State of Emergency

CHAPTER 44


Quinn and Aleksandra walked back to the bivouac together, keeping up the appearance of a couple. Each carried a folded camp chair over their shoulder. Bo had stayed back a few minutes longer to make sure the fire was out. Jacques hung back as well, using the satellite phone to call his wife in private.

In anticipation of an early start, most riders had already hit the rack, but Jericho’s mind raced. Instinct, sixth sense, haragei—Japanese art of the belly—however it was described, he’d learned long before to pay attention to such things.

“I am sorry for that display back there,” Aleksandra said. “I won’t let it happen again.”

“It was good,” Quinn said. “I don’t often see my baby brother get choked up like that.”

“You are very different, the two of you,” she said.

Jericho shook his head, chuckling. “You have no idea.”

“And yet . . .” She stopped to look at him under the light of the tire repair awning. The clank of wrenches and thump of rubber rims went on all night. “And yet you are very much the same.”

“I suppose.” Quinn walked on. Boaz Quinn was good deep down, but he’d chosen a very different path in his life.

“There’s something I need to tell you,” Aleksandra said, looking back and forth to make certain no one else was in earshot. “In most—”

She stopped abruptly as Julian Monagas passed. The crooked-nosed thug forced his pockmarked face into a twisted half smile. He raised his hand in a noncommittal wave as he went by.

Beside him, Quinn felt Aleksandra’s body go tense, as if all the air around her was suddenly drawn away. She spun, staring daggers at the broad back of a departing thug.

“What is it?” Quinn stared down at her, feeling her hand go hot in his.

She stood stone still, not even breathing until Monagas turned the corner on the other side of the tire shop.

“Are you all right?” Quinn prodded.

“I am fine,” she said, shutting down again after all the emotional openness of the evening. She spun toward her tent. “I am very tired,” she said. “And you have an early morning.”





Inside her tent, Aleksandra knelt on her sleeping mat and rifled through her bag for the long dagger she kept at the bottom. She held her hand out in front of her. Even in the shadows of her tent, she could see it trembling.

The bastard Monagas was wearing Mikhail’s double eagle ring. It had been him in the men’s room stall at the strip club. He had killed the Chechen pig Akhmad Umarov. A tear of frustration crossed the freckles of her cheek. He had murdered her friend.

Aleksandra knew she should tell Quinn what she knew. If Monagas had killed Mikhail, then he and Zamora had been present when Baba Yaga was taken. There was no more doubt that they had her. She told herself that it didn’t matter. They were watching Zamora anyway. If Quinn started to doubt, then she would tell him. If she told him her plan for Monagas now, he would try and stop her.

“I will make him pay, Misha,” she whispered, huge tears dripping from the end of her nose and landing with loud plops on her sleeping bag. Chiding herself for such rampant emotion, she sniffed, wiping her nose with the heel of her hand.

She stuffed the dagger under her belt at the small of her back and press checked her H&K one last time, reassuring herself that there was a round in the chamber. Satisfied that she was ready to wreak havoc on the murderous thug with the flat nose and crooked lip, she listened until she heard the sound of Quinn’s rhythmic breathing coming from the tent beside her. She only had to wait a few moments for a scooter to buzz past and used the sound to cover the noise as she unzipped her tent and crept into the night.