“That wouldn’t go well,” Palmer said. “In one scenario they kill Zamora and we are no closer to the bomb. In the other, they find the bomb and Bolivia suddenly becomes a nuclear power.”
“We are losing him, sir,” Quinn said. “Can you destroy the road? Box him in until we catch up?”
More keyboard clicks.
“The George Washington is off the coast of Brazil with the Fourth Fleet,” Palmer said. The line was silent for a long moment. “But that’s a no-go. They’re too far out to do you any good.”
Aleksandra came trotting back up the hill with Bo right behind her. He looked mortified at the thought of being beaten by a girl in a footrace. Their chests heaved under the flimsy clear plastic rain jackets Adelmo had given them.
Bo stopped beside Quinn, bent forward with his hands on his knees. “We found a way around,” he said between panting breaths.
“Gotta go,” Quinn said into the satellite phone.
“I’ll put our Bolivian contact on alert. Call back as soon as practical.”
“You have got to be shittin’ me,” Thibodaux said when Bo explained his plan. He shook the now dog-eared tourist pamphlet at Quinn for emphasis. “We’re talkin’ about the Road of Death here, beb.”
“He’ll soon be out of range.” Aleksandra looked up from her phone. Rain plastered red hair to her forehead and cheeks in thick locks. “I cannot see another way,” she said.
Bo ran back down the hill while Jericho and Aleksandra threw on fleece jackets and shoved their gear into Quinn’s daypack. Quinn sighed at the Spartan nature of it all — two pistols, an extra pair of socks for each of them, and the heavy Severance blade.
Bo and Thibodaux had the battered Yamaha 250 dirt bike off the back of a rusted bubble-topped Mercedes truck by the time Quinn and Aleksandra made it down to them. The driver stood at the side of the road, counting his surprise windfall. Adelmo stayed back with his van, unwilling to be a part of such foolishness.
There was only one bike, and since Quinn was the better rider, it was understood he’d go. Aleksandra refused to be left behind, stressing the fact that she was the only one who knew what to do with the bomb once they found it.
Quinn threw a leg over the little blue bike and braced himself for Aleksandra to climb on behind him. An ATGATT man when he was on a motorcycle—all the gear, all the time—he felt naked in the flimsy raincoat and 5.11 khaki slacks. Looking ahead at what he could see of the snaking road and steep drop-offs, he consoled himself with the fact that a leather jacket and helmet weren’t likely to save him anyway.
Leggy as it was, the Yamaha wasn’t made for two riders. Quinn found himself thankful that Aleksandra was built like a forest sprite. Snugging down the pack on her shoulders, she wrapped her arms around his waist and scrunched up tight against his back, her thighs running parallel with his.
Quinn could see the headlines. UNITED STATES AIR FORCE OSI AGENT PLUNGES TO DEATH IN THE ARMS OF BEAUTIFUL RUSSIAN OPERATIVE….
Jacques stood by with a big hand planted flat on top of his head, looking like he might throw up. Rain dripped down Bo’s face, curling his shaggy head of blond hair. His lips pursed in a jealous line.
“You be careful with her, Jericho,” he muttered.
“Are you kidding me?” Quinn glanced over his shoulder at Aleksandra, then back at his brother, before shaking his head. “That old witch was right about you two.”
Aleksandra gave him a rough squeeze around the ribs, planting her doubled fists in his midsection. Her voice was flint hard next to his ear. “Let’s go,” she said. “Monagas is getting away.”
“You mean Zamora,” he said.
“Of course,” she said over the blatting engine. “That is what I mean.”
Quinn toed the bike into first and released the brake, beginning their seventy-kilometer downhill roll. With the angry Russian woman breathing revenge in his ear, the Road of Death was about to grow more deadly.
CHAPTER 52
A thirty-meter chunk of mountain lay in a lumpy tangled heap of roots, tree branches, and ferns across the narrow road. Bits of gravel still tumbled over an abrupt edge that disappeared into a low bank of soupy clouds that filled the valley below.
Crews of men wearing plastic raincoats and wielding shovels had cleared a flattened trail along the edge so they could walk back and forth. A chubby man with a cigarette dangling from his lips maneuvered an orange Kubota backhoe around the slide on metal tracks. It wasn’t much larger than a garden tractor and seemed even smaller alongside the gigantic heap of earth.
Rolling past the waiting trucks, buses, and the odd car, Quinn picked his line, aiming for the packed trail just feet from the edge. Quinn felt Aleksandra tense as they neared the mudslide. He assumed she was worried about going over the steep edge, but he was more concerned with one of the workers hitting him with a shovel as they rode past.
Focused on riding, he was vaguely aware of a car door slamming. Aleksandra half turned to look behind them.
“Go, go, go!” she shouted in his ear.
Road workers dove for cover as automatic gunfire cracked in the thin air, splattering the mud. Quinn leaned forward, downshifting and rolling on the throttle. The bike shimmied in the sloppy mud and he dragged the rear brake a hair to help stand it up.
The shooters were close, and judging from the way Aleksandra squeezed him with her thighs, she’d recognized them an instant before they’d opened fire. At this range, Quinn found himself grateful that they used submachine guns and not rifles or even pistols, which they would have been tempted to actually aim.
Quinn could hear the shouts of angry voices behind them. A car door slammed. A car engine revved and the sound of spinning tires on gravel preceded the grind of metal gears as bumpers and fenders crashed together.
Quinn squirted over the mudslide and picked his way through the loose debris on the other side before opening up the throttle again. Another volley of shots cracked past, echoing off the deep canyon walls and splatting into the mud. Aleksandra squirmed behind him.
“They are trying to follow,” she said, settling in low against his back.
“You recognize them?” Quinn yelled over the wind and hard patter of rain against his plastic jacket.
“Chechens,” she yelled back, tucked in so his body broke the chill of the oncoming wind. He could feel her shivering. “The driver is Salambek. Rustam Daudov’s man. A killer.”
“He doesn’t seem to like you very much,” Quinn yelled into the wind.
Only a handful of trucks waited downhill from the mudslide. Beyond them, Quinn and Aleksandra had the Road of Death all to themselves. Waterfalls careened through the dense foliage and down the high mountainside above them, rushing in newly formed ditches across the road to disappear into the cloudy abyss on the other side.
Quinn planted a foot in the soupy gravel to pivot the bike around a sharp turn and still keep it on two wheels.
“His sister, Dagmani, was a leader of the Black Widows,” Aleksandra shouted once the Yamaha was stabilized.
Quinn had heard of the female suicide squads in Chechnya, though thankfully he’d never faced one.
“I killed her,” Aleksandra said simply, confirming his suspicions.
The snaking road seemed to magically disappear off and on, playing now you see me, now you don’t, as banks of fog and cloud drifted down the mountains with the rain.
“Did they make it around?” The little Yamaha had the tendency to dart in whatever direction he looked so he depended on Aleksandra to be his eyes to the rear.
The back wheel shimmied as she turned, but to her credit, she caught herself with her thighs, careful not to upset his balance in the treacherous mud.