Song sat beside him, making a note in a small notebook. He couldn’t help but wonder if it was some observation about him she planned to send back to her bosses. He certainly had some observations of his own.
“I’m guessing most of my background is attached to the Interpol Red Notice,” he said, his words buzzing against his hands as they held the binoculars.
“Quite a lot of it.” Song put the notebook in her lap and toyed at the peeling bark of a nearby cedar tree. “Air Force Combat Rescue Officer, OSI agent, multilingual, accomplished in hand-to-hand fighting, that sort of thing. But the report does tend to highlight the fact that you are a rogue killer.”
“I’d argue the rogue part,” Quinn said. He played the binoculars back down to the inflatable as he formulated a plan. Song was hard to get a handle on, but she seemed smart enough to judge him on his actions, not something she read in some intelligence file.
The gray dinghy bobbed in the blue-green water alongside a weathered wooden plank. This Spartan boarding ramp was affixed to a rusted set of metal arms that had been driven into a concrete jetty ages before. A riprap breakwater ran from the shoreline in a stunted J, wrapping around the dinghy and decaying concrete dock to form a protective nest from direct waves. The dinghy itself looked to be around twelve feet, made of tough Hypalon with a single board seat fixed amidships across the pontoons. What looked like an ice chest was just forward of a small outboard motor where the driver would sit while steering with the tiller. A red plastic fuel tank, faded and much older than the boat, sat beside the ice chest on an inflatable rubber floor. Quinn had ridden in identical little boats hundreds of times in Alaska.
“So, you know about me.” He lowered the binoculars and turned to face Song. “Tell me a little about yourself.”
Song peeled away more bark from the cedar tree. “There is no need—”
“Not so,” Quinn interrupted her. “You’re an operative from a country that has significant issues with US policy — I get that. But at this very moment, politics are a long way down my list of things to worry over. What I need to know is if I can depend on you in a fight. Tell me about your training, where you came from.”
Song studied him, breathing deeply, but saying nothing. She had the amazing ability to look him in the eye as if she were listening and then go on like she’d not heard a single word.
“We should take turns keeping watch,” she said at length. “It may be some time before this Scuric shows up.”
As a rule, Quinn found silence profoundly more enjoyable than chatter, but six hours of sweating shoulder to shoulder in the rocks and trees with a silent woman he did not know began to wear on him. Several times, she began to hum some song he didn’t recognize, but always caught herself, clenching her teeth as if she had almost given up a state secret. When she did speak, it was only to tell him she was going deeper into the trees for a bathroom break.
He breathed a sigh of relief when the welcome sound of a vehicle filtered through the trees. Action trumped silence every time. Tires crunched on the gravel as the vehicle turned off the D8 Highway above and began to wind its way down the service road toward the dinghy.
Quinn folded the motorcycle jacket he’d been using to pad the rocky ground and stuffed it behind a tree. Crouching so he would remain hidden but able to move quickly, he decided to give it one more try with Song as Scuric drew closer. “Seriously,” he said. “They give MSS agents some tactical training, right? Just make something up. It’ll make me feel better.”
“Of course, we are trained,” Song said. “But mostly in computers and the writing of reports.”
Quinn’s mouth fell open.
“I joke,” Song said. “Don’t worry so much.”
Suspension springs squeaked and groaned as the vehicle drew closer. A large panel van creaked to a stop along the edge of the gravel single track twenty meters above the dinghy. The driver stayed behind the wheel while the passenger in the front seat got out and came around to slide open the side door, revealing two redheaded women, both bound with duct tape at the wrists and ankles. Gaunt and cowering, neither looked to be even twenty years old. The man, obviously Scuric from Bursaw’s description of his misshapen head, leaned in and cut the two women free with some kind of hook attached to his hand. Scuric motioned them out and pointed toward the dinghy. One of the women tried to run as soon as her feet hit the ground. The driver, a younger man wearing a backward cap and a cigarette hanging out of a pouty mouth, stayed slumped behind the wheel and shook his head in disgust. Scuric caught the fleeing prisoner easily and cuffed her in the back of the head, sending her flying face-first into the gravel.
Quinn felt a pang of pity for the girl, but her actions gave him just the break he needed to move.
“Okay,” he said, peeling the rugby shirt over his head. “Scuric’s taking them out to the boat. The dinghy motor is going to die shortly after he gets it going. When it does, I need you to be ready to take care of the driver. Make some noise and get Scuric’s attention focused on you.”
Song stared through the trees at the van, frozen in thought.
“Got it?” Quinn asked.
“Yes. Got it.” Song blinked, and then turned suddenly toward him. “What are you going to do?”
“What somebody should have done to this guy a long time ago.”
Staying low as he moved through the trees toward the far side of the jetty, away from the dinghy, Quinn hit the beach at a run. He pushed away any thought of Song’s capability. If she couldn’t do her job, it was only a matter of time before they were both dead anyway.
He dove noiselessly into the water, sliding through the blue-green sea with hardly even a splash. It was cool compared to the evening air and gave his body the shock he needed to cover the thirty feet to the end of the rocks in a matter of seconds.
Thankfully, the two women were not the kind to go peacefully and Scuric had to pester and prod them along the road, cursing to keep them in line at the same time Quinn swam around the end of the jetty and kicked his way to the stern of the inflatable. Even from nearly fifty meters away, Quinn could see the print of a pistol under the Croatian’s shirt.
A stiff ocean breeze added a light chop to the surface of the water and with the sun to the west, Quinn felt certain Scuric wouldn’t be able to see him. The bottom dropped away fast off, which made it easier to get around than floundering in shallow water. Using the skeg of the outboard motor as a step, Quinn waited with his nose just above the surface at the pointed back corner of the pontoon until Scuric turned his head to chide one of the balking girls. While the Croatian was looking back, Quinn reached over and popped loose the rubber line between the motor and the plastic fuel tank. He left it slightly attached.
Quinn considered just reaching across the pontoon and dragging Scuric overboard when he arrived, but the water was deep, giving him no leverage but for the weight of his body. His hands would be wet, so there was too big a chance that the Croatian would just shrug him off. The sidearm combined with the crystal-clear water made things too iffy for a direct assault.
Quinn drew the Riot from the scabbard on his belt and let himself sink back to nose-level in the cool water, bobbing out of sight at the rear of the inflatable. Anton Scuric cursed and shoved, threatening the two young women as he forced them toward the little boat. When they made it to the concrete jetty, Quinn ducked silently beneath the surface and slipped under the pontoon.
The plan was simple — but he had only one chance to make it work.
Chapter 31