“Yes,” Quinn said, giving a satisfied nod. “We have. We have your partners who helped you kill the man on the stairs. It is over, my friend.”
“It is my fault we have failed,” Gao sighed. He threw back his head. A tear ran down his cheek. “May Allah forgive my clumsy hands…”
Quinn pinched the man’s thigh again, harder this time, pulling a chunk of skin and giving it a sharp twist before letting it snap back into place. It brought on a yowl of pain, but focused the man a little too much.
He looked up suddenly, regaining what sense he had. “You know nothing.”
“I know you are not from Shanghai.” Quinn shrugged.
The key to a successful interrogation often lay as much in the things that were not said as much as the things that were. One moment Gao’s shoulders slumped in defeat, the next they began to shake. Turning his head slowly so he could look Quinn in the eye, he loosed a cackling laugh.
Quinn stood up, thinking through what to do next. He considered administering one of the epinephrine pens to bring Gao out of his stupor and question him under the added anxiety. The truth was there was no time to do this the right way — especially with Mattie sitting so close.
Carly and Natalie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. Carly’s neck was blotchy and red from nerves. Even the normally unflappable Natalie was mussed as if she’d been in a scuffle, her face drawn and stricken as if she’d seen a ghost.
Quinn stepped away just enough to keep an eye on Gao and spare them another sight of the dead body.
“What is it?” Quinn’s first thought was of Mattie’s safety.
“We found something you need to see,” Carly said.
“Does it look like a bomb?” Quinn said, hope rising. If they’d found it, they could try to disarm it — or at least put it in a spot that would do the least damage to the aircraft.
Natalie took a step back at the word. “A bomb?” she said. “No… there’s been another murder… two more murders.”
“A woman and the attendant from the coffee station,” Carly said. “Somebody killed them both. Juanita found their bodies down in the crew quarters below first class.”
Quinn motioned Carly across the lounge, farther from Mattie. He kept his voice at a whisper. “Describe the woman to me.”
Carly grimaced. “Juanita came up the stairs like she’d seen… well, two dead bodies. None of us went down there. We just came to get you.”
Madonna Foss was sweating from the pain in her broken arm, but she was still coherent and looked like she wanted to punch Quinn in the face. That was good. He needed her mad and ready to fight if she was to protect his daughter. “I need to go check up front,” he said. “You all right here for a minute?”
“We’ll be fine.” Foss put on a tight smile. “Mattie will look after me.”
“I’ll stay back too,” Natalie said. “I still have the stun gun if I need it.”
Quinn nodded. It killed him to leave his daughter, but if he didn’t stop whatever was going on up front, it wouldn’t matter who stayed back to watch her.
Chapter 56
A balding flight attendant in his mid-forties named Andre stood guard outside the door to the crew rest quarters.
“Are you the one that found the body?” Quinn said.
“No, sir,” Andre said. “Juanita found him. She’s the senior flight attendant.”
Before Quinn could ask anything else, the top of Juanita’s head came up the ladder. Ebony eyes flashed at Quinn, daring him to get in her way. She’d been affected by the dead bodies, and though on edge, did not appear to be afraid. There was a fierceness about her that made Quinn wonder if she was afraid of anything.
“Looks like Paxton was beaten to death,” she said. “The woman was strangled with some kind of cord.” Hauling herself up the ladder with one hand, she passed what looked like a coffee grinder to Quinn with the other.
Quinn passed it to Carly and stepped back, helping the other flight attendant onto the deck.
“No one else is down there?” he asked.
Juanita shook her head. “Nope,” she said. “Just poor Paxton and the Chinese woman.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes.
“Wait,” Quinn said. “The dead woman is Chinese?”
“I think so,” Juanita said. “I couldn’t find any ID, but that’s what I’d guess. I’ll keep watch if you want to go down and have a look.”
Carly held up the coffee grinder. “What’s this for?”
“That’s the weird part,” Juanita said. “Somebody plugged it in by one of the bunks. Looks like they used pillows to muffle the noise.”
Quinn opened the grinder and ran a finger around the sides. It came back covered in silver gray dust.
Carly looked at his finger. “What the heck is that?”
“Aluminum,” he said.
Juanita stepped away from the door leading to the crew quarters. “You want to go down and check it out?”
“No need,” Quinn said. A feeling of dread washed over him. He had to get back to Mattie. “I know what’s happening.”
Chapter 57
Baka, the derisive Japanese word for idiot, was nowhere near strong enough to convey Ran’s contempt for Hartman Drake. She stood at the back of the cramped White House pressroom and watched as the president droned on and on about his administration and what he was doing to counter growing Chinese nationalism and a legion of other threats to the United States. As if this buffoon, this mindless lothario, could do anything but chase women and admire himself in the mirror.
Lee McKeon flanked the president, a few steps to the left, hands crossed at his stomach. He was taller than Drake by half a foot, slender — almost to the point of bony — where the President was husky and, Ran knew, McKeon was brilliant where the other man was overwhelmingly dim.
Few knew the truth, but McKeon might as well have had his hand up the back of the President’s shirt, controlling him like a ventriloquist’s dummy. But that was the thing about McKeon — he was happy to be in the shadows, working as the power behind the throne. She’d asked him once, while he was still the governor of Oregon, if he did not wish to be the president. “Why waste time being the emperor?” he’d said. “When I can be the shogun?”
It was nothing short of amazing how he handled the fool — and Ran was not easily amazed. Though Drake strutted around as if he’d decided on his own to release the Uyghur terrorists in Guantanamo Bay to Pakistan where they could more easily escape and wreak more havoc against China, the idea had sprung from McKeon’s fertile mind. It was all part of his larger plan to push America and China into a devastating nuclear war.
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, all his cabinet members, even close members of his West Wing staff, believed Drake was running the show. McKeon wanted it that way. He moved by suggestion and sheer force of will, rarely giving anyone more than a nod, or a word or two to nudge them in the right direction.
Drake was too shortsighted to see the larger picture. He wanted to open borders, allow members of al Qaeda, Lashkar e Taiba, and a dozen other terrorist organizations to slip through and put their little bombs in Disneyland and Times Square. But Lee McKeon was a big thinker. He’d inherited a sense of purpose and destiny from his father that the other man would never comprehend.
Under his quiet guidance, President Drake would chip away at the Chinese economy, throw the full weight of his support behind Japan and the disputed Senkaku Islands. He would start issuing a travel visa to the president of Taiwan and treat him like a head of state.