Quinn raised a wary eye. He wanted to change the subject so he reminded the big Marine of the tight rein Mrs. Thibodaux had on his language. “We’re getting near the end of the month, Jacques-Camille only gives you five non-Bible curse words every thirty days. I’m no religious scholar, but I’m pretty sure batshit doesn’t make the cut for the Good Book.”
“You just watch yourself, l’ami.” Thibodaux threw a thick leg across his bike. He turned the key, paused a moment to let the electronics run through their cycle. “I have to go meet Cornmeal at that baby-birthin’ class, but you listen to me. I know a thing or two about bad women. I’m tellin’ you, that sexpot Cuban is one bad jolie fille.”
“Don’t be such a pessimist, Jacques,” Quinn said.
Helmet visor flipped skyward, Thibodaux looked Quinn square in the eye. “Oh, I’m being optimistic, brother. A bad woman can be a mighty good find.” He pressed the start button and the GS growled to life. The opposing cylinders ripped happily as he gunned the throttle with a toothy grin. “I’m just not sure you’re ready for such heady doin’s.”
Four blocks away, Nona Schmidt slouched behind the wheel of a faded maroon Nissan Sentra parked under a row of trees. She watched in disgust as a pompous-looking blond man in a herringbone jacket came down the white concrete side steps of the Norwegian Embassy to let his little fuzz-ball dog take a dump across the sidewalk, next to the street. Bastard. All that sovereign ground of Norway just inside the ivy-covered wall and he had to let his stupid dog tootle over to crap in America. Schmidt thought about getting out and hitting him in the head with the ball-peen hammer on the floorboard but decided against it, reminding herself that she had more important duties across the street. Her blue eyes homed in on the twin gates leading out of the Naval Observatory.
A shiny black Impala made the slow S turns around the concrete exit bollards, then stopped, waiting for traffic. The dark woman whom they’d seen earlier with Quinn was driving. To Nona’s horror, she came straight across Massachusetts Avenue.
The sight of the woman brought on a wave of instant panic. No one had expected they would come out this way. They’d gone into the Observatory grounds on the Georgetown side. That’s the way they were supposed to leave.
Nona picked up the radio from the seat between her legs. She wore extra-short cutoff jeans everyone called Daisy Dukes. Her pale thighs were bare-and now covered in gooseflesh that made the wispy blond hairs on her skin stand on end from worry. She turned the radio speaker-side up but kept it low in her lap and out of sight the way her boyfriend Scott had taught her. He was in the National Guard and knew everything about tactics. Her daddy liked him for that at least.
“I think they may be coming this way,” she hissed, trying to keep her lips as still as she could, looking like a bad ventriloquist. “The spic lady in the Impala just drove by me, going”-she consulted the map in the seat beside her-“north.”
“Sit tight and wait for the motorcycles,” her brother, Bobby, came back. He was set up with Scott in the parking lot of the Whole Foods Market on the opposite side of the circle, a half mile away. “If you see them, sing out and we’ll come runnin’. You stick close, but don’t let ’em see you. Remember what those bastards did to Uncle Walt.”
Nona nodded into the radio, then, remembering she had to speak out loud said: “okay… roger…” She was every inch the patriot but this tactical stuff gave her the heebie-jeebies.
Sitting off Embassy Row, where every other building belonged to some country besides America, filled her with righteous indignation. The Embassy of Finland was a half a block to her left. Azerbaijan was behind her. Nona didn’t know if Azerbaijan was the good guys or the bad guys, but it pissed her off that they had their own little piece of sovereign real estate smack in the middle of the U.S.A. Iraq, Iran, Belgium, and even the papist Vatican had little cancerous toeholds. It made her sick.
American to the bone, she even hated driving the Jap car, but Scott had reminded her of the need for operational security. They had to blend in driving around D.C. She thought it an awful thing how in the nation’s capital, you had to drive a foreign job not to stick out. Her brother’s 1981 Ford Bronco, designed and built in the good old U.S.A.-now that was a truck. She drummed both hands on the wheel, wishing she was in the Bronco-
The unmistakable roar of an approaching motorcycle made her wish she was back at the safety of their little compound in Martinsburg. An instant later, she watched a slender man in a black leather suit straddling a silver-gray BMW wind his way through the zigzag exit barricades from the Observatory grounds. The man wore a gunmetal helmet and rode the bike in the easy, self-assured manner that could only belong to Jericho Quinn.
Nona sat transfixed for a moment, eyes marveling at the fluid grace of the menacing bike as it leaned this way and that going around the concrete blocks. It reminded her of a dancing horse she’d seen once at a rodeo.
She’d seen a photograph of Quinn. The man’s gaunt looks and that dark, unshaven face made her go all melty inside. She’d read of IRA women running honey traps-luring young British soldiers into their homes for sex so they could be ambushed and have holes drilled into their knees by other faithful Irishmen. Nona had earned a slap from her daddy at suggesting she might try such a thing with Quinn.
And now he was riding his motorcycle directly toward her.
Her brother beat her to the radio.
“We got the big guy coming out of the gate now on our side. Looks like he’s alone.”
Nona chewed on her bottom lip, twisting and tugging at a curl of honey-colored hair. She knew she would have to follow until the others caught up.
“Qu… the other one just came out this way.” She cussed herself for almost using Quinn’s name over the radio. Scott had warned against that.
“Got it.” Bobby’s voice twanged with excitement.
“We’re on our way. Don’t let that son of a bitch outta your sight.”
Nona sank back in her seat trying her best to look invisible as the bike rumbled past her. When it was almost to the end of the next block, she made a quick, three-point turn like Scott had taught her and fell in behind. It was up to her, and though the thought made her shake so badly she could hardly keep a grip on the wheel, her face flushed with the pride of being a part of something so important. This time wouldn’t turn out like the screwup at the gas station. If they couldn’t capture Jericho Quinn, they would kill him.
Hunky or not, the country could use one less traitor.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Nancy Hughes couldn’t help thinking that the quicker she got Jolene married to Garrett Filson, the quicker the two lovebirds could get around to the business of giving her grandbabies. She often said she was born to be a grandmother. Her naturally red hair had gone snow white about the time she turned fifty. And she certainly preferred the honesty of children over the adults in Washington. Jolene had come along late in life as it was, when the Hugheses had been married almost ten years. Then she’d taken a sabbatical from college for a three-year stint in the Peace Corps. At twenty-seven, the girl had waited long enough-and so had Nancy.
Hughes sat in a wicker chair on the long front porch of the vice-presidential residence, sipping her sweet tea and looking over the park-like lawns of the Naval Observatory. The house was nice enough, but it was a bit of a step down from their home back in Dallas.
Nancy Hughes had made a solemn vow to herself that-except for the mandated security detail-Jolene’s wedding would not cost the American taxpayers a dime. Besides, she’d told her daughter, the taxpayer couldn’t afford the kind of wedding she wanted. That had to come from their considerable family war chest.