Brute Force (13 page)

 

A
stark white light bored into Quinn’s subconscious, needling him awake from an uneasy dream. Every muscle in his body ached as if he had the flu. At least he knew he wasn’t dead. His eyes felt as if they’d been rubbed with sand. Blurry images of Chinese soldiers in green Army uniforms spun in his head, bringing waves of nausea. He blinked, letting his eyes grow accustomed to the light, and found that a tube ran from a catheter in the back of his left wrist to an IV rack at the head of a metal hospital bed. The clang of a chain leg restraint told him he was secured in place by more than a flimsy IV line.

A Chinese woman peered at Quinn over the top of an English copy of
The Economist
. She looked to be in her late twenties and was pretty, as guards went, with thick black hair piled into a loose bun over an oval face. Black-framed glasses—the kind of glasses that looked like they belonged to a person who might read
The Economist
in someone else’s hospital room—clung to a smallish nose.

Quinn recognized her immediately as the woman who’d stabbed him just before he passed out.

Her eyes flicked up at the rattle of the leg irons. An audible gasp escaped her lips when she saw Quinn—as if she was surprised that he woke up. She glanced at her watch, then tossed the magazine on the side table and scooted her chair closer.

“How are you feeling, Mr. Quinn?” She spoke in English.

Quinn licked his lips, taking the time to steady his racing mind before he spoke. She knew his name. That was something, since the only identification he carried was a Moroccan passport. He wondered how much he’d babbled while he’d been unconscious.

“I guess I’m okay,” he said, “considering the fact that you stabbed me.” His throat was on fire. He’d been through enough surgeries in his life to recognize the residual pain a breathing tube left in his throat. The bandages on his chest and shoulder confirmed his suspicions. “What happened?”

She gave a little sigh, like she was about to explain something to a child. “Do you know how every story involving politics begins in China?”

“How?” Quinn raised an eyebrow, playing along.

The woman shot a worried gaze over one shoulder, and then the other, before turning back to Quinn. “Just like that.”

“Hmmm,” Quinn grunted. “That might be funny if I wasn’t chained to a hospital bed.”

“You were poisoned, Mr. Quinn,” the woman said.

Quinn ran his fingers along the bandage on his chest. That explained the nausea and the fact that he’d blacked out from such a superficial wound. “The man with the spear. Who is he?”

“A Pakistani,” the woman said. “Unfortunately he did not survive his arrest.”

“That figures,” Quinn said, letting his head fall back against the stiff hospital pillow, eyes closed as another wave of nausea passed. “There were at least four more,” he said. “Did you get them?”

“Perhaps,” the woman said. “We made a large number of arrests, seventeen in all. Three fought back and were killed by authorities. Identifications are still ongoing.”

“What kind of poison?”

“Bì má dú sù,”
she said in Mandarin. “Ricin.” She leaned over the edge of the bed, as if she wanted to keep their conversation between them alone. Strands of black hair escaped the utilitarian bun and fell across her forehead. Flushed cheekbones were set high, over a strong jawline. She shot a glance at the door over her shoulder every few seconds, as if still trying to illustrate her earlier joke. “It is a fairly easy substance to procure from the common castor bean. The Pakistani rider was able to inject you with a small pellet from a specially designed metal rod. Crude in its operation, but it would have been effective enough had we not been watching you.”

Quinn put his hand flat on his chest, feeling the surgical wound. He was fortunate this woman had known to look for a ricin pellet. A fleck the size of a pinhead could kill a man. Vomiting, bloody diarrhea, seizures, kidney failure—there was nothing noble about death caused by ricin. The KGB had used it to assassinate a Bulgarian dissident by stabbing him in the thigh with a pellet-shooting umbrella.

“Are you sure you got it all?” he said.

“I removed one pellet while you were still on the
buzkashi
field,” the woman said. “The doctors here could not locate any more with their scanners. They did some exploratory digging, which I am certain you will feel when the anesthetic wears off, but they did not find anything else. They believe there was only one. The spear was painted with some sort of sedative or I fear you would have fought until you were dead.”

Quinn reached for a cup of water on the side table. It was room temperature but brought some relief to his sore throat. “This Pakistani,” Quinn said. “Might he have been one of Habibullah’s men?”

The Chinese woman shook her head. “I do not believe so,” she said. “We have Habibullah in custody. We will certainly ask him.”

Quinn took another sip of water. A Pakistani. It made sense. One of Mandeep Gola’s men must have recognized him and been working for the other side. “How long have I been out?”

“A few hours.” The woman glanced down at her lap. “You spoke of someone named Veronica while you were still under sedation . . . in terms that were quite tender.”

Quinn took a deep breath, steadying himself by assessing his surroundings, careful not to say anything that would confirm any of his unconscious babbling.

The door leading out of the room was shut and had no window, but it was safe to assume there was at least one more guard posted outside. The furniture and bed linens were worn and shabby and though the room looked clean, it didn’t have the sterile smell common to hospitals in the United States.

Dressed in nothing but a flimsy cotton hospital gown, Quinn was in a private room in a culture where multi-patient wards were the norm. His only contact was this woman who, though she seemed willing to answer his questions, was surely a government agent. She was tall and trimly built, but well-muscled like she’d just finished boot camp. She wore fashionable jeans and a tight black T-shirt. The imprint of a pistol was clearly visible at the waist of her khaki journalist vest. Quinn couldn’t see her shoes from his vantage point on the bed, but was sure they were at once stylish and utilitarian. There was a sort of awkwardness about the woman, as if she was working from a script, and didn’t quite have all the lines memorized.

He took another sip of the water.

“You seemed to worry a great deal about your friends while you were out,” the woman said. “Quite noble.”

“My friends . . .” Quinn wondered if Jacques had been able to make it back to Deuben’s clinic.

“You are thinking of Gunnery Sergeant Thibodaux,” the woman said. “He is fine.”

Quinn moved his leg under the sheet, rattling the chains that secured him to the bed. “Is he also a prisoner?”

The woman glanced at her watch. “He departed on a flight to Urumqi while you were still in surgery. He will be on his way to New York within the hour.”

Quinn thought about that for a moment. “Was he under guard when you left him?”

“What difference does that make?” she asked. “He is safe, I assure you.”

Quinn leaned back against the pillow, eyes closed. Thibodaux would never get on a plane and leave the country if he knew Quinn was still alive and being held against his will.

“Your friend will not come to set you free. He will return to the United States as instructed. I told him my plans concerning you. He did not like them, but he appeared to understand that there were no other options.”

The woman’s mobile phone gave a quiet chime. She smiled softly when she looked at it, like she’d seen a photo of a small child or a puppy.

“My name is Song,” she said, almost as an afterthought.

“Well, Song,” Quinn said. “As much as I appreciate you digging the poison pellet out of my chest, I wouldn’t mind it if you took these leg irons off.”

She nodded as if this was an understandable request, but just stood there beside the bed, making no move to release him.

“Are you in pain?” she asked, touching his bandages like a concerned relative.

“I feel fine,” Quinn said, following Song’s gaze to the side of his face. He reached up to find a series of tiny needles had been inserted in various points of his ear.

“I believe your Air Force calls this Battlefield Acupuncture,” Song said. “I instructed the surgeon to keep you as free from pain medication as possible. We need to move soon, so I thought this treatment more prudent.”

Some called it a godsend, others deemed it quackery, but apart from his sore throat he was relatively pain free for coming out of surgery where a doctor had just spent a considerable amount of time digging around in his chest. He studied Song’s face, noticing the tiny, tension lines at the corners of a smallish mouth, the fleeting twitch in her golden brown eyes. Though in her twenties, she reminded Quinn of his seven-year-old daughter, Mattie, when she was hiding something that might embarrass her.

Quinn swallowed, grimacing a little but feeling better by the moment. “You said we need to move quickly?”

Song gave a solemn nod. “You are an impressive tactician, Mr. Jericho Quinn.” She held up her phone to show a photo of the Interpol Red Notice seeking his immediate arrest. The US Marshals, who’d placed him on their Fifteen Most Wanted List, had used his OSI credential photo for the wanted poster. “It says here that you are a dangerous fugitive, but I believe you and I are after the same thing.”

“So you’re looking for a handcuff key as well?” Quinn said.

She rolled her lips, as if holding in the words she wanted to speak. At length, she removed the black glasses and stuffed them in the pocket of her vest, sitting back down to slump in her chair with a resigned sigh. “The man you followed to the warehouse—Hajip Mohommed—has been the subject of my investigation for the past month. We had cameras and listening devices installed inside his warehouse three weeks ago, so I was able to see and hear much of your conversation last night”

“And what is it you think I’m—?”

The hi-lo tone of approaching police cars wailed in the distance. Song frowned, cocking her head toward the window.

“We should work together,” she said.

“I’d be interested to hear what you have in mind,” Quinn said. “But I’m chained to the bed.”

“The fact is,” Song said, “just like your friend Thibodaux, you really have no choice.”

“There’s always a choice.

“Quite so.” Song shrugged. “But not always a good one.”

She turned in her seat, shouting a curt order for the agent she had posted outside. A middle-aged man wearing the same style of khaki vest poked his head in the room, hand on the door.

“Go down and meet Colonel Wu when he arrives,” she snapped. “I am fine here.”

The other agent paused for a moment, studying Quinn. “Yes, of course . . . right away,” he said, with a subordinate bob of his head and shoulders before ducking back out the door.

Song stood as the sirens drew closer. “As I said, I believe you and I are after the same thing.” She took a handcuff key from her vest pocket and unlocked the leg irons and nodded toward a metal cabinet. “You will find fresh clothing in there.”

Quinn pulled the IV from the back of his hand and replaced the bandage over the weeping needle puncture. He swung his legs off the bed and took a moment to let the room stop spinning before standing to check inside the cabinet. The woman was telling the truth. She did not turn around and eyed him without embarrassment as he stepped out of the hospital gown and into a new pair of khaki slacks. There were two shirts, a navy three-button polo and a red-and-white striped rugby shirt. She’d done a good job on the slacks, but the shirts were a couple of sizes too large.

“The blue one first,” Song said, nodding to the polo as she took out her phone. “But hurry.”

Quinn pulled the shirt over his head, stifling a groan as he lifted his arms. The stabbing, the surgery, and the fall from the galloping horse had taken a toll on his body that the acupuncture only dimmed.

She put on her glasses again. Reaching into the pocket of her vest, she took out a moistened towelette and raised it toward his face. “May I?”

Quinn gave her a puzzled look. “May you what?”

“You seem the sort of man who would break my hand if I touch your face without permission. This picture is for your new passport. Consider me your . . . what is the word . . . your stylist.”

Quinn turned to the side, giving her a wary eye, but he let her rub the towelette across the bridge of his nose and up between his eyebrows. He grimaced as she made a single swipe across the apple of his left cheek.

“I feel like my mother’s giving me a spit bath before church,” he said.

“ ‘Spit bath,’ ” Song mused, stepping back to check her work. “I’ve never heard that before.” Returning the towelette to her vest pocket, she reached up to fluff out Quinn’s hair so it covered the acupuncture needles in his left ear. “That should do it,” she said.

She used her phone to snap several photographs. Deeming them passport worthy, she nodded at the rugby shirt on the bed. “Now change quickly. It would raise suspicions if you are dressed in the same shirt you are wearing in your passport photograph.”

Even this small bit of repetition brought welcome relief to his muscles. He hunched his shoulders back and forth, stretching. “Where am I going with this new passport?”

“Maybe nowhere,” she said, staring at the scars that mapped his upper body. “I am not certain.” She saw him catch her eye and looked away toward the window. “You must hurry,” she said. “Not everyone in my government thinks as I do. Colonel Wu is the regional commander of the People’s Armed Police. Once he arrives, things will be much more difficult. I will tell him you escaped your restraints while I was in the restroom.” She waved a slender hand toward the door. Quinn noticed for the first time that she had pink polish on her nails. “Turn left as you exit, then take the service elevator at the end of the hallway to the basement. When you leave the elevator, go straight until you reach the double doors that will take you to outside. The People’s Park is one block to the north.” She looked at him, waiting for him to confirm that he understood her instructions, as if she was accustomed to repeating directions for people who didn’t listen. “Colonel Wu believes females are worthless as field agents so he will quite happily believe the story of your escape. I’ll tell him I watched out the window as you got in a car heading east, toward the expressway.”