“Ah.” Hoyt returned the wink with one of his own. “Friendly, good, good,” he said, providing Quinn with the second half of the phrase used by one Air Force Academy graduate to identify another. Taken straight from the Mitchel Dining Hall comment card, Fast, Neat, Average, Friendly, Good, Good were the only acceptable critique freshman cadets were allowed to give on the mandatory Form 0-96.
Hoyt stepped back to give Quinn a more thorough up-and-down look. “Class of seventy-five.”
“Two thousand and two,” Quinn said.
“Oh.” Hoyt rubbed his elbow. “That class.”
“Yeah,” Quinn said, “that class.” He decided to steer the subject away from the fact that he’d graduated from the Air Force Academy the same academic year Al Qaeda brought down the Twin Towers and crashed a plane into the Pentagon. “You sir, are a good guy to have around.”
“That was hellacious!” Hoyt grinned, shooting a glance at his wife. “Work as long as you can, son. Retirement’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
Quinn chuckled, rolling his shoulders to relieve the pain in his ribs as he nodded to the Hoyt’s elbow. “You should probably have that looked at.”
“Don’t worry about him.” Mrs. Hoyt gave a little good-natured scoff. “He’ll be glowing about this for days,” she said. “Best thing in the world for him, getting to mix it up with some bad guys. Makes him realize he’s still relevant.”
A white Alaska State Trooper SUV approached from the north carrying Ronnie Garcia in the passenger seat. Quinn could tell immediately from the frown on her face that something was terribly wrong.
“What is it?” Quinn said when she opened her door. “What’s the—”
Half in, half out of the car, Ronnie waved Quinn over. “Jericho,” she said. “You need to come hear this.”
Chapter 3
Dr. Kostya Volodin inhaled the smell of popcorn and freedom as he left the windy tarmac along with the other eight passengers and entered through the metal doorway to the air-charter office. The buzz of people chattering in English made him feel heady as if he’d suddenly had a great weight lifted off his chest.
Dressed in a threadbare woolen blazer with patched sleeves and light wool traveling slacks that were half tucked in to ankle-high hiking boots, Volodin looked like the professor he had been and not the defector he had become. Gaunt and stooped, Volodin appeared to be much shorter than his six foot two inches. Numerous cowlicks caused his wiry head of gray hair to grow in all directions at once, leaving it in a perpetual state of bedhead.
Across the cavernous hanger, a smiling American Immigration and Customs official sat at a lone metal desk. Russians were accustomed to queuing up for bureaucrats so the other passengers who’d come across the Bering Sea with Volodin lined up without direction. Kaija stopped directly ahead of him, her head moving back and forth, birdlike. He could not blame her. This was her fist trip to America. There was a lot to take in.
At twenty years old, his dear daughter could pass for a much younger woman, but he would always think of her as a five-year-old with a skinned knee, before her mother had taken her away for all those excruciating years. The tail of her blue wool shirt hung to mid-thigh of her faded skinny jeans. Her sleeves were too long and frayed at the cuffs where they swallowed up her tiny hands. Red ankles were dry and chapped above thin canvas sneakers. He could have afforded more, but she would hardly accept a kopek from him.
Youthful lips trembled when she turned to look him in the eye, obviously frightened by something she’d seen. A black wool watch cap topped straw-blond hair that hung around narrow shoulders, framing a stricken oval face. A pair of white earbuds perpetually connected her to the music on her mobile phone, but even in her terror, she refused to remove both of them, leaving one in her ear and the other trailing down the side of her neck. She shook her head, mouth hanging open, the way she’d done when she was a small child. She’d borne the same expression the day her mother — Volodin’s dear Maria — had died.
“What is the matter, kroshka?” Volodin whispered. He put a hand on her shoulder. She was trembling and it broke his heart.
Kaija cast a hurried glance toward the door.
He followed her gaze but saw nothing but a handful of Native people, all dressed in wool and fleece and fur. He saw a few men, but mostly there were smiling women with round bodies and Asian eyes sitting on shabby furniture next to boxes of diapers and cases of canned soda pop in the open bay of the charter office that served as a combination waiting and cargo area. Fluorescent lights hummed in the high ceiling of the tin building, barely cutting through the thin fog of dust that rose into the chilly air.
“We are safe now, kroshka,” he said. “I will inform the Customs Inspector we mean to defect to the United States. He will escort us to the proper authorities. He will give us something to eat and warm clothes.”
Kaija clenched her eyes as if she was about to scream. “They are here, Papa.”
“Who?” Volodin shook his head, still holding the poor girl’s trembling shoulder. “Who is here?”
Kaija brushed a lock of blond hair from her eyes and tucked it up under the wool cap. She’d not been one to worry much with her hair after her mother died the year before. Volodin wondered for a time if she’d even bothered to bathe.
Kaija glanced toward the front of the building again, past the rows of customers waiting for their small charter flights within Alaska.
“You do not see the men?” Her breath came in short, tremulous gasps. “Outside. They are waiting for us. I am sure of it. Colonel Rostov has wasted no time in finding you.”
Volodin chanced a quick look at the door. The front window of the air charter building was covered in grime, but there were indeed two men outside, smoking cigarettes and chatting in the light swirl of blowing snow. The menace in their faces was all too evident. Of course they would be here, ordered to force him back — or kill him, which was the highest of all possible probabilities considering the man who sent them.
Volodin looked at the head of the line. There were now only six passengers between Kaija and the uniformed Immigration agent.
“Do not worry, my dear,” Volodin whispered, leaning down and forcing a smile for his daughter. “This man will protect us.”
“How can you be sure, Papa?” Kaija said. “Is it not possible he has been paid to detain us? He could at this very moment be in league with the men outside.”
Volodin rubbed a tired hand across the stubble on his face. The girl was as wily and wise as her mother. She made a valid point. Americans were brought up to trust people in uniform. In Russia it was quite the opposite — and sadly, the Russian perspective was often the correct one. Anyone could be bought.
It was a Herculean effort to look nonchalant as he scanned the air-charter office for anyone who might be waiting to shoot him in the back of the head. A bullet to the back of the head — that’s the way they’d done it in Mother Russia since the beginning of bullets. Considering the awful things he’d been a part of, a quick shot would be a merciful way to go. That time would come soon enough, but for now, he had to stay alive to take care of his daughter.
Volodin snugged the wool jacket tighter around his neck and used the tip of his finger to push a pair of thick, tortoiseshell glasses back on a large nose. He tilted his head, trying to get a better look out the window without being too obvious.