Kim worked her butt off in rehab, learning how to walk on her new leg, enduring hours of painful stretching therapy. She walked for miles around the halls of the hospital, first with, then without the assistance of a cane.
Jericho was apparently good friends with the former national security advisor and Mr. Palmer saw to it that she had the finest in aftercare for an amputee. Sadly, years of war ensured that military hospitals received a great deal of experience in replacing lost limbs. At first, Kimberly Quinn had been welcomed at Walter Reed because she was a friend of the White House. Later, after the horrible accusations against Jericho, it seemed like the new administration wanted her there so they could keep an eye on her. She had to make this “new normal,” as they called it, work for her before she could do anything.
Surrounded by servicewomen who’d had bits and pieces of themselves blown off in war, Kim had remained quiet about how she’d lost the leg. All the other patients in her ward had lost limbs as a result of roadside bombs or mortar attacks. She’d always felt a certain amount of pride at being married — at least for a time — to a member of the military. Now, for the first time in her life, Kim found herself truly embarrassed that she was not herself a veteran wounded in the service of her country. She’d been shot at a wedding, for crying out loud. For weeks, she didn’t talk to anyone but her roommate, a female US Army corporal named Rochelle, who’d lost both legs in a helicopter crash in Afghanistan.
Then, a month after the shooting, Rochelle and four of her girlfriends, all amputees, cornered Kim in the gym with a dozen roses and a Wounded Warrior challenge coin. Kim had cried, protesting that she didn’t deserve to be grouped with these brave women.
“Are you kidding me?” Rochelle had said, standing there on her twin prosthetic legs. “You took a bullet intended for your own kid. You’re a wounded warrior if ever one wore a skirt. So strut that leg proudly. Wear shorts, go dancing, kick ass. I’m sure going to.”
The love and companionship of those women was like nothing Kim had ever experienced. More even than the surgery, they had saved her life.
They’d given her the confidence to get out, to do things like go shopping with her daughter.
Mattie ran ahead, completely unbothered by the shiny stainless-steel “leg” that stuck out from the hem of her mother’s denim shorts. She was happy to go to the mall, but happier still to be out with her mom. She darted back to hold Kim’s hand and check on her every few seconds. They’d returned from Alaska so Kim could spend the last two weeks at Walter Reed, being fitted for her new, computerized prosthetic leg. This one adjusted to her changes in gait as many as fifty times per second. Kim had been so busy with doctors’ appointments and physical therapy that this was their first day out together since coming back to DC.
“How about some supper at Johnny Rockets?” Kim asked, pointing Mattie toward the escalator around the corner from the Apple Store where they’d just spent the last hour picking out the perfect case for Mattie’s iPod.
“That sounds great, Mom,” Mattie said, skipping around the corner ahead. It did Kim’s heart good that her daughter didn’t try to coddle her — even if the extra exertion caused her to sweat through the armpits of her T-shirt. Her physical therapist had warned her that a prosthetic for an AK — above the knee — amputation would use far more energy than a normal leg. That, combined with the body’s loss of all the pores on the missing limb, meant the rest of her was likely to perspire more in an effort to regulate her temperature. The other girls in her ward called it “glistening.”
Mattie stopped in her tracks as soon as they’d rounded the corner.
“I forgot my new shirt at the Apple Store,” she gasped. Stricken, she grabbed Kim’s hand and spun her around, oblivious to how tricky such a move was on a prosthetic leg.
“Are you sure it was there?” Kim asked. “Maybe you left it somewhere else.”
“No.” Mattie shook her head. “I’m sure I had it there. We have to go and get it.” She clutched Kim by the hand and led her back the way they’d come, rounding a square support pillar and nearly running headlong into a startled man walking directly toward them.
He was about Kim’s age, in his mid-thirties, with a sullen flap of blond hair and an intense look she recognized from her ex-husband. He wore faded jeans and an unremarkable button-up shirt with short sleeves — loose, like the kind Jericho always wore to hide his gun. And this was the fifth time she’d seen him since they’d been in the mall. She felt a twinge of fear rising up in her stomach. Maybe living with Jericho for all those years had made her paranoid, but either this guy had the same taste in shopping as a seven-year-old girl, or he was following them.
Chapter 12
“Two of them are holed up in the Kwikpac building.” Ukka did a quick peek around the corner of the weathered plywood fuel shed where he and Quinn were hidden.
Seventy-five meters away, the image of a weatherworn clapboard building ghosted through the curtains of drizzle and fog. It lay at the base of the village on a narrow spit of gravel that made it easier for boats to come up on the riverside and offload their commercial catch. The icy winds that shrieked off the frozen Yukon through the long winters made it impossible to keep paint on any of the buildings in Mountain Village. The blue splotches the fish buyers had slapped on their building the previous summer were now little more than a scoured memory.
According to Ukka’s cousin, two of the contractors had grabbed a young schoolteacher named April John to use as a hostage when they’d come up from the river and dragged her into the fish plant.
While Ukka kept an eye on the Kwikpac building, Quinn lay on his belly, facing the opposite direction, making certain they weren’t ambushed by the still unaccounted-for pilot.
Ukka wiped the rainwater off his round face. “I think I saw some movement through the front window. It’s tough to tell in this fog.”
“Okay,” Quinn said. “Use those hunter’s eyes of yours to watch our six for a minute. If there are only two accounted for in there, we still have a variable out here.” He maneuvered around so he could get a look at the fish house while Ukka took up the job of rear guard.
“Tell me more about April John,” Quinn said, watching the wide gray ribbon of the Yukon tumble along behind the Kwikpac building. He’d met her a couple of times over the last few months and knew she worked at the school. A sturdy-looking girl, she’d taken a moose during a late winter hunt that had filled the larders of a couple of village elders — but that didn’t mean she was equipped to handle being a hostage.
“She’s the kind of girl who’d beat a guy to death with a walrus pecker if he crossed her,” Ukka said. “She’ll not be one to boohoo to her captors, if that’s what you mean. They’ll have to tie her up or knock her out to keep her from fighting.”
“Good.” Quinn gritted his teeth, thinking through his options. “That gives her a chance—”
“Wait!” Ukka hissed, his voice a tense whisper. “I got movement five houses up from the fish plant. Looks like a boot sticking out from under Myrna Tomaganuk’s house. I’ll lay odds it’s the pilot.” State policy said village public safety officers were supposed to be unarmed, but he’d grabbed his favorite hunting rifle before leaving his house. It was a Winchester Model 70 chambered in 30.06. It was battered, and even a little rusty around the base of the Leopold 3X9 scope, but Quinn had seen the man use it to shoot a moose in the eye at over a hundred yards.
Quinn glanced down at the submachine gun in his hands. He had two extra magazines in his pocket and the Severance sheathed on his hip. These guys had obviously done their research and believed he’d come to the hostage. With two of the contractors barricaded with their backs to the river and the third hiding under Tomaganuk’s home, ready to blow his brains out when he approached, a frontal assault was impractical.