State of Emergency

CHAPTER 20


Arlington

Reagan National Airport

10:56 AM





Quinn turned on his phone while the plane from Miami was still rolling down the taxiway. There was a missed call from Bo.

He punched in the number and was relieved to hear his kid brother’s voice.

“Boaz Quinn,” he said, giving him the older sibling’s chiding tone. “I’ve been trying to get in touch with you for days.”

“What can I say?” Bo laughed. “My life of crime takes me places cell phones don’t work so well.” Quinn could hear the sun-bleached surfer attitude in his brother’s voice. Four years younger than Jericho, the unrepentant prodigal had left home after a not so stellar year at University of Alaska to start over in Texas. He’d landed on his feet, but square in the middle of a motorcycle club that dabbled in several lucrative, but not so legitimate, businesses. Not the academic that Jericho was, Bo was bull strong and incredibly smart. A natural leader, he worked and fought his way up through the ranks of his new club and found himself in charge in a matter of years.

“Your passport still valid?” Quinn asked. “Or did you have to surrender it to your probation officer?”

“Very funny,” Bo said. “As a matter of fact, I am clear to travel and free for the next few days.”

Quinn smiled at the thought of seeing his kid brother again, even under the circumstances of tracking down a nuclear bomb. “Have I got a deal for you,” he said. “I can’t talk about it on the phone, but how do you feel about Argentina?”





“He is walking toward baggage claim now,” a Japanese man wearing a tan golf jacket whispered. He stood in line at the Dunkin’ Donuts holding a newspaper under his arm. His black hair was moussed and combed up in the earnest businessman style. He ordered a coffee from the tired-looking black woman behind the counter as Quinn walked past, almost close enough to touch.

“I am interested in what an American OSI agent would be doing with a Japanese killing dagger,” a female voice answered over the earbud that was paired to the cell phone on his belt. “You know what to do.”

“Of course,” the Japanese man said. He tossed a five-dollar bill on the counter to pay for his coffee and fell in with the arriving passengers as they walked in small groups along the dimly lit hallway, past the ever-present construction that seemed to define Reagan Airport and down the escalator to baggage claim. For an international airport across the Potomac from the nation’s capitol, Reagan saw little traffic at this time of morning.

The Japanese man loitered near the carousel as if he was waiting for his own baggage. Quinn stood with his back to one of the large support columns inside the rail that separated the baggage area from the front walkway. His eyes were constantly on the move, flitting from one person to the next, as if sizing them up as potential threats or, the Japanese man couldn’t help but think, possible targets. There was no doubt in his mind that Quinn carried a weapon. As a government agent, he would have been allowed to fly with it—and men like this one did not walk around without weapons unless they were forced to do so. His black leather jacket was loose, so it was impossible to know if it was on his belt or under his arm, but he was definitely armed. Quinn’s demeanor, the predatory way in which he carried himself, spoke louder than any outline of a pistol under his clothing.

Truly dangerous men, the Japanese man thought, recognized others of their kind.

Quinn grabbed a camel-colored ballistic nylon duffel and turned toward the escalator to long-term parking. Following, but not too close, the Japanese man didn’t get on the escalator until Quinn neared the top. He’d already marked Quinn’s vehicle in the lot, and parked his own car nearby. It would be easy enough to follow him from a distance.

The Japanese man was halfway up the escalator, trapped between a large Sikh in a black turban and a group of Georgetown coeds dressed in droopy sweats, when Quinn met him, coming down the escalator on the other side.



Quinn spotted the tail at the baggage carousel. A compact Japanese man with neatly trimmed hair to match a military bearing loitered as if he had bags of his own, then left moments after Quinn without retrieving anything. Perhaps it was his earlier encounter with the bosozoku, but Quinn had become hyperaware of Japanese men.

With no way to know if the man sought to do him harm or just to test him, Quinn took three steps off the escalator, then turned to take the ride back down, meeting his pursuer face-to-face.

Both of this man’s hands were visible, one hanging loosely at his side, the other holding a Dunkin’ Donuts cup. It was a calm person indeed who could hold a cup of coffee at the same moment he intended to do violence. Still, Quinn kept a hand in his jacket pocket, fingers wrapped around the Beretta. In his other hand, he held his BlackBerry.

The man’s jaw hung open in mortified surprise when he saw Quinn, but his hands remained motionless.

“Sayonara dake ga jinsei, sa,” Quinn said, snapping a photo with his cell phone as he passed by on his way back down. It was a line from an old movie, certain to make sentimental Japanese women cry—and the man looked as if he was close himself. Life is nothing but good-bye.

Quinn dropped the phone back in his jacket pocket and nodded at the man, whose face now burned at his error. At the bottom of the escalator Quinn walked briskly toward the exit door that would take him to the taxi stands. He’d come back for his car later with a bomb tech. For tonight, a random taxi seemed the more prudent way home.