State of Emergency Read Online Free Page A

the extra horses he needed to keep up with the frenetic thump of D.C. traffic. Six cars ahead, the man he wanted to kill activated his turn signal, then moved a forest-green Ford Taurus into the left lane.
    The big Beemer was a leggy bike, aggressive like a mechanical predator from a science-fiction movie. Tall enough to be eye level with passing cars, it flicked easily for what some considered the two-story building of motorcycles.
    Even locked-on to his target, Quinn was watchful. Riding on two wheels required constant awareness—as his father constantly chided: Ride like everyone else is on crack and trying to kill you. In truth, though he’d been riding since he was a small boy in Alaska, each time he hit the street awakened an intense hyperawareness, like the first time he’d tracked a wounded brown bear, worked outside the wire in Iraq, or kissed a girl.
    Following the Taurus in the heavy afternoon traffic took concentration, but every on-ramp and intersection, every car around him, presented a possible assault. The Brits called them SMIDSY accidents— Sorry, mate, I didn’t see you . There was hardly a summer growing up that Quinn or his brother, Bo, hadn’t been consigned to some sort of cast due to such encounters with absentminded drivers.
    And still they rode, because it was worth the risk. When they were younger, he and his kid brother had come to the conclusion that miles spent on the back of a motorcycle were like dog years—somehow worth more than a regular mile.
    Now Quinn tracked the little Ford like a missile, taking the left off 395 at the Pentagon/Crystal City exit, then the ramp to the Jeff Davis Highway. He stayed well back, leaving three vehicles as a cushion between him and his target, accelerating then tapping his brake in a sort of fluid Slinky dance. The Taurus moved into the right lane. Quinn glanced over his shoulder, then, with a slight lean of this body, took the right lane as well.
    He wore a black Transit riding jacket of heavy, microperforated leather and matching pants against the humid chill of a Washington December. The Aerostich suit was waterproof with removable crash armor to guard against any asphalt assaults. Quinn’s boss had seen to it that the Shop, a subunit of DARPA—the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—added level IIIA body armor for traditional ballistic protection along with a few other modifications like a wafer-thin cooling and heating system to bolster the suit’s amazing versatility. His Kimber ten-millimeter pistol, a small Beretta .22 with a XCaliber suppressor, and a thirteenth-century Japanese killing dagger, affectionately called Yawaraka-Te—or Gentle Hand—were all tucked neatly out of sight beneath the black jacket. A gray Arai helmet hid Quinn’s copper complexion and two-day growth of dark beard.
    They’d come from downtown, outside the Capitol on Constitution Avenue, under the Third Street Tunnel and onto 395. Though it was lunchtime, rush hour in D.C. seemed only to ebb slightly during the business day and the low winter sun glinted off a river of traffic. The Taurus looked remarkably like eighty percent of the other sedans on the road and Quinn had to concentrate as he moved from lane to lane to keep from losing track amid the flow.
    Knowing who was in the car made the hair bristle on Quinn’s neck. After a year of doing little but sitting back on his haunches and watching, he itched for the opportunity to make a move. Now it looked as though Hartman Drake had given him that chance. People accustomed to a diet of Kobe beef and champagne didn’t suddenly trade it all in for hamburger and tap water. The Speaker of the House of Representatives was certainly used to traveling in more style than the plain vanilla sedan. He had chosen the innocuous Taurus for a reason.
    Agents of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations were well known in law enforcement circles as experts at handling