“Is he talking?” Thibodaux asked.
“Won’t shut up,” Palmer said. “He swears someone is trying to frame him. The Bureau and Homeland are putting the squeeze on all the ports as we speak… ”
“But you think the evidence was planted?” Quinn nodded in agreement.
“It all seems a little too neat,” Palmer said. “From your report, I’m not willing to write Zamora off just yet. The Russians think there’s something going on or you wouldn’t have run into Ms. Kanatova. I’ve got to tell you, though — doesn’t it seem odd that he’d be off running a race like this if he was trying to move a weapon worth over a quarter billion dollars?”
“He’s a flake,” Thibodaux offered. “Bomb or no bomb, he’s gotta have the three A’s to be happy — adventure, approval, and…” He looked at a stoic Mrs. Miyagi before continuing. “… women.”
Palmer leaned back in his chair as the phone began to ring on his desk. “Keep me informed,” he said. “Emiko, I have to take this. If you don’t mind filling them in on the rest.”
Mrs. Miyagi bowed slightly in her seat.
“Of course.”
Palmer disconnected.
Mrs. Miyagi stayed in her high-backed chair. “Due to the short lead time involved, Mr. Palmer has ordered the KTM 450 rally bike you require, along with your support truck, to be flown south to rendezvous in the South Atlantic with a cargo vessel already en route to Mar del Plata. It should arrive shortly before you do, giving you time to clear Argentine customs before the race.” She handed Quinn a small device the size and shape of a dash-mounted GPS. “This will scan for gamma radiation. You can use it to interrogate Zamora’s vehicle and equipment. If he has the bomb with him, it should leave a signature and we can take appropriate action. Now, I understand your brother is to accompany you?”
“Yes.” Quinn took the handheld sensor and slid it in his jacket pocket. “He’s a wild child, but he’s also a competent mechanic. We’ll need someone we can trust handling that side of things.”
“Very well,” she said. “A contact from State who cooperates with Mr. Palmer will provide an unregistered sidearm for each of you upon your arrival.” She rose quickly, turned away as if to leave, then spun back with a sort of snap aggressiveness that reminded Quinn of a shark.
“I am to make you truly aware of what this device will do,” she said. Her dark eyes, multihued as mossy agates, flicked back and forth between the two men.
Though he’d seen plenty of devastation and heartache during his deployments to the Middle East, Quinn was not entirely sure he comprehended the magnitude of a nuclear detonation on American soil.
Miyagi saw it in his face and her eyes softened. In her mind, ignorance was better than swagger — so long as her students were willing to learn.
“It has become almost trite,” she said with her oval face canted a little to the side as it often was when she explained things. From anyone else, it might have come across as condescending, but Emiko Miyagi looked as if she merely wanted more than just her words to be understood. “Do you remember where you were on September 11, 2001?”
Quinn nodded. Thibodaux looked at the tatami floor.
Miyagi continued. “Nineteen al-Qaeda terrorists murdered almost three thousand people that day. Over six thousand more were physically injured, but we will never know the true human cost. The U.S. stock market lost almost one and a half trillion dollars in value that week — and, of course, we went to war.” She raised her hand as if to ward off a question. “I do not condemn the war. I am, as you have observed, perhaps as bellicose a woman as you will ever meet. I merely point it out as a consequence of September 11. The entire world changed that day.
“Those nineteen killed three thousand and changed so very much, but we have rebuilt and made ourselves, as Hemingway says, ‘stronger at the broken places.’ ” She sighed, slowly nodding her head. “But gentlemen, my people know something of a nuclear bomb. Even a small device will bring more destruction than we as Americans can imagine. Our economy is a fragile egg, ready to be crushed underfoot at any moment by the next catastrophe. If intelligence reports are true, Baba Yaga is capable of delivering five kilotons of destructive power. That’s a third the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima that killed a hundred and forty thousand and forced the surrender of the Japanese government.
“Now, imagine how this will change the world: A five-kiloton explosion would produce a firestorm over two square miles. If such a device were to be detonated in Lower Manhattan it would not only destroy the major buildings of the Financial District, but virtually everything from Battery Park through Chinatown and Little Italy all the way to SoHo. Great volumes of superheated air would shoot into the sky. Hurricane-force winds would drive the flames through the rest of the city. Police and fire rescue would be completely overwhelmed. National Guard would mobilize, but by then thousands more are dead or dying from radiation exposure. If detonated in the right location, tens of thousands would be gone within the week.
“I have explained the effects of such a device on New York,” Miyagi concluded. “Now think on this. A bomb such as Baba Yaga could be placed in Anchorage or New Orleans — in short, anywhere.”
Thibodaux breathed in heavily through his nose, clenching the muscles in his massive jaw. “Well,” he said. “I guess we’d better find the damned thing.”
Miyagi raised a delicate black eyebrow. “Yes, Jacques, you’d better, for there is no surrender.”
“That’s fine,” Quinn said. “Because I’m not the surrendering type.”
“And I don’t suggest you are.” Miyagi’s voice was strained, as if the weight of the world rested on her small shoulders. “But that does not matter. The people we fight now do not care if we surrender or not. They only want to see us dead.”
Quinn’s phone buzzed just as he threw a leg over his motorcycle. He tapped the Bluetooth device on the side of his helmet and answered.
“Daddy!” Mattie Quinn’s voice filled his helmet and his heart.
“Hey, kiddo,” he said, leaning forward to rest across the tank and handlebars.
“Do you have my Christmas present yet?”
“That’s a surprise,” he said. In truth, he had no idea what to buy a little girl. Kim proved little help, seeming to enjoy letting him twist in the wind with his decision. “Do you still want to be a doctor when you grow up?”
“Not anymore,” she said. “Now I want to be a scientist or maybe a teacher… or a lawyer.”
“A lawyer?”
“No.” She giggled. “Mom told me I should say that to bug you. Really and truly, right this minute, I think I want to go into the Air Force.”
“Did Mom tell you to say that?”
Mattie sucked in her breath. “Oh no.” She giggled again. “But it bugs her when I do.”
Jericho grinned while his little girl shared her dreams and goals and wishes for Christmas. She might look like her mother, but sadly for her, Mattie Quinn was an awful lot like him.
CHAPTER 22
The SinFull strip club hadn’t changed décor since it was the Booby Trap in the late eighties. Aleks Kanatova sat in a corner booth and wondered if the carpet had ever been vacuumed. A black light hung on the wooden paneling made the tonic water in her gin glow an eerie blue. Cigarette smoke hung in swirling plumes and dance music vibrated the walls with a rhythmic bass thrum. The heady odor of desperation made it difficult to breathe.