Time of Attack Read Online Free Page B

sly wink with his good eye. “Camille likes it when I wear the patch to bed. She says it’s like wrestlin’ with a James Bond villain.”
    “You’ve been waiting all day to tell me that, haven’t you?” Quinn said.
    “Maybe.” The big man laughed. “Speakin’ of wrestling with villains, how’s your baby brother? Is our pretty little Russian friend still takin’ care of him?”
    “He’ll be in the hospital for the next week or so.” Quinn’s younger brother, Bo, had been wounded in the same gunfight where Jacques injured his eye. “And yes, the boss worked it out with State so she can stay in the States for a while. But, her allegiance is to mother Russia. She’ll likely slip away someday soon when Bo’s heart is healthy enough to break.”
    Prone to fits of pensive philosophy, the big Cajun turned to gaze across the concrete deck at the bride and groom. He shook his head. “Damn women, they get us all, later or sooner. If you’re single, they sneak up at you when you ain’t lookin’ and convince you you’ll just die if you don’t marry ’em. If you are married, then one comes along, sneaks up at you, and does her level best to make you single. They do it just for giggles, I expect.”
    Quinn scoffed, looking at the Marine’s raven-haired wife, where she sat on the concrete wall with a blanket across her shoulder, nursing her baby, Henry—which Jacques pronounced closer to Ornery . Somehow, between Thibodaux’s repeated deployments to the Middle East, he’d found the time to father seven sons. Each of the older six now wore a black eye patch to show solidarity for his daddy.
    “I don’t know,” Quinn said, “you seem pretty settled.”
    “Oh, I am, l’ami.” Jacques gave a somber nod. “And Camille’s pretty good with a knife, if I ever decide I ain’t.”
    “So,” Quinn mused, half interested, half placating his friend’s desire to philosophize about females. “You think a woman will be the end of me?”
    The Cajun smacked Quinn on the back with a roaring laugh. “You kiddin’ me, beb? You’re here with the hottest jolie fille at the party, meantime you still broodin’ over your ex. You’re damn right it’ll be a woman to bring you down.”
     
     
    A thousand meters to the west, the sweet hint of peppermint and gun oil hung in a deadly cloud among the shadowed boughs of a thick juniper. Not so tall as to stand out from its surrounding neighbors, the tree stood on a swell of earth across Academy Drive, with a perfect firing lane to the concrete deck in front of the cadet chapel.
    A young Japanese woman settled among the branches, her almond eye behind a powerful Leupold scope. Strong legs entwined gnarled limbs, boots against the peeling bark of the trunk. Braced but relaxed, she melded into the lines and shadows of the tree like a leopardess in the relative comfort of her hide. Thick black hair hung across the oval features of her face like a sniper veil, parting to fall around each side of the .338 Lapua rifle. She was still years from thirty, but the flint-hard look in her eyes overshadowed her youthfulness. She’d learned to mask the hardness, but if anyone with discernment looked at her long enough, the age of her experience showed through. Two men had questioned her—each during an intimate moment when she’d let her guard down. She’d answered each in turn with a dagger to the throat.
    She was dressed as a tourist, and her green long-sleeve T-shirt and dark jeans were tight enough that anyone from the Security Police would not think to look at anything else. An hour before, she’d batted her eyes at the baby-faced airman as she’d come through the North Gate of the Academy, shoulders relaxed with the full knowledge that if he tried to search her vehicle she’d kill him before he got to the trunk.
    Of course, he had smiled and waved her through.
    Once on base, she’d parked in the lot at the Academy Visitors Center beside a van belonging to a group of elderly