Larsson held out his hand, palm up. “Yes, right here on the side of the road.”
“Come on, Max.” Chin shook her head. “We don’t have time—”
“Who’s the training officer here?” Larsson chided before turning to Quinn. “I don’t know how long you been doing this, but there’s an old saying in traffic. The guy running the stop is always right — and that would be me. You wanna complain, be my guest — after we’re done.”
Quinn took a deep breath. It went against everything he knew to hand over a sidearm like this. Still, Larsson was correct. He did have the right to secure the weapon during the stop, even if all he wanted to do was drool over it. Quinn decided not to mention the suppressed Beretta .22 under his arm.
He handed the Kimber to Officer Chin, who passed it back to a gloating Larsson.
“See, that wasn’t so hard.” The big Swede chuckled, an instant before he flicked off the safety and shot Officer Chin in the face.
Quinn leaped off the motorcycle, moving toward Larsson rather than away from him. Quinn wasn’t the type to hide behind a tree, and there was really nowhere else to run.
Larsson dropped Quinn’s Kimber to the pavement after the initial shot and drew his own pistol. Quinn caught the man’s arm as the weapon cleared the holster, pinning it against his side and driving him backward all the way to the hood of his patrol car. He was big, but slow, and had relied too much on bullets doing his work for him.
Quinn gave him a vicious head butt, all but destroying the man’s nose. The Sig fell out of his hand to thump against the hood of the car before sliding to the pavement with a clatter.
“Who are you working for?” Quinn threw the stunned man to the ground, kicking the weapon out of his reach before dropping a knee into his groin. A ballistic vest protected the downed officer from any body blows, so Quinn grabbed him by the collar, slamming his head against the pavement.
“Who… are… you… working for?!” Quinn yelled, slamming the man’s head back at each word. Spit flew from his mouth. He rolled the officer and handcuffed him before he could regain his senses and fight back. With Larsson contained, Quinn turned to check on Officer Chin but found the 10mm round from his Kimber had taken much of her throat and lower jaw. She’d been dead before she hit the ground.
Quinn returned to the fallen Swede, taking some satisfaction in the trickle of blood oozing from the man’s ear. “I’m going to ask you one more time.” Quinn took deep breaths, working to regain his composure. “Who’s calling the shots?”
Larsson clenched his eyes shut and laughed through the pain of his wounds. “You are a dead man, Jericho Quinn.”
Sirens wailed from less than two blocks away. Quinn cursed under his breath when he saw the ‘man down’ radio on Larsson’s duty belt. As soon as Quinn had thrown him on the hood of the cruiser, the device had signaled an alert to his dispatcher. When he’d failed to answer, they’d sent the cavalry to assist.
Quinn nodded to the dash camera mounted in the patrol car but Larsson shook his head.
“That? Camera’s been tits up for a week now.” He winced. “Just my word against yours, cowboy. And I say you killed my partner dead and then tried to do the same to me. These guys will gun you down the second they get the opportunity.”
Tires screeched as patrol cars converged from both directions of Fort Hunt Road, sliding to a stop and boxing Quinn in.
Responders saw a grim picture. Officer Chin lay in a pool of blood, half her face torn away. Larsson should have won an Oscar for his performance. Flat on his back against the pavement, he screamed, turning his face as if he was in mortal fear for his life. Quinn stood over him with a gun in his hand.
CHAPTER 25
Secretary of Defense Filson stood fidgeting in the Oval Office thirty-five minutes after Palmer had called to summon him on behalf of the president. Sec State Melissa Ryan was on the speakerphone. Palmer and President Clark were both seated. Filson, however, paced in place, his shirttail half untucked — as if he’d been playing basketball in his suit. Thick black glasses seemed constantly on the verge of jumping off a bulbous nose that should have held them firmly in place.
Lisa Kapoor, the director of Health and Human Services, sat across from Palmer in one of the twin Queen Anne chairs that flanked the Resolute Desk.
Kapoor, a well-respected heart surgeon before she’d been pressed into government service, was near the end of her briefing. It was nothing more than a summary of what they already knew, but at this early stage, that was to be expected. She was a matronly woman of Indian heritage with a keen intellect that matched the fire in her amber eyes. Blessed with the attendant real-world experience that came from being a grandmother of nine, she was not only smart, but just plain pleasant to be around. In her early sixties, she kept her curly gray hair neatly trimmed so it looked as though she was wearing a hairnet. Filson had tried early in the meeting to bully her as he did most people he met, but the fact that she’d raised three sons had rendered her immune to swaggering male bravado.
“It looks as though the only commonality in each affected U.S. city is the fact that they all had at least one soldier returning from Bagram Air Base,” she said. “The cases overseas appear to have ties to Afghanistan as well.”
Clark rubbed his face in thought. “But we’re still unsure how the illness is spread? Airborne, blood?”
Secretary Kapoor shook her head. “We do not know, Mr. President. I have CDC advising local providers to use all universal precautions. The spouse of each returning soldier seems to have contracted the disease as well. Of course, we’ve yet to determine if the cause is breathing common air, skin contact, or from unprotected sex.”
“Phhht,” Filson harrumphed. “If you’d been away from your spouse for a year, would you have protected sex?”
“Shut up, Andrew,” Clark said. “She’s just stating facts. I hate to do this to all those men and women who are scheduled to come home, but I don’t see any way around putting an embargo on returning troops to the U.S. from Afghanistan in general until we get a handle on this.”
“Understood and agreed,” Filson said, pushing his thick glasses back on his nose. “But I don’t like it. This whole thing has the smell of biological warfare.”
A smooth, feminine voice piped up over the speakerphone. It was Melissa Ryan, Clark’s Secretary of State — and Winfield Palmer’s significant other.
“Funny you should bring up bioweapons, Andrew.” She was no dove, but her struggle for diplomacy was consistently at odds with Filson’s hawkish behavior. “The president of Afghanistan made a statement to the press this morning, accusing the United States of carelessly releasing a biological weapon we had been planning to use against the Taliban.”
“You know that’s bullshit,” Filson scoffed.
“I do,” the Sec State said. “And so does he. Since when does the truth have anything to do with politics? What I’m telling you is that everyone is going to put their own spin on this thing. He’s got a country to control. We’re on our way out, so we make a likely fall guy.”
“It has already hit the major networks,” Secretary Kapoor said.
“That’s true,” Ryan’s honeyed voice said over the phone speaker. “Cell phones and the Internet have rendered secrets a thing of the past. I am sitting here in Mexico watching your favorite governor beat you to the podium.”
Clark cursed under his breath. “McKeon’s giving a press conference?”
“As we speak,” Melissa Ryan said. “He’s urging his good friend, President Clark, to get to the bottom of this outbreak and find our embattled troops some help.”
The president threw up his hands. “How long have we known about this, forty-five minutes? Where does this son of a bitch get off telling me about troops…” His voice trailed off and he took a deep, thoughtful breath. “Sorry, ladies,” he said. “Not very commander-in-chiefly of me. Lee McKeon may support my initiatives, but he can be a ruthless self-promoter in front of the cameras. We’ll ignore him as we usually do.” Clark turned to Secretary Kapoor again. “Tell me more about this Japanese study.”