Allah's Scorpion (50 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
“Get the car ready, but send the others up here.”
“How?” Sampson demanded.
“The west stairwell, you idiot!” Graham bellowed. “McGarvey is here.” He slammed down the phone, checked the load on his Steyr, and started to the east stairwell.
Bin Laden came to the door of his prayer room. He was dressed now in his traditional Arab garb of headdress and flowing white robes. “Captain Graham,” he called.
Graham stopped in his tracks and turned back, the pistol hidden at his side behind his leg.
“I would like a word with you about Mr. McGarvey,” bin Laden said. He was flanked by his two mujahideen personal bodyguards, armed with Kalashnikov rifles.
“What about him?”
“There is a possibility that he traced you here after your meeting this evening,” bin Laden said, his voice soft as if he were talking to a schoolboy. He stepped aside. “Please join me. We’ll have tea and discuss how you will deal with this problem. And with your next assignment.”
“First let me fetch something from my room,” Graham said.
“If it’s your weapon you’re after, you will not be needing it. I have sent for help.”
“Okay,” Graham said, but he spun on his heel and ducked around the corner before bin Laden’s bodyguards could react.
At the end of the corridor, he tore open the stairwell door just as the first of the two mujahideen opened fire from the end of the corridor, but by then he was racing down the stairs, taking them three at a time.
He had no idea how McGarvey had found this place, but with a little bit of luck the bastard would be coming through the garage, that by now was unguarded except for Sampson, whose pistol’s firing pin was missing.
He wanted McGarvey dead, but first he wanted the American to kill bin Laden, because the worldwide repercussions would be so great that no one from the CIA or al-Quaida would bother looking for one British ex-pat.
M. A. JINNAH COMMERCIAL CENTRE
Stepping off the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor, McGarvey heard the brief burst of automatic weapons fire directly below. It was a single Kalashnikov and very close, no more than one or two floors down, which at least meant that Otto wasn’t involved.
He stopped in his tracks for just a moment, to wait for more gunfire, but the building fell silent again; no screams, no shouts, nothing.
He could think of any number of possibilities, not the least of which involved Graham, who might have outlived his usefulness to al-Quaida. He keyed his lapel mike as he crossed the corridor to a pair of highly polished oak doors. The brass plaque on the wall identified the offices as MI-RANI TRADING COMPANY: KARACHI, BERLIN, PARIS, LONDON.
“Otto, I’m on twenty-sixth, somebody’s shooting just below me.”
“I didn’t hear anything,” Rencke radioed back. “But you’re going to have company. Two guys from the garage are on their way up the stairs. The only one left is Graham’s driver, and it looks as if he’s getting set to get out of there. He found the tracker and destroyed it. What do you want me to do?”
“Graham’s probably on his way down. Make sure Gloria and Bernstein have the heads-up. But tell them to be careful.”
“I read you,” Bernstein radioed.
The channel was silent for a moment. “Gloria?” McGarvey radioed.
There was no answer.
“Check on her, Joe,” McGarvey ordered.
“You got it.”
“Otto, I want you to shut down the main elevators. If you don’t hear from me sooner, turn them back on in ten minutes and get the hell out of the building.” McGarvey set his bag down, and using the same universal card key Rencke had used downstairs, unlocked the door and let himself in.
“It’s done,” Rencke radioed.
“I’m in, shut down the alarm system for the entire floor.”
“Stand by,” Rencke said.
The anteroom was large and expensively decorated with ornately framed seascapes on the walls, several tall plants, and a tasteful grouping of dark wine leather furniture on an Oriental rug facing a receptionist’s desk.
“Done,” Rencke radioed.
“Start the clock now,” McGarvey said. He crossed to the door beyond the reception room, let himself into a plushly carpeted corridor, and hurried to the palatial office at the end. This one was at the rear of the building, opposite from the M. R. Kayani Road’s main entrance, and was furnished like the reception room with massive, dark leather and oak furniture, including a very large executive’s desk and credenza in front of tall glass windows.
He opened the nylon bag on the desk, took out a Kevlar vest and black jumpsuit, and quickly pulled them on. Next he donned a rappelling harness with caribiners, and stuffed his zippered pockets with several small blocks of Semtex plastic explosive and pencil fuses, three spare magazines of ammunition for his 9 mm Walther pistol and three for a Heckler & Koch M8 short-barrelled carbine, and several H & W E182 flash-bang grenades, plus an evidence kit.
Next he took out a 150-foot coil of nylon rope from the bag, and quickly tied a double loop around the massive desk, which would serve as an anchor, and then swept the credenza clear of a stack of files, a half-dozen books held in place by heavy stone bookends, and a water carafe and several glasses on a silver tray.
He attached two suction cup window glass handholds onto the window, and then using a battery-powered glass cutter, removed a four-foot-round section from the window, careful to make sure that the lower edge was below the top of the credenza so that the sharp glass would not cut the rope.
He set the heavy piece of windowpane aside, the warm, humid night air wafting in on a light breeze, the sound of a siren in the distance. He slung the M8 carbine over his shoulder, then threaded the rope through the snap rings attached to his harness, paid the long end out the window, climbed up on the credenza, and slipped backwards through the hole in the glass.
Balancing 250 feet above the city, his feet on the window ledge at the floor level, McGarvey paused for just a moment to take stock. The two guards from the basement were on their way up to the twenty-fifth floor because Rencke’s GPS tracker had been found. They knew someone was coming, and they would be getting ready to spring their trap.
But they couldn’t know yet from what direction the attack would come.
McGarvey gingerly rappelled down a few feet to a point where he could lean over and look into the window below. The room was mostly in darkness except for a dim light spilling through a partially open door. From what little he could make out there were bare mattresses scattered on the floor, and perhaps knapsacks and other things piled here and there. The room was being used as a dormitory for bin Laden’s mujahideen. For the moment, however, it was empty, which was a bit of luck.
He lowered himself the rest of the way down, and then holding that position, took out a small block of Semtex, which he plastered to the center of the window. He inserted one of the pencil fuses, set it for ten seconds, then scrambled twenty feet to the left, beyond the edge of the glass.
The plastique blew with a small, sharp bang, spraying shards of glass inside the room as well as outward into the night air like a million diamonds suspended for just a second until they began to rain down onto the backstreet below.
The countdown had just begun.
McGarvey unslung the M8, switched the safety catch to the off position, and kicked away from the side of the building, swinging in a short arc to fly through the shattered window into the dormitory.
As he landed inside, a dark figure flung open the door and raised a Kalashnikov rifle. McGarvey fired a short burst from the hip with one hand,
stitching two shots into the mujahideen’s chest, slamming the man off his feet back into the corridor.
stitching two shots into the mujahideen’s chest, slamming the man off his feet back into the corridor.
He disengaged himself from the rope, then threw off the rappelling harness, and crossed the room to the door. Someone was shouting something in Arabic, and at least two people were coming up the hall.
McGarvey pulled out a flash-bang grenade, pulled the pin, waited for just a couple seconds, and then tossed it around the door frame out into the corridor.
Someone shouted a warning just as the grenade went off with an eye-searing flash of intense light and a tremendous bang.
McGarvey stuck the carbine around the corner and sprayed the corridor. Pulling back, he ejected the spent magazine, popped in another one, and rolled left through the door.
Three mujahideen were down, blood splattered on the walls and ceiling, and pooling up beneath two of the bodies. The third man, blood pumping from a neck wound, had grappled a pistol out of his tunic and was raising it.
“Don’t,” McGarvey warned, but the man managed to pull the hammer back. McGarvey shot him in the head, killing him instantly, then sprinted down the corridor.
There was no way to know how many of bin Laden’s freedom fighters had been holed up with him, but the dormitory room had mattresses for at least ten. By now they knew that they were under assault, and if bin Laden were actually here right now, they would have called for help, and would be barricading themselves somewhere. Or they would be trying to make a run for it. Either way there were probably other well-armed, well-motivated men up here perfectly willing to give their lives for the cause.
But there’d been gunfire, so there’d already been some sort of trouble here tonight.
The end of the corridor opened to a large room decorated only with prayer rugs facing a raised platform on which lounging pillows were piled. McGarvey held up around the corner, waiting for someone else to show up. But the building had fallen deathly silent.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no one was coming up behind him, then, girding himself, stepped around the corner and zigzagged his way across the big prayer room to a pair of doors, one of them partially ajar.
He looked through in time to see a mujahideen just a few feet away down a short corridor, a Kalashnikov pointed at the door. A second armed man was waiting farther down the corridor at an open door, he too held a Kalashnikov in the ready-fire position.
McGarvey fell back, away from the doors, an instant before the nearest freedom fighter opened fire, the 7.62mm rounds slamming through the door, fragments hitting McGarvey in his right hip, and left arm, causing him to lose his grip on the carbine, and two striking him in the chest, shoving him backwards off his feet.
The Kevlar vest had saved his life, but the wind had been knocked out of him, and a wave of dizziness and nausea washed over him. For just a moment he saw spots and jagged bolts of black lightning in front of his face.
He managed to pull out his pistol and push the safety catch to the off position, as the half-destroyed door slowly opened and the mujahideen extended the Kalashnikov around the corner. A moment later the freedom fighter ducked his head through the opening and McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of the forehead.
The man’s head snapped back and his legs collapsed under him.
McGarvey scrambled away from the doorway as the second mujahideen opened fire from the end of the corridor, bullet fragments and pieces from the door flying all around him.
At six hundred rounds per minute, it took only a few seconds for the rifle to run out of ammunition.
Despite his injuries, McGarvey scrambled to the open door in time to see the mujahideen at the end of the corridor slam a fresh magazine into the weapon. The man looked up as McGarvey fired three shots, two catching him in the chest, and the third in the throat, shoving him backwards into the room.
The building fell silent again. McGarvey braced himself against the door frame as he cocked his head to listen. But there was nothing. No sounds to indicate that anyone else was alive up here.
Rencke and Gloria were not to initiate radio contact, lest it be a distraction at a critical time. And for a few seconds McGarvey felt a tremendous wave of loneliness and depression wash over him. Everything, every person and place he knew and loved seemed to be a million miles away, completely inaccessible. He had been in situations like these countless
times in his career, so this was nothing new—coming out of the night, an assassin stalking his prey—but there’d never been anything glamorous or exciting about what he did.
times in his career, so this was nothing new—coming out of the night, an assassin stalking his prey—but there’d never been anything glamorous or exciting about what he did.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes for just a moment. He wanted to think about Katy, bring a picture of her face into his mind’s eye, but he shoved that thought away. He could not afford the distraction, not until this business was over.
Pushing away from the door frame, McGarvey hobbled slowly down the corridor, stepping over the body of the first mujahideen, careful to keep out of the blood that was soaking into the carpeting.
All of his senses were alert for the slightest sign that he was walking into a trap. He stopped a few feet from the open door. The second mujahideen was lying on his back beneath a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. His rifle was on the floor within reach beside him, but he posed no further threat. He was obviously dead.
McGarvey went the rest of the way, holding up just at the threshold before he leaned forward to see inside, and he almost fired his pistol on instinct alone.
A clean-shaven Osama bin Laden, dressed in white robes, sitting cross-legged on a large prayer rug, an open Qur’an lying on his lap, his Kalashnikov propped against the wall behind him, looked up, and smiled sadly. “Good morning, Mr. McGarvey,” he said softly. “It seems as if Allah has intertwined our destinies against all odds.”
McGarvey peered around the corner to make sure no one else was in the room before he stepped through the doorway, over the mujahideen’s body.
“Congratulations for a job well done. You have been a formidable opponent.”
McGarvey glanced over his shoulder. It wouldn’t take the two men from the parking garage much longer to get up here. It was something bin Laden probably knew, so he was stalling for time.
“I presume that you mean to take me away so that I can stand trial,” bin Laden said. He seemed to be amused. “So that a mockery will be made of me before the entire world.”
“No,” McGarvey said softly, not sure if bin Laden had heard him. By now the Pakistani authorities had probably been alerted to the explosion and the gunfire up here, and were likely on their way.
“In any event I would welcome a public trial,” bin Laden said, a smug expression on his long face. “Your lawyers will not be able to prove a thing against me, because in Allah’s eyes, I am innocent.”
McGarvey keyed his communications unit. “Otto, unlock the main elevators, and get ready to move. I think we’ll be having company any minute.”
“Will do,” Rencke radioed back.
“As an innocent man I have nothing to fear from your American justice,” bin Laden said.
McGarvey shook his head. He didn’t know if there was any clear definition of what evil was. Soldiers opposing each other on a battlefield couldn’t be included. But if any man fit the notion of evil, bin Laden was one. “Wrong answer,” McGarvey said, with great difficulty. “Just before 9/11 you told me that no one was innocent in this war. That includes you.” He raised his pistol.
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