The smile vanished from the big Marine’s face. He grabbed a pen from his shirt pocket and took notes on a napkin while he listened to the other end of the conversation. Garcia leaned in close, trying to hear, bouncing so much Bowen thought she might fall out of her chair.
“Okay,” Thibodaux finally said. “We’ll make it happen. I got someone here who’s dyin’ to talk to you before you go… You bet… Be safe, Chair Force.” He passed the phone to Garcia who snatched it away and fled to the far corner of the noodle shop.
Thibodaux leaned in, lowering his voice. “Turns out Petyr’s daddy is behind the gas attacks,” he said. “Or at least the chemist who’s invented the gas itself. Calls it New Archangel. Quinn has him in custody. Seems Petyr’s got a sister who might be runnin’ the whole show. She was able to give them the slip and is on her way to Anchorage now, probably with enough gas to kill a gob of people. We’re supposed to see if Petyr’s tied up with her in some Russian Nationalist group called the…” He consulted the notes he’d scrawled on the napkin. “The… Black Hundreds or some shit. They could be using Islamic State proxies.”
“ISIS working for Russia?”
“Not on purpose,” Thibodaux said. “You know how it is, proxy warriors are always the last to know who they’re fightin’ for.”
Bowen looked out the window, past the smoked duck carcasses, trying to put it all together. “Petyr doesn’t fit the profile of a terrorist…”
“Maybe not,” Thibodaux said. “But there’s something else. I guess his daddy’s mind is slippin’, poor bastard. Petyr could be in league with his evil sister — or the old man might have accidentally sent him some of the gas labeled as growth hormone…”
“So Petyr’s got some of this New Archangel stashed away somewhere?” Bowen took a deep breath. “He was carrying that yellow duffle pretty close when he came into Cheekie’s.”
“Odds are this dipshit doesn’t even know what he’s got.” Thibodaux said. “He’s just dammed lucky he hasn’t dug into this batch of his daddy’s stuff yet. His sis probably sent her Black Hundreds nationalists or Islamic State cutouts to retrieve the gas. It would make sense they’d try and cover it up by removing the bodies from the Dumpster.”
“So we’re supposed to grab Petyr,” Bowen said. “Find the nerve gas his father accidently sent him, and pick up anyone else trying to get the gas…
Garcia walked up. “And we need to do it fast,” she said, handing Thibodaux his phone and holding up her burner. “Maxim called. The fight goes down in some tunnel under Doyers Street — in half an hour. He’s texting me directions.”
“The Bloody Angle?” Thibodaux closed his eye.
“What’s the Bloody Angle?” Bowen asked.
“Doyers Street,” Thibodaux said, drumming his fingers on the table, thinking. “Sharp angle makes it the perfect place for an ambush. Many a Chinese gangster met his death by hatchet on that street around the turn of the century. Quinn and I did some work there a couple of years ago. We heard rumors the gangs had a bunch of old escape tunnels.” He grabbed his phone and began to punch in numbers, pausing just long enough to pull Bowen’s noodles away from him, tapping on the bubble tea instead. “Looks like you get your wish.” He put the phone to his ear, winking at Garcia. “We’re gonna need our own gang to make this work. Lucky for us, I got one on speed dial.”
Chapter 60
Captain Amy Munjares, the pilot in command of the Air Force C-21, was a slender brunette who reminded Quinn a little too much of his seven-year-old daughter, Mattie. The easy swagger with which she made her way down the boarding stairs was well earned, evidenced by the fact that she’d used every inch of Ambler’s 3000-foot gravel runway to bring her airplane to a stop that didn’t involve a flaming wreckage.
The C-21 was a military version of the sleek Learjet35 with wingtip fuel tanks and twin Garrett turbofan engines mounted on the rear of the fuselage. Capable of speeds over five hundred miles an hour, the plane would get Quinn and Beaudine back to Anchorage in a hurry. Landing one of the hot little airplanes out here was akin to racing a Ferrari down a dirt road. This particular plane was based at Scott AFB in Illinois and primarily used for medevac missions. It had been a rest day in Fairbanks on its way back from a training run to Yokota Air Base in Japan when Winfield Palmer had snagged it.
“Captain Quinn?” Munjares said when she reached the bottom of the stairs.
Quinn nodded. “Thanks for the pickup.”
“Getting in was the easy part.” Munjares gave him a sly wink. “I have to find a little girl’s room and offload some coffee. We need to lighten the load any way we can if we want to make it off this little postage stamp of a runway. How many of you are there?”
“Five.” Quinn nodded to Beaudine, Kostya Volodin, and an itinerant Public Health nurse he’d pressed into service to check over Beaudine’s wounds during the flight to Anchorage. A reluctant Clarence had gone to retrieve Polina on his four-wheeler.
“Not a chance,” Munjares said. “I’m two thousand feet shy of the runway I need to get this bird off the ground. I can maybe carry four counting the Trooper.” She walked toward the lonely set of weathered buildings set just off the gravel apron. “Go ahead and board,” she said over her shoulder, leaving no room for argument. “Lieutenant Halsey will get you settled in.”
“Trooper?” Beaudine said about the time a tall man in the light blue uniform shirt and navy slacks of an Alaska State Trooper appeared at the door of the airplane. He situated a flat brimmed “Smoky the Bear” hat over close-cropped sandy hair and started down the boarding stairs.
“Aaron Evans,” he said, hiding a grimace when he saw Beaudine’s wounds. “AST. I guess I’m your reinforcement.”
“They just sent one of you?” Beaudine said, shaking her head in disbelief.
“I was stationed in Kotzebue before Fairbanks so I know the folks out here on the river.” Evans smiled. “And you know what they say, ‘One riot, one trooper.’”
“Oh, no you don’t,” Beaudine said, puffing up like she might explode. “That’s ‘One riot, one ranger.’ Don’t you be co-opting Texas expressions.”
Trooper Evans shot a save-me glance at Quinn. “You must be Special Agent Beaudine.”
“Well, that sucks,” Beaudine said, deflating at once. “You recognized the bitchy one as me…”
“Not at all,” Evans said. “My boss told me you were injured. Before I took this job, I was a firefighter/paramedic. The powers that be asked me to ride with you and do double duty as another gun who could take care of getting you patched up. There was a whole separate aircraft with the Trooper Swat Team on their way out here, but when you sent word the Russian girl had already departed for Anchorage they got diverted down there to assist APD.”
Quinn told the relieved Public Health nurse that she didn’t have to fly out after all and then called Clarence on his cell. He and Beaudine followed Trooper Evans back up the stairs with a dejected Kostya Volodin between them. Lieutenant Halsey, a smallish man with a crew cut, sat in the right seat of the cockpit, reading emails on a tablet computer. He welcomed them aboard and told them to sit wherever they wanted.
The plane was set up with a single blue leather seat on either side, with the front two facing aft — back to back with the pilots — while the remaining four faced forward. The interior was comfortable but cramped, and everyone but Beaudine had to stoop to walk down the narrow aisle.
“Change of plans on Polina,” Quinn said when the Village Police Officer finally picked up. It gnawed at his gut that he’d left Kaija’s friend out of his sight, but he chalked it up to fatigue and the hot pursuit of Volodin.