Free Time of Attack by Marc Cameron

nonexistent.
    The three bodyguards she had taken with her to the United States—her only son and his friends—had been sorely lacking for such a task. It was she who had underestimated the possibility for conflict during her meeting with Hartman Drake. She knew full well that her son could be erratic, but she’d not comprehended how bizarre he could be and how such behavior would come so close to ruining everything. He’d paid the ultimate price. It was fortunate indeed that she had escaped such an error with her own life.
    “I am sure you do remember it,” the man said, his words clicking like a train on a track. “And I do not particularly care. Frankly, the only thing that interests me is Jericho Quinn’s death. Is that too difficult to understand?”
    “No, but I must—”
    “See to it then.” The man cut her off, apparently bored with her report. “Call again when you have more information.”
    Shimoyama dropped the cell phone on the table. She knew the line was dead. Qasim Ranjhani was not a man for good-byes.

C HAPTER 7
    Q uinn showered quickly at the hotel, taking just enough time to scrub Kim’s blood from his hands and chest where it had soaked through his shirt. He’d shaved for the wedding, but his black beard had already started to form a shadow over his copper complexion—a look that, along with his flawless Arabic, allowed him to blend in in many areas of the world without anyone suspecting he was an American agent.
    He pulled on a dark blue polo, khakis, and a pair of well-worn Lowa Renegades that fit more like sneakers than boots. He wanted to be ready in the event he had to run. Press-checking his Kimber 10mm out of habit to make certain he had a round in the chamber, he slid it into the Comp-Tac holster inside the waistband of his slacks and snugged down his belt. A small .22-caliber Beretta with a micro suppressor hung in a leather shoulder holster under his left armpit. Light for any serious work, the diminutive .22 had a specific niche in the world of deadly weapons—it was extremely quiet. Quieter still was the seven-inch blade of the CRKT Hissatsu fighting knife he carried.
    His Aerostich Transit Leather motorcycle jacket did double duty, covering the weapons and adding a layer of ballistic armor installed by the national security advisor’s special team at DARPA known as the Shop.
    Quinn threw the rest of his clothes and gear in a bag for Garcia to pick up, and made it to the Denver airport in time to hop the afternoon Southwest flight to Las Vegas. He wasn’t allowed to sleep on the plane since he was armed, but wouldn’t have been able to anyway. Closing his eyes when surrounded by a hundred strangers had never been something Quinn could bring himself to do. Reading was out of the question since the shooting, so he sat and stared at the seatback in front of him, letting his mind drift and his body metabolize the residual adrenaline.
    The flight squawked onto the tarmac at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport just under two hours later. Quinn’s cabbie was a talkative Romanian named Tiberius who gabbed about his large family and the tremendous opportunities offered by the “U.S. of A.” nonstop during the fifteen-minute ride to the Strip. Quinn gave him a good tip, which, of course the patriotic jabbering had been intended to induce, and got out of the cab in front of the Bellagio, down the boulevard from Caesars Palace so there would be no record of him being dropped off there.
    Once Tiberius was safely on his way, Quinn walked into the Bellagio’s spacious lobby and turned right under the kaleidoscope of flowers that hung like an inverted glass garden from the ceiling. Walking easily but with purpose, he could feel the eyes of countless security cameras on his back as he cut this way and that to make his way through the maze of tourists. He counted at least a half dozen different languages from all nationalities—many of them Chinese. Glancing up at one of the small