Fellow OGA “Gunny” Jacques Thibodaux pointed out the reality that “that which does not kill us makes us weaker for the next thing that tries to kill us.”
Quinn had needed a place to hide out, to heal from the many wounds he’d gotten in Japan — both physical and mental. His friends in the tiny Yup’ik Eskimo settlement of Mountain Village provided exactly what he’d needed.
He’d made the long trip by oceangoing car hauler from Tokyo to Seattle, just one step ahead of Interpol. A barge going up the inside passage had taken him to Anchorage, where he’d caught an Era flight to the bush. He’d not chanced seeing his parents or his daughter, or going to any of his old haunts. They were all certainly being watched.
Once he arrived in Mountain Village, Ukka’s wife and mother-in-law had tended to his wounds with traditional herbs as well as antibiotics they got from the clinic and school by feigning illness themselves. Of course, nothing went on without everyone eventually finding out in a close community like Mountain Village, called simply “Mountain” by locals. Soon, the entire village became accessories to the crime of harboring a fugitive. Few knew what he was wanted for, or his real name, but they knew he was wanted by the United States government, and that alone was enough of a reason for most to hide him.
Ukka threw the skiff into reverse just before they scraped gravel. Quinn hopped to a clump of willows, using them to keep his feet on the slippery mud and vegetation along the eroding cut bank. Gnarled limbs and bits of wood from upstream littered the area from the recent “breakup” when thousands of tons of ice melted enough to crack and give way ahead of the pressure of meltwater building upstream. Great, frozen slabs scoured the riverbed as they were shoved downstream by the tremendous pressure that built up behind them.
“Ukka,” Quinn sighed as he watched his friend jump to the bank beside him. “I’ll never be able to repay you for—”
“So help me, Jericho” — the Eskimo shook his head — “you’re gonna make me cry. And if I start crying, the next thing you know, I’ll be picking berries and cutting fish with the women.”
The Eskimo’s cell phone played the snippet of “Old Time Rock and Roll” that he used as a ringtone. He dug it out of his float coat.
“This is James,” he said.
He listened intently while Quinn scanned the hillside above them. Quinn switched on the dead contractor’s radio and stuffed the earpiece in his ear. He was tempted to say something cavalier, but thought it better to keep the new crew guessing as to what had happened to their river-based compatriots.
Ukka’s face went white and he ended the call.
“That was my neighbor,” he said. “Two of those bastards are heading for my house.”
Chapter 5
Veronica “Ronnie” Garcia looked away from the image on her computer and rubbed her eyes with a thumb and forefinger. A leaning tower of manila folders that she should have been analyzing sat precariously close to the edge of her desk. Each was striped and marked according to their classification level. She nibbled on the lipstick-stained straw sticking out of her cup of Diet Dr Pepper, taking a moment from the tedium of scanning the monitor for the last three hours.
Sliding down to let thick, ebony hair fall over the back of her chair, Garcia looked around her cubicle. Apart from the purple stapler and a Far Side calendar, the only other decoration was a photo of her with Jericho tacked to the door of the overhead cabinet. It was early in their relationship, on a trip to Virginia Beach they somehow had been able to wedge between missions. Her canary yellow swimsuit accentuated long legs and a multitude of curves. The color was a perfect complement to her rich, coffee-and-cream complexion. Jericho wore blue bathing trunks and a rare smile, big enough to show his teeth.
Garcia’s chair creaked as she leaned forward to touch the photo with the tip of a red fingernail, tracing the lines of Quinn’s bare chest and the many scars that mapped his body. She thought of something her Russian father used to say — “The way a man fights is the way he does everything else” — and that made her miss Jericho all the more. She kissed her finger, and then pressed it to Quinn’s bearded face. If they ever did have kids, the poor things were doomed to being hairy gorillas. Of course, you had to be in the same time zone to conceive a child, so even if they’d considered such a thing, the notion of it was as far as they would get.
For all practical purposes, she was alone in the bullpen. The girl that sat in the cubicle to her right had already gone home for the day, and Nathan, the tall, blond drink of water who occupied the stall to her left was off picking up copies at the communal printer, which happened to be next to the desk of the tiny brunette who was his latest conquest. He would be gone awhile.
Garcia took another quick sip of her Dr Pepper, and then turned back to the computer monitor. Resting an elbow on her desk, she began to scan the screen again while she pondered how odd it was that an intelligence agency that was so steeped in secrecy and compartmentalization would have a communal printer. Government cutbacks bordered on the bizarre. There were so many things about the present administration that were absurd. The new president had clamped down on everything and everyone with all the paranoid efficiency of communist East Germany. Garcia herself had been given the names of five people in the agency on whom she was to provide “vetting overwatch.” She was certain her name was on at least two other agents’ lists. Overzealous, even heavy-handed government employees were rewarded rather than constrained. Jericho Quinn and anyone else who’d ever stood in the way of the new administration were being hunted down, or, as in Ronnie Garcia’s case, sidelined to a life of busywork.
Citizens followed like sheep because President Hartman Drake, a victim of a terrorist attack himself if you believed the papers, gave them what they wanted — free health care; snarky, populist sound bites; and the drumbeat of war with anyone who dared cross American policies.
But not everyone marched in lockstep. A sizable underground had sprung up in the aftermath of President Clark’s death. Quinn, Garcia, and others who had worked directly for the former president’s national security advisor, Win Palmer, knew the incoming administration was behind the assassination of Clark and the Vice President. There was just no way to prove it, yet.
Garcia clicked her mouse, switching screens. Her breath caught in her throat when the image loaded. She looked away, blinking to clear her eyes, then back to check again.
It was highly pixilated from being enlarged several times over, but it was definitely the needle in the digital haystack she’d been searching for. Dr. Naseer Badeeb, the mastermind of a plan to bomb the wedding of the former vice president’s daughter, stood chatting with a man with a heavy black beard. But neither of these men were the most important find. Garcia clicked her mouse, enlarging the photo as much as she could without losing it completely. It was impossible to prove without enhancing the image, but Garcia was certain the young man standing behind Badeeb was Hartman Drake — the President of the United States. He was younger, in his early teens, but there was no mistaking the condescending sneer and vaporous look in the boy’s eyes.