preoccupation with Zamora, Quinn inched backward to the bike, pressing the plastic zip ties on his wrist against the exhaust, as close to the engine as he could get. He winced as the heat seared the tender skin inside his wrists, but held them there until the plastic melted, freeing him with a faint pop as they gave way.

Now loose, he kept his hands behind him and took another look at his opponents. The Chechen had a pistol on his hip and Blessington had a knife in addition to his wooden staff. It killed him inside to help a man like Zamora escape. The treatment he was getting was well deserved. But Blessington was enjoying himself too much. It was obvious the Chechens wanted the bomb, but these two were heavy-handed. They were likely to kill Zamora by accident before he told them anything.

Quinn toyed with the idea of giving them a few minutes before he took action, but they could turn on him at any moment. The chance the Chechen would draw his pistol and start shooting was too great.

He moved his feet slightly, wiggling his toes to make sure they weren’t asleep. The last thing he needed was to be halfway into his lunge and realize he was working on two dead legs. When he felt reasonably sure his body was in good enough working order after the wreck, he took one final look at the situation and let Blessington have one more whack at Zamora’s feet.

The piercing screams provided good cover for his initial movement — and Blessington’s feelings of superiority at dispensing punishment to a helpless prisoner made him careless.

Many an advancing army had been beaten when a retreating foe turned and struck them down in the midst of their foolish bravado.

Quinn rolled to his feet at the crescendo of Zamora’s tattered cries. He picked up the helmet and threw it underhanded as he moved, catching Blessington center chest. It didn’t cause any damage, but surprised him, giving Quinn a precious second to focus on the other man.

A half step out, Quinn pulled up short, stepping sideways as if trying to avoid a confrontation. The Chechen, taking this for weakness, struck out with a powerful right hook. Instead of meeting the punch, Quinn let it sail by, grabbing it across the top, drawing against his center, then reversing directions to turn the wrist back on itself. In Japanese martial arts it was called kote-gaeshi.

Quinn kept his own circles tight and powerful as he spun, but extended the man’s arm, not only snapping the fragile wrist bones but destroying his elbow and shoulder joints as well. Screaming in pain, the Chechen clutched the damage with his good hand. Quinn grabbed him around the chest, turning to face a maniacal Blessington, the wooden rod raised high over his head like a sword.

Quinn’s hand slipped the pistol from the Chechen’s belt as he let the man fall. He shot without aiming, putting two slugs in Blessington’s belly as he tried to bring the wooden staff down on Quinn’s head. The Brit stood blinking for a long moment, slumping against the heavy stick like a cane before toppling forward, his open mouth blowing soft puffs of fesh fesh away as he drew his last breaths.

Quinn used his pocketknife to cut Zamora’s hands free, keeping an eye on the wounded Chechen.

“Are you okay?” Quinn said, tossing him the blade so he could cut loose his own feet.

“I’m fine,” Zamora said, blinking to clear his head. He tested tender feet before standing. “Thankfully, nothing is broken… ” He gave Quinn a long quizzical look before turning toward the glaring Chechen, who lay just ten feet away.

The Chechen peered up at Quinn with brooding eyes. “You think you know this man, but you do not.”

Zamora was on him in an instant, striking over and over. Quinn kept the blade of his ZT folder extremely sharp. That, combined with Zamora’s white-hot desire for revenge, gave the Chechen no chance for survival.

Zamora’s face was covered in blood when he looked up. “We should get out of here,” he said, wiping his face with a rag from inside his riding jacket. “Frankly I’m surprised the ASO hasn’t sent someone looking for us since our bikes have been stopped so long.”

Without the illegal communication Quinn could not have known about the accident or the fact that Zamora’s IriTrak was malfunctioning, so he didn’t mention it. Instead he nodded at the bodies, feigning shock.

“I’m not in too much of a hurry to get caught out here with these guys. What was that all about anyway?” He shrugged and picked up his bike. He breathed a sigh of relief when it started on the first try.

Zamora was already snapping the camlocks on his riding boots. “Trust me,” he said. “You do not want to know.”

The IriTrak on Quinn’s KTM began to speak, rescuing him.

“Contestant 172, please report your status.” The voice was thickly French.

“Good to go,” Quinn responded. “Just took a wrong turn. Moving now.”

“Acknowledged,” the race official said, ending the transmission.

A little more time bought, they dragged the bodies into the deep fesh fesh, making sure they were well covered in the event of a flyover. Quinn made certain the IriTrak on Blessington’s bike was disconnected before burying it in fesh fesh as well. The Chechen must have had a vehicle nearby, but it was nowhere to be seen and there was no time to worry about it.

Zamora’s Yamaha started with a little coaxing.

“There must be something wrong with my GPS.” The Venezuelan sat on his bike beside Quinn. “I am left to wonder why you followed me if your GPS was functional.”

Quinn shrugged. “Sometimes it’s easier to follow a pro than it is to lead. Why do you think Geroux and Caine trade wins each day? One does all the work of the leader while the other sits back only to shoot ahead fresh at the end — putting him in the lead for the next day and repeating the cycle.”

Zamora nodded. “And you hoped to follow me until the end so you could beat me?”

“It’s a tactic.”

“Well.” Zamora winked, lowering his goggles. “I am fortunate you came along. But sometime in the not too distant future, you may regret your decision to save my life.”

Quinn watched as the man raced away, covering him in a rooster-tail shower of sand. He regretted his decision already.

CHAPTER 37

Pollard didn’t know if it was the oppressive heat or the fact that he sat three feet away from the remnants of a nuclear bomb, but he had never sweated so much in his life. His plywood hut kept off the daily rain showers but proved more of an oven than shelter. Though sweat ran down his back and stung his eyes, the humidity was so high that none of it evaporated to help cool him. At first he’d shucked off his loose cotton shirt but found he worried too much about malaria-bearing mosquitos without it.

Still on his bunk, he let his head loll sideways to study the device. It occurred to him that the shielding had degraded to the point that he was being irradiated as he sat there, but found that he didn’t care. He doubted that he’d come out of this alive anyway. The point was to figure out a way to save his wife and son — and to do that, it looked as though he was going to have to rebuild a bomb that was well past its prime.

The trunk stood on its side with the lid hinged open like a door. The thing Zamora called Baba Yaga was nothing special to look at. A metal cylinder ran diagonally from one end of the box to the other, a length of about four feet. As big around as his leg, the cylinder housed the high-explosive charge as well as the “bullet” and “target,” two pieces of plutonium that would be rammed together by the charge to achieve critical mass.

Theoretically, the metal tube was shielded enough to protect someone carrying the device from errant radiation. The rat’s nest of wires leading from an ancient battery was white with corrosion. It could have been from the atmosphere or leaking acid, but radiation was highly corrosive to electronics. Without a Geiger counter, there was no way to tell which had caused the decay. So far the capacitors looked intact, though there was something about their array that he still couldn’t quite put a finger on.

Pollard sat up to look at the bomb more closely. There was a sinister beauty about the thing — like some kind of poisonous spider. Zamora was insane. There was absolutely no doubt about that. But he was smart enough to pick the right scientist for this job.

Baba Yaga, as the name implied, was an old hag. Built by the Soviets in 1970, she had seen better days. Her battery — last replaced in 1986—was toast, some of the wiring was corroded beyond repair, and she very likely leaked radiation like Chernobyl. Apart from the physical danger posed to Pollard — and anyone else who spent any time near the device — such leakage was also highly corrosive to the fragile electronics. But plutonium had a half-life of roughly eighty million years. That component, at least, was still good to go. If the explosive charge in the initial “gun” portion of the bomb remained viable, there was a slight possibility he might be able to fix the rest.

Old as she was, it was the very age of this device that made her so appealing. In an effort to help ward off the risk of rogue generals with their finger on the launch button, the United States had shared their own Permissive Action Link technology with the Soviets sometime around 1971—two months after Baba Yaga was born.

PALs, as the systems were called, were essentially the detonation codes. In the early days, a PAL was little more than a key and a three-digit combination lock. As devices and technology improved they became more sophisticated, with later generations buried deep within the device, making them impossible to tamper with.

Baba Yaga’s lock was analog without the later fail-safe mechanism that would render the bomb unusable after a given number of tries to defeat the code. It would take time to figure out, but first impressions showed a series of wires, covered in some sort of hard resin and suspended in a set of Enigma-like rotors. In order for the bomb to activate, these rotors would have to be turned to the correct location, aligning the wires with the appropriate contact. A simple clock allowed for a prescribed delay in detonation once the device was armed. Pollard thought he could work his way through the puzzle. What he didn’t know was what he’d do once he’d finished.

Yesenia’s voice saved him from horrible thoughts. He shut the lid to the case, hoping to protect her from what radiation he could.

“I brought you supper.” She still carried the Kalashnikov, but kept it pushed behind her back, as if it was more of an afterthought than a weapon of intimidation. At first Pollard wondered why none of the other guards had anything to do with him. A few minutes with the fascinating Guarani girl gave him his answer. Zamora knew he would never hurt someone as articulate and kind as this one. A male guard might bluster and give cause for an outburst. Pollard would only see Yesenia for the fellow victim that she was.

He took the wooden tray of piranha and rice and sat back on the edge of his bunk. The heat and worry over his family pushed a fist against his gut so there was more than he’d ever eat in one sitting. He speared a piece of the flaky white fish with his fork and held it up.

“Would you like some?”

She shook her head, content to stand and smile while he ate.

“I am sorry for you,” she said, as he handed her back the tray a few moments later. He’d picked at one of the fish and forced down a few mouthfuls of rice.

“And why is that?” he asked, wiping his hands on his pants.

The Guarani girl squared her shoulders and nodded in thought. “Because you are a good man,” she said. “And I see no way out of this for you.”

She turned and left without another word. Pollard thought she might have been crying.

He fell back on his cot and looked up at the wooden crossbeams that supported the tin roof. He’d given up on the shredded mosquito netting. None of that mattered anyway. He deserved whatever diseases and misery came his way.

Yesenia was right about one thing. There seemed no good way out of this. But she was dead wrong about the other. Matt Pollard was a lot of things — but he knew a good man was not one of them.

Twitching beetles lay on the pavement under the streetlight in front of Fitzhugh Chevrolet. A black four-door Silverado was parked on the front row next to a gleaming Suburban of the same color. Flanking these like bishops on each side of a black king and queen were two slightly smaller but no more eco-friendly Chevy Tahoes. Row after row of these heavy, earth-killing vehicles covered the four-acre parking lot.

Matthew Pollard hid in the grassy shadows of an overpass, a small set of binoculars pressed to his eyes. A steady flow of traffic thumped on the highway overhead. The lithe coed beside him squirmed with anticipation. Her name was Audrey, but she went by Care. She wore formfitting unbleached cotton capris that hugged the curve of her hips and a tattered green Che Guevara T-shirt cut high so everyone could see the pair of orange and black koi fish playing yin and yang around her bellybutton.

She pushed a sandy dreadlock out of bright eyes.

“I’m, like, so nervous,” she whispered. “Aren’t you nervous? I can’t believe we’re, like, really following through. This is crazy. Don’t you think this is so crazy?”

Pollard turned to look at her for a long moment, then shook his head, saying nothing.

A doctorate in nuclear engineering, five years on a nuke sub, mere months away from a second doctorate, and he was hiding in the grass next to a nineteen-year-old dreadlock-wearing trust-fund kid — trustifarians, he called them — who thought wearing underwear and shaving her pits would somehow bind her to the evil elite of the bourgeoisie.

Crazy indeed.

Scanning the Fitzhugh parking lot one last time, he traded the binoculars for a handheld radio that lay in the grass next to his face.

“All clear from station two,” he said.

“Looks good from here,” a Hispanic voice crackled over the radio. “Listo?”

“Ready,” Pollard said, holding his breath.

He was sick of his life, embarrassed with the road he’d taken for so much of it. Doing something big seemed the only way to make amends. Sugaring a few bulldozer fuel tanks, attending some sit-ins to stop clear-cutting — all that was well and good, but the damage he’d done required a true penance.

He needed a big bang.

Thanks to a particular B-list movie starlet with enough liquid income to assuage her own guilty conscience, Pollard’s little group had the money to up the ante — call in the big dogs, so to speak. She’d put them in touch with a Venezuelan student named Valentine, also at the U of Oregon. He had slick hair, smoked hundred-dollar cigars, and was about to help them take the leap from beginner eco-terrorists using diesel bombs with Ping-Pong-ball and birthday-candle fuses to the big league of military plastic explosives.

Pollard stuffed the binoculars down the front of his shirt and moved in a low crouch toward the car lot. Care, for all her youthful nerves, stayed right beside him. It would be her job to act as lookout while he and Valentine Zamora placed the explosives at each corner of the building. It was one thing to blow up a gas-guzzler or two. They planned to bring down the whole enterprise.

Less than five minutes later, they’d set timers on six two-pound blocks of C-4 explosive. Two under the gas hogs out front and the others under the support columns of the building. Pollard had wanted to use remote detonators, but the good ones, the kind that would ensure they all didn’t get blown to hell by some idiot’s garage door opener, were out of his price range. Zamora, who seemed to be an expert at such things, had convinced him to use timers, planning the sets so they’d go off at roughly the same time.

All three of them ran across the frontage road to the safety of the overpass, sliding into their hiding spot in the tall grass.

“Put these in.” Valentine held a pair of earplugs out to each of the other team members.

Pollard was in the middle of inserting the foam plugs when he felt Care tense beside him.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. “There’s someone in there.”

Pollard snatched up the binoculars.

“Where?”

She pointed with a shaking finger. “Coming out of the service area, just on the other side of that window. It’s a girl.”

Pollard’s breath balled up in his chest as he watched a young woman in a smart gray pantsuit walk from a back office into the showroom. Without thinking, he dropped the binoculars and gathered himself up to run.

“What are you doing?” Valentine yanked him back to the ground. “We have ninety seconds before twelve pounds of explosive and who knows how many gallons of gas blows that place to hell.”

Pollard jerked away, staring back at him. “We have to warn her!”

“Be still!” the Venezuelan hissed. “If you tell her about the explosive she’ll know you’re responsible. I’m not going to prison because some chica decided to work late.”

Care gave an emphatic shake of her head, eyes wide, body twitching. “Matt’s right,” she said. “We have to let her know.”

She got up to run, but Valentine was on her in an instant. He grabbed a fist full of dreadlocks and heaved, jerking her over backwards. She hit the ground with a groan, but he split her lip with a quick fist to the face to make sure he had her attention.

The fireball from the first explosion reflected off his twisted face as he pulled back to strike her again and again, turning her face into a bloody pulp.

Pollard sat motionless, trapped between the murder of an innocent dealership employee and the vicious assault of one of their own by a member of his group.

The third explosion sent the hood of the black Suburban shrieking overhead to slam into the overpass abutment. The sickening crash snapped Pollard out of his stupor.

“Knock it off!” he said, shoving Valentine off a bewildered Care.

Blood poured from her nose and lips, dripping from her chin and soaking her blond dreadlocks. Her teeth showed pink in the firelight of burning cars. “No one was supposed to get hurt,” she moaned.

“Just keep our heads,” Valentine said. “If we keep our heads, everything will be fine.”

“Oh, you mean like when you were beating the shit out of me?” Care winced. She clutched at her forehead with both hands. “You bastard, I think you broke my skull.”

“You’ll be fine,” he said, waving her off. “We did what we came to do — send a message. There is often collateral damage in this sort of action.”

“Screw that,” Care said, stumbling to her feet. “I’m going down there to see if maybe she’s alive.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.

Pollard froze. He knew Care was right. There was a chance the woman had survived the explosions. Someone should go check on her — but he couldn’t bring himself to move. Zamora pulled a pistol from his waistband and made his choice for him.

“You hear that?” he said, pointing the gun at Care. “The cops are on their way.”

“Good.” She rocked back and forth, clutching her head. “I can talk to them when they get here.”

The dealership was fully engulfed in flames now. Every few seconds a fuel tank on one of the gas hogs blew, sending jagged shards of glass and metal whirring into the night sky.

Care swayed, blinking dizzy eyes. She looked at the pistol and smirked, her bloody face backlit by the orange fireball. “Put that away,” she said. “You wouldn’t shoot me, Valentine.”

Pollard felt as if his joints were locked in place. Unable to make himself move, he watched helplessly as Valentine Zamora fired twice. The first shot hit her in the throat, the second in the shoulder.

The gun hung motionless in Zamora’s hand. For a terrifying moment, Pollard thought the man might turn it against him.

Instead Zamora shoved it back in his waistband, spitting on the ground in disgust. “Stupid bitch,” he said. “I just blew that lady to hell. What made you think I wouldn’t shoot you?”

He turned to Pollard, mistaking his fearful inaction for complicity. “Come on,” he said, already grabbing the girl’s feet. She was still moving, tragic sounds coming from the wound in her throat. “Help me drag her body out of sight.” He looked up and grinned. “Like it or not, we’re on the same team now, amigo.”

CHAPTER 38

Zamora lay naked, facedown on the padded massage table in his motor home with a cell phone pressed to his ear. The soles of his feet were on fire, but luckily there appeared to be nothing broken, no long-term damage.

The shorter of the gap-toothed twins worked on the small of his back and the taller kneaded the knots out of his calves. The familiar buzzing of Lourdes Garcia’s angry voice helped to chase away memories of his beating at the hands of the Chechens. He found that he missed her more than he’d imagined and could almost smell the familiar burned-sugar odor she got when she was mad.

“I want to punch this boohooing woman in the face,” Lourdes said. “She is so weak… and the awful little baby… I cannot stand to look at it.”

“And you say I get into moods, my darling,” Zamora said. His voice shook as the twins began to beat on his back. “Let Jorge and Pete watch them and you relax.”

“I cannot relax with the worm squealing his face off every five minutes,” Lourdes snapped. “Have you forgotten me completely? The men you assigned here are pathetic. Pete does little but sit in his chair and tell her nasty jokes when he is not playing video games. He is like a stupid teenager — and do not get me started on the whining Jorge. He is useless. I can no longer trust him. He even gave the bawling worm some of my chocolate milk. Can you imagine?”

Zamora smiled to himself. Beautiful, crazy Lourdes, she was passionate about so many things. He would have to give her some little something to appease her or risk a mutiny.

“I believe it is time for you to make a statement, my darling.”

“What do you mean?” She paused her rant to listen.

“Send Jorge and Pete to buy ten bags of cat litter. When they return, have them dig a grave some distance from the house — large and deep enough to hide the bodies of a mother and child.”

“Then I will be alone with the woman and her worm while they work,” Lourdes said, sounding almost giddy. “That will probably scare her to death.”

“Now, now,” Zamora said. “We need them alive for the moment, remember?”

“I know,” she said. “I hate it, but I understand.”

“I promise you, my love,” Zamora said. “When you see what I have in mind, you will find it so very entertaining.”

He ended the call and summoned Monagas with a snap of his fingers.

His face pressed against the cool leather bed, he watched through sleepy eyes as his faithful companion ushered in Fabian, one of the mechanics.

“How long have you been with me, my friend?” Zamora’s voice was muffled against the table.

“Four years, patrón.” The man’s knees shook.

“Four years…”

The gap-toothed twin used her fists to beat the muscles of Zamora’s back like a drum.

He groaned as the days of tension began to bleed from him. “You would think that would be long enough to know me… ”

The mechanic stood quietly, twisting a ball cap in his hands.

“Have I not treated you well?”

“Very well, patrón.”

“I think so as well,” Zamora said, languidly twisting his neck as the short twin continued with her work down his spine. “That is why I am so distraught at your actions.”

“I beg your pardon, patrón?” Fabian’s teeth chattered as he spoke.

“It had to be you, my friend,” Zamora said. “No one else had access to the motorcycle and my road book.”

“What?”

Zamora cocked his head. “Monagas, I believe Fabian is having some trouble hearing me.”

The mechanic shrieked as Monagas stepped up behind him and sliced off his ear. The gap-toothed twin, numb to such things, continued to knead Zamora’s buttocks without so much as a flinch.

Zamora held out his hand, taking the bloody ear and holding it up to his mouth.

“Can you hear me now, my friend?”

“They have my family, patrón,” the man sobbed. “What was I to do?”

“Well,” Zamora said, “certainly not what you did. What else does Rustam Daudov have planned?”

“He says you have a bomb, and he wants it for himself.”

“I know what he wants,” Zamora hissed into the ear. “I asked you what he has planned.”

“I do not know, patron,” Fabian sobbed. “I swear it. He did not tell me.”

Zamora gave a tired sigh, sitting up on the table. The twin felt him moving and scrambled out of the way. “You won’t be needing this then.” He sniffed the severed ear, then dropped it on the floor, nodding at Monagas.

CHAPTER 39

It was nothing short of a miracle that Pollard had gotten as far as he had with the austere environment and simple tools Zamora provided. He’d told Yesenia that it would have been easier for the professor on Gilligan’s Island to build a bomb from scratch than it was for him to try and repair one, but she didn’t understand the joke.

On the stifling afternoon of his tenth day in the jungle, he reassembled a section of the PAL and heard a faint click. He grimaced, waiting for whatever came after death, because he knew if the bomb blew, he’d not be conscious to experience the moments in between. There was no detonation, but along with the now living circuitry, Baba Yaga’s design clicked in Pollard’s brain. As if a veil had been lifted, everything became clear. He understood her.

Peering with a flashlight at the top of the metal tube, deep into the guts of the thing, he took a look at the row of capacitors from a fresh perspective. Dizzy with the new information, he fell back on his cot and rubbed a hand over his face. There was something about her that had bothered him from the beginning — and now he knew what it was.

More dangerous than even Zamora imagined, Baba Yaga was not what she seemed.

Revitalized, Pollard jumped up as quickly as he’d sat down, pacing back and forth, shaking the hut on its piers. Finally, he threw open the flimsy door. Technically, he wasn’t even supposed to use the latrine without an escort, but boredom and oppressive heat had made the guards lax over time.

Angelo, the camp’s second in command, sat in a folding chair flipping through a magazine about fishing. His rifle leaned against the woodpile beside him. He nearly fell over at Pollard’s shrill whistle. Angelo spoke no English and looked terrified whenever Pollard spoke to him.

He held up his hand as if he wanted Pollard to stay in place. “Yesenia,” he mumbled, shoving the fishing magazine in his hip pocket and scooping up his weapon. Two other guards, also Guarani Indians, glanced up from the cook fire for a moment, then resumed whatever it was they were doing.

“Yes.” Pollard nodded to Angelo. “Yesenia.”

The Indian girl came trotting up a moment later, breathless and smiling. Pollard realized he’d never called for her before.

“I need to talk to Zamora immediately,” he said, trying to keep his voice calm.

Yesenia sighed, nodding softly before walking away. She seemed to realize that things were about to change.

“I need assurances,” Pollard said, “before I go any further.”

Zamora gave a slow sigh on the other end of the phone and was quiet for a long time. Finally, Pollard heard his lips smacking.

“Very well then,” the Venezuelan said. “You may be assured that if you play games with me, I will chop your wife and son into fish bait.”

“I’m serious, Valentine.”

“And I am suddenly playing games? You know what I am capable of, my friend. Do us both a favor and complete your mission.”

“So,” Pollard said, biting his lip as he spoke. “How does this work when I do figure it out? How can I know that my family will be safe?”

“I do not know,” Zamora said. “I have been focused on other endeavors. Present a plan to me and I will consider it. But know this, my customers need your expertise, so you will stay with the device until she is delivered. This is a package deal.”

“If one hair on my son’s head—”

“I know, you will kill me,” Zamora chuckled, cutting him off. “You’re making yourself look foolish, Matthew. Call me when you have good news.”

Zamora ended the call.

Pollard took a deep breath, clutching the satellite phone in his fist. He looked down at Yesenia.

“Things are about to change,” he said.

She smiled, blinking her eyes like a schoolgirl with a crush. “I know.”

CHAPTER 40

Zamora set the phone on his chest and smiled. Pollard had done it. It was apparent in the timbre of his voice. He’d figured out a way to arm the device, and though he harbored well-placed concern for his family, the scientist in him couldn’t help but brag about his accomplishment. Valentine had known all along that the man could do it, but the fact that plans were moving forward so well was cause for celebration.

The taller of the gap-toothed twins — he could never remember their names — gave a plaintive whine from where she lay beside him. Naked but for an Egyptian cotton sheet pulled up to her waist, she snuggled in close, causing him to sweat despite the chilly desert air coming through the motor home window. The other twin peeked over the point of her sister’s shoulder, grinning broadly enough to whistle when she breathed.

“Are you finally done with your calls, Vali?” she asked. He really hated it when she called him that. She and her sister were a pair, though, one never far from the other. He thought of them as bookends, something to admire while he searched for something else but never really study too deeply.

“Almost, my darlings,” Zamora said. He stared up at the ceiling, thinking of what to do next. By all rights he should have been exhausted from the long day of riding, but instead of fatigue he felt a sort of wishful anxiety, as if something very wonderful was about to happen and he simply could not wait. There was so much yet to do and Pollard’s assistance would be necessary until the end. Still, he could tell from Lourdes’s voice she was getting to the very last knot on her rope. He had to figure out a way to placate her somehow. She was like a kiln, a furnace that he needed to feed from time to time.

He picked up the cell phone again and punched in Lourdes’s number with his thumb, smiling at his own brilliance.

“Come on, Vali,” the shorter twin pouted from behind her sister.

He put a finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he said. “If Lourdes suspects you are with me, she’ll peel the skin off the soles of your feet and make you dance with her.”

Both girls fell silent immediately, taking care not to even breathe too deeply, for they knew he wasn’t joking about such a thing. They’d seen her do it.

“Hello, my darling,” Zamora said when Lourdes answered. “I need you to do something for me. It will upset the good professor, to be sure, but I believe the time has come to make some changes in our arrangement.”

CHAPTER 41

Marie’s body jerked awake from a fitful sleep when Lourdes stomped into the room wearing her lime-green ski parka and wool tam. Simon, who’d grown even more sensitive to his mother’s moods than normal, looked up with a trembling lower lip. Tears brimmed on his tiny lashes and he swelled his lungs, gathering breath for a horrific squeal. He’d already lost so much weight. His little face was sunken and pale. Marie clutched him to her chest and tried to comfort him, but the squeal came anyway. Her teeth ached from constantly clenching her jaw. Stress hormones coursed through her body without a break, wearing her down and eating away at her mind.

“Time for a hike,” Lourdes said. She stomped her foot on the tile floor, making a dull thud and rattling the mostly vacant farmhouse.

Pete looked up from his recliner with a sideways eye. “Are you serious?”

“Valentine demands it,” Lourdes said, glaring at the bawling baby. “It is not good for me to be cooped up in this house for so long. I become impatient, and when I become impatient, I become violent.”

“Well, I haven’t been cooped up for that long,” Pete said. “I’ll just stay here with the prisoners.”

“They are coming as well,” Lourdes barked. She clapped her hands. “Apúrate,” she said. Hurry up.

“It’s freezing out there,” Marie argued. “I’m afraid Simon is already getting sick.”

Jorge, who’d been making sandwiches in the kitchen, poked his head around the corner. “My leg is bothering me,” he said. “I can stay with them.”

“Aaahhhhhhh!” Lourdes screeched. “We all go! Put on your coats or not, I do not care. We leave in two minutes.”

“Oh, mi madre,” Jorge whispered, biting his bottom lip. His eyes fell on the crying baby.

Marie scrambled to fit a squalling Simon into his hooded fleece jumper. In between shuddering sobs he looked up at her with accusing eyes, not understanding why she had to be so rough. It killed her inside to force him.

Knowing better than to argue with his crazy boss, Jorge slipped into his ratty Carhartt jacket and limped to the door.

A light coating of snow had covered the yard behind the house, powdering the small utility shed and propane tank. Sagging clotheslines hung in perfect shallow curves against the backdrop of a small orchard of a dozen leafless apple trees. A hundred yards beyond the orchard over a plowed stretch of field, a line of spruce trees marked the entrance to a copse of thick woods that ran up the side of a low hill, one of many islands of trees here and there on the rolling farmland.

Marie stopped at the orchard when she realized Lourdes was leading them toward the dark line of forest. Nothing good could come from walking into such a place with this horrible woman. Still, with Simon in her arms she could not fight, so a moment later she trudged on. Snow kicked up into her Danskos at each shuffling step and melted into her socks.

Ten yards inside the forest, Marie saw the mound of freshly dug earth. Her stomach clenched as she recognized it immediately for what it was. A grave. In the center of a small clearing, it was protected by the canopy of tall spruce trees and frosted with only a hint of snow.

Marie stopped in her tracks twenty feet from the pile of turned earth. She swayed, struggling to stay on her feet. Simon was too big for her to carry far and her legs shook from the effort and fear.

Lourdes raised a sullen brow at Pete and Jorge, who’d been walking single file with Marie in between them, and nodded toward the hole. “It will have to do,” she said. Cold pinked her cheeks and the tip of her nose. The tam hung low across her eyes. She retraced her steps so she passed Pete and stood directly in front of Marie.

Simon squirmed and fussed, trying to get down and play in the snow.

Lourdes looked on smugly, studying him.

“We have come to a crossroads,” she said with a snarling grin. “Where changes must be made.”

Marie’s heart told her to run as fast as she could, but she knew there was nowhere to go. Her stomach lurched and the world seemed to spin around her as she felt Jorge’s hands on her arm. This couldn’t be happening. She had dreams, Simon had to go to college, have a girlfriend… Her vision blurred with tears and soul-crushing terror. She found it impossible even to swallow.

Pete grabbed her other arm and helped Jorge lead her to stand at the edge of the rectangular hole.

Oddly, once at the edge Marie felt a sudden calm come over her. What made her any more important than the murdered mothers and children she heard about on the news? They surely had dreams as well. She set her jaw and stared straight ahead. If she and Simon were dead, Matt could do what he needed to do. Maybe no one else would be hurt by these awful people. She began to sense everything around her in perfect detail. The toes of her Danskos sent a skittering of loose dirt over the edge with a hollow rattle. Small roots hung snakelike from the sides. The rich earthiness of the forest soil on chilly air tickled her nose. She no longer cared about herself but wanted only to make certain Simon did not suffer.

Beside her, Jorge’s hand began to tremble.

“I am sorry, señora,” he whispered, a split second before Lourdes shot him in the back of the head.

Jorge convulsed momentarily at her arm, nearly pulling her into the grave before he fell away. His body stiffened and he toppled headlong into the pit.

Every ounce of clarity she’d just felt flew from Marie with the sound of the pistol. Eyes wide in horror, she vomited into the hole. Clutching Simon to her breast, she collapsed to her knees, head bowed, bracing for the next shot.

It never came.

“He was weak,” Lourdes snapped. “Weakness is worse than babies.” She looked Marie in the eye. “Besides, I want you to understand what is coming to you… in time.” She turned on her heels to start for the house, leaving Jorge’s body alone in the open earth.

“Move your ass,” Pete stammered, clearly shaken that his boss had just shot one of her own.

Marie struggled to stand, scrambling to keep from sliding into the grave with the dead man. Lourdes trudged ahead without looking back. Pete plodded along behind, cursing and giving Marie a shove every few steps to prove there wasn’t the tiniest bit of weakness in him.

CHAPTER 42

Quinn sat quietly with a watered-down Gatorade in his hand, staring into the flames of a small campfire. They’d walked a hundred meters outside the bivouac fence and a small sand dune blocked them from the hubbub of scooters, power tools, and foot traffic that went on all night inside the enclosure. There was no suitable wood, but Bo made do by pouring two cups of gasoline on a mound of sand. Orange shadows played off the faces of Thibodaux, Bo, and Aleksandra, who all sat in folding camp chairs watching the same fire.

The KTM’s tires and oil had been changed, Quinn had been fed and watered and completed his road book after his shower. All his Dakar duties complete, it was good to sit for a moment and collect his thoughts — and try to figure out Zamora.

“Hey, Jericho,” Bo said. One hand held an open bottle of rum, the other was shoved down the pocket of a handwoven cotton hoodie he’d bought from a local street vendor. “Remember what Dad calls a fire like this?”

“Cowboy TV.” Quinn laughed, enjoying the memory. “Our old man tells the dumbest jokes.”

“I know a joke,” Aleksandra said. Flames reflected on her oval face. Both hands rested in the pockets of her fleece vest.

“A joke?” Bo said, taking a swig of rum. “Impressive.”

She glanced up from the fire to glare hard at him. “Russians are very funny people,” she said.

“Yeah,” Bo said, rolling his eyes. “That’s obvious.”

“We do not giggle like maniacs at every little thing.” Aleksandra turned back to the fire, her face bordering on a pout. “But Russians have a fine sense of humor.”

“I think Mr. Bo should take a little teaspoon full of hush.” Thibodaux leaned forward, big arms resting on his knees. “I want to hear your joke, cheri.”

“Me too,” Jericho said.

“Okay.” Aleksandra sat up a little straighter. The pout left as quickly as it had come. “Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson go to camp in the desert,” she began. Quinn couldn’t help but notice how her green eyes caught the dancing light of the fire. “They have a good meal and go to sleep. In the middle of the night Holmes nudges the doctor awake. ‘Look at the sky, Watson, and tell me what you see.’ Watson looks up and says: ‘I see millions and millions of stars.’ ‘And what does that tell you?’ Sherlock asks. ‘Well,’ Watson answers, ‘astronomically I see there are millions of galaxies and infer that there are billions of planets. Astrologically, I see that Saturn is in Leo. Meteorologically, I deduce from the lack of clouds that we should have pleasant weather in the morning. Theologically, I observe that God is infinite and we are but tiny, insignificant specks… What do you deduce, Holmes?’ Sherlock shakes his head and says: ‘Watson, you idiot. Someone has stolen our tent!’ ”

Thibodaux’s easy belly laugh shook the chill from the night air. Jericho chuckled and even Bo cracked a smile.

Satisfied that her joke had gone over well enough, Aleksandra slid back in the canvas of her chair and closed her eyes. “That was Mikhail’s favorite,” she whispered.

Jericho looked up at the night sky. Like Dr. Watson, he saw millions of stars splashed across the Milky Way over an infinite desert night. Carina, Alpha and Beta Centauri, and the Southern Cross — they were foreign to the northern sky he’d grown up with.

“You know,” he said. “I assume since Russians have a sense of humor, you possess other feelings as well. We’ve been so busy trying to find this bomb that we’ve never stopped to check and see how you’re doing.”

“How do you mean?” Aleksandra looked up at him. “I am fine.”

“It’s difficult enough to lose a fellow agent.” Jericho shrugged. “But I can see you and Mikhail were very close. Losing someone like that is especially painful.”

“He was married, you know,” Aleksandra said, her voice low and reverent. “He had a lovely wife, Irina, and two beautiful daughters.”

An awkward silence fell around the fire, but for the uneasy squeak and shift of camp chairs and the distant sound of engine noise.

“We were not lovers,” she went on, now staring a thousand yards past the fire, into the black desert night. “Though most suspected so, even our superiors. No, my Misha was very much in love with his wife. He was my trainer, my mentor, and oftentimes my surrogate father when I had no one else to trust. But most of all, he was my friend.” A tear ran down Aleksandra’s cheek. She rubbed her nose with her sleeve. “I have had many lovers — but I have only ever had one friend.”

Bo looked around the group with glassy eyes, his chest heaving. Quinn knew his brother could be argumentative, but his emotions ran bright, just below the surface. The younger Quinn sniffed and raised the bottle of rum.

“To Mikhail Ivanovich Polzin, Agent Riley Cooper, and too many other good friends we’ve all lost to bloody men.” He took a drink, then tipped the bottle, letting it run for a moment into the sand. “And to tomorrow, when we find that damned bomb.”

CHAPTER 43

“Daudov has disappeared.” Monagas slipped a Walther .22 caliber pistol with a stubby suppressor in the waistband of his pants. Nearly worthless in a true gunfight, the tiny thing was meant for close work where stealth was the key. Within the close and crowded confines of the bivouac, it was perfect.

“No sign at all?” Zamora mused. “My mind is muddled. We’ve killed so many, maybe we are just running out of Chechens.”

“No,” Monagas said. “He and anyone we know connected with him have simply vanished.”

Zamora threw a hand over his face. He lay alone in his bunk, wearing nothing but an open red dressing gown of rich silk on Egyptian cotton sheets that draped decadently over the edge. He’d grown bored with the gap-toothed twins and sent them to sleep in their own tent. The episode with Blessington and the Chechen had left him fitful and unable to concentrate. Still, in the crowds where he ran, it didn’t do to show a shred of weakness, even among friends.

Monagas stood across from him at the door to the motor home, waiting for orders.

Zamora looked up. “I would consider it a personal favor if you were to find Rustam Daudov and cut out his heart.”

“I will find him then.” Monagas turned to go.

“It is far too probable, my friend, that Daudov has found out our secret and is already en route to Bolivia.” Zamora pursed his lips. He was hesitant to voice his thoughts for fear that they would come true. “Far too many know about the camp,” he said. “My father’s pilots could easily be bought. I know — I bought them. I should have had them killed them long ago.”

Monagas put a hand on the doorknob. “The mechanic is still working outside. He will call me if he sees anyone.”

“You’re certain he had no part in Fabian’s betrayal?”

Monagas nodded. “He saw what happened to his partner.”

“Very well then. Do your best to find the Chechen dog. But I fear he has already flown.” Zamora made a fluttering gesture with his hand. “And that means my dream of finishing the Dakar has flown as well.”

“But you have other dreams, patrón,” Monagas said.

A thin smile perked Zamora’s lips.

“Indeed I do,” he said.

CHAPTER 44

Quinn and Aleksandra walked back to the bivouac together, keeping up the appearance of a couple. Each carried a folded camp chair over their shoulder. Bo had stayed back a few minutes longer to make sure the fire was out. Jacques hung back as well, using the satellite phone to call his wife in private.

In anticipation of an early start, most riders had already hit the rack, but Jericho’s mind raced. Instinct, sixth sense, haragei—Japanese art of the belly — however it was described, he’d learned long before to pay attention to such things.

“I am sorry for that display back there,” Aleksandra said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

“It was good,” Quinn said. “I don’t often see my baby brother get choked up like that.”

“You are very different, the two of you,” she said.

Jericho shook his head, chuckling. “You have no idea.”

“And yet…” She stopped to look at him under the light of the tire repair awning. The clank of wrenches and thump of rubber rims went on all night. “And yet you are very much the same.”

“I suppose.” Quinn walked on. Boaz Quinn was good deep down, but he’d chosen a very different path in his life.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Aleksandra said, looking back and forth to make certain no one else was in earshot. “In most—”

She stopped abruptly as Julian Monagas passed. The crooked-nosed thug forced his pockmarked face into a twisted half smile. He raised his hand in a noncommittal wave as he went by.

Beside him, Quinn felt Aleksandra’s body go tense, as if all the air around her was suddenly drawn away. She spun, staring daggers at the broad back of a departing thug.

“What is it?” Quinn stared down at her, feeling her hand go hot in his.

She stood stone still, not even breathing until Monagas turned the corner on the other side of the tire shop.

“Are you all right?” Quinn prodded.

“I am fine,” she said, shutting down again after all the emotional openness of the evening. She spun toward her tent. “I am very tired,” she said. “And you have an early morning.”

Inside her tent, Aleksandra knelt on her sleeping mat and rifled through her bag for the long dagger she kept at the bottom. She held her hand out in front of her. Even in the shadows of her tent, she could see it trembling.

The bastard Monagas was wearing Mikhail’s double eagle ring. It had been him in the men’s room stall at the strip club. He had killed the Chechen pig Akhmad Umarov. A tear of frustration crossed the freckles of her cheek. He had murdered her friend.

Aleksandra knew she should tell Quinn what she knew. If Monagas had killed Mikhail, then he and Zamora had been present when Baba Yaga was taken. There was no more doubt that they had her. She told herself that it didn’t matter. They were watching Zamora anyway. If Quinn started to doubt, then she would tell him. If she told him her plan for Monagas now, he would try and stop her.

“I will make him pay, Misha,” she whispered, huge tears dripping from the end of her nose and landing with loud plops on her sleeping bag. Chiding herself for such rampant emotion, she sniffed, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand.

She stuffed the dagger under her belt at the small of her back and press checked her H&K one last time, reassuring herself that there was a round in the chamber. Satisfied that she was ready to wreak havoc on the murderous thug with the flat nose and crooked lip, she listened until she heard the sound of Quinn’s rhythmic breathing coming from the tent beside her. She only had to wait a few moments for a scooter to buzz past and used the sound to cover the noise as she unzipped her tent and crept into the night.

CHAPTER 45

Marie woke from a fitful sleep to the sensation of breathing on her neck. Even her nightmares were welcome relief from her actual circumstances, and she clenched her eyes shut, afraid to open them until she heard the familiar sound of Simon’s cooing.

Pete sagged in the recliner, snoring loudly with a leg thrown over one arm of the chair. Lourdes was in the back bedroom. The buzz of her voice carried down the hall as she talked to her foul boyfriend on the computer.

Simon cooed again in her ear.

Fully awake now, she wiped the grit out of her eyes and licked dry lips. She needed some water but didn’t want to risk waking Pete.

“What have you got there?” she whispered, looking down at Simon’s hand. Her heart stopped in her chest when she realized what it was.

He must have wandered over to Pete’s chair while they were both asleep and picked up his cell phone.

Marie tugged on the phone, her brain spinning as she tried to figure out what to do. She could call the police but didn’t know where she was. Worse, on the outside chance that someone was able to find them, such a thing would surely get Matt killed.

Simon started to whimper. Fearful of waking Pete, she abandoned trying to take the phone for a moment while she thought. Matt might have something planned already. He was smart that way. Whatever she did, it had to involve him. But how?

“Hooray for Simon,” Marie whispered, praising him for getting the phone. Pete was no more than fifteen feet away so she kept her voice to a quiet hum. Every move she made seemed as loud as banging a string of metal cans. “Can Mama see?” She held out her hand for the phone. Mercifully, the baby gave it to her. “Hooray for Simon,” she whispered again.

Thankfully, Pete had not opted for a screen lock and she was able to access the camera with no problem. She turned the phone around and took a photograph of herself and Simon leaning against the wall.

Lourdes’s heavy footfalls pounded down the hall and Marie shoved the phone under her thigh. Pete stirred but didn’t wake up. Marie did not breathe until she heard the bathroom door shut, followed by the sound of Lourdes peeing.

Fingers trembling, Marie punched in the number she’d decided on and sent the photograph attached to a text message. As soon as it sent, she deleted the evidence of both text and photograph.

The toilet flushed an instant before Marie slid the phone across the floor below Pete’s dangling leg.

Lourdes stomped into the living room just an instant after Marie had tiptoed back across the room and collapsed on her lumpy mattress beside Simon. The horrible woman got herself a glass of water from the kitchen and stood wearing nothing but black panties and a T-shirt. One hand on a thick hip, she glared down at Marie while she downed the water in one long gulping swallow.

Lourdes wiped her mouth with her forearm and sniffed.

“Why are you so happy?” She asked.

Marie bowed her head. She was still shaking. “What do you mean?”

“You have hope. I can smell it,” Lourdes sneered. “I thought we talked about that.”

“I don’t,” Marie lied.

Lourdes stood for a long moment, blinking under the stark bangs of her Cleopatra haircut. Without warning she let loose a bone-chilling scream and threw her glass against the kitchen wall.

“Holy shit!” Pete fell out of the chair at the sound of the scream and shattering glass. He scrambled to his feet trying to make sense of what was going on.

Frightened by the sudden noises, Simon let out a screech of his own.

“Enough fun for now,” Lourdes said. “Go back to sleep.” She shot a hateful look at Marie. “Clean up that mess,” she said.

Pete reached to pick up his phone from where it lay on the floor and shoved it in his pocket without a second look. He suspected nothing. Marie had to fight the urge to smile. For the first time in days, she felt a tiny bit in control.

CHAPTER 46

“Monagas is gone,” Aleksandra said early the next morning. Her lips were drawn in a tight white line as she set her tray down on the long folding table under the dining tent. “I just heard it from one of his mechanics. Gone!” The sun was just coming up, but the last riders had left the starting line five minutes before.

Thibodaux looked up from his plate of eggs and buttered toast. “Gone?”

“That can’t be good,” Bo said from across the table.

“No,” Thibodaux said. “It’s not.” He reached for the iPhone in his shirt pocket. “You get Jericho on the horn and I’ll check on Zamora.”

Thibodaux pulled up his hacked link to the ASO tracking system just in time to see the GPS blip identifying Zamora’s bike veer off the designated course and turn east for the Iquique airport. In an unavoidable turn of events, Jericho had come in ahead of him the day before and had to leave the starting line earlier. He was going slow, feigning engine trouble, but was still ahead a half mile.

Thibodaux stood, twirling his hand overhead for the others to abandon their breakfast and follow him.

Bo handed him the phone as they ran toward the support truck.

Jericho tapped the Bluetooth receiver on the side of his helmet. “Go for Quinn,” he said. Without a face shield, the wind whirred in his helmet, but the earpiece made it possible to hear well enough.

“Turn around, l’ami,” Thibodaux said. “Zamora’s heading to the airport.”

Quinn tapped the brakes, feeling the bike’s knobby tires squirm on the cool pavement. If Thibodaux said to turn around, there was no point in second-guessing him.

“Monagas?” he asked.

“He was MIA as of early this morning, beb,” Thibodaux said. “Looks like they’re making a move. We’re on our way to the airport now.”

Quinn pulled over long enough to disable the KTM’s GPS locator system so the officials — and anyone else who might be watching — wouldn’t be able to track him. Race officials would call the IriTrack to check his safety soon enough, but he would tell them he’d had engine trouble. He didn’t want to withdraw until later, in case Zamora happened to check in later in the day.

Back aboard the bike, he flipped a quick U-turn and opened up the throttle, no longer fretting about babying the engine through the race. He made it to the tiny civil aviation airpark near Iquique’s Diego Aracena Airport less than five minutes later.

The KTM’s wheels crunched up on the gravel apron next to a young mechanic in greasy blue overalls wiping his hands on an even greasier rag. A twin-engine Cessna banked northeast over the rolling dunes of the Atacama Desert.

“Have you quit the race too, señor?” the mechanic asked, eyeing Quinn with an empathetic frown.

“I’m afraid so, amigo,” Quinn said. He saw Zamora’s Yamaha — a fifty-thousand-dollar motorcycle — abandoned, lying on its side next to a neatly painted tin hangar along the edge of the taxiway. “Bad transmission,” he lied. He nodded toward the twin-engine Cessna that grew smaller and smaller as it flew into the morning light. “What happened to my friend?”

“It must be in the water.” The mechanic smiled. “He too had a bad transmission.”

“So he chartered one of your planes?” Quinn asked, still straddling the KTM.

The mechanic shook his head. “No. He bought it. They are going to La Paz.” He peered at Quinn. “Do you too wish to buy an airplane to go to La Paz?”

Quinn scanned the tiny airport. Only three other aircraft sat at their tie-downs beyond the building, a Piper Cheyenne twin, a tiny Cessna 150, and a radial-engine plane that looked like some kind of older war bird.

“I’d like to charter one,” Quinn said. Thibodaux and the others came rolling up in the support truck, screeching to a stop beside him.

“Very well, amigo,” the mechanic said, eyeing the newcomers. “The 150 and the Navy trainer are available for charter. But the Cheyenne is for sale only.”

Quinn frowned. Both the 150 and the Navy AT6 were two-place aircraft. They would do no good. “For sale only?” he asked.

“Ah, I am afraid so, amigo. Too many people want to do things outside the law in such a plane. If I was to own it during such an action, I could get into grave trouble.” A broad smile crossed his face. “I make you a very good deal at one hundred thousand American dollars.”

Quinn tilted his head. “And she’s in good condition?”

“Of course, señor,” the mechanic said. “And I will fly her for you for an additional fifty thousand dollars.”

“That is a steep fee, my friend,” Bo Quinn said as he walked up beside his brother.

“It is,” the mechanic said. “But I am not the one with a bad transmission needing to go to La Paz.”

Five minutes later Enrique Santos had changed his greasy overalls for a pair of faded jeans, a white sweatshirt, and a ball cap with an Orvis fly-fishing logo on the front — and proclaimed himself a Piper Cheyenne pilot.

“You sure this is safe?” Thibodaux said, as they climbed up the fold-out air stairs at the rear of the aircraft. He ran a thumb around the tattered rubber door seal before ducking his head to walk between the single seats on each side of a narrow aisle.

“He’s flying us,” Quinn said. “He must think it’s safe enough.” There were two seats in front for a pilot and co-pilot, then four more with two facing aft and two more in a vis-à-vis configuration. A fifth seat with a removable cushion hiding the toilet was at the far aft of the plane behind a sliding curtain. It had space for two more seats, but Quinn guessed they had been removed in order to haul more cargo in the form of coca products. Quinn took the forward-facing seat on the right of the airplane so he could keep an eye on Enrique.

“We’re in a bit of a hurry, amigo,” he said. “I would like to catch up to my friend who left earlier if we could.”

Enrique picked up the mike from the console of instruments and looked over his shoulder. “I could attempt to call him on the radio.”

Quinn raised his hand. “That won’t be necessary.

The young pilot nodded. “I thought not, amigo. You have that look about you.”

“What look is that?” Bo asked, sitting across from his brother.

“The look of one who chases bad men.”

“And my friend in the Cessna?”

Enrique’s face grew dark. “Oh, señor, he has the look of a very bad man. That is why I gave you my sweetheart deal on this airplane.”

The Pratt & Whitney turbine engines hurled the Cheyenne off the runway and pulled her up at an angle steep enough that Bo, who sat almost knee to knee across from Quinn, was hanging above him by his shoulder harness. Aleksandra hung similarly over Thibodaux until the plane began to level out at fifteen thousand feet into a shallower climb.

One hand on the yoke, Enrique turned and held up a two-foot length of toilet paper. “We are having a little trouble pressurizing,” he said. “I need someone to take this and hold it up to the door.” His face was relaxed, as if this sort of thing happened all the time.

“Do what now?” Thibodaux’s eyes went wide.

“We’re losing air around the door.” Enrique held out the toilet paper. “Hold this near the door. When you get to the leak it will suck out of your hand and seal the hole… hopefully.”

Despite having to use toilet paper to fix the door seal, Enrique proved to be a more than competent pilot. Roughly two hours later he set the Cheyenne down through heavy clouds at Laja Airport a few kilometers outside of El Alto, a suburb of La Paz.

Thibodaux applauded when the wheels touched down in a steady rain. “Damn good aviating, amigo.”

“Thank you for flying Air Enrique,” the young pilot said as they rolled down the runway. Blue and white lights flashed in by the fog. The prop blast pushed rivulets of water along the windows. “It sounds as if we were the last plane in. The weather has everything grounded. Look, your friend was able to make it in. There is the Cessna he purchased.” Enrique pointed to the main operations building looming like a ghost through the fog as they made their way to parking. “I must advise you that if you wish to be legal, you will need to check in with Bolivian customs at the airport in El Alto. You are American so they will charge you a hundred and thirty-five dollars each for a Bolivian visa. That is entirely up to you, however. No one knows we are here. Where do you want me to park your plane?”

“Consider it our gift to you,” Quinn said. Both he and Enrique had known all along that he wasn’t going to hassle with the aircraft while Zamora got farther away.

“Thank you very much for your generosity,” Enrique said, grinning.

Thibodaux looked at him through narrow eyes. “How many times have you sold this same plane?”

Enrique’s grin grew even wider as he set the parking brake. “Oh, you would be surprised, señor. I could retire, but the work is good and I get to meet such interesting people.”

A thought suddenly occurred to Quinn. “I’m sure you know the pilot who flew my friend here in the Cessna.”

“He is my cousin,” Enrique said.

“Call and see if the men are still with him. But tell him not to mention us.”

Enrique nodded emphatically. “An excellent idea, amigo.” He pulled out his cell phone and dialed.

After a quick conversation of rapid-fire Spanish he ended the call and returned the phone to his pocket.

“The men you follow tried to get my cousin to fly them to Rurrenabaque on the other side of the Yungas Mountains. But the weather is too bad. He told them he would wait, but he says they are rude and very impatient.”

“Where are they now?” Aleksandra asked.

Enrique shrugged. “They took a cab down to the city.”

“Will they come back so he can fly them?” Aleksandra’s voice rose in pitch and timbre. “Surely they will come back.”

“Not according to my cousin, I’m afraid,” Enrique said. “He says they were in too much of a hurry to listen to reason. He pointed them to the Hotel Condeza, but I do not know if they would take his advice.”

Enrique paused at the door of the aircraft, his hand on the exit lever. “I must warn you,” he said. “The air is very thin here in La Paz. Go slowly, my friends — or you will learn the hard way. And lastly, be wary of unofficial taxis. Some are paid to drive you to certain places where you will be robbed.”

Both Bo and Aleksandra smiled at that, taking the pistols out of the duffel and shoving then under their jackets.

“That would prove to be quite a surprise to the robbers,” she said.

Oddly, Quinn felt the pressure drop when Enrique twisted the Cheyenne’s latch and cracked open the door, as if they’d opened the door in flight. He took a deep breath of what oxygen there was and made his way down the folding stairs to the wet tarmac.

Team Quinn grabbed their duffel bags and stood in the rain to wave good-bye to the young entrepreneur. Jericho had changed out of his riding gear in mid flight and into a pair of nylon 5.11 khakis and a white polo. Prepared for desert nights on the Dakar, he had only a nylon jacket that proved to be lacking against the chilly heights of El Alto at over thirteen thousand feet above sea level.

Enrique called them a cab, and it arrived within minutes. Cramming themselves into the battered Ford Expedition, they settled in for the looping ride on the Autopista from the high plains of El Alto down, down, down to the great gash in the Andes that cradled the city of Nuestra Señora de La Paz, the Hotel Condeza, and, if they were extremely lucky, Valentine Zamora.

CHAPTER 47

Simon had been crying nonstop for ten minutes. In many ways life had been easier when Marie had given up hope. Now that she harbored even the tiniest notion that she could get her message to Matt and he could use his genius brain to figure out a way to save them — all she wanted to do was scream right along with her baby.

Lourdes seemed bent on giving them just enough food to keep them alive until she could shoot them. A meager diet of nothing but cheese and bread was hard enough on Marie, but it put the baby’s stomach in knots. She tried her best to soothe him, rubbing his tummy, bouncing him on her knee, but day after day he got worse, throwing his head back and wailing.

Lourdes kept the laptop computer with her in the back room, where, thankfully, she stayed most of the time. Marie had grown attuned to the faint beep of an incoming video call and could barely contain herself when she heard it. Lourdes’s lumbering footfalls as she stomped down the hall confirmed that the call was her daily moment with Matthew.

The evil woman never allowed the calls to last more than a few seconds, so Marie knew she’d have to be quick if she wanted to get the message across. Often, Matt’s face was heavily pixilated and his voice little more than a string of disembodied garble. She prayed the connection would be clear enough this time.

Lourdes stomped to the edge of the mattress and handed her the open laptop. She crossed her arms over her chest and glared. “Say hello and then good-bye,” she said.

Marie took the computer and set it in her lap. “He needs to see his son,” she said, trying to ignore Lourdes.

Matt’s gaunt but smiling face greeted her on the screen.

“Are you all right?” The tension in his face seemed to increase when he saw her, and Marie realized she must look a sight. She pushed her bangs out of her eyes and forced a smile. “I’m fine,” she said, pulling Simon onto her lap. Thankfully, he quit crying when he saw his daddy. “We’re both fine. I’m worried about Miss Kitty though.”

Matt cocked his head to the side. “You’re worried about who?”

“Miss Kitty,” Marie sniffed. “I left her in the kitchen and we don’t have anyone to go check on her.”

“Marie, I—”

“That is enough.” Lourdes snatched back the computer and closed the screen. Tucking it under her arm, she shook her head in disgust. “You have but seconds to talk to your husband and all you can think of is your silly cat? He will be lucky to be rid of you.”

Marie let her head loll back against the wall and closed her eyes. Oh, Matt, she thought. I hope you understood.

CHAPTER 48

Zamora sat at a tippy wooden table in a coffeehouse off Prado Avenue in downtown La Paz, a cell phone pressed to his ear.

“Don’t do anything rash until we speak in person,” he said, pressing a thumb and forefinger to his eyes. Surely, someone was digging out his eyes from the inside. “I am on my way there now.”

“We feel the need to explore another option,” Yazid Nazif said at the other end of the line. “We are after maximum effect, after all.”

Zamora pounded his fist on the table, first shouting, then lowering his voice when others in the café looked in his direction. “And that is what you will get! You must stay with the plan!”

“I ask you again, my friend,” Nazif said a little too sweetly for Zamora’s taste. “Is the device ours or is it not?”

“Of course it’s yours,” he hissed. “We will speak of this when we get to the location. Tell Borregos to wait in Rio Branco for my call.”

Zamora ended the call and rested his head on the table. “Idiots,” he whispered to himself. He should have known better than to trust the Yemenis to follow through.

The quick exit from Chile and the bumpy flight over the storm clouds had left him dizzy and bilious. He had no idea where he was, leaving those particulars to Monagas. The altitude made his temples feel like he’d been hit with a hammer, and his stomach churned. All he wanted was to leave this stinking, airless cesspool and get to his bomb. So far, the weather refused to cooperate.

No flights were leaving the city. They were so high in the sagging clouds that rain hardly seemed to fall, but only rattle around in the mist. It was enough to make someone crazy.

He clicked the touch pad on the laptop computer in front of him, trying to connect to Pollard for the third time. For all he knew, Rustam Daudov and his men were already at the river camp. He almost cried when Pollard’s face appeared on the screen.

“Where have you been?” Zamora snapped. He used a telephone earpiece with a small microphone so the handful of other patrons, mostly tourists, couldn’t hear the conversation. Pollard stared back at him with sullen eyes, saying nothing.

“Never mind,” Zamora said. “Is everything all right there?”

“Valentine, you are insane,” Pollard scoffed. “Of course everything isn’t all right. You have my family at gunpoint.”

“A fact you should keep in mind,” Zamora said. “I mean — is the device intact and still in your care?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

“There is a certain Chechen who wants what is mine. I believe he is on the way to you,” Zamora said. “If he gets there before I do, he will kill you without question.”

“I doubt that,” Pollard laughed. “You’ve surrounded me with this crack group of guards.”

Zamora scoffed, feeling a chill as he thought about Yesenia and the other guards. He’d often employed groups of Guarani and other indigenous youth to guard lesser narcotics labs. He’d thought to hide Baba Yaga in plain sight without making too much of a fuss with a heavily armed encampment. There was always someone with a bigger army. “You know they are just there to keep you honest,” he said.

“I know. But anyone familiar with one of these devices knows they will also need an expert to make it work. You said it yourself. Isn’t that why I’m here?”

“Believe me, he will kill you and take the device,” Zamora said. “Rustam Daudov is a thug.”

“And what are you?” Pollard sneered.

Zamora scratched his chin, then ran the tip of his finger along the thin black line of his mustache. “As you say, I am the man who has your family. You would do well to remember that. Now be watchful. I will be there shortly.”

He ended the call as Monagas entered the coffee shop.

Zamora motioned for him to sit in the chair across from him. That was the thing about Monagas; he never assumed things. “I hope you have good news.”

“I am sorry, patrón,” Monagas sighed. “They say this weather will be here for some time. No aircraft are able to fly over the mountains for the Beni.” His eyes shifted back and forth around the small coffee shop and he leaned forward across the table. “I do have a way out, patrón, but it would be very, very dangerous.”

CHAPTER 49

In the valleys of the Andes, La Paz, Bolivia, was a city built upside down. The most desirable real estate was nestled at a more breathable nine thousand feet in the lowlands southwest of the tree-lined central thoroughfare known as the Prado. Much of the city sprawled along a deep trench with middle-class residents occupying condos near the Choqueyapu River. The less well to do clung to the steep mountains surrounding the city in makeshift brick houses. The poorest lived in the thin air of nearly fourteen thousand feet above sea level.

Quinn felt his ears pop for the third time as the rattling Ford radio-taxi turned back southeast on the Autopista and headed down into the city.

The cabdriver, a short Aymara Indian man with a colorful wool hat and tattered homespun coat, pointed to the south with an open hand. “If not for the clouds, you could see the three peaks of Illimani there. The guardian of La Paz.”

The man, who said his name was Lupe, never engaged in real conversation, piping up only when they passed a particular landmark or milepost. Quinn suspected he didn’t actually speak much English, but had memorized a few lines in order to ingratiate himself to tourists for bigger tips.

Quinn had the taxi drop them off a block above the Hotel Condeza at the bustling intersection of Santa Cruz and Linares. Lupe smiled broadly as Thibodaux paid him fifteen American dollars, twice the agreed-upon fare.

Low clouds sulked in the air, drifting between the red brick buildings. Barrel-chested men and stocky women wearing colorful, handwoven alpaca shawls against the drizzling rain sauntered along the crowded streets. Most wore bowler hats, tied to their heads with pieces of string. The smell of frying meat and roasted corn drifted with the mist and whiff of open sewers.

“I tell you one thing, cher,” Thibodaux panted as they jostled their way through the crowds of tourists and stall keepers. He clenched his eyes shut. “I am not a mountain man, that’s for sure.”

Bo, who seemed less affected by the altitude, pointed down the street, less than a hundred meters away. “There’s the hotel,” he said. “Should we go see if he’s there?”

Aleksandra tapped the small duffel slung over her shoulder where she carried her pistol. “Good idea,” she said.

“Now hold on a second,” Quinn said, pulling up short in the drizzling rain next to a stall selling what looked like dried baby dinosaurs. “Our goal is to follow him to the bomb. Not confront him yet.” Passersby spilled around him.

Aleksandra nodded. “That is true,” she said, but it was obvious she was trying to convince herself.

A wizened old woman, sitting behind what turned out to be a large pile of desiccated llama fetuses, piped up. “You need good luck.” Thinning gray braids hung from a weathered brown derby hat that sat sideways over her broad face, which was wrinkled and dark as a prune. A coca leaf was pressed to her sagging cheek like a piece of jewelry. She chewed on a wad of leaves as she spoke, sweeping a bony hand across the stacks of figurines, amulets, and dried animals that made up her wares. Like traders worldwide, her command of English was remarkable. “Everyone could use some help. I have the llamas to bless new buildings, Ekeko to bring you fortune, Pachamama for protection… ” Her rheumy eyes narrowed to look straight at Aleksandra. “You are on a quest, no?”

Thibodaux, who put a little more stock than he should in such notions, raised a surprised brow at the woman’s divination.

“Relax, Jacques,” Quinn whispered. “A bunch of turistas marching along, intent on something down the street. It’s not too much of a stretch to guess we’re on a quest.”

Thibodaux bit his bottom lip. “Take a look up there, beb.” He nodded toward a sign on the open front brick building where the old woman’s stall was tucked in among others selling similar wares. “Mercado de las Brujas,” he said as if proving a point. “The witches’ market.”

“I have the ingredients to capture the heart of a man.” The old women grinned at Aleksandra, showing the wad of coca against stained teeth. “But I see you have already captured one.” She cackled at Bo, who shot a startled glance at Quinn.

“That’s crazy,” he said, looking a little too guilty for Jericho’s taste.

“How about one of these?” Aleksandra picked up a clay figurine of a little man, apparently anxious to change the subject. The statue wore a traditional wool hat and his arms were laden with packages. It was no more than three inches tall, and a hole in its mouth held a full-size cigarette. “How much?” She shuffled through her pockets for her money.

“Ekeko,” the old woman said. “He will bring you good fortune.”

Aleksandra pulled her cell phone from her pocket along with her wallet. Quinn, who stood directly beside her, heard a nearly inaudible ping. She handed the woman her money and turned quickly toward the street, staring down at the phone.

“What was that?” Quinn moved closer.

The face of the phone showed a map where a blue dot pulsed on a road leading northeast out of the city.

“Zamora?” Thibodaux said as he and Bo crowded in to look at the phone as well.

“No.” Aleksandra shook her head. “Monagas. This signal is from the tracker I placed with Umarov at Zamora’s party. It was in a gold money clip. It was Monagas who killed the Chechen back in Miami and must have taken the clip as a trophy.” Aleksandra gave the half grin of a hunter. “His foolish habit will be his undoing.”

“We’ve been around Monagas for over a week. Why is the tracker only showing up now?” Thibodaux asked.

“The device is activated by body heat.” Aleksandra shrugged. “Perhaps he had it buried in his luggage and did not have it in his pocket until now.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Quinn held out his hand for the phone. “May I see it?”

Aleksandra gave the phone to him and he showed it to the woman in the bowler hat, who sat smiling behind her stack of dried baby llamas. “Do you know what is in this part of the city?” he asked.

The old woman pulled a pair of cat’s-eye reading glasses from behind her table and slipped them on to study the phone.

“Ahhhh,” she said under her breath. “Very bad. This is very, very bad.”

“What?” Thibodaux’s mouth fell open. “Just go on ahead and tell us, will you?”

“This blue spot?” The old woman peered over the top of her bright red glasses. “This is what you seek?”

“It is.” Quinn gave her a twenty-dollar bill.

The woman took off her glasses and held them in a clenched fist. “The miners are marching on the new road, making it impassable today. The one you seek goes to El Camino de la Muerte.” She pointed to the northeast. “The Road of Death.”

CHAPTER 50

Quinn flagged down the first green and white radio cab he found that would hold them all. The driver was a ponytailed Aymara Indian named Leonardo who looked to be in his late teens. He confirmed that the easiest way to get across the Andes to Coroico and on to Rurrenabaque was shut down by a parade of striking indigenous silver miners trying to get the Bolivian government’s attention. Until the skies cleared, El Camino de la Muerte, he said, was the only other way. He agreed to take them to Cumbre Pass, beyond the eastern edge of the city, where his cousin Adelmo had a four-wheel-drive van that could make the journey down the Bolivian Road of Death. Quinn wondered if everyone in South America had a cousin who ran a hotel, flew planes, or rented out cars.

Crammed in the middle between Jericho and Bo, Aleksandra kept watch on the pulsing blue dot on her phone. “We have to hurry,” she said, her voice breathless from tension and altitude. The heavy mist and lack of oxygen made everyone feel as though they were slowly drowning. “He’s still moving away.”

“My friend.” Thibodaux took a drink from his water bottle and looked across the front seat at the driver. “We are in a hurry. I will double your fare if you can pick up your speed.”

Leonardo grinned broadly and slammed his foot to the floorboard, throwing them all back in their seats. He drove with one hand while he spoke in animated Spanish on his cell phone. The car sped over cobblestone streets, climbing steadily upward thousands of feet, splashing through puddles and drenching pedestrians who trudged too close to the edge of the road. Rain spattered on the foggy windshield but did little to slow the boy down.

“I don’t want to be the pantywaist here,” Bo said, bracing his knees against the front seat to keep from being thrown completely on top of Aleksandra as the cab made a hard left. “But we don’t exactly need a run-in with the local polícia right now, considering our status in the country.”

Leonardo smiled over his shoulder. “Not to worry, amigo,” he said, with an apparent understanding of English far greater than that of their last driver. “My cousin Mateo is the captain of the traffic police. His men know my cab.”

Leonardo’s cousin Adelmo had the van ready to go by the time the cab came screeching to a stop high up on the barren mountainside in front of a terraced yard full of rusted vehicles. Chickens pecked in the mud, oblivious to the rain. A tawny billy goat peered through the mist from the long hood of an old AMC Javelin sitting on concrete blocks.

Not much older than Leonardo, Adelmo was more somber than his cousin with a curl of black hair hanging over expressive brown eyes. His English was not quite as good, but he was pleasant enough and willing to get them over the Road of Death. His services as a driver, along with a plate of piping-hot meat empanadas and chunos, a grayish frost-dried potato, came with the price of the vehicle rental.

“He has stopped,” Aleksandra said through clenched teeth, eyes glued to her phone. Her entire body seemed to hum with nervous energy. “If we hurry, we can catch him.”

Adelmo’s young wife, plump cheeked and pregnant, had given Jacques a small pamphlet on the Yungas Road, as the Camino de la Muerte was more formally known. It was written in Spanish, but the big Cajun’s French and Italian helped him pick through the descriptions as they drove.

“Did you know the American tourist books call this place we’re going WMDR — the world’s most dangerous road — on account of the little factoid that two or three hundred people plummet to their deaths there every year? It says here that we’ll be climbing to over fifteen thousand feet at La Cumbre Pass before we drop down to about four thousand feet.” He glanced up at Quinn, wagging his head. “But don’t you worry because the drop-offs are only eighteen hundred feet or so and we’ll have plenty of room since the shittin’ road is all of ten feet wide.” He turned to stare out the side window. The fog made it impossible to see the sheer cliffs that fell away from the mountain just inches outside the door. “Don’t be surprised if I use up a non-Bible curse word or two, l’ami.”

“We will be fine, señor,” Adelmo said, nodding to the clay statue of a big-breasted Pachamama, the Aymara earth goddess, on his dashboard. It bore a surprising resemblance to his wife.

Traffic grew thicker as they approached the pass, with cargo trucks and brightly painted buses known as col-lectivos inching along in a soggy parade to clog the ever-narrowing road ahead. Within another half mile they were at a complete standstill. Nothing but fog to the left and rivulets of muddy water gurgling down the rock face to their right.

“I don’t think anything has passed us from the other direction for quite a while,” Bo said, leaning out the window.

“Can we go around?” Quinn asked, pulling a wad of American bills out of his pocket. “It is important that we catch our friend.”

Adelmo took a deep breath, reached to touch the statue of Pachamama, then pulled his little van out of line and began to slog forward, past the line of glaring truck and bus drivers, up and over the pass.

Quinn kept an eye out as they drove past every vehicle.

“Do you see him yet?” Adelmo said, eyes glued to what he could see of the narrow road through the fog.

“Not yet,” Quinn said.

“He’s still ahead of us,” Aleksandra said from the back of the van where she got better reception from her satellite.

Well below the pass, Adelmo slowed as a truck driver wearing a North Face fleece jacket and traditional bowler hat ghosted through the fog outside his flatbed. Smoke from his clay pipe curled around his brown face. Adelmo apparently knew him and rolled down his window to shout a greeting. They spoke in a rapid-fire language Quinn guessed was their native Aymara. Adelmo’s young face grew grave as he listened to his friend.

“There is a mudslide ahead,” he said, pulling his head back inside. He switched off the engine and leaned back in his seat, settling in as if this was something he did all the time. “A road crew is there, but it will take two or three hours to clear.”

“I don’t like this,” Thibodaux said. “I jump out of airplanes and go toe-to-toe with whatever badass you want to shove my way, but you can have this road-of-death shit.”

“Oh, señor.” Adelmo opened his eyes, chuckling. “We are not yet on El Camino de la Muerte. That does not begin for five more kilometers at the town of Cota-pata.”

“Damn to hell!” Aleksandra hissed. She looked up, a dark frown creasing her face. “They made it around the slide. He is moving again!”

CHAPTER 51

Quinn stood beside Thibodaux under a drizzling rain along the edge of the pavement, a satellite phone pressed to his ear. What had been bare, skeletal rock from the Altiplano to Cumbre Pass was now covered by a lush skin of green cloud forest. Towering peaks vanished into the clouds in every direction, blocking the horizon and making it difficult to get a signal. He had to turn every now and again to stay connected.

Bo and Aleksandra had walked ahead a little, passing the line of trucks and buses to see if they could get a feel for how long the road would be blocked. It was eerily quiet but for the gurgle of newly formed streams and waterfalls that tumbled down through the foliage. Drivers and passengers alike dozed in their seats.

Palmer answered on the third try.

Quinn brought him up to speed quickly about Aleksandra’s tracker. Few details were as important as the fact that they were about to lose the only link they had to the bomb.

“He’s moving north,” Quinn said. “We believe he’s trying to get to a place called Rurrenabaque.”

“Dammit,” Palmer said. “It had to be Bolivia.”

“Sir?”

“Since Evo Morales shut down cooperation with drug enforcement, we’re pretty slim in the way of resources in that part of the world.”

Quinn could hear the click of a keyboard in the background and imagined Palmer sitting behind his expansive wooden desk in the study of his Virginia satellite office away from the White House. “I may have somebody,” Palmer said. “What kind of a vehicle are they in?”

“Not sure,” Quinn said.

“Okay,” Palmer sighed. “You realize you’re asking me to call a seldom-used asset and ask him to look for two Hispanic men coming into a town of eight thousand or so people who look just like them in a vehicle you can’t describe?”

“Bolivian police then?” Quinn offered. “Someone has to stop this guy before he dissolves into the jungle. Maybe regular military.”

“That wouldn’t go well,” Palmer said. “In one scenario they kill Zamora and we are no closer to the bomb. In the other, they find the bomb and Bolivia suddenly becomes a nuclear power.”

“We are losing him, sir,” Quinn said. “Can you destroy the road? Box him in until we catch up?”

More keyboard clicks.

“The George Washington is off the coast of Brazil with the Fourth Fleet,” Palmer said. The line was silent for a long moment. “But that’s a no-go. They’re too far out to do you any good.”

Aleksandra came trotting back up the hill with Bo right behind her. He looked mortified at the thought of being beaten by a girl in a footrace. Their chests heaved under the flimsy clear plastic rain jackets Adelmo had given them.

Bo stopped beside Quinn, bent forward with his hands on his knees. “We found a way around,” he said between panting breaths.

“Gotta go,” Quinn said into the satellite phone.

“I’ll put our Bolivian contact on alert. Call back as soon as practical.”

“You have got to be shittin’ me,” Thibodaux said when Bo explained his plan. He shook the now dog-eared tourist pamphlet at Quinn for emphasis. “We’re talkin’ about the Road of Death here, beb.”

“He’ll soon be out of range.” Aleksandra looked up from her phone. Rain plastered red hair to her forehead and cheeks in thick locks. “I cannot see another way,” she said.

Bo ran back down the hill while Jericho and Aleksandra threw on fleece jackets and shoved their gear into Quinn’s daypack. Quinn sighed at the Spartan nature of it all — two pistols, an extra pair of socks for each of them, and the heavy Severance blade.

Bo and Thibodaux had the battered Yamaha 250 dirt bike off the back of a rusted bubble-topped Mercedes truck by the time Quinn and Aleksandra made it down to them. The driver stood at the side of the road, counting his surprise windfall. Adelmo stayed back with his van, unwilling to be a part of such foolishness.

There was only one bike, and since Quinn was the better rider, it was understood he’d go. Aleksandra refused to be left behind, stressing the fact that she was the only one who knew what to do with the bomb once they found it.

Quinn threw a leg over the little blue bike and braced himself for Aleksandra to climb on behind him. An ATGATT man when he was on a motorcycle—all the gear, all the time—he felt naked in the flimsy raincoat and 5.11 khaki slacks. Looking ahead at what he could see of the snaking road and steep drop-offs, he consoled himself with the fact that a leather jacket and helmet weren’t likely to save him anyway.

Leggy as it was, the Yamaha wasn’t made for two riders. Quinn found himself thankful that Aleksandra was built like a forest sprite. Snugging down the pack on her shoulders, she wrapped her arms around his waist and scrunched up tight against his back, her thighs running parallel with his.

Quinn could see the headlines. UNITED STATES AIR FORCE OSI AGENT PLUNGES TO DEATH IN THE ARMS OF BEAUTIFUL RUSSIAN OPERATIVE….

Jacques stood by with a big hand planted flat on top of his head, looking like he might throw up. Rain dripped down Bo’s face, curling his shaggy head of blond hair. His lips pursed in a jealous line.

“You be careful with her, Jericho,” he muttered.

“Are you kidding me?” Quinn glanced over his shoulder at Aleksandra, then back at his brother, before shaking his head. “That old witch was right about you two.”

Aleksandra gave him a rough squeeze around the ribs, planting her doubled fists in his midsection. Her voice was flint hard next to his ear. “Let’s go,” she said. “Monagas is getting away.”

“You mean Zamora,” he said.

“Of course,” she said over the blatting engine. “That is what I mean.”

Quinn toed the bike into first and released the brake, beginning their seventy-kilometer downhill roll. With the angry Russian woman breathing revenge in his ear, the Road of Death was about to grow more deadly.

CHAPTER 52

A thirty-meter chunk of mountain lay in a lumpy tangled heap of roots, tree branches, and ferns across the narrow road. Bits of gravel still tumbled over an abrupt edge that disappeared into a low bank of soupy clouds that filled the valley below.

Crews of men wearing plastic raincoats and wielding shovels had cleared a flattened trail along the edge so they could walk back and forth. A chubby man with a cigarette dangling from his lips maneuvered an orange Kubota backhoe around the slide on metal tracks. It wasn’t much larger than a garden tractor and seemed even smaller alongside the gigantic heap of earth.

Rolling past the waiting trucks, buses, and the odd car, Quinn picked his line, aiming for the packed trail just feet from the edge. Quinn felt Aleksandra tense as they neared the mudslide. He assumed she was worried about going over the steep edge, but he was more concerned with one of the workers hitting him with a shovel as they rode past.

Focused on riding, he was vaguely aware of a car door slamming. Aleksandra half turned to look behind them.

“Go, go, go!” she shouted in his ear.

Road workers dove for cover as automatic gunfire cracked in the thin air, splattering the mud. Quinn leaned forward, downshifting and rolling on the throttle. The bike shimmied in the sloppy mud and he dragged the rear brake a hair to help stand it up.

The shooters were close, and judging from the way Aleksandra squeezed him with her thighs, she’d recognized them an instant before they’d opened fire. At this range, Quinn found himself grateful that they used submachine guns and not rifles or even pistols, which they would have been tempted to actually aim.

Quinn could hear the shouts of angry voices behind them. A car door slammed. A car engine revved and the sound of spinning tires on gravel preceded the grind of metal gears as bumpers and fenders crashed together.

Quinn squirted over the mudslide and picked his way through the loose debris on the other side before opening up the throttle again. Another volley of shots cracked past, echoing off the deep canyon walls and splatting into the mud. Aleksandra squirmed behind him.

“They are trying to follow,” she said, settling in low against his back.

“You recognize them?” Quinn yelled over the wind and hard patter of rain against his plastic jacket.

“Chechens,” she yelled back, tucked in so his body broke the chill of the oncoming wind. He could feel her shivering. “The driver is Salambek. Rustam Daudov’s man. A killer.”

“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Quinn yelled into the wind.

Only a handful of trucks waited downhill from the mudslide. Beyond them, Quinn and Aleksandra had the Road of Death all to themselves. Waterfalls careened through the dense foliage and down the high mountainside above them, rushing in newly formed ditches across the road to disappear into the cloudy abyss on the other side.

Quinn planted a foot in the soupy gravel to pivot the bike around a sharp turn and still keep it on two wheels.

“His sister, Dagmani, was a leader of the Black Widows,” Aleksandra shouted once the Yamaha was stabilized.

Quinn had heard of the female suicide squads in Chechnya, though thankfully he’d never faced one.

“I killed her,” Aleksandra said simply, confirming his suspicions.

The snaking road seemed to magically disappear off and on, playing now you see me, now you don’t, as banks of fog and cloud drifted down the mountains with the rain.

“Did they make it around?” The little Yamaha had the tendency to dart in whatever direction he looked so he depended on Aleksandra to be his eyes to the rear.

The back wheel shimmied as she turned, but to her credit, she caught herself with her thighs, careful not to upset his balance in the treacherous mud.

“I can’t tell,” she said, turning just a little farther to get a better look. Her legs tensed again. Her arms squeezed a little tighter.

“I hear them,” she said at length, her voice ripped away by the wind.

Quinn rolled on more throttle, counter steering around a series of deep ruts, then bouncing through a foaming waterfall that sprayed across the entire roadway like a huge bathroom shower. His face stung from the chilly, liquefied air. He’d ridden enough in cold wind to know it would be completely numb in a matter of minutes.

Somewhere ahead was a man they had to catch or risk losing track of a nuclear bomb. Behind was a car full of Chechen terrorists. They were likely after the same bomb, but at this moment were bent on killing Aleksandra — and in a car with the stability of four wheels versus his two, Quinn stood zero chance of outrunning them.

“How many are in the car?” he yelled.

“Three.”

Quinn took a series of slow, rhythmic breaths, slowing his heart rate. His eyes scanned the road ahead, noting the angle of drop, the thick tangle of trees and bushes that grew on the cliff side. Rain and the fine spray of dense fog whipped at his unprotected face, popping against his thin plastic raincoat like firecrackers. A cold chill ran down both legs. He fought to keep from shivering so badly he’d upset the bike. In CRO training, he’d endured long soaks with his classmates in ice-filled water in order to induce hypothermia. A lifelong Alaskan, used to the cold more than most, his teeth had chattered so badly he’d thought they might shatter. Though it had been horrific at the time, he’d gone through it, and the training had taught him what to expect — to recognize the promptings of his body before he reached a point of no return. Wind and wet would sap his body of critical warmth and leave him unable to ride, let alone fight.

A hundred meters ahead the narrow road made a sharp bend to the right, putting them out of sight for a period of a few seconds even if the fog happened to thin.

Popping his neck from side to side, he worked to relax his shoulders, drawing on the warmth of Aleksandra’s body where she pressed against him. His hands clutched the grips like frozen claws. He made rhythmic fists, trying to work the blood back into them.

“We have to stop around that corner,” he yelled over his shoulder.

“Are you crazy?” Her breath buzzed directly into his ear. “They will be on top of us almost at once.”

He rolled his palm to give the little Yamaha as much gas as he dared, causing it to give a throaty moan as it dug into the muddy slop.

“We’d better hurry then,” he said through chattering teeth, as much to himself as Kanatova.

CHAPTER 53

Yesenia had scored him a more serviceable netting and Pollard lay on his cot and watched the mosquitos try to reach him. Outside the protective barrier, sitting cross-legged on the plywood floor of the metal hooch, the Indian girl looked at him with the adoration of a student with a teacher crush. She’d taken to wearing a green parrot feather in her hair and washing her face before she came to see him. During their conversations he’d let it slip that he held two doctoral degrees and from that moment on, she’d referred to him as Dr. Matt. She said little except when he spoke to her, but spent most days just sitting and watching him like some sort of rifle-wielding disciple.

At first he’d ignored her; then, instead of talking to himself as he worked, he began to bounce his ideas off her. But Zamora would arrive at any time and she did work for him, so he kept his present problem to himself.

What in the world had Marie been talking about? They didn’t have a cat. In fact, she knew he didn’t care for house pets at all. Still, their time on the video link was always limited, and Marie was smart enough not to waste it on mindless chatter. She had a reason for what she’d said. Miss Kitty was some sort of clue. He just had to get inside that brain of hers and figure out what it meant.

He replayed Marie’s exact words over and over in his head. “I left her in the kitchen,” she’d said. “And we don’t have anyone to check on her… ”

Yesenia shook him out of his daydream.

“Dr. Matt,” she said, toying with the iridescent green feather over her ear. The beauty of it stood out in stark contrast to the rifle across her lap. “Do you think it possible I could ever attend university?”

He rolled up on his side. The world was somehow softer and less intense when viewed through the mosquito netting. It was easy to imagine he was having a discussion with one of his students.

“Of course,” he said. “But you’d have to set new priorities. Leave all this behind.”

She hung her head, staring at the floor. “When my debt is paid,” she said.

“What debt?” Pollard sat up, parting the net, and moved to the edge of his cot.

Yesenia sighed deeply. “A man came to our village and offered my sister and me work in Cochabamba. Even though my family is very poor and my father wanted me to go, I saw this man for what he was and said no. My sister said yes. He took us both anyway. When we got to the city I saw they were going to take us to Brazil and I… how do you say it?”

“Killed him?” Pollard offered.

Yesenia gave a little chuckle and shook her head. “Oh, no, señor. I wish I had, but a man like that is not so easy to kill. I became more trouble than I was worth, stealing things from shops as we walked by, starting fights with tourists… you know, to annoy him. The one who runs Señor Zamora’s businesses in Bolivia paid my debt, but now I am indebted to him.”

“Wait,” Pollard said. “I don’t understand. What debt?”

“You know, my bus ticket, food and lodging each night. I got an infection the first month so I have the debt for medicine as well. It piles up, you know.”

Pollard threw up his hands. “Yesenia, you were kidnapped. There is no debt.”

“Someone paid for my food and medicine,” she said. “My sister wrote me a letter a few months ago. She says the worst thing about being a prostitute is that you are always sick and your debt grows every week.”

Pollard tried to calm his breathing, knowing full well his desire to beat these men to death showed clearly on his face. “May I ask how old your sister is?”

“She is eleven years,” Yesenia said, her small hands across the rifle in her lap. “I think that is much too young for such things, don’t you, Dr. Matt?”

Pollard shuddered. “Any age is too young for that, Yesenia.”

“It makes me feel guilty, but I am saved from… that — for the most part.” She gave a resigned shrug. “I can shoot and my English is good, so I have other uses — like guarding you. But still, I owe this man for the money he spent to buy my freedom.”

“That isn’t freedom,” Pollard said. Anger churned in his gut like an illness. “Being bought and sold.”

“I know,” she said. “But it is reality, and sometimes knowing what is real is the closest thing we have to being free, no?”

“I wish you were one of my students,” Pollard said.

“Maybe someday,” Yesenia said. “I often dream of paying my little sister’s debt so we can go to school together.” She wiped a tear from her eye with the heel of her hand. Her thumb was bound in grimy white tape to protect some jungle injury. “She is much prettier than me,” she sniffed. “Which I suppose is what saved me and got her where she is. I can still see her wearing stupid red lipstick with that stupid Hello Kitty purse, pretending to be a grown woman… ”

Pollard’s mind was already spinning. He’d figure out a way to help Yesenia and her poor sister in good time. But for now, she’d helped him.

He stood from his cot and strode quickly back and forth in front of the bomb. Yesenia didn’t protest when he stopped and kissed her on the top of her head.

CHAPTER 54

A troop of howler monkeys munched in the wet canopy, soft eyes staring down at the spinning back wheel of the blue Yamaha as it teetered over a football-size stone along the abrupt edge. A hummingbird whirred in the shadows, zipping from plant to plant like a bullet, iridescent green against shades of gray.

A steady rain pattered against dense foliage and hanging moss along the winding, mud-choked Road of Death. Brown streams gurgled through delicate orchids and broom-like ferns. Greenery rose up through thick fog on either side, ghosting through the cloud forest on the mountains above and the sheer drops below.

The Chechens’ muddy white Jeep Cherokee sloshed to a stop in the center of the road. There was no shoulder, and even the middle provided little clearance for those getting out on the driver’s side of the vehicle.

Three feet below the edge, Quinn pressed his chest against the slick shrubs, feeling them soak through his shirt. Being out of the wind had returned a semblance of warmth to his body. His feet braced against one of the saplings that grew in a small stand along the edge. He clutched another the size of his wrist, bent like a spring under his right arm.

Above him, out of sight, a car door eased shut. Whispered voices barked in guttural Chechen. Footsteps sloshed along the road sending a slurry of mud and gravel skittering over the edge, pelting Quinn’s head. His face against the mountain, he waited for the man above to peer over before releasing the sapling he’d pulled with him when he slipped over the edge.

Under tremendous pressure, the arched tree snapped upright, swatting the startled Chechen directly in the face. He staggered backward away from the edge, shouting vehement curses.

Quinn clawed his way through the tangle of slick brush and back onto the road as gunshots cracked to his right.

The man he’d surprised had fallen backwards, landing on the seat of his pants in the mud. Blood poured from his forehead and a nasty gash across the bridge of his beakish nose. A broken branch the size of Quinn’s thumb stuck from a wound in his shoulder and a pistol hung loosely in his left hand.

Quinn kicked the weapon from the dazed man’s hand, scanning the road for the two others, trusting that Aleksandra was doing the same. A crunch of gravel behind him sent him sprinting again for the mountain edge as the bearded Jeep driver floored the gas and bore down directly on him. The Chechen on the ground screamed as the driver ran over his legs, aimed in on Quinn.

The flat report of two pistol shots cracked the air as Quinn slid over the side, flailing for a handful of branches to keep from tumbling another thousand feet.

Glass shattered and the Jeep’s engine revved, gaining speed. Metal groaned as it veered sharply right, glancing off the mountain face to swerve left again. The driver slumped over the wheel, dead from the two well-placed shots to his neck from Aleksandra long before he crashed and rolled through the rocks and trees below.

“Salambek is dead.” Aleksandra nodded toward the canyon as she walked toward the injured Chechen who’d been pressed into a muddy rut by his friend’s driving. She held the H&K P7 at her side. “Lucky the driver had the window down,” she said, “or these little bullets might not have penetrated the door.” She spun quickly to shoot the wounded Chechen in the knee. “They do, however go through swine quite easily.”

The man howled in pain, forgetting the bleeding gash on his forehead to clutch at his demolished leg. He was pushing fifty, tall and heavily muscled. His face pulled back in a tight grimace showing a mouthful of gold teeth.

Aleksandra smacked him in the back of the head with her open hand. It was odd to Quinn to see such a small woman exercising such control over such an imposing man.

She spoke in clipped Russian that communicated her disdain for the man. Quinn could tell the Chechen would be difficult to break. He’d likely been on the dispensing end of such questioning before. Aleksandra squatted down beside him, just out of reach, her pistol behind her back.

Quinn understood neither Russian nor Chechen, but he had a pretty good idea what the two were saying. They had no time for a lengthy interrogation. Even as they spoke, Valentine Zamora was getting away. Aleksandra was professional enough to know the man would either talk or he wouldn’t. In the end, he spit in her face.

Aleksandra stood and wiped her cheek with her forearm. Despite her small stature, she grabbed the wounded man by the collar of his jacket and dragged him to the edge of the road. He was weak from loss of blood, and though he was defiant to the end, it was little problem for the compact woman to shove him over the edge.

“He kills Russian babies,” Aleksandra said when she wheeled around to face Quinn, as if he needed an explanation for her actions. “I will not waste another bullet.”

“Understood,” Quinn said, already moving to pick up the motorcycle. He’d hoped they’d be able to use the Chechens’ Jeep to make it down the mountain, but now that wasn’t going to happen. “Did he tell you anything?” Quinn climbed aboard the bike and toed it back into gear. He checked the safety on his 1911 before passing it over his shoulder to Aleksandra, who returned it to the daypack.

“They were supposed to catch up to Zamora and kill him,” she said, throwing a leg over the back of the bike and settling in around his waist.

“After he led them to the bomb?” Seconds counted now, and Quinn was already rolling.

“No,” she said. “He was clear on that. They were to kill Zamora when they caught him, here on the Death Road.”

Quinn grabbed a handful of brake and brought the little Yamaha to a slithering stop. A brown slurry of mud and gravel ran around his mud-caked boots.

“Wait a minute,” he said, turning to look at Aleksandra whose face was just inches away. “You say these men worked for Rustam Daudov?”

“I am sure of it,” she said.

Quinn blinked, letting the words sink in. Turning, he released the brakes, giving the bike as much throttle as the muck would allow.

“That means the Chechens already know where the bomb is,” he yelled. “If they get there before Zamora he’s a dead man.”

“Or the bomb is already gone,” Aleksandra said.

CHAPTER 55

The incident with the Chechens had cost valuable time. Periodically, the clouds would thin and Quinn caught a glimpse of another vehicle ahead, winding its way along the steep edge of the twisting road as it snaked back and forth, down toward the Amazon Basin.

The lower they went, the thicker and warmer the air became. Quinn found it easier to think and the suffocating panic of near drowning began to seep away. Feeling crept back to his hands and face. Aleksandra too became more animated, looking around to take in the sights rather than ducking in behind him.

Nestled in the rolling hills, the subtropical village of Coroico was a favorite weekend getaway for more well-to-do La Paz residents when they grew weary of the stark, airless Altiplano. They were, in effect, coming down for air.

The clouds parted, revealing a swath of blue as Quinn pointed the little Yamaha toward the edge of town. Two boys of nine or ten walked barefoot, whacking sticks on the ground at the edge of the lonely road. A low sun hung over the tree-covered hills to the west, drawing clouds of steam from the jungle.

The boys stopped, interested in what the two frozen-looking crazy people were doing on a motorcycle in their town. Quinn rolled up beside them.

“How’s it going?” Aleksandra said from the back, her voice trilling in perfect Spanish. The dark skin of his Apache grandmother allowed him to blend in, but for all his language ability, this was one he’d never learned to speak. Aleksandra was close enough to Quinn’s ear, though, that she was able to give him the gist of their conversation.

The boys waved politely, ducking their heads.

“We’re looking for some friends who came in ahead of us,” Aleksandra said. Quinn couldn’t help but think of how sweet she could make her voice considering what he’d seen her do just an hour before.

“Which ones?” the smaller of the two boys in a dirty white T-shirt asked.

“Have there been many?”

“Not many,” the boy said. “I hear there was a mudslide and the miners are marching.”

Alexandra translated in quick whispers.

Word traveled fast in the Andes, a fact that Quinn knew they would have to depend on if they wanted to find Zamora.

“Our two friends are traveling together,” Aleksandra said. “One has a tiny mustache like a little mouse.” She made her voice go higher as if she was telling a story. “The other has a flat nose like he fell against a wall.”

The boys laughed at her impressions. Though Quinn didn’t understand all the words, he knew who she was talking about with each description. He couldn’t help but think she would have made an excellent schoolteacher if she hadn’t gone the professional killer route.

“He stopped at my auntie’s store for a coffee,” the boy said, smacking his stick against the ground as he spoke. “Then they left for Rurrenabaque.”

“How far away?”

The boy consulted with his friend. “All night at least,” he said, scratching his nose. His friend nodded his head in agreement.

“Are there any airplanes here?” Aleksandra asked.

Laughing at the thought, the boys suddenly looked up the road. “More friends?” the boy in the white T-shirt said.

Quinn turned to see Jacques Thibodaux’s big face looking at him from the passenger window of Adelmo’s van. Bo leaned forward from the backseat, a broad grin spreading across his face when he saw Aleksandra.

Valentine Zamora beat on the dashboard with the flat of his hand, cursing at Monagas and ordering him to drive faster. Though not as steep as El Camino de la Muerte, the road from Coroico to Rurrenabaque wound its way deeper and deeper into the jungle, more like a river of thick mud than an actual road. Less than two hundred miles, the trip took nearly ten hours — all night — and Zamora had not slept for a moment.

The sun was just pinking the horizon by the time Monagas rolled the Land Cruiser into the river town of Rurrenabaque, known as simply as Rurren to the locals. It took Monagas less than twenty minutes to rouse a sleeping fisherman and rent his open wooden boat for the river. Zamora rarely used the Beni River camp and had little in the way of staff in the area. He’d thought it better to keep Yesenia and Angelo and a couple of others to guard Pollard and the bomb. Many men would have made it too much of a target.

Once on the boat, he held up his finger to have Monagas wait a moment to start the engine. He took the satellite phone from his pack and punched in the number. Ever the calm adventurer, his hands trembled at being so near his prize.

“Sí,” Diego Borregos said, answering the phone.

Zamora had expected the Yemeni.

“We are almost there,” Zamora said.

“Good,” the Colombian said. “I am not so fond of your friends. May I have the location now? I am ready to be rid of them.”

“Of course. But there may be a problem,” he said, thinking of the Chechens. There had been no sign of them either on the road or in the camp, according to Pollard, but one could never be too careful.

“Don’t worry so much, my friend.” Borregos laughed. “If you had no problems you wouldn’t need my services. I will handle whatever issues I find as long as I can get your friends what they want and be rid of them. Now…” The Colombian’s voice grew grave. “You pay me for transport along our… established routes. Give me the location and I will meet you there.”

The Colombians knew nothing of the bomb itself, thinking only that he was selling arms as he usually did and had had a run-in with his tyrannical father.

Zamora held his breath. In the end, he had to trust someone.

CHAPTER 56

Quinn’s eyes slammed open when the van bounced over a downed log half sunken in the middle of the road. He’d been dreaming about a walk with his daughter and the rutted road provided a rude awakening. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked around to get his bearings. The sun was fully up, but it was still early and the relative cool of night still hung in the trees. Roosters crowed behind a line of shanty houses along the road leading into town. Two blue and gold macaws perched like sentinels high in a gnarled branch, looking more like vibrant jungle ornaments than actual birds.

Aleksandra sat in the back of the van beside Bo, and Thibodaux thumbed through a pamphlet in the front seat beside Adelmo.

Quinn sat up in his middle seat, stretching his back, waiting for the old wounded parts of him to wake up. At thirty-five, the life he had led made the years doubly hard on his body. He turned half around in his seat.

“Have you got any kind of signal?” he asked Aleksandra.

She nodded. “He is on the river.”

Adelmo negotiated with a fisherman to secure a boat and a sack of provisions including bottled water and several dozen cunapes, a sort of bulbous Bolivian cheese bread that, Adelmo explained, got its name because it resembled a woman’s breast. Thibodaux ate them like popcorn and took to calling them boob biscuits.

The unflappable Aymara driver had become caught up in the chase and offered to come with them downriver for no extra charge. Quinn wouldn’t allow it. Where they were going there was bound to be bloodshed. It was bad enough to have Bo along. They paid him well and said their good-byes while they boarded the slender wooden craft that looked like a sort of canoe made of planks from a wooden privacy fence. It proved to be watertight, though, and the little Nissan motor was sound and had them nosed out into the muddy river in a matter of minutes.

“Where are we now with a signal?” Quinn asked, popping the lid on one of the water bottles. As cold as he’d been the day before, he preferred it to the oppressive heat and humidity of the Amazon Basin. He was an Alaskan at heart and always would be.

“My battery is dying and there was no time to charge it,” Aleksandra said. “I have it turned off for the moment, but he was a mile ahead of us when I last checked. Just before we get to that spot, I will check again and so on. Until then we must keep watch.”

Thibodaux sat on an overturned plastic bucket at the tiller, steering away from the muddy bank to head downstream through the low green hills toward the Amazon. A youth spent exploring the Louisiana bayou made him the natural choice to drive the boat.

Three miles from town, the boat slid past a group of chunky capybara grunting in the thick reeds along the bank. A giant ceiba tree grew on a heavily buttressed trunk behind the pig-sized rodents. Hanging moss and aerial ferns hung like decorative feathers from the great tree’s crown, spread high above the surrounding canopy. Troops of squirrel monkeys scolded from the surrounding trees. The rolling hills gradually flattened. Flocks of birds wheeled above open marshes and grassy pampas that reached back in pockets surrounded by the black green of seemingly impenetrable rainforest. The jungle crowded closer as they motored farther north. Dense branches drooped along muddy banks, skimming the brown water.

Bo dangled his hands in the water with Aleksandra, who crouched beside him on the floor of the boat.

A sudden pop and a whooshing spray caused everyone on the boat to jump. Quinn’s hand fell instinctively to his pistol. He smiled when he saw the patches of slick, rubbery skin break the surface of the water beside the boat.

Thibodaux popped another boob biscuit in his mouth. “That’s a good sign, l’ami,” he said. “The little book Adelmo’s bride gave me said that when you see pink dolphins you don’t have to worry about the crocodile caiman things and can go in swimming. Sort of reminds me of home… minus the pink dolphins.”

Bo leaned over to take a whiff of his armpits. “I still smell like rosy lilac water.” He grimaced at Jericho, the wind blowing a lock of blond hair across his face. “You, however, ought to jump in. You know how you get when you haven’t bathed for two days.”

“We don’t have time,” Quinn said. “And besides, just because the caimans are afraid of dolphins doesn’t mean the piranhas are.”

Bo jerked his hand out of the water. “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“Or how about those teensy little catfish?” Jacques observed around a mouthful of cunape. “The som-bitches swim up inside you when you pee underwater and get stuck in there.”

Aleksandra crinkled her freckled nose in disgust. “How do you know this revolting thing?”

Jacques took slug of bottled water. “Jungle training.”

“I didn’t know you’d been to jungle training,” Quinn said. “That’ll come in handy out here.”

“Truth be told”—Thibodaux grinned—“I haven’t really. I saw it in that Tom Berenger Sniper movie.”

“Who knows,” Quinn said, looking ahead at the thick foliage along the river. He swatted a mosquito that landed on his forehead. “Maybe that will come in handy too.”

CHAPTER 57

Pollard moved like a robot, taking one last look at the bomb before he screwed the false wooden panel on the crate. As per Zamora’s plan, a half dozen military-grade Kalashnikov rifles would be stacked in front of the false front in case anyone got nosey. Pollard found it mind numbing what he’d do to keep his family safe for a few days longer.

He was smart enough to know that crazy bitch Lourdes would kill them eventually. He’d seen the black hole in her eyes when she’d first walked in his classroom what now seemed like months before. He’d been away from such things for so long that he hadn’t recognized it until it was too late. Marie stood no chance against a woman like her. She was too nice, believing that even people who did bad things were by and large good at heart and would all jump at the chance to mend their ways if only given the right set of circumstances. She gave money to beggars at every street corner and wept at the poverty of people who had to send out Internet scams from Nigeria to survive. People are mostly moral, she’d often say, if you give them a chance.

He called such naïve notions the Mermaid and Unicorn Fart Theory, explaining to his classes that though they sounded sweet and fantastical, they were every bit as foul smelling as their normal, everyday counterparts.

Sometimes bad people were just that: bad people. They might pet a puppy because society expected them to, but in their hearts they wanted to kick it across the room and listen to it yelp. Marie just wouldn’t be able to get her pretty head wrapped around such a person. Matt was sure of it.

Yesenia startled him out of his inner dialogue when she stepped in the door of his hooch, rifle slung across her chest as always.

“Señor Zamora will be here soon.” Her chin quivered ever so slightly as she spoke. “So you are going away.”

“It is better for you that I take this thing away from here,” he said.

“I wish that I could come with you.”

“Me too, Yesenia.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “If I can figure a way out of this, I’ll make sure you get to school.”

“I do not know much, Dr. Matt, but I do know Señor Zamora.” She looked down at the toes of her boots. “He will kill you when you’ve finished — and your wife.”

“I know,” Pollard said.

She looked up at him. “Then why do you do as he asks?”

“Because every moment that I do, my wife and son stay alive for just a little while longer. And as long as they live, no matter how awful the circumstances, I can cling to the hope that I can figure out a way to save them.”

“I like that,” Yesenia said. “It makes me think of my sister.”

“Me too,” Pollard lied. In reality, such futile hope sounded a lot like a unicorn fart.

Yesenia suddenly turned her head to one side so quickly it knocked the parrot feather out of her hair. She lifted the rifle.

“Dr. Matt,” she said, looking at the door. “Do you hear that?”

“Something is wrong.” Zamora stood in the middle of the wooden boat and watched Borregos’s Piper bank in over the jungle from the north. “I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it.” He toyed with the holster at his side, unsnapping and snapping it absentmindedly while he tried to work out what was going on.

Monagas let the boat drift against the slow current.

“Shall I continue upriver?”

“No,” Zamora said, still looking. “Our plan depends on the Yemenis taking possession of the bomb.”

Monagas nodded, and aimed the boat for the bank ahead.

A six-foot caiman hung motionless in the shallows, staring at the interlopers to his territory with nothing but the twin bumps of his eyes and the tip of his toothy snout breaking the chocolate surface of the river.

They were roughly four miles up a tributary from the main arm of the Beni, off the beaten path of eco-tourists. Even the local indigenous tribes knew this was a river of no return — a place where piranha, electric eel, and deadly snakes were nowhere near the most dangerous things in the jungle.

Zamora took a deep breath, scanning the shadowed foliage that came right to the water’s edge in most places. Angelo stood on the small apron of bank below the boughs of several ceiba trees, hanging heavy with their own weight. Behind him, a barely noticeable trail vanished into the undergrowth, connecting the river to the camp nearly fifty meters away.

Angelo waved with his ball cap, smiling as if he was happy to see his boss.

The roar of the Piper’s engines diminished as it touched down on the grassy strip hacked out of the jungle in back of the camp.

Zamora turned back to his companion. “Be watchful.”

“As always, patrón.” Monagas nosed the boat sideways against the muddy bank and killed the engine. He threw the landing line to Angelo, who helped Zamora over the side and up a teetering path of wooden planks he’d placed on the squishy mud.

“All is well?” Zamora asked, still sniffing the air for any sign of the Chechens. “You have not seen any other boats or aircraft?”

Angelo snapped to attention, patting the rifle slung across his chest. “No, patrón. I have been on guard. It is only us and Dr. Matt. The aircraft just arrived.”

“I see that,” Zamora said, still toying with the snap on his holster. He brushed past the stubby Angelo, pushing his way through the thick undergrowth for the camp. They’d purposely left the trail to the camp tangled and choked with vines to discourage visitors from the river.

As he expected, Pollard met him with the hateful gaze of a man with a plan for vengeance. He was so predictable. What Zamora hadn’t expected was the same look from Yesenia. He made a mental note to have Monagas kill her after the bomb was loaded and they were safely away from any would-be interference by the Chechens.

Borregos and his camouflaged men were just making it into camp when Zamora emerged from the river trail into the clearing. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes with the arm of his shirt. They were so close now. He would be glad to get out of this place.

A small bird suddenly flew from a branch above him, fluttering away like the sound of a beating drum.

Zamora froze. That was it. That was what had been out of place. He had flown in to this camp no fewer than twenty times over the past five years, and each time, a huge flock of white egrets had exploded from the marshes off the end of the runway at the noise of the aircraft’s approach.

There had been no egrets when Borregos’s plane had landed. No egrets because someone had already scared them away.

“Daudov is here,” he hissed to Monagas an instant before the first bullet rustled through the branches and struck Angelo in the chest.

CHAPTER 58

Quinn saw the boat tied alongside the muddy bank at the same moment he heard the shots.

He ducked instinctively, but kept both hands on the gunnel of the boat, leaving his pistol holstered.

“What you do wanna do, l’ami?” Thibodaux said from the tiller.

A steady barrage of automatic gunfire zipped and rattled inside the jungle to their right.

“They’re not shooting at us,” Quinn said, his head on a swivel as he looked up and down the bank. “This would be a good time to go in and get a feel for things when they have their hands full.”

“Agreed,” Aleksandra said, pistol already in her hand.

Thibodaux took the boat past the muddy bank at a fast idle, easing around the bend where the river curved back on itself. He pointed the bow around a protruding root that had caught a raft of floating deadfall. It was a natural breakwater where a boat could be hidden from all but the most curious river traveler.

“You can stay here.” Quinn nodded at Bo. “I need someone to stand guard.”

“Like hell,” Bo said. “You don’t get to drag me down the Road of Death to have me sit and watch the horses. If the bomb’s up there, you’re gonna need all the help you can get.”

Jericho gave a resigned shrug and stepped of the boat onto springy wet ground. “Okay,” he said, drawing his pistol. He gave Severance a tap on the hilt for comfort’s sake. “But stay behind me. Mom will kill me if I let anything happen to you.”

Quinn led the approach with Thibodaux three paces to his left, each picking their way through dense underbrush and tangled vines. Bo and Aleksandra flanked on either side a few steps back. The shooting grew more intense as the little group made their way through the dripping rainforest. Sporadic shots interspersed with rattling volleys followed angry shouts and periodic cries of the wounded. The vegetation began to thin forty yards in from the river and a series of rusted tin buildings became visible through the trees.

Thibodaux sidestepped alongside Quinn, clearing away a spiderweb with the barrel of his gun. He leaned forward, intent on the gunfire, a half grin crossing his face. Heights and bad juju might scare him, but he melded into a gunfight like he was coming home.

“Just so you know, beb,” the big Cajun said without looking up from the undergrowth, “you don’t need to fret about my mama if anything happens to me. My child bride would, however, cut your cojones off.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Quinn started to push through the undergrowth, but Thibodaux put a hand on his shoulder.

“So, l’ami,” he said. “Who are you thinking of right now, this very moment when your life is on the line?”

“Valentine Zamora,” Quinn lied. Though focused on stopping the bomb, the face he saw before he pressed it out of his mind as he made his way toward the sound of gunfire was Veronica Garcia.

An unseen hand seemed to grab Aleksandra and pull her forward, toward the sound of gunfire and danger. Some said she had a death wish. A few had accused her of drawing some sort of freakish pleasure at putting herself in harm’s way. In truth it was nothing close to either.

She’d had the feeling since she was a small child that her eventual death would be violent. Some boring people died in their sleep or choked on an olive, but by the time Aleks was eleven she’d been certain her own death would be surrounded by a great deal of blood. Where the thought might frighten some or make them live in a sort of plastic bubble of perceived safety, Aleksandra was fascinated by the notion. She reasoned that fate was preordained and, since there was nothing she could do about it anyway, resolved to live moving forward, toward the inevitable, rather than sidestepping through life and hiding from her shadow.

Eyes peeled for the first threat that presented itself, she watched the others in her peripheral vision. The big Cajun plowed his way through the jungle like a bull looking for a lost cow. Bo, the beautiful blond Quinn with the body of a Greek god and the impish smile, moved cavalierly, as if he was eager to impress his older brother, but was a half step out of his natural element.

Jericho, by contrast, seemed more a part of the jungle than someone moving through it. Ducking and turning, stepping and twisting, he made his way around trees and over fallen logs as if there was nothing but the hot humid air between him and his target. She’d known men as cruel as this one, men as intelligent, men as physically capable, and men as driven to do the right thing — but she’d never before known one who possessed all these qualities at once.

Bo had inched his way closer to her as they walked, trying to get out ahead to shield her from danger. It was a sweet gesture and reminded her of Mikhail, but it would not do to allow such a thing. The poor boy would get himself killed. Protecting a fellow combatant was a noble cause, but before one could protect a friend, he had to stay alive.

Frenzied voices shot through the trees with the constant barrage of bullets, directing movement or shouting threats.

Jericho waved his hand in a tight circle above his head, calling the group in close. They lay down on the jungle floor, side by side, shoulders together.

“Count?” Quinn said, looking at Thibodaux.

A greasy centipede-like creature, fully six inches long, slithered over the ground litter between Aleksandra and Quinn. Even if it happened to be poisonous, a bullet would be more permanent, so she ignored it, focusing on Quinn and the more immediate two-legged dangers in the jungle.

“I’m guessing the Chechens only have four or five,” the gunny said, still scanning. “Zamora has maybe… eight.”

Quinn looked at Aleksandra. She nodded, agreeing with Thibodaux’s assessment. “That sounds correct,” she said.

Bo peered around a clump of ferns. “I’m pretty sure that’s one of the Borregos out there,” he said.

“Zamora’s buyer,” Quinn mused.

The gunfire grew more intense, as if someone was preparing to move.

“Whoever they are,” Thibodaux said, pressing his face to the ground, “they’re well armed and carrying a shitload of ammo.”

The angry hiss of a rocket-propelled grenade ripped through the air, confirming Jacques’s assessment. Aleksandra hugged the ground out of instinct as the primary explosion shook the buildings at the northern edge of the tiny compound. A moment later, a secondary boom sucked the oxygen from the air. Louder and more powerful than the first, it sent wood and rusty tin whirring through the air, one piece flying like a saw blade over Thibodaux’s head.

An orange fireball bloomed over the jungle to the north, followed by a mushroom cloud of greasy black smoke.

Jericho sniffed the air. “Smells like fuel. They must have blown up a plane.” He turned and faced her. “What will happen if they hit the bomb?”

“In theory?” She gave a resigned shrug. “Nothing. In practice, it could arm the device… ”

The shouting grew louder again after a brief lull following the explosion.

Bo moved closer to Aleksandra, touching her on the shoulder to get her attention. He nodded toward a large woodpile three feet high and a good fifteen feet long.

“Stay with me,” he said in a show of bravado that melted Aleksandra’s heart.

A sudden movement to her right caught her eye. Through the dense tangle of vines and undergrowth she saw a flash of curly black hair and the unmistakably flat profile of Julian Monagas. An electric current seemed to jolt her body and she raised half up off her belly as if doing a pushup. Locked on, she shook her head. “No, my dear,” she said a moment before she sprinted into the jungle. “You go with your brother. I have business with someone.”

“Well, I’ll be!” Thibodaux whistled under his breath. “Would you look at that?”

Quinn watched as Aleksandra ran amid a hail of bullets to disappear into the undergrowth. In the middle of the compound, a tall man with a coal-black beard sat beside an overturned table of heavy timber. Dressed like someone out of an REI advertisement, he appeared to be unarmed. Instead of using the table for cover, he sat cross-legged in the open, cradling a wounded girl in his lap, stroking her long black hair. She wore woodland camouflage fatigues and was presumably one of Zamora’s.

“Why isn’t anyone shooting at him?” Thibodaux grunted.

“Let’s go ask him.” Quinn ran the five paces to the long stack of firewood, crouching behind it. So far, he’d not fired a shot. Bo slid in next to him while Thibodaux, chased by a string of automatic gunfire, dove behind the rusted hulk of a diesel generator ten feet away.

Bullets thwacked against the logs and zinged off the generator as both Zamora’s men and the Chechens focused on this new threat.

Quinn pulled Bo down beside him and assessed the situation. He’d yet to find the bomb, but judging from the fighting, possession of it was still a matter of contention. Less than six feet to his left, the man with the beard sat weeping over the girl, oblivious to all the lead in the air. To his right, Thibodaux engaged one of Daudov’s men, who crept through the jungle trying to flank them.

Quinn tossed a piece of wood at the sobbing man.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man looked up; his reactions were dull, shell-shocked. “Who are you?”

Quinn tried a different tack. The guy was sitting in the cross fire. He obviously was beyond succumbing to threats. “Is she still alive?”

“What do you care?”

Quinn took a deep breath. “Listen,” he said. “I’m not one of these guys. I can help.”

The man blinked his eyes. “She’s already dead,” he said.

“No, she’s not,” Quinn said. “Look at her chest. It’s still moving. As long as she’s breathing there’s a chance.”

“Not her,” the man said. “I mean my wife. Zamora will kill her no matter what I do.”

“I told you I can help,” Quinn said. “What’s your name?”

The man brightened. “Matt Pollard. I’m a professor at Idaho State.”

“And the bomb?”

“They have it,” the man said, nodding toward Borregos and his men. He hung his head. “Zamora threatened to kill my wife and son if I didn’t bypass the locking system.”

“Do you know where they’re going with it?”

“No idea,” the man said, studying Quinn through bloodshot eyes. “Can you really help my wife?”

“I can,” Quinn said. “Tell me where she is, and I’ll call some people to go check on her. But first we have to stop this bomb—”

Thibodaux loosed three rapid-fire shots, hitting Daudov’s man as he came in from the side. The Chechen staggered forward, firing blindly. Bo flinched, as one of the bullets clipped his left arm.

He looked up at Jericho with an embarrassed grin. “Sorry, bro—” A fountain of blood gushed from the wound between his elbow and armpit. Pulsing in time with his heart, it arced into the air, painting the wood behind him.

CHAPTER 59

“I’ll cover,” Thibodaux barked from behind the generator. He began to lay down steady fire, a shot at the Borregos crew, then another at the Chechens. “You see to him.” He’d run out of ammo in a matter of seconds.

Quinn tucked his 1911 back in the holster and lowered Bo to the ground. He had to stop the bleeding, but he couldn’t do that if he got himself killed. With shots cracking and whirring overhead, his training kicked into high gear.

Flat on his back, he grabbed Bo by the shoulders and dragged him backward to the more protected center of the woodpile, scissoring his body in a motion called shrimping to help him move but stay low at the same time. Blood pumped from the wound in great spurts with each beat of Bo’s heart, and by the time Quinn stopped they were both covered. He kicked a large log loose and slid it under Bo’s boots, elevating his legs.

“Jeez, brother,” Bo groaned. “I screwed up. Go after the bomb. I’ll be fine.”

“Shut up, Boaz,” Quinn said through clenched teeth. He jammed a fist high under Bo’s armpit in an attempt to slow the bleeding while he assessed. “I told you what Mom would do if I let anything happen to you.”

It was the nature of war. Some died no matter what. Some lived no matter what. Some would die unless something was done to save them. KIA — killed in action — couldn’t be helped. DOW was a different thing entirely. Dying of wounds would not be an option for Bo.

Above all else, Quinn knew he had to stop the bleeding. Two minutes was enough to bleed out completely if the wound was bad enough. The human body was extremely resilient at mending itself, but it needed blood to feed the brain. He had to treat Bo for shock, and the best way to do that was to keep him in the fight — give him a job to do and keep him focused.

Reaching into the channel left by the bullet, Quinn searched behind the bicep and connective tissues to find the bleeder. As he’d suspected, the brachial artery had been clipped. Slick with the warmth of his baby brother’s blood, he used his thumb and forefinger to squeeze the offending vessel shut. Just smaller than a soda straw, it was snot slick and wriggled as if it had a mind of its own. His fingers slipped free and a fresh crimson arc sprayed Quinn’s face. He used his shoulder to clear his eyes, methodically probing to find the artery again and get a better grip.

“Bo,” he said through clenched teeth. “How we doing?”

“I’m good.” Bo grimaced. “You done this sort of thing before?”

“A time or two,” Quinn said.

“Ever lost anyone?” Bo looked him dead in the eye.

“A couple of the pigs and one goat,” Quinn said. “But they were way worse than you. This is just a flesh wound.”

“Pigs,” Bo sighed. “That makes me feel better.”

Quinn could feel his brother’s pulse throbbing quickly beneath his fingertips, working to push the life’s blood from his body. The heart pumped faster as it lost blood, working extra hard to get what was left to vital areas like the brain. It was an odd sensation and he found himself thankful he’d experienced it before.

No matter what animal rights activists felt about the practice of “pig lab” training for military corpsmen and combat rescue officers, there was no mannequin or “lifelike” device that came close to working on something that was actually alive. Quivering flesh, the copper scent, and even the slickness of warm blood could be duplicated. But life, that vital essence that made animals different from sugar beets or ears of corn, was inimitable, no matter how sophisticated the tech.

As cruel as it was, cutting a few sedated pigs was a small price to pay for the training that Quinn now used in an attempt to save his kid brother’s life.

“Listen to me,” he said, ducking a spray of woodchips from a fresh string of gunfire. “We need to get a tourniquet on this A-SAP. You understand?”

“Okay,” Bo said, nodding. He was alert and engaged. That was good, Quinn thought. As long as he was engaged, he could fight to live.

“Outstanding,” Quinn said. “Now reach in the right thigh pocket of my pants and get my wound kit. I can’t let go or you’ll start bleeding again.”

Bo nodded, breathing deeply. He was no stranger to pain — and Quinn was certain he was causing quite a bit digging around next to torn muscle and chipped bone.

The size of a fat wallet, the Cordura pouch held the basic gear to treat a gunshot wound — windlass tourniquet, coagulant gauze for stuffing the wound, H bandage, chest-seal, and a three-inch needle. He’d seen firsthand how many soldiers died of blood loss while they waited for a medevac. Since his first deployment, he rarely went anywhere without the small kit.

“High or die, brother.” Quinn talked him through application of the tourniquet, pulling the nylon strapping tight, then twisting the pencil-size metal windlass to further compress the artery above the wound.

Halfway through the process Bo suddenly looked up. Turning, he grabbed the pistol from his lap and shot over Quinn’s shoulder, deafening him in the process.

Quinn glanced back to see one of Borregos’s men fall on his way to reach Pollard.

“If I’m going to die,” Bo groaned, “might as well take someone with me.

Thibodaux, in a fierce gun battle with two Chechens working their way around the cook shed, hardly had time to look up.

The tourniquet in place, Quinn slowly released his grip on the artery. Blood oozed but didn’t spurt.

“Good job,” Quinn said, pushing the wound kit into Bo’s good hand. “There’s a packet of QuikClot gauze in there. Shove as much of it in the wound as you can.” He pulled the 1911 from his holster. “I’m going to help Jacques kill the guys who shot you.”

CHAPTER 60

Gunfire pinged off the heavy generator as Quinn slid in beside Thibodaux. The big Cajun turned too late as one of the bullets cut a fuel line, spraying him in the face with a slurry of metal shards and diesel fuel.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, wiping a forearm across his face.

Quinn felt a wave of dread tighten in his throat. Fighters learned to protect their eyes at all costs. A wound in the arm or leg was preferable to being blind in battle.

“How bad?” Quinn said, throwing a double tap into the sweating face of a man with a red beard and naked upper lip who crept toward them on his belly.

“Bad, l’ami,” Thibodaux spat. “My right eye is toast.”

Another series of shots popped amid the undergrowth. A moment later Daudov staggered out, bleeding from a wound to his throat. A fusillade from Borregos’s men finished him off. Quinn was about to fire but caught a glimpse of Aleksandra ghosting through the thick vines.

An eerie silence settled in over the jungle camp immediately after the Chechen leader’s body slumped to the ground. Pistol in both hands, Quinn scanned the tree line while he worked to slow his breathing. He looked at Bo, who gave him a weak thumbs-up with his gun hand.

Thibodaux scanned the jungle with his good eye. “Two rounds and one peeper left, l’ami,” he said. “Afraid I’m not much help to you.”

“We want the professor,” a voice yelled from the jungle shadows. “We have no fight with you.”

Quinn looked at Pollard, who held a small notebook at waist level.

“I’m coming out,” Pollard yelled. He dropped the notebook to the dirt at his feet, then looked at Quinn. “They’ll kill us all if I don’t go with them. Your friend needs a doctor. Please, save my wife. She doesn’t deserve this.” Raising his hands, he walked like a condemned man to disappear into the jungle with Borregos and his men.

Aleksandra bolted from the trees a moment later and ducked behind the generator. “You should have shot him,” she hissed. “They need him to detonate the bomb. I am empty or I would have done it myself.” She held up her H & K, slide locked to the rear. Her eyes flew wide when she saw Bo.

“What happened?”

“Chechen bullet,” Quinn said, frowning. “Where did you go?”

“I wounded Zamora,” she said. “He fell in the river and drifted away. I’ve been picking off his men one by one.”

“And Monagas?” Quinn asked.

“I’m not certain,” she said. “He went down, but I could not find the body.”

“No time to look now,” Quinn said. “We have to get our wounded back to town.”

Bo shook his head. “You can’t just let the bomb get away from you.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “I’m working on that.”

The Indian girl Pollard had been holding suddenly stirred.

“Please,” she said, her voice a rasping whimper. In the aftermath of all the shooting, it was difficult to hear anything.

Still unconvinced Borregos meant to keep his word, Quinn ducked as he sprinted to the girl and dragged her behind the overturned table. He relaxed a hair when no one tried to shoot him.

“I had to pretend to be dead,” she whispered, “or I don’t think Dr. Matt would have left me.”

Quinn found that she wasn’t far off from her pretense. Three bullets had torn into her side, shattering ribs and narrowly missing her heart. Her chest rattled as she struggled for breath. Dirt and leaves covered a grisly exit wound that had torn away most of her right shoulder blade. She didn’t have long.

“Zamora has another camp,” she whispered through cracked lips. “A coca plant with an airstrip.” She coughed. “Promise to help Professor Matt and I will tell you where it is… ”

Quinn bit his lip.

“Of course,” he said, leaning in so he could hear the girl’s instructions over the incessant ringing in his ears.

The flat roar of a boat engine carried in from the river. Baba Yaga was already moving.

CHAPTER 61

Marie held her hands over her baby’s ears to shield him from the horrible woman’s rant. Even Pete’s perpetual scowl had fallen into a twitching frown of nervous puzzlement at the latest volcanic eruption.

“This is not like him.” Lourdes tromped back and forth in the living room, spinning at each corner to turn and stare accusingly at Marie and Pete in turn. “He always calls me back. It is not like him at all.” Tears welled in her black eyes. Her lips quivered like a frightened little girl’s. Wheeling, she looked down at Marie, her words gushing out in a fountain of emotion. “He knows what his calls mean to me. Why would he do such a thing? Do you think something has happened to him?”

Marie relaxed her hold on Simon, letting him squirm around to face her. She didn’t know what to say. One minute this woman was threatening to kill her and eat her baby, the next she wanted to confide her innermost fears.

Lourdes buried her face in her hands. “Why won’t you call me, Valentine?” she sobbed in frustration.

Marie suddenly realized that if something had happened to Zamora, the same thing could have happened to Matt. Her chest tightened and for a moment she thought she might be having a heart attack. She’d heard of women her age whose hearts had just given out under severe stress — and heaven knew what she was going through qualified.

As horrible as the woman was, there was something so genuine about the way Lourdes wept. Sadness was sadness, even in the heart of a madwoman.

“Maybe he’s lost his phone,” Marie offered, attempting to console her. “Matt sometimes misplaces—”

Lourdes’s head snapped up. Her bloodshot eyes seethed with anger. “You dare compare Valentine with your stupid excuse for a man! He cannot even protect his own family.” She spat on the floor to show her contempt. “I am surprised he was man enough to father your child — if the boy is even his.”

Marie flew off the mattress in a rage.

“You hateful bitch!” she screamed, clawing at Lourdes’s face. “Shut your mouth! My husband is twice the man your prissy little Valentine is.”

Lourdes put a hand to ward her off, but not before Marie landed a wicked punch that split her bottom lip.

Beyond furious, Marie kept punching and clawing, finally grabbing a handful of black bangs.

All she could think of was killing the awful woman — beating her to death with whatever she could find.

Pete pulled her off before she got another swing in. He gave her a hard backhand across the face to get her attention, then threw her brutally against the wall. She staggered, and then fell backward, landing on the mattress next to a screaming Simon.

“Sit your ass down and stay there,” Pete said. He looked back and forth at the two women as if he didn’t know which one was crazier.

Lourdes touched a finger to her split lip, licking away the blood. Her black eyes locked on Marie, who stared right back at her.

A twisted smile crept slowly across the dark woman’s bleeding lips. “You surprise me,” she said, nodding in approval. “I had thought killing you would be a bore. I am so happy that you will at least fight back.” She held up her hand. “Wait, I want to show you something.” She disappeared down the hall to return a moment later with a length of stainless-steel chain. On each end was a gleaming steel hook.

“If I do not hear from Valentine very, very soon, I am going to play a game.” Lourdes swung the chain in a tight circle in front of her face, causing the hooks to whir in the air. “Maybe I will play the first round with your little worm… ”

CHAPTER 62

Quinn estimated the cartel was no more than half an hour ahead of them with the bomb. There was no time to bury the dead, so he left them where they lay surrounded by a dark jungle that hummed and ticked with creatures that would close in and reclaim the bodies in a matter of hours.

Quinn rigged a makeshift stretcher from a nylon tarp he found hanging near the overturned table. With the help of a half-blind Thibodaux, he was able to get Bo back to the riverbank without reopening his wound. There was no time to waste formulating a sophisticated plan, so they boarded the boat without discussion. Aleksandra manned the tiller, pointing the boat downriver toward medical attention — and the bomb.

Moving again, Quinn took the opportunity to pack more QuikClot gauze into Bo’s wound and apply an H bandage for direct pressure. He found a pen in Aleksandra’s daypack and noted the time on the tourniquet for medical staff.

Thibodaux sat at the bow, keeping his good eye peeled for any sign of Zamora and Monagas, who were still unaccounted for. He’d rinsed his eye with two bottles of fresh water and though it seemed to help, the lid was still badly swollen and inflamed as if he’d rubbed it with sandpaper.

“You’re going to have to leave us,” Bo said, looking up with sunken eyes. Blond hair matted to his forehead. His normally tan face was pale and drawn. “There’s a lot of traffic on the big river. We’ll be back in civilization in no time.”

“I’ll stay with him, l’ami,” Thibodaux said without turning around. “I’m no good to you as a Cyclops, and you two have to catch up to the bomb.”

Jericho shot a glance at Aleksandra, who nodded almost imperceptibly. A soft breeze, caused by the movement of the boat, jostled her hair.

“My phone is dead,” she said. “I have no signal with which to track Monagas, even if he is with the bomb. We must rely on what the girl told you and hope for the best.”

In a world accustomed to instant communication by radio, cellular, and satellite phone, going off the grid was like a slap in the face. There were few places on the planet where some sort of communication system would not get through. Much of the Himalayas had 3G service and satellite phones worked at least a few hours each day even at the earth’s extreme poles — but you had to have such a device. Batteries died, electronics broke or fell in the water.

Sometimes all a man had to rely on was himself — Quinn looked up at Thibodaux, Bo, and Aleksandra — and, if he was fortunate, a capable friend.

A family of fishermen was camped at the confluence and agreed to take Bo and Thibodaux back to Rurrenabaque immediately.

Quinn gave Jacques the notepad with Pollard’s instructions about his wife and shook the big man’s hand.

“Don’t you worry about Boaz,” the Cajun said. “I’ll look after him.”

“I know you will,” Quinn said.

Thibodaux shook his head with a squinting half frown.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “That’s Diego Borregos out there. Zamora sold the bomb to the Colombians?”

“Looks that way,” Quinn said. “All the money they make with narcotics, they have enough of a bankroll. But I’m still trying to figure out where the Yemenis fit in.”

The Cajun put a hand to his damaged eye, wincing. “Wish I was coming with you, Chair Force. I don’t trust the Russian to watch your back like I would. She’s crazy.”

Quinn gave a tense chuckle, still watching his brother. “You say that about every woman we’ve ever met.”

Thibodaux took a deep breath through his nose. “I know I do, and I stand by it. But this one is damaged-crazy. That goes clean to the bone.”

“What did you talk about with Jacques?” Aleksandra said, once they were back on the water. Behind her, the little Nissan engine whined in protest as she opened the throttle as wide as it would go. Spray hissed and splashed from the wooden bow.

Quinn smiled. “He told me not to trust you.”

“Wise,” she said, scanning the river ahead as if her mind was elsewhere. “The children in my primary school used to tease me when I was very young—ryzhi krasni chelovek apasni. It means a redheaded person is dangerous.” She shrugged. “My mission is to retrieve Baba Yaga. If I have to sacrifice you, I will do so without pause.”

“And if we see Monagas again?” Quinn asked. “Will you chase him without pause — even at the expense of finding the bomb?”

Aleksandra frowned. “There were many people to shoot back there,” she said. “Monagas was just as deserving of a bullet as any of them.” She stopped, looking down at her boots for a long moment. “Still, I see your point. Such a thing will not happen again.”

Quinn settled back against the gunnel, holding the backpack in his lap. He opened a water bottle and took his first drink in over an hour. It was warm, but it revitalized him almost immediately.

He checked the Aquaracer on his wrist. “We’re making good time,” he said, happy to change the subject. “They’re loaded down with at least six men, not to mention the bomb. If we’re lucky, we’ll catch them before they leave the river.”

“And then what?” Aleksandra sat stoically at the tiller, small shoulders hunched forward, red hair blowing in the wind.

“Good question,” Quinn said, tapping the curved blade on his belt. “We’re a little light on ammo for a gunfight. Your H&K is out. I have two rounds left and Bo’s pistol has three.” They’d left Jacques with his pistol and two rounds in case Zamora had doubled back. Other than the weapons and scant ammunition, they had the pack, a bottle of water, and three cunape that they split between them. Over long periods of exposure, adrenaline and stress ate away at the body’s fuel reserves, sapping strength and draining brainpower. The starchy cheese biscuits gave a much-needed boost of energy.

Quinn spotted the bow of the sunken boat two hours after they left Bo and Thibodaux with the fishermen. The point of the bow bobbed just inches above the surface, nearly hidden in the raft of branches and other deadfall caught in a shaded back eddy behind the stump of a fallen tree. Borregos’s men had thought to scuttle the vessel and hide their trail, but the river had other ideas.

Quinn nodded downriver, actively ignoring the boat. Aleksandra ran past, slowing the little Nissan only when they were a hundred meters beyond the sunken vessel. Cranking the tiller hard over, she turned in a wide arc, slicing a deep V in the chocolate-brown water. Twenty meters out, Aleksandra killed the engine and let momentum carry them in. A startled caiman greeted them with a splash of his knotted tail as the boat nosed up against the muddy bank, groaning as it rubbed a submerged stone.

Quinn stepped over the gunnel and onto the spongy bank. He carried the pack in his left hand but left the 1911 holstered, reasoning that if someone was going to shoot him, they’d have done it already.

Beyond the sunken boat the bank was a trampled mess. Quinn found a square of mud about a yard long, and counted fifteen separate footprints. Splitting that number in half and rounding up, he estimated Borregos had eight men including himself. Two sets of boots had pressed more deeply into the mud. They would be carrying the weight of the bomb. He didn’t waste time trying to age the tracks. Even accounting for the time he’d spent talking to the dying Indian girl and then dropping off Bo and Jacques, the cartel couldn’t have been more than a half hour ahead.

Aleksandra stood facing the humming wall of black jungle, her back to Quinn. Sweat darkened her khaki shirt along the spine. “Apologies do not come easy to my lips,” she said.

Quinn checked to make certain his pistol was fastened in the holster, then slid Severance from the sheath at his belt. He said nothing.

Aleksandra plowed ahead. “I should not have abandoned you to go after Monagas.”

“You are correct there,” Quinn said, checking the bowknot connecting the boat to the gnarled root snaking out of the cutbank.

“Perhaps your brother would not have been shot if I would have stayed.”

“Or perhaps he would have,” Quinn said, knowing such after-action quarterbacking did little good.

“Have you never had a friend you would kill for?”

“I left two of them back there along the river,” Quinn said without hesitation. He looked west, shielding his eyes from the low, afternoon sun above an endless ocean of green forest canopy. “Now let’s focus on finding the bomb before they make it to the airstrip.”

“Very well,” Aleksandra said. “If we move quickly we can catch them before nightfall.”

“That should be easy enough.” Quinn turned, pushing aside a vine the size of his wrist with the tip of his blade. “It’s easy to move fast when you’re not weighed down with unnecessary things like ammunition.”

CHAPTER 63

Yazid Nazif swung his machete as if wielding a baseball bat. He’d never seen so much vegetation in his life and felt as if it was closing in around him. The intensity of the moist heat and droning hum in the surrounding trees caused his heart to pound out of control. He found it difficult to breathe, but consoled himself with the knowledge that he was at last in possession of Baba Yaga. Soon, all of the decadent West would bow to the white-hot power of a new al-Qaeda. He would be the leader of the most feared organization on earth — if Borregos didn’t kill him first. With Zamora gone, he realized that was a very distinct possibility.

They walked in a single-file line, each man giving the next room to swing his own blade should he find it necessary to hack a vine or push a troublesome spiderweb out of the way. One of Borregos’s men was in front, doing the lion’s share of the work, followed by the cartel leader himself. Nazif was next in line with another two Yemenis behind him. The bearded professor stayed with the bomb, which was now carried by two of Borregos’s men farther back in the line. He was the only one who seemed unafraid of the thing. Everyone else kept a little distance away from the simple footlocker, as if a few feet would save them when such a bomb went off. A Yemeni and two Colombians brought up the rear.

Strange and colorful birds flitted through the dark canopy of trees overhead, shrieking frightened warnings at the little parade. A troop of monkeys screamed from the shadows, pelting them with bits of wood. Here and there a snake coiled around a low-hanging branch like some sort of prop in an American horror film.

A cloud of mosquitoes buzzed around Nazif’s face. Sweat rolled down this back.

“Why do you not take the bomb for yourself?” the Yemeni suddenly asked, preferring to know his fate up front rather than fret over it. If Allah willed his death, there was nothing he could do about it.

Ahead, the Colombian used a long machete to hack his way through a dense stand of bamboo and tresses of hanging vines as thick as his wrist.

He stopped, turning to catch his breath.

“My mother used to read me the Bible when I was a child. I was particularly fond of the Old Testament because it contained wonderful stories of violent men.” His eyes gleamed with the memory. “Do you know of David and Saul?”

Nazif nodded. “Of course. The writings of Moses and David were once pure, but corrupted by men.”

“Ah, I see,” the Colombian said. “Well, they say Saul killed his thousands and David his ten thousands. Unlike Saul, I am happy with my thousands. I find the reputation of a narcotics dealer makes me less of a target for government manhunts than that of a terrorist.” He pointed the tip of his machete at the footlocker. A sinister smile crept slowly across his face. “Though I must admit, it does not displease me that you plan to use this to kill your ten thousands. Despair, after all, turns out to be very good for business.”

“Oh,” Nazif said. “There will be plenty of despair. I can assure you.”

Borregos turned and nodded at the lead man, who began to hack away at the wall of jungle before them. The lush rainforest had all but obliterated the vague trail, but thanks to the swinging machetes, they moved quickly, stepping over mossy deadfall and skirting stands of bamboo packed as tight as the bars of a prison.

The leader stopped abruptly by a moss-covered log. Resting on the jungle floor, it was even with the man’s waist. He stooped to study something on the ground. Bin Ali, the youngest of Nazif’s men at twenty-three, moved up the trail to investigate. His white shirt was stained as if he’d been wearing it for months. His machete hung limply at his side as he stooped in the green gloom to study the five-inch track of a jaguar pressed deep in the jungle floor beside a steaming pile of scat.

“Relax,” Borregos roared with a great belly laugh. “Jaguars rarely develop a taste for human flesh. On the other hand, there are dozens of venomous snakes and spiders that will kill you very dead.”

Branches snapped and groaned in the gloom behind them, causing the entire group to spin, searching their back trail.

“Probably a tapir,” Borregos chuckled. “Fleeing the scent of the cat.”

“Maybe.” Nazif nodded. Fear was contagious, especially when a bomb worth nearly a half a billion dollars was at stake. “Or perhaps someone is following us. We should pick up our speed.”

The Colombian scratched the back of his neck with the dull side of his machete, thinking. “Our load is heavy and the jungle is full of surprises to trip us up if we do not move carefully.” He pulled a length of twine from his pocket, then plucked a M67 hand grenade, green and roughly the size of a baseball, from a camouflage pouch on his belt. “We could go faster — or we could leave behind us a nasty surprise.”

CHAPTER 64

Quinn’s survival instructors had called it “Jungle Eye”—the ability to see the various details of the undergrowth and pick out a safe trail without being overwhelmed by the dense tangle of it all. It was much like the Magic Eye books Mattie liked so much. If he stared at it too hard, the way before melted into a glob of shadowed green.

They’d been moving through the gloom of thick undergrowth for over two hours, following fresh tracks and cut vegetation. Any actual hacking with Severance might have alerted Borregos of their presence, so Quinn used the blade for little more than pushing aside vines and limbs. He’d given Aleksandra a broken length of oar from the boat so she could do the same and keep from coming into contact with the many ants and stinging insects that used the jungle plants as a highway.

“I hate snakes,” she said from a few paces behind him. “I wish to shoot every one I see in the face.”

“We don’t have snakes in Alaska,” Quinn said.

“I would very much like to visit Alaska,” Aleksandra said.

“You would love—”

A gossamer tug along the front of his khakis, just above his ankle, caused Quinn to freeze in his tracks.

Aleksandra sensed his change in mood and stood still as well.

“What?” she said. “A snake?”

Quinn shook his head. Backing up slowly, he used Severance to point at a length of green parachute cord, almost invisible in the gathering darkness. Tied to a gnarled root, it ran directly across the scuffed path to disappear into a cut piece of bamboo the diameter of his forearm. Quinn took a small LED flashlight and shined it into the open end of the bamboo.

“That’s what I thought,” he said. “A half step more and I’d have pulled this out of its tube right at our feet.”

Aleksandra started to move up next to him, but he raised his hand. “See one, think two,” he said, scanning the jungle for signs of anything out of the norm. Straight lines in particular were rarely found in nature.

“Ahh,” he said at length. He held his hand out behind him. “Can I borrow your oar?”

She handed it forward.

“Think two,” he said again before tossing the short piece of wood at a second hidden tripwire.

The foliage to the right of the trail gave a sudden whoosh as a thick piece of bamboo sprang horizontally at chest height directly across the trial. Five sharpened spikes of smaller bamboo had been lashed to it — a whip stick. Quinn had heard his father and uncles talk about such booby traps from Vietnam. He’d never seen one himself, but had long since stopped being surprised at the various methods men could devise to maim and kill other men. In fact, he marveled at the simplicity of both the traps.

“I doubt they took the time to set any more,” he said, moving slowly up the trail. “Still, it will be night soon and we can’t move safely in the dark. If a booby trap doesn’t kill us some venomous spider likely will… ”

Aleksandra swatted a mosquito on her forehead, looking uncomfortably at the surrounding jungle. She pointed in disgust at the forest floor that seemed to roil beneath their feet with ants and other roving insects. “I’d rather take my chances than stay out here. We’ll be eaten alive if we sit down to rest.”

Quinn smiled. “I grew up in the mountains,” he said. “But I’ve watched my share of jungle movies. Can’t do anything about the mosquitos, but I think I may have a solution to get us off the ground.”

Aleksandra stood on the trail behind Quinn, watching him through a buzzing cloud of mosquitos in the gathering gloom. He’d turned his head to listen, standing motionless amid fronds of elephant ear and giant fern. A dark line of sweat ran down the spine of his shirt, which hung untucked at his waist.

“They’re far enough ahead we can’t hear them,” he said, studying a thick stand of bamboo that stood like a green fence off the path to his right. “That’s good, because they won’t hear us either.”

He picked a fat stalk of bamboo roughly four inches in diameter and well over twelve feet tall. Two quick blows with his curved blade felled it neatly a few inches above the ground. Aleksandra marveled at how fluidly he moved, as if he chopped bamboo as an occupation and the steaming heat of the jungle was his home. He stopped every few seconds to listen. She imagined he had the ability to filter the natural noises of the rain forest, coaxing out any made by man — like the ping of a machete against wood.

“Bring the water bottle,” he said, dragging the length of bamboo to rest the cut end in the crook of a low sapling that stood even with his belt. He’d retrieved the piece of wooden oar and, using it as a baton to pound on Severance’s hilt, punched a square hole just above the last node ring. He rolled the bamboo and clean water poured from the hollow core.

“Interesting,” she said, filling the bottle.

“They don’t all have water in them,” Quinn said. “But there’s a good chance we’ll find enough to keep us alive without getting some parasite from the river.”

Once they’d drained all the water, he punched another square hole opposite the first. Through this, he shoved a sturdy piece of vine to form a short-topped T. He repeated the process at the other end, wedging the entire length between two trees so it ran parallel to the ground. He wiped the sweat from his face with the sleeve of his shirt and looked up.

“What do you think?”

Before she could answer, a wide grin spread across his face. “I know, it’s still a little narrow for the two of us. But just watch.”

Using the parachute cord from the two booby traps, he took half a dozen turns around each end of the bamboo trunk. Then, using the oar as a baton again, he drove the point of his blade completely through the trunk so it came out the bottom side. Tapping on the spine of the blade, he split the stem from one end to the other, stopping just before he reached the last reinforced ring and wraps of parachute cord. He repeated the process over and over until he had the entire length of the bamboo split into one-inch shreds down the center but still intact at both ends. He spread the pieces with both hands and, as if by magic, they fanned open to form a sort of hammock.

The last blue hints of light faded and the jungle closed in around them by the time Quinn wedged the ends of the makeshift bed into the crooks of two sturdy trees three feet off the wriggling ground.

Quinn lay down first, testing it slowly with his full weight. Satisfied, he situated himself diagonally, then motioned for Aleksandra to climb in beside him.

“It won’t do anything against bloodsucking bats,” he said, one arm outstretched, presumably for her to use as a pillow, the other thrown over his forehead. “But it’ll keep us off the ground.”

Aleksandra settled in next to him, choosing the sticky heat of his closeness over the open vulnerability of rolling away. The smells of La Paz, the Altiplano, and the high mountains of the cloud forest still lingered next to his skin. She marveled at how far they’d come in two days.

Each was silent for a time, moving this way and that, nestling their way into the best sleeping position they could find. Both were completely exhausted, but the urgency of their mission kept them on edge, fighting back against sleep.

“You are in love then?” Aleksandra said at length, seeing no reason not to be forward since she was sharing a bed and would, in all likelihood, die with this dark man. They’d raced, ridden, fought, and killed together. Apart from Mikhail, she would have long since slept with any other man she’d known under such stressful circumstances. It was the way of things, her method of forgetting her own mortality. But this one, he had a wall.

Quinn raised his arm as if to study her.

“I am,” he said.

“But for some reason, you struggle with it?”

He shrugged, saying nothing.

She turned slightly, feeling the bamboo slats creak beneath her. Her face was just inches from his. “You are in love enough that you have me here, alone, and do not even make a flirtation.”

Quinn chuckled. “Our bed isn’t strong enough for that sort of thing. Anyway, ‘making flirtations’ is more Bo’s department.”

“I’m sorry about him,” Aleksandra offered, snuggling closer, drawing on the comfort of muscle and strength of bone.

“He’s too tough to die,” Quinn said, a catch of worry in his voice. “If he was here, I’m sure he’d be flirting, bullet wound or not.”

“You are a b’elaya vorona, Jericho Quinn,” she whispered.

“What’s that?”

“A white crow,” she said. “In Russian it would be like your black sheep — one who stands apart from the rest. Some say a white crow is bad, but I believe it is a good thing to stand apart.”

For a short moment Aleksandra allowed herself to be comfortable. The shriek of a monkey somewhere deep in the blackness of the jungle reminded her that comfort was a fleeting thing. Baba Yaga, the Bone Mother, was out there, nearby. She could feel it in her teeth. And they shared a secret she could no longer hold inside.

“I should have told you this before,” she said before Quinn had a chance to doze. “Please understand, I could be executed for divulging such information.”

“Okay…” Quinn’s voice was muffled against his arm.

“Do you remember the second North Korean nuclear test in 2009?”

“Of course,” he said.

Aleksandra took a deep breath, and then plowed ahead. If she could not trust this man, she could trust no one.

“The arming unit on that device was an older Soviet model. Thought to be much the same as the one used on Baba Yaga.” She raised her head, her face close enough to smell the sweet odor of cunape on his breath. “The North Korean detonation wasn’t a test at all. It was an accident.”

“You’re saying the bomb detonated on its own?” Quinn was now wide awake.

“Not quite,” she said. “The Korean bomb was indeed armed, as part of a testing procedure, but there was no delay with this particular detonation. We believe the Bone Mother will malfunction the same way. There will be no final countdown, no last-second clipping of the red wire to save the world. The moment the arming sequence is entered into the Permissive Access Lock, the Baba Yaga will detonate with immediate effect… ”