The Damaged Read online

  “What’s going on?” Fisher asked.

  Before Quinn could answer, Jorio whipped the car around and raced back toward the driveway.

  “He’s running!” Kosar said.

  Quinn heard scrambling on the roof, followed by three rapid spits from the assassin’s suppressed sniper rifle. The bullets punctured the vehicle’s rear window, but the car kept moving.

  A fourth and fifth spit and the sedan finally veered off course, careening into the field before coming to a stop.

  “Dammit,” Quinn muttered. His job’s difficulty level had just increased.

  “Anyone see movement?” Fisher asked.

  “I’m repositioning,” Kosar replied.

  “I don’t see anything from here,” Quinn said. “Hold on.” He grabbed his binoculars and zoomed in on the car. It had stopped at an angle that gave him only a partial view of the front. It took a moment before he was able to make out an arm and shoulder and what he presumed was part of Jorio’s head. “He’s in the driver’s seat. I don’t see any movement.”

  “Kosar,” Fisher said. “Anyone other than us see what happened?”

  A beat. “There’s a truck coming down the main road. No way to know yet if he noticed anything.”

  “Quinn, I need you to check the target for me. Kosar, keep an eye on that truck.”

  “Copy,” Quinn said.

  “Copy,” Kosar said.

  Quinn drew his weapon and exited the house through the side door. He moved cautiously across the dirt area, his eyes glued to the vehicle. When he reached the rear fender, he paused and looked through the bullet holes in the rear window. Jorio appeared to be draped over the steering wheel, the arm Quinn had seen still in the same position. Either the guy was an excellent actor, or he was indeed out of commission.

  Quinn stepped around the side of the sedan, circling out into the wheat that had just missed being crushed by the car. Through the stalks he studied the target, looking for even a hint of movement.

  Finally, he approached the driver’s-side door. Blood soaked the back of Jorio’s shirt. Quinn discerned two entry wounds. The lower shot would have been lethal but death might have taken a while. The upper one, however, had torn through the target’s spinal cord within a centimeter or two of his heart. Excellent shooting in both cases, especially given the difficult angle and fleeing subject.

  Quinn opened the door, checked the man’s pulse, and said into the comm, “He’s dead.”

  Technically that was the moment Fisher’s and Kosar’s jobs were done. They could have left Quinn alone to take care of the mess without a second thought. But whether it was out of guilt for creating the extra work, or the desire to give a fellow operative a hand, both men pitched in on the cleanup.

  There were two big problems. The plan had been for Quinn to drive Jorio’s car south to Paris, where—license plates removed and serial numbers filed down—he would leave the vehicle with its keys in the ignition, in an area where it wouldn’t likely remain for long. Now, with the damage to the rear window and the bullet holes in the driver’s seat, not to mention bloodstains, the repurposing of the vehicle by some random thief was no longer on the table. The car would have to be destroyed in a way that wouldn’t cause questions.

  The other issue was the grain. In the grand scheme of things, the car hadn’t taken out very much at all, the ruined wheat unlikely to put more than the smallest of dents in the Fortiers’ income. But since the damage was directly in front of the family’s home, there was no way it would go unnoticed. Which would lead the Fortiers to ask questions that may cause problems later.

  While Quinn thought about how to handle the situation, he and the other two agents rolled the vehicle out of the field and over the lip between it and the dirt area in front of the barn. They stopped it about a dozen meters from the structure.

  Quinn retrieved his gear from inside the house and pulled out a body bag.

  “Can you give me a hand with this?” he said to Fisher.

  Fisher grabbed one end and they rolled it out.

  “I hear you’ve been working with Durrie again. How’s that going?”

  “Who told you that?”

  The assassin shrugged. “Word gets around.”

  “I heard it, too,” Kosar said.

  Quinn glanced at both of them, then set his end of the bag on the ground. “It was just one job.”

  Fisher put his end down. “And?”

  “And nothing. Everything went fine.” Quinn unzipped the bag and pulled the flap back.

  “I know he was your mentor and all, but you should consider yourself lucky. He’s gone off the deep end, man. A lot of people I know refuse to work with him.”

  “Like I said, everything was nice and smooth.” Quinn hoped his tone conveyed this was not a conversation he wanted to continue.

  The message was received, because Fisher said, “Glad to hear,” and neither man brought it up again.

  For Quinn, however, the mention of Durrie brought the cover-up back to the forefront of his mind. And that inevitably led to wondering what would happen if Durrie was a no-show for the next job. Or, worse, showed up but did something that jeopardized the mission. Quinn wanted to believe Durrie would perform competently, but in his heart of hearts he didn’t think that would happen.

  Informing Peter of Durrie’s failure would be one of the worst moments in Quinn’s life, but if it came to it, he would have no choice.

  The more he mulled it over, the more he thought that Durrie missing the mission would be the best solution. Yes, Quinn would still have to tell Peter, but at least the mission would not be compromised and no one would be hurt or, God forbid, killed.

  And perhaps getting his mentor blackballed would be a good thing for Durrie, too. It could very well be the kick in the ass the son of a bitch needed to get help.

  Orlando would see that, too. She’d have to. She’d understand.

  Wouldn’t she?

  Quinn, Fisher, and Kosar put the now full body bag into the sedan’s trunk. Quinn sopped up as much of the blood as he could from inside the vehicle, then put the soaked rag into a plastic bag that also went in the trunk.

  “There’s some plastic sheeting in my bag and some duct tape,” he said to Fisher. “Can you get that for me?”

  “Sure.”

  The assassin retrieved the items and helped Quinn wrap the driver’s seat in the plastic and secure it with the tape. That would protect Quinn’s clothes from getting stained. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do anything about the floor around the pedals, and would have to sacrifice one of the two pairs of Nikes he’d brought. Annoying, but sometimes that was the job.

  Quinn used a crowbar to knock out the back window. No glass was better than glass with bullet holes in it.

  “Any idea what you’re going to do about the field?” Fisher asked.

  Quinn frowned and looked again at the wheat. “Think we’re just going to have to leave it.”

  “Leave it?”

  “Unless you know a way to grow grain to the right height overnight.”

  “They’re going to notice.”

  “Yeah, they definitely are.”

  Quinn walked along the car’s path and used a rake to obscure tread marks and shoe prints. The dirt in the parking area was harder packed, so the few marks on it weren’t enough to be worrisome.

  While he couldn’t do anything about the damaged grain itself, there was something he could do to temper the Fortiers’ response to it.

  With his rubber gloves still on, he returned to the house, found a piece of paper in a printer, and wrote a note to the Fortiers, in French, telling them his “son” had lost control of his car and caused the damage. He folded one thousand euros inside the unsigned letter and slipped them into an envelope. He hid the envelope under a planter on the porch. In the next hour or two, he would use a vocal modulator to leave a voice mail on their home phone, letting them know where to find the letter.

  “I think that’s it, gentlemen,” Qu
inn said. “I appreciate the help.”

  “What about the rear window?” Kosar said, nodding his chin toward the sedan.

  “Not much I can do about that.”

  “If a cop sees there’s no glass, he’s going to pull you over.”

  “I’m not planning on letting a cop see me.”

  Kosar huffed a laugh, clearly doubting Quinn’s ability to pull it off. “You’re the expert.”

  He held out his hand and Quinn shook it.

  “You’ve gotten really good at this,” Fisher said, holding out his own hand.

  Quinn had worked with him a few times when Quinn first started out on his own, and once or twice back in his apprentice days with Durrie.

  He shook the assassin’s hand. “Thank you.”

  With a final goodbye, Fisher and Kosar headed along the back of the field, toward the side road where they’d hidden the car they’d all arrived in.

  Quinn called Peter.

  “You guys are done?” Peter asked.

  “Kosar and Fisher are. My job’s been extended a bit.”

  “Why is that?”

  Quinn filled him in.

  “You sure there aren’t going to be any problems?” Peter asked.

  “I’m as sure as I can be.”

  Peter grunted. “Is there anything you need my help with?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is.”

  Quinn moved the car a couple of kilometers away, down an access road between two more fields of wheat. There he stayed until 2:30 a.m.

  The early hour meant not only were there few other travelers on the road, but when there were, he would see their lights long before they neared him. As often as possible, he pulled off the road when this happened, hiding so the other driver wouldn’t see the damaged window.

  On a side road ten kilometers outside Roubaix, he met up with the vehicle-transportation truck Peter had arranged for him.

  He rode up front with the driver, neither saying a word on the entire trip to Rotterdam. You had to love the European Union—no border checks. Just a straight shot out of France through Belgium and into the Netherlands.

  Not far from the Rotterdam docks, the truck dropped off Quinn and the sedan at a business that specialized in scrap metal. Waiting for him was an SUV, also courtesy of Peter, parked as requested in a sheltered spot where he would not be observed. He pulled up beside it in the damaged sedan, and transferred his gear and the body bag into the SUV. He then entered the office, looking for the owner.

  Over the next ninety minutes, Quinn watched as the fluids were drained from Jorio’s sedan, the engine block was ripped off the front, and the car crushed into a metal brick. Before the day was up, the scrap would be loaded onto a cargo ship, bound for a recycling center in Malaysia.

  Quinn’s next stop was on the other side of the city, at a crematorium he had used before, where the target’s body and trash from the clean-up were incinerated. The ashes and few remaining pieces of bone went into a box that he dumped, bit by bit, into different trash bins around town.

  By the time he finished, it was after midnight and he was exhausted. But before going to bed, he put in another call to Peter.

  After giving him a rundown of the disposal and thanking him for his assistance, Quinn said, “I was thinking, since this other job isn’t going to happen for a few weeks at least, I’d love to take a little time off. Maybe hit a beach or something.”

  “While that’s a lovely idea, it’s not going to be a few weeks. The job’s hot again.”

  “Seriously?”

  “You go on Tuesday.”

  That was six days away, and with travel back to the States and prep, there wasn’t much time left for lounging around on an island.

  “All right,” Quinn said. “I’ll fly back in the morning.”

  “The information packet will be waiting for you when you get home.”

  Quinn frowned. “Can’t wait.”

  As promised, Quinn found an email with several attachments sitting in his inbox when he arrived back in Los Angeles midafternoon.

  The code name for the job was Operation Redeemer, and the focus of the mission was a Saudi national by the name of Fawar El-Baz, known also as the Falcon. According to the brief, El-Baz had been an early follower of Osama bin Laden, and was rumored to have been involved, at least peripherally, in the planning of the 9/11 attacks. Quietly, the terrorist had begun to form his own splinter operation, which, unlike bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, preferred keeping a low profile and letting other groups take credit for its actions. The Falcon had been wreaking havoc throughout Africa and Asia, and was believed to be the mastermind behind a foiled plot to blow up the US, UK, and French embassies in Nigeria two months earlier.

  He was a thorn in the side of US Intelligence, who wanted him stopped.

  From a source embedded deep within El-Baz’s organization, the good folks at the NSA had learned of a trip the terrorist was planning to Rio de Janeiro to meet with Matias Varela, an Argentinian arms dealer, raising new concerns that El-Baz intended to expand his operations into South America.

  The terrorist would be arriving via a private jet, with a security detail estimated to be from five to ten men. The mission to intercept him had been previously postponed because El-Baz had rescheduled his trip twice. CIA analysts were now saying there was an eighty-five percent chance the Falcon would make the trip the following Thursday, exactly one week away.

  OPERATION REDEEMER

  Mission Goal: To capture El-Baz alive and eliminate his men, specific site to be determined.

  Your Assignment: Clean the scene and transport the bodies to the airport, where they will be loaded onto El-Baz’s jet, which will then be remotely flown over the Atlantic Ocean, where it will crash into the sea, preferably in an area where locating the aircraft will be impossible. All those supposedly on board, including El-Baz, will be presumed dead.

  Five to ten bodies were a lot of work for Quinn, even with an on-the-ball Durrie. Thankfully, Peter had authorized him to hire one additional team member.

  After going over the brief a second time, Quinn called Durrie. Unsurprisingly, his mentor didn’t answer. This gave him an excuse to call Orlando.

  “Hi,” she answered.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Good. Thanks. How about you?”

  “Same.” He paused. “So, um, the job is a go.”

  “Oh, that’s great,” she said, sounding truly excited.

  “Yeeaah,” he said. “So, um, I tried calling Durrie but he didn’t answer. He did get his phone working again, didn’t he?”

  “Ha! Yeah, he’s just…busy.”

  “So he’s not there?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Can you tell him to call me? I need to brief him.”

  “Of course. As soon as I see him.”

  Quinn hesitated before saying, “I’m going to need him on a plane in four days. Be honest with me. Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “Of course he will,” she said. “That’s next Tuesday?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t worry. He’ll be there, and he’ll do a great job. I promised, remember?”

  “I remember,” he said, trying to sound more encouraging than he felt.

  “I’ll make sure he calls you. And, Quinn, thank you. If it weren’t for you, I don’t know what I’d do. He really needs this. I can’t tell you how much we both appreciate it.”

  Quinn felt a slight tinge of guilt. Should he tell her the truth? That he was hoping Durrie would drop out? That he thought it would be better for all of them that way?

  He couldn’t bring himself to do that, so in the end, the only thing he said was, “You’re welcome.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Orlando wanted to tell Durrie about Quinn’s request right away, but he had left right before noon and hadn’t returned. She tried calling him but only succeeded in reaching his voice mail, so she sent a text.

  When do you think you’ll be home?


  She thought about mentioning Quinn’s need to talk to him but decided against it, fearing doing so would make him stay unreachable all day. Better to wait and tell him in person, and all but force him to make the call in front of her.

  She paced the living room, wondering if she should drive out to the Tin Star again. But chances were he was somewhere else, to avoid being found.

  She was sure it would be hours before she heard back from him, but twelve minutes after she started carving a path across her floor, her phone dinged with a text.

  Six.

  That was a little over an hour away.

  Now her worry about not being able to get in touch with him turned to concern, about how he would react to the news the mission was on. Other than his agreeing to do it, they had talked little about it. Had he changed his mind? Would he flat out tell her he wasn’t interested anymore?

  By the time she heard his car pull into the garage at ten after six, she’d worked herself into a ball of nerves. Thank God for the training she’d received from Abraham Delger. Unlike Durrie with Quinn, Abraham had coached her with a patient, understanding hand. Not that he wasn’t strict when he needed to be, but he always made sure she understood why he was being hard on her and seemed to really want her to succeed. Durrie, on the other hand, had not been as kind on Quinn.

  Early on in her training, Abraham had told her something that had stuck with her. They’d been in Toronto, conducting an information grab on an American businessman suspected of selling banned electronics to a Russian company with close ties to its government. To get into the man’s computer, a wireless electronic bug needed to be placed somewhere in the room. Unfortunately, the man had not left his hotel since he arrived, and the growing concern was that the opportunity to extract the data would be missed. Abraham decided Orlando would pose as a hotel maid doing room checks, and use the opportunity to slip the bug under a table.

  While Orlando had taken on roles during other operations, those had been in far less dicey situations. This one had her anxious.