Free Brute Force by Marc Cameron Page B

turned out to be an overly exuberant greeting, heart in his throat. He could plainly hear the Vice President talking just steps away around the corner in the Chief of Staff’s office. He had to move now or risk losing the perfect moment—a moment that might never present itself again.
    “Washington Nationals, buddy.” He kept his voice at a whisper, the way protective agents become accustomed to speaking after years of working in the halls of government elite. “You won, I lost, so I’m here to pay up.”
    “What’s this all about, Adam?” Harper gave him a quizzical look. “You could have just dropped them by my apartment.”
    Knight could feel the other agent’s eyes boring into him, sizing him up as a possible threat. He had about half a second before he’d be asked to leave—politely at first, and then forcibly booted out the door. It was what he would have done had the roles been reversed.
    “Well, I was in the area,” Knight said, taking the tickets out of his jacket pocket and letting them fall to the ground.
    All Harper had to do was look down. He did, watching the fluttering paper long enough to allow Knight to slip by him unimpeded.
    Knight heard Harper’s startled shout behind him as he shouldered his way past and rounded the corner through the door to the Chief of Staff ’s office, pistol already in his hand. Harper might shoot him in the back at any moment, but by then it would be too late.
    Vice President Lee McKeon came into view an instant later, towering over the Chief of Staff’s desk, pounding on a stack of files with the flat of his hand. He was less than fifteen feet away. It would be an easy shot.
    Knight caught a flash of something out of place as he brought the gun to bear. It was dark and fast and moved obliquely along the inside wall—directly toward him. He stepped sideways to avoid this new threat, keeping his focus on McKeon. Before he could pull the trigger—or even take a breath—an Asian woman threw herself in front of him and loosed a chilling scream as if he’d already shot her.

Chapter 9
    Kashgar
     
    A dusty Land Rover sat parked in the shadows of the three-story brick wall outside the back entrance to Deuben’s clinic. Thibodaux put a hand flat on the hood and raised the brow of his good eye. “Still warm,” he whispered. “Your friend’s got company all right.”
    A flurry of German curses, flung on the pointed voice of Gabrielle Deuben, poured through a crack in the second-story window above them.
    “I don’t know what she’s saying,” the big Cajun said, “but she don’t sound like the happy sort of woman.”
    A muffled grunt followed, like someone being hit in the belly.
    Quinn put a shoulder to the door. Locked. He stepped aside, making way for Thibodaux. Booting a door himself when the big Cajun was around was akin to using a teaspoon to dig a ditch. He could do it, but why?
    “Now you can huff and puff,” Quinn said.
    It had been nearly two years, but Quinn still had a clear picture of the interior layout. Doors to the clinic and the small kitchen Deuben used as her personal office ran off the end of a short hallway. Just inside and to the right, blue cotton curtains covered the entrance to a set of timber stairs, roughhewn and nearly as steep as a ladder. They were ancient and creaky, a passive burglar alarm, but that mattered little since Thibodaux had put his boot to the back door with great effect, splintering the jamb with a loud crack in the process. Rather than creeping up, Quinn and Thibodaux bounded up the steps, hoping to reach the top before Grigor and his men had time to formulate a strategy.
    Quinn heard a second gasp when he was mid stairway, followed by another torrent of German curses. He hit the top step at an all-out run.
    The upstairs was comprised of a one large open room with what looked like a small bathroom off the far back corner. Two large timber support columns ran up to wooden ceiling beams in the middle of the