“My dad’s a crab fisherman,” Quinn said. “He fishes Alaska crab for the US market.”
“Yeah, well, too bad for your dad.” The man shrugged.
Quinn folded his arms across his chest and then leaned sideways so his face was close to Popeye’s ear. His head was almost on the other man’s shoulder. “I want you to consider something.” Quinn’s voice was coarse, a quiet growl. “As a buyer of crab, I want you to think of all the things you would do to protect someone you cared about.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Quinn ignored the question and continued his thought.
“So, now that you’re thinking of all the things you, as a man who buys crab, might do to protect his wife, or girlfriend or even, say… his daughter, you might be interested to know what it is I do for a living.”
The man’s eyes flicked toward Quinn, and then looked quickly away as if they couldn’t abide the pressure.
“What is it you do?” he asked, trying in vain to hide the tremor that had crept into his voice.
“I’m a butcher,” Quinn said.
“A butcher?” The man gulped.
Quinn nestled back in his seat and closed his eyes, knowing he’d gotten his point across. “In a manner of speaking.”
Chapter 41
Popeye kept to himself during takeoff. The puny crab buyer was a far cry from any real threat and Quinn knew he should have left him alone. If Quinn was anything he was tactical, but when it came to the protective envelope around his little girl, he rarely thought long before he acted — even at the risk of getting himself kicked off the plane. He didn’t like putting Mattie on the aisle seat and planned to move her back as soon as he was sure Popeye was going to behave himself.
Until then, he leaned his seat back and stared up at the ceiling. The Airbus A380 was incredibly quiet, absent the gushing whir prevalent in other commercial airliners. If not for the pressing urgency Quinn felt to get out of the country, it would have been easy to forget he was seven miles above the earth.
According to his frequent flier programs, Quinn had flown nearly a million commercial miles over the course of his career — back and forth across the US, down to South America, all over Asia, and too many deployments to the Middle East.
From the time he’d received his Bs and Cs — badges and credentials — at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center, he’d carried a sidearm every time he’d flown domestically. Most international flights made that impractical since the Status of Forces Agreements with countries not immediately involved in a conflict precluded him from carrying a weapon as an agent. Now, as a fugitive, he often found himself without a sidearm — and flying with one was out of the question. Still, on the ground or in an airplane, Quinn could usually find something that he could use as a field-expedient weapon if things happened to go south. He looked for them without conscious thought, cataloging their location for later use.
A ballpoint pen, a pencil, the spine of a hardback book could all come in handy in a pinch. A metal fork from first class could be bent at a right angle at the base of the tines to form a workable push dagger. The wooden cane placed in the overhead compartment by the elderly man who’d boarded just ahead of him made a convenient striking weapon, while a rolled magazine made a fairly efficient club. The magazine was especially painful when shoved end-first into someone’s face. Unopened soda cans could be thrown, as could beer and wine bottles from first class. Neckties made for quick garrotes — as Quinn felt they did every time he wore one — and the crooked metal side support of a folding tray table could be accessed with the removal of a couple of metal pins and wielded like the jawbone of an ass that Samson used to smite his thousand Philistines.
Quinn was a gun guy and freely admitted it. He’d have carried every chance he got, even if he hadn’t taken up the badge. But even in his line of work, he’d used his intellect and powers of observation exponentially more often than he’d ever drawn a pistol. He often thought that the mind was the only real weapon, everything else — be it gun or blade or blunt instrument — was merely an element of strategy.
More than just looking for weapons, Quinn made certain to study the other passengers. Most fell asleep quickly. A few watched movies on their seat back screens and some unrolled sandwiches or other snacks they’d bought at the North Terminal shops. Not a soul on board seemed to care about him or why he happened to be heading to Russia with his daughter. Everyone was the star in his own little show, and thankfully, no one was interested in his.
Even so, Quinn located the pins in the metal arm of his tray table and began to work them loose — just in case the need arose for the jawbone of an ass.
Chapter 42
August Bowen started making calls as soon as he left the water park in Manassas. There was an endless list of crappy things about living and working as a deputy US marshal in the DC area. The flagpole, or HQ, for instance, was much too close for Bowen’s blood. Even as an Army officer, he’d never been the spit-and-polish sort, preferring the ragtag, grimy life in the field to the relative comforts of being a garrison soldier. The upside of working in the seat of government power was a fat Rolodex full of contacts.
Ronnie Garcia’s questions about a tail made him jumpy and he found himself looking in the mirror more than usual. He didn’t see anyone, but decided it was worth the time and trouble to drive around a little while he made his calls. He took random turns, cutting back to cover the same road he’d just been down before taking a different side street. He stopped at green lights, waiting for them to turn red before speeding through at the last possible moment, and circled an entire block three times. He could almost hear the Pac-Man music inside his head.
Feeling reasonably certain he’d lost anyone who happened to be following him, Bowen worked his way south and east, generally pointing himself toward Lorton, Virginia, where he jumped on I-95 going south. He took the next exit to circle back north toward Alexandria.
Though well-educated and worldly-wise if he was to believe his mother, Bowen was self-aware enough to know he was little more than a knuckle-dragger in the eyes of Washington elite. To the bad guys on the street, deputy US marshals came down from Mount Olympus on special occasions to rub shoulders with the normal folk, flash a silver star, and snatch a fugitive from their life of crime. But to the established gentry, a GS 12 deputy was like a major in the Pentagon. Their rank might garner respect in the field, but they still fetched coffee for the generals.
When asked what branch of law enforcement they wanted to pursue, high school students often listed the Marshals, FBI, and CIA as high on their list. The truth was law enforcement and intelligence were miles apart in scope and duty. Even much of the protective work he did as a deputy marshal was far removed from the mission of a beat cop or detective. To him, intel was something you used to find the bad guy or keep your protectee alive. The term had nothing to do with bringing down or propping up governments — and Bowen preferred it that way.
Apart from Veronica Garcia — who made his stomach hurt when he thought about her too long — Bowen didn’t know anyone in the intelligence community. But he knew someone better — the ranking staffers on Senate Appropriations who held the purse strings for Intelligence and Justice. It had come as a surprise to him, a natural cynic, that the true bastions of power in Washington were these staffers. Most of them were in their early thirties — drafting bills, shaping policy, and controlling the money for their powerful senators and congressmen.