Spider Neck had just looked at him and glared, turning the blade so it glinted in the scant light of the alley. “If you arrived in a Russian prison with ink that had not been earned, the men there would cut out your liver…”
He had gone on to explain that since they were in America and not a Russian prison, Mr. Anikin had graciously given Petyr forty-eight hours to have the stars and the laughing skull covered or removed. He also ordered Petyr to take a fall during his next fight. It was implied that if he chose not to comply, Spider Neck would remove the tattoos for him.
But two days came and went and no one came to cut out his liver. The more time that passed from the incident in the alley, the more of his bravery, however misguided, seeped back. Petyr hadn’t spent years training to fight in the octagon to run scared from some ugly dude with a bug tattooed on his throat. By the third morning, he reasoned that if this Russian mob boss wanted him dead, he would have killed him already. The Bratva, or Brotherhood, was into stolen credit cards nowadays. They didn’t go around whacking people over tats. By lunchtime, he’d felt ready to kick Spider Neck’s ass for treating him with such disrespect. He was The Wolf. Nobody treated The Wolf like that.
But a shadow of doubt crept into his bravado, diminishing his swagger now that almost seventy-two hours had passed. Petyr nearly jumped out of his skin when someone began to pound on his door. He leaned around the corner from the bathroom and stared hard at the knob, as if he had some kind of X-ray vision, trying to figure out who it was on the other side. For a moment he held onto the hope that it might be Nikka, but the banging was much too hard for her little hands. He thought about looking through the peephole but decided against it. Spider Neck would just shoot him in the eye as soon as he saw the shadow pass across the lens.
The banging got louder, like the person doing it owned the place, then suddenly stopped. The doorknob jiggled. Petyr froze. Metal scraped against metal as someone inserted a pick set into the lock.
Petyr shot a gaze at the back window. He’d already packed a bag with the important stuff — a change of underwear and the rest of the juice his father sent him. He could hit the fire escape and be gone in a flash. But if it was Anikin’s men, they would be expecting that. They’d make a big show of trying to get in, only to have Spider Neck waiting for him outside to cut out his liver as soon as he dropped off the fire escape. The door would have been easy enough to kick in if they’d really wanted to. No, this was an ambush. They expected him to run.
He took a long, calming breath, and then ducked back in the bathroom so he could get another look at himself in the mirror. He’d do the last thing they expected — meet them head on.
Slipping a loose cotton shirt over his head, he picked up a baseball bat he kept beside the door and held it over his head like an ax. Spider Neck had thrashed him so well the last time, Petyr doubted he’d brought more than a couple of helpers, and those just so he’d have an audience. Keeping well to the side of the doorframe in case someone out there had a shotgun, he reached out and flipped the lock before putting his hand on the knob, ready to fling it open.
Spider Neck had caught him off guard once. He wasn’t going to let that happen again. All he wanted was to be left alone to fight in the octagon, but if these guys wanted to mess with The Wolf, they’d feel his teeth.
Chapter 12
Quinn felt his phone buzz with a text message at the same moment one of the two young airmen pushed a black button on the back wall of the cavernous hangar. The button activated the floor to ceiling doors, opening the entire north wall so they could drive the tug out and pull in the aircraft with Quinn’s mystery guest who had just arrived from Boling Air Force Base. Metal doors rumbled on their tracks as they began to slide across each other, yawning open to reveal the black of an Alaska fall night. Blue and green lights winked in the chilly air beyond the approaching airplane. It seemed extra dark in contrast with the bright and sterile interior of the hanger.
Quinn looked down at the text and chuckled. Garcia was standing next to him and raised a wary brow at the message.
“Who’s that from?”
“Jacques,” Quinn said, still chuckling.
“Is he talking about me?”
Quinn cocked his head and looked her in the eye. “Didn’t your mother ever tell you it’s not nice to read over someone’s shoulder?”
“I work for the CIA,” Garcia said. “It’s my job to read over people’s shoulders.” She took on Thibodaux’s Cajun accent as she read the text aloud. “ ‘Watch your ass, l’ami. The woman is batshit crazy.’ What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“My guess is he’s talking about whoever’s on this airplane,” Quinn said, nodding to the phone. “He left me a voicemail. Maybe that explains it.”
Quinn called his voicemail but kept his eyes on the Challenger while it taxied with a high whine toward the hanger. He took a calculated risk and left the phone on speaker so Ronnie could hear. She was already what Thibodaux called “level-ten pissed,” so there wasn’t much of a chance she could get any madder than she already was.
“I don’t have much time, Chair Force…” The Cajun’s tone was dead sober, absent its customary irreverence. “You’re about to meet my cousin, Special Agent Khaki Beaudine of the FBI…” He stopped, taking a long thinking pause, odd for a man who never seemed to be at a loss for words, even in the middle of a running gun battle.
Ronnie’s eyes widened at the news. Quinn knew Thibodaux’s cousin was with the Bureau, but other than the fact that she was getting a divorce, the big Cajun had kept anything else about her to himself.
“Khaki’s a good kid,” the message finally continued. “But she has some… well, cher, she’s plum bracque—loony — and I ain’t just sayin’ that because she grew up in Texas. She’s been through some horrible shit…” There was a muffled sound on the other end, as if someone else was trying to talk to Jacques while he left the message. “Dammit, I gotta scoot.” His voice grew hushed, imperative. “You watch yourself with her, Jericho, no foolin’. I’m serious as nut cancer.”
Quinn watched as the two airmen marshaled the tug and waited for the floor-to-ceiling hanger doors to slide to their stops and lock open. Outside, starkly white against the darkness, the Bombardier Challenger 601 nosed its way toward the hanger. The beefy business jet was ostensibly assigned to the FAA but was in actuality at the beck and call of Winfield Palmer. This off-the-books aircraft allowed him to move operatives and human assets around the world without resorting to commercial aircraft or infighting between government agencies.
The Challenger rolled to a stop twenty meters from the open door, and twin GE turbofan engines whined down.
The spacious hanger off the end of the Elmendorf flight line could easily hold three planes the size of the nineteen-passenger aircraft, but the National Security Advisor to the President of the United States had enough pull that they had the entire place to themselves. Even the tug driver and his spotter disappeared down the hallway to the front offices as soon as they had the airplane chocked and the hanger bay secured.
The pilot stepped to the aircraft door as soon as it opened, lowering the folding stairs himself. He caught Quinn’s eye immediately, smiling a tight-lipped smile as if there was something he needed to apologize for. The first officer, a man with sandy hair, followed him off the plane. Winfield Palmer handpicked his pilots from Air Force Special Operations Command, and Quinn recognized the first officer as a former AC-130 “Spooky” gunship pilot out of Hurlburt Field.