The bellowing Russian charged when he realized his friends had been shot, bending low for a double-leg takedown. He was much too close for Quinn to bring his weapon to bear. The point of his shoulder hit Quinn in the belly, driving him backward and slamming the Kimber out of his hand. Quinn reacted without thought, letting his body bend forward naturally from the impact. Face down against the Russian’s broad back, he wrapped his arms around the man’s chest and let his legs collapse, allowing the Russian’s forward momentum to roll him backward onto the floor. He landed between the two overstuffed chairs in a jujitsu throw called tawara gaeshi. Ignoring the searing impact of the unforgiving hardwood against his bruised ribs, Quinn grabbed one fist with the other as he rolled, pulling the monstrous Russian against his belly and bucking his hips to roll him feet first and on his back. The Russian crashed against a wooden coffee table beside a startled Esther Henderson, reducing it to kindling.
Quinn kept moving as he heard the table splinter behind him, scrambling sideways and working to regain his bearings. Stunned but not out, the Russian had lost his pistol as well and now knelt on all fours, blinking as he pushed himself up. Quinn beat the man to his feet and drove a quick knee into his face. The blow should have ended the fight but the big Russian absorbed it like he took knees to the face for breakfast. Instead of reeling back, he exploded upward, roaring at Quinn and coming in for another charge. Quinn was more prepared this time and stepped offline like a matador, slapping the Russian in the ear as he plowed by, stunning him further, but still not putting him down. The Russian was larger, more powerful — and not weighed down with fatigue and injury. Quinn knew the man would eventually kill him if they simply traded blows.
But there was a lot more to a fight than a simple contest of size or strength. In fact it was not a contest at all. A contest would have implied that there were rules.
Crouching next to the fireplace now, Quinn snatched up a wrought-iron poker. When the Russian turned to come back for more, Quinn bent the metal bar around his face. The big man staggered sideways, still not out, so Quinn hit him again, this one sending him careening headlong against the stone hearth. His eyes rolled back in his head and blood covered what was let of his demolished face.
“Holy shit,” Agent Beaudine whispered, her voice a little shaky. “This escalated quickly.” She let her gun hand fall down by her side, blue eyes locked on the Russian’s battered skull as she spoke to Quinn. “I’d like to see how you fight when you’re not on the sick list.”
Chapter 23
Corey Morgan flung open the front door and staggered out to check on Lovita. Quinn wanted to follow but didn’t dare leave until the situation inside the lodge was completely secure. He retrieved his Kimber from where it had come to rest under one of the chairs, returned it to the holster over his kidney, then stooped beside the big Russian. The man stirred when Quinn began to go through his pockets, laughing a slurred laugh as if he held some great secret that Quinn wasn’t privy to.
Stifling a groan from the tremendous pain in his side, Quinn ignored him and did a quick search for more weapons. He found a vicious little hawksbill karambit-style knife that thankfully the Russian had been unable to snatch from his belt during the fight.
“You are dead man,” the Russian slurred, blood and spittle hanging in ropy lines from his tattered lips.
“How’s that?” Quinn said, looking at the depression in the man’s skull. The orbit of his right eye was now more octagon than oval. The fire poker had done a number on him and without medical attention the swelling in his brain was likely to kill him during the night.
“Americans think you are so smart… we are not the last.” The Russian began to laugh again. “You will never see him coming…” He lapsed back into Russian before falling back against the floor, panting, squinting up at Quinn as if he was having trouble keeping things in focus.
Quinn glanced at Beaudine. He counted his breaths to consciously slow his heart rate. The fight was over, but their mission had just moved up several notches in priority. He stood and moved away from the Russian before he spoke, not wanting to put all their cards on the table.
“You get anything new from what he said?”
“Something about a wolf hunter and the moon,” she said. “He could just be babblin’. You cracked his head a pretty good one.”
“Maybe,” Quinn said, working through the possibilities. In his experience, babblers often gave up actionable intelligence. It was just a matter of sifting through all the garbage. “In any case, I think we know that Volodin’s visit is more than a coincidence. We need to give your people a heads-up. The Russians want him bad enough to send out a plane full of gun thugs.”
Beaudine brightened at the thought. She took the satellite phone out of her jacket pocket and unfolded the antenna, heading toward the door.
“Won’t work,” Adam Henderson said, nodding at the phone. “I suppose you can try, but we’re so far north the satellites are too low to get a signal most of the day. It might work later this evening. The radio’s usually the best option but these bastards smashed ours up right after they shot Corey.”
“We’ll try and call out from the plane,” Quinn said. “I’ll get someone here to take care of these bodies as soon as we’re in the air—”
The clomp of footsteps on the porch turned everyone’s attention to the front door. Lovita came in a moment later, pressing a wadded pink bandana to her bloody nose and clutching Corey’s good arm. He was obviously feeling woozy again and Quinn couldn’t tell who was holding up who.
“I’m fine,” she said, before Quinn could ask. “Not much of an Eskimo to let some gussaq creep up on me like that though…” Her eyes played around the room until they fell on the battered Russian who slumped beside the fireplace. Beaudine had cuffed his hands behind his back, but Lovita stayed well away from him.
“That’s the one who hit me,” she muttered, nodding. “Serves him right that you broke his head.”
The Russian glared, spitting disdainfully at her.
“Somebody gonna tell us what this is all about?” Esther Henderson said, collapsing into the recliner farthest away from any dead bodies.
“FBI,” Beaudine said, making the rookie mistake of believing that was an explanation.
Adam’s face screwed into a half frown. “What’s the FBI doing way out here?”
“There’s another Russian man here who came in with a young woman,” Quinn said. “We need to speak with them.”
“Take them with you,” Adam said, hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I got no use for guests who bring this kind of shit rainin’ down on us.”
“They’re gone anyhow,” Corey Morgan said, looking toward the door. “I just watched them leave in your boat, heading downriver toward the Kobuk.”
Adam stepped out to the porch and returned a moment later. “The kid’s right,” he said. “They took my damn boat.”
“It’s very important that we find this man,” Beaudine said, her Texas accent coming on strong as she poured on the charm. “Do you happen to have another boat we could borrow?”
“Not one that works,” Henderson said.
Quinn looked at Lovita’s swollen nose and frowned. It had stopped bleeding, but jutted to one side, clearly broken. Her top lip was swollen and blue, ruptured where it had been caught between her teeth and the big Russian’s fist.
“Are you well enough to fly?”
“She’s not flying anywhere!” Corey said.
Lovita shot the boy a withering look. “You speak for your own self,” she said. “I been hurt worse than this from a mosquito bite.”