State of Emergency

CHAPTER 60


Gunfire pinged off the heavy generator as Quinn slid in beside Thibodaux. The big Cajun turned too late as one of the bullets cut a fuel line, spraying him in the face with a slurry of metal shards and diesel fuel.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, wiping a forearm across his face.

Quinn felt a wave of dread tighten in his throat. Fighters learned to protect their eyes at all costs. A wound in the arm or leg was preferable to being blind in battle.

“How bad?” Quinn said, throwing a double tap into the sweating face of a man with a red beard and naked upper lip who crept toward them on his belly.

“Bad, l’ami,” Thibodaux spat. “My right eye is toast.”

Another series of shots popped amid the undergrowth. A moment later Daudov staggered out, bleeding from a wound to his throat. A fusillade from Borregos’s men finished him off. Quinn was about to fire but caught a glimpse of Aleksandra ghosting through the thick vines.

An eerie silence settled in over the jungle camp immediately after the Chechen leader’s body slumped to the ground. Pistol in both hands, Quinn scanned the tree line while he worked to slow his breathing. He looked at Bo, who gave him a weak thumbs-up with his gun hand.

Thibodaux scanned the jungle with his good eye. “Two rounds and one peeper left, l’ami,” he said. “Afraid I’m not much help to you.”

“We want the professor,” a voice yelled from the jungle shadows. “We have no fight with you.”

Quinn looked at Pollard, who held a small notebook at waist level.

“I’m coming out,” Pollard yelled. He dropped the notebook to the dirt at his feet, then looked at Quinn. “They’ll kill us all if I don’t go with them. Your friend needs a doctor. Please, save my wife. She doesn’t deserve this.” Raising his hands, he walked like a condemned man to disappear into the jungle with Borregos and his men.

Aleksandra bolted from the trees a moment later and ducked behind the generator. “You should have shot him,” she hissed. “They need him to detonate the bomb. I am empty or I would have done it myself.” She held up her H & K, slide locked to the rear. Her eyes flew wide when she saw Bo.

“What happened?”

“Chechen bullet,” Quinn said, frowning. “Where did you go?”

“I wounded Zamora,” she said. “He fell in the river and drifted away. I’ve been picking off his men one by one.”

“And Monagas?” Quinn asked.

“I’m not certain,” she said. “He went down, but I could not find the body.”

“No time to look now,” Quinn said. “We have to get our wounded back to town.”

Bo shook his head. “You can’t just let the bomb get away from you.”

“I know,” Quinn said. “I’m working on that.”

The Indian girl Pollard had been holding suddenly stirred.

“Please,” she said, her voice a rasping whimper. In the aftermath of all the shooting, it was difficult to hear anything.

Still unconvinced Borregos meant to keep his word, Quinn ducked as he sprinted to the girl and dragged her behind the overturned table. He relaxed a hair when no one tried to shoot him.

“I had to pretend to be dead,” she whispered, “or I don’t think Dr. Matt would have left me.”

Quinn found that she wasn’t far off from her pretense. Three bullets had torn into her side, shattering ribs and narrowly missing her heart. Her chest rattled as she struggled for breath. Dirt and leaves covered a grisly exit wound that had torn away most of her right shoulder blade. She didn’t have long.

“Zamora has another camp,” she whispered through cracked lips. “A coca plant with an airstrip.” She coughed. “Promise to help Professor Matt and I will tell you where it is. . . .”

Quinn bit his lip.

“Of course,” he said, leaning in so he could hear the girl’s instructions over the incessant ringing in his ears.

The flat roar of a boat engine carried in from the river. Baba Yaga was already moving.