Both men went down in a spray of crystalline shards. Davis was the quicker to roll, and he delivered his best strike of the day, an elbow to the forehead that sent the man cold to the floor. He scrambled to his feet just as the other two burst inside. Fortunately, neither man had a gun, but one was brandishing a black truncheon. When it came in a blur Davis moved too late, and took a painful blow to his shoulder.
It might have been the pain that set him off. It might have been so many days of frustration, not knowing whether his daughter was dead or alive. There was also a chance these men were tied to the abduction. Anger is never a strategy, at least not a successful one, but at that moment it swept over Davis like a breaking wave.
The nightstick came again in a backhand swing, but such blows were rarely effective. They lacked force and momentum. Davis diverted the strike easily before stepping in and dropping a weighted elbow to the man’s collarbone. When he buckled, immobilized, Davis grabbed under his crotch, lifted the man, and sent him flying across the room like a Scotsman tossing a caber. The impact took out an entire row of display cabinets stocked with tea sets. The resulting explosion of ceramics might have been heard a block away. Before he could turn, the last man standing, the one in the soccer jersey, crowned him with some kind of vase.
It hurt like hell, but vases make lousy weapons because they have no density. With a broken ceramic handle in his hand, the man stood looking at his much larger opponent, obviously out of ideas. Davis started with a compact left, followed by a not so compact right. His fists arced down like a windmill gone amuck, and when the soccer player wobbled, Davis lifted him lengthwise, took a running start, and sent him headlong down a row of cabinets that stretched the length of the showroom floor. His head swept through sets of crystal goblets, two trays of figurines, before encountering the side of a very sturdy display case. One that held something called Baccarat. The big cabinet rocked back on its edge, hesitated for just a moment, and then crashed to the floor in a burst of glittering chips.
Davis fell still. He was battered and bloody. He was sucking air like a train at the top of a mountain. Four men lay motionless on the floor. Pretty much everything was on the floor. The carpet of glass shards and shattered ceramics was two inches deep in places. Behind the lone surviving counter, Davis sensed a presence, and the young saleswoman rose cautiously. First he saw her raven hair, then two wide eyes, and finally the rest as she stood straight. She looked at him dumbly, then surveyed what was left of her shop.
“Do you speak English?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You should call the police.”
She looked at him questioningly, then set her eyes on the man splayed on the floor near her demolished Baccarat cabinet. The clerk pointed down.
Davis looked at the soccer player. He’d come to rest on his back, but was beginning to stir. Next to him on the floor was small leather wallet that had been thrown clear on the final impact. Only it wasn’t exactly a wallet. It was a credential holder, and had fallen open perfectly to display a picture of what the man used to look like. Right next to that was his badge.
Davis heaved a long, heavy sigh. “Shit!”
“A china shop,” said a dumbfounded Larry Green after hanging up his phone.
Sorensen looked at him blankly. “What?”
The two had met for dinner, intending to discuss options for helping Davis. Heavy plates of a Thai wasabi creation had just reached their table when the call interrupted.
Green expanded, “Jammer just waylaid four policemen and converted a Wedgwood factory outlet into a beach of ground glass.”
Sorensen hung her head. She knew how much Jen meant to Jammer. She also knew it wasn’t in his nature to wait serenely for the world to turn.
“He never has been the patient type,” she said.
“That’s all good and fine when you’re turning over charred airplane parts in a Kansas cornfield. This is different. From what you tell me, he’s dealing with some pretty ruthless people who have high connections right here in the Beltway.” Green shook his head. “I should have known better than to send him down there. It was a disaster in the making.”
“Is he okay?” she asked.
“Jammer? He’s indestructible, you know that. But he’s definitely highlighting himself. That call was from my boss at NTSB, Janet Cirrillo, who has received some very specific guidance from the State Department.”
“The State Department?”
“It seems their prevailing view is that Jammer is an embarrassment to our nation. She’s been told in no uncertain terms to get him out of Colombia before he causes, in the Secretary of State’s words, ‘irreparable damage to a long and peaceable relationship with a vital strategic neighbor.’”
Sorensen looked at him doubtfully. “He won’t come. Not without Jen.”
“You and I know that.”
“So you’re not going to pull him out?”
He sighed. “I’ll leave a message on his phone. He’ll ignore it.” Green watched her spin her fork aimlessly in her food. “Tell me… how are the two of you doing?”
“Jammer and I? As in personally?”
He nodded.
“Not as well as we should be — the usual.”
“He’s never been one for spilling his feelings, but I can tell he really likes you, Anna. Goes into a funk every time the two of you split.”
“Does he?”
“I knew Diane. He was the same way about her when the squadron deployed. Send him to Italy, and he’d be fine for the first week. After a month he was miserable.”
“Maybe that’s one of our problems,” she said. “Ghosts can cast pretty long shadows.”
“And daughters?”
“No,” said Sorensen. “I know how much Jen means to him, and I wouldn’t want it any other way. In fact, that’s what worries me now. Worst case, if she doesn’t come back… I don’t know if Jammer could handle that.”
“Could any of us?”
Sorensen looked up plaintively. “You said you could help him.”
“I said I was working on some options.”
“Well, now’s the time.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right.” Green picked up his phone.
As he dialed, Sorensen kept playing with her food. In time her worry gave way to the slenderest of smiles.
“What?” he asked as his call rang.
“For real? A china shop?”
Green only shook his head.
THIRTY-FOUR
Prison cells, Davis had once mused, were rather like fine wine. Each has its distinctive bouquet, subtle flavorings and nuances that present a unique signature. As a full-bodied Merlot might have hints of red currant or blackberry, a robust drunk tank could allude to the bodily functions of the previous night’s lodgers. If a Chardonnay reflected the essence of an oak barrel, the walls of a Third-World immigration lockup might offer scratchings and cranial imprints from vintage years past. The understated signatures were always there. All you had to do was look for them.
This particular hundred square feet was not the worst he’d seen. Three cement walls, and at the front a standard-issue iron grate with a hinged door. It wasn’t old, wasn’t new, and Davis could see three similar cells down the hall. Beyond these was a brightly lit office where uniformed policemen came and went. Though Davis had seen his share of holding cells, two in one week was a personal best. His other visits had been the result of minor transgressions, most fueled by alcohol. Rugby celebrations gone too far. The odd bar fight as a young enlisted Marine, the service in which he’d done a tour before gaining his appointment to the Air Force Academy. For all his proficiency, however, he had never spent two nights in the same week on ice. That was a record he desperately wanted to keep intact.