Game changer, p.12
Game Changer, page 12
The merc’s eyes widened in alarm.
“Turns out I never did get the chance to wash up,” continued Quinn. “Go figure. And while this trace residual amount isn’t enough to be deadly if ingested, I managed to deposit it directly into your bloodstream. My guess is that you now have between two and five hours before paralysis and heart failure set in.”
Quinn glared at the merc with a feral intensity. “But sorry my attack was such a disappointment to you,” he said icily.
17
The tall mercenary stood at a boundary of light and darkness in the dingy structure and glanced down at the scratches on his arm once again, and then back at his prisoner, studying him. His panic of a moment before had given way to a calm resolve. “You’re bluffing,” he said.
Quinn laughed. “Sure I am.”
“You tried to shoot the president. Even my sources know that much. This poisoning fiction is just the product of a desperate mind.”
“Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. But if you want to live, cut me loose now. The guy I got the poison from told me about a simple antidote. But one you won’t find by searching online. If we leave now, we could be at a drug store in an hour, and I can give you what you need with time to spare.”
“Just cut you loose?” said the merc in amusement. “I suppose you’ll want your gun back too?”
Quinn smiled. “As a matter of fact, yes. And I’ll want your weapons as well. You’ll be driving, while I hold a gun on you.”
“You have balls the size of Texas, Agent Quinn, I’ll give you that. But I won’t be surrendering. Instead, how about I just shoot you between the eyes right now and be done with this idiocy?”
“You won’t do that,” said Quinn, shaking his head. “Because you know that if I’m telling the truth, killing me is the same as killing yourself. And if I’m lying, you piss off your employer and lose a big payday.”
“I’m sure as hell not going to surrender to you.”
“Yes you are. Because if you do, I promise you’ll survive. I’ll escape, yes, but I’ll leave you poison-free, unharmed, and alive. And you’ve studied my background. You know I’m a man of my word. I have my . . . issues . . . with Matthew Davinroy, but you know if I tell you I’ll leave you unmolested, you can believe it.”
The mercenary remained silent for an extended period as he wrestled with conflicting thoughts. “You’ve played this brilliantly, Agent Quinn,” he said finally. “But the book on you says you’re as creative as they come. Few men could manufacture an elaborate bluff like this on the fly, and make it seem so compelling. But you could. You tried to shoot Davinroy, plain and simple. So I choose to ignore your little gambit and to continue with my original plan, as though this never happened.”
Quinn cursed inwardly. He couldn’t have sold his bluff any harder. The cyanide tablet he had dropped into Davinroy’s drink had been coated with a substance that ensured no trace amounts of the poison would be left on his fingers or nails, a substance that would only dissolve and release its payload when it came into contact with large amounts of liquid. He would never have been sloppy enough to let the poison contact his skin. And there were no antidotes to this cyanide, secret or otherwise. But he really thought the merc would buy it.
Quinn did have one card left to play, however. “Your employer seems to know everything,” he said. “So check with him. If he vouches for what I’m telling you, maybe you’ll see reason. You know,” he added with an insincere smile, “before your heart stops.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”
“Absolutely,” said Quinn. He nodded at the merc’s phone. “Go ahead. Check it out. The life you save just might be your own.”
The merc frowned and began composing a text message to his employer, being sure not to reveal the quagmire he had gotten himself into. You said Quinn would be rational, he typed. But he’s ranting about trying to poison Davinroy, when it’s clear he tried to shoot him. If he’s delusional, I need to know it. Any intel to support this poison claim?
“Okay, Agent Quinn,” said the merc after hitting the send button. “We’ll play it your way. Why not? We’ll know any minute.”
“I already know,” snapped Quinn, with far more confidence than he felt.
While Cris Coffey had discovered by now that he had tried to poison the president, he was sure Coffey would limit this information to a handful of people. The chances that this mystery employer would be in the know were so close to zero as to be meaningless. On the other hand, the chances that he would know exactly where to find Quinn were pretty small also. If he did somehow know about the poisoning, this would be more than a little scary.
The merc’s phone chimed, indicating he had received a reply to his text, the burst of sound such a stark contrast to the deep silence that had preceded it that it seemed to fill the entire small enclosure. Quinn’s captor looked down. I can confirm Quinn tried to poison Davinroy before any guns came out, read the text. He used a highly potent version of cyanide. On another topic, I may arrive as early as tomorrow. I’ll keep you posted.
Quinn didn’t need to be told that the man’s employer had confirmed his poisoning claim. Even in the dim light Quinn could see the mercenary whiten as he read the message. He looked as though he might vomit, and his gaze immediately returned to the scratches on his arm once again, almost against his will.
Quinn felt a surge of relief. He didn’t have time to dwell on what this accurate intel implied about the reach of his hidden adversary, but he would consider it at length the first chance he had.
“Seems you weren’t bluffing after all,” said the man. He paused for a moment in thought. “But I won’t be surrendering,” he added with a sudden dark intensity, his jaw tightening in resolve. “Instead, you’re going to tell me how to make the antidote. If not, I’ll take out your left kneecap. Then your right. Then I’ll use my knife to chop off your fingers, one at a time. You get the idea.”
Quinn moved his left leg closer to his captor, and gestured toward his kneecap with his head. “Fire away,” he said calmly. “Just know that if you harm me in any way, there’s no coming back. You start down that path and I promise you, we both die. No amount of torture will get you that antidote. But if you surrender, we both live. It’s as simple as that.”
The two men locked eyes in a staring contest that seemed to last for ages, but in the end, the mercenary folded, as Quinn knew he ultimately would. A few minutes later the tables had been turned. The mercenary cut the zip-ties that were binding Quinn and surrendered his phone and weapons.
When this transfer was completed, Quinn blew out a deep breath. “We’d better get moving,” he said, receiving no argument on this point.
He followed the mercenary to his car, a sleek 2022 Tesla, which explained why Quinn hadn’t heard it. Battery-powered cars were far more stealthy than their gasoline exploding brethren, and the two mercs had left the car and walked the last thirty yards to the shed on foot.
Quinn knew the men who had come for him were experienced and professional. They would be well prepared, most likely harboring a veritable arsenal in the trunk of the Tesla.
“Before we get you . . . detoxified,” said Quinn, “I need you to fetch a tranq gun from your goodie bag.”
The merc wasted no time. He popped the car’s trunk and rummaged through a large gray rucksack, stuffed to the gills with weapons and supplies, finding a tranquilizer gun almost immediately. He tossed it to Quinn. “Let’s get moving already,” he said, glancing anxiously at his arm.
Quinn pocketed the tranquilizer gun and extended the lethal one his prisoner had given him. “About that,” he began. “The truth is, we can stay right here. You were right. I was bluffing.”
The man screamed a curse at Quinn while his face turned a beet red.
“You aren’t looking on the bright side,” said Quinn. “You’re perfectly fine. No danger of not getting an antidote in time. Now, I did promise to leave you alive and unharmed,” he added. “And I will leave you alive. The unharmed part, however, will depend on how much you cooperate.”
The man glared at him but said nothing
“Who do you work for?” demanded Quinn
The man studied the gun pointed at him and then stared once again into Quinn’s eyes, taking his measure. He must have decided that Quinn wasn’t bluffing this time, because his bitter expression was replaced by one of resignation. “I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve never met him, and I know nothing about him. He contacted us, wired good faith money into our accounts, and we began working for him. About a month ago.”
“Come on. You can do better than that.”
“You can threaten me, or torture me, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know. You really think a guy this good, this connected, is going to tell me who he is?”
Quinn decided that the man made an excellent point.
“We talk over the phone and text each other,” continued the mercenary, “but that’s it. Thirty minutes before he arrived he was going to have us tie you down and move out. Get started on our next assignment. So he could arrive unseen by us. No one gets to know who he is.”
“Except me,” said Quinn.
“Right.”
“Which means he had no intention of leaving me alive after he got whatever it is he wanted.”
“Probably not,” acknowledged the mercenary.
Quinn reached into his pocket with his left hand and removed the phone he had taken from his new prisoner. It was a custom model, sure to be completely untraceable. “Is he in here?”
“Yes. Under the name 302. That’s what he told us to call him.”
“And you have no idea what this is about?”
“None at all. Find you, hold you. That’s all.”
For some reason, Quinn believed him. “What’s he sound like?” he asked.
“His voice is average. Not deep or high-pitched. His English is good, but he has a Russian accent.”
Now this was a valuable piece of intel. Assuming it was true. Around the turn of the century, Russia had become largely innocuous, but many years later Vladimir Putin had thrust Russia back onto the world stage with a vengeance. He and other Russian leaders had been making moves to help the country fully regain its former glory ever since. This was likely a very important piece to a puzzle Quinn was unable to even begin to solve.
Quinn was about to end the interview when one last question occurred to him. “You mentioned your boss wanted you to move on to your next assignment just before he arrived here,” he said. “What next assignment?”
The merc hesitated.
“Are you really going to hold out now?” said Quinn. “Answer me on this and we’re done. You get out of this without a scratch.” He glanced at the man’s arm and couldn’t help but smile. “Well, without another scratch,” he amended.
The man sighed heavily. “Okay. Why not?” he said. “When you go through my phone you’ll find it anyway. We were told to take out a woman in the Boston area. Rachel Howard.”
“Who is she?”
“Don’t know. Haven’t begun planning. Her photo and bio are on my phone. And instructions from 302. All I know is that he wants her to stop being alive.”
Quinn was satisfied with this answer. “Thank you,” he said, removing the dart gun from his left pocket. Without saying another word he shot the mercenary in the leg, and watched as he crumpled to the dirt, unconscious.
18
Quinn stood over the unconscious mercenary’s head and pulled him by his armpits toward the back of the Tesla. He would hide him in the trunk so he’d be out of sight of his partner, whom Quinn would ambush and put into dreamland as well when he returned from his mission.
As Quinn crossed a border between brown dirt and green grass he noticed a tiny shimmer on the man’s shoulder, which happened to be just a foot away from Quinn’s face as he dragged the man’s body. He leaned closer, but the shimmer disappeared. He was about to write it off as a figment of his imagination when some sixth sense of his insisted that he not. His intuition had served him well, and he had learned not to ignore it.
He studied the mercenary’s right shoulder from several angles, and when he hit one that showed the shoulder against a multicolored background, the image of a housefly came vaguely into focus.
What in the world? thought Quinn. A fly that could blend in with its surroundings? What, a fly with chameleon DNA mixed in?
But even as he thought this the fly suddenly became visible from all angles, as though it knew he was suspicious of it and had decided to appear more ordinary.
Quinn was left with only one conclusion: it must be mechanical. But as he studied it further, it began to rub its tiny legs together, and even though it was missing a wing, he realized that no forgery could possibly be this perfect. And yet, as absurd, as ridiculous a supposition as this was, he was convinced he was right.
It must be the ultimate Micro Air Vehicle, abbreviated as MAV. Drones of all kinds now filled the skies, recreational and otherwise, and the military variety had gotten smaller and smaller over many years. But as far as he knew, no one had come close to creating a perfect, working mechanical fly.
Until now, perhaps.
Which would explain so much. What advantages would someone gain if they could become a fly on the wall—literally?
Intelligence gathering would be revolutionized. The MAV that Quinn was staring at now could be camouflaged, made almost invisible. And if someone did happen to see it from just the right angle, they would only be seeing a harmless housefly, easy to dismiss.
This fly must be beaming Quinn’s location to an interested party, or even video and audio. He guessed it had begun its mission at Garza’s mansion, at the fundraiser. Why not? Spying on the president perhaps? When Quinn had made his move against Davinroy, its operator had sent it on a new mission: stick to Quinn. Like glue.
Or like a fly.
It could have been clinging to his back while he nearly broke the sound barrier in Garza’s Maserati, saving battery power and wear and tear on its wings. The Russian—302—must have sent it. That’s how he knew where to find Quinn, and even the best time and way for his hired guns to approach him. And also how he knew Quinn had tried to use poison on the president. He must have sent another drone to be a fly on Cris Coffey’s wall.
The MAV could have become damaged when he had dived into the mercenary and they had grappled in the shack, which might explain how it had ended up on the merc’s shoulder. Or else its operator had decided to move it there for a better vantage point, and it had later become damaged all the same.
Which explained why it wasn’t trying to fly away now.
What the hell had he gotten himself into? And if this device had been perfected by the Russians, the US could be in a world of hurt. This had suddenly become bigger than Matthew Davinroy. Quinn may have tried to eliminate the president, but he was still a patriot. He still loved his country, despite the monster currently at its helm.
So his mission parameters had expanded. He now had two impossible missions. Kill the president. And find the Russian who was calling himself 302.
19
Quinn lowered the mercenary to the ground, keeping his eyes locked on the housefly that wasn’t a housefly. When it had possessed both of its wings, he wondered if it had been as agile as a real fly.
A fly’s range of vision and reflexes were too great for most people to have any chance of catching one. Bring a hand down from any position above the fly, with almost any speed, and it would deftly escape the trap racing toward it.
But he had learned as a boy how to catch one. Every time. How to kill one with his hands. Every time.
First, wait until the fly had landed on a roughly level surface. Once this happened, killing it was as simple as carefully planting both hands on either side of it, knife-edged on the surface, with palms facing each other. Center the fly between the hands and then slide them together as quickly as possible, ending in a clap. A fly would always try to escape upward, but it could only make it halfway up the giant wall of hands closing in on it before being smashed in between.
Catching one worked the same way. Plant one hand to the side of the fly and slide it toward the target as fast as possible, closing the hand the moment it was reached. Quinn had done this countless times as a boy, a feat that never failed to impress other kids.
Unfortunately, the drone’s position on the merc’s shoulder didn’t give Quinn enough runway for this maneuver. Even so, given the damage the fly had suffered, he had high hopes that a less strategically sound grab would prove doable.
Quinn launched his right hand at the fly like his life depended on it. The tiny MAV made an attempt to launch itself into the air, even with a single wing, but Quinn was able to snatch it up, keeping his hand in a tight fist so it couldn’t escape.
At least for the moment. He didn’t want to hold it for long, in case it had some tricks up its sleeve, like an ability to bore through soft flesh.
Quinn popped the trunk of the Tesla and emptied his pockets as quickly as he could. There must be something in the car or his pockets he could use to cage the drone. He considered pressing it into the magazine of a gun, like it was a round. Might work, but it wasn’t ideal.
His eyes lit up like fireworks when he spied a tiny canister attached to the Tesla’s key fob. It was a steel LED flashlight, bright blue, the size of a woman’s pinky. It was perfect. He managed to unscrew it with one hand and then dumped out the tiny battery inside.
As a kid he had learned that shaking his fist for several seconds, hard, would stun the fly inside, so he could let it go or transfer it elsewhere, and it would act like a drunken sailor. He couldn’t make an artificial fly dizzy, but he was willing to bet that he could temporarily disorient any motion sensors inside.
