Retribution (9781429922593) (11 page)

Brian's knees gave out and as he fell his momentum carried him forward and onto his side, at the shooter's feet. The man's eyes were lifeless, no expression in them whatsoever. The pistol was a 9mm subcompact Glock 26. A toy, but deadly in the right hands. And the son of a bitch had shot Cindy with it.

Breathing was getting tough, but all he could think about was the SEAL's dark humor: incoming rounds have the right of way and sucking chest wounds were nature's way of telling you to slow down.

“Why?” he managed to croak.

“For Usama.”

Everyone on the assault team that night in Abbottabad knew something like this was possible. A couple of days ago Pete Barnes and his wife had been shot to death in Florida. But his old boss over on the base coming up on his thirtieth year, told him that the word from the top was that the hit in Florida was an anomaly: “Some son of a bitch redneck with a grudge against the world opened fire at the museum. If he'd been targeting you guys he wouldn't have taken out Pete's wife.” Taking revenge on the assaulters was one thing, but killing the wives was stupid.

The shooter pointed his pistol at Brian's head.

“Why our wives?”

“Not just the wives,” the shooter said. His English had an odd accent that Brian couldn't quite place. Maybe German. This guy wasn't a redneck with a grudge. He was a pro.

But then what he had just said suddenly registered.
Not just the wives.

Brian started to roll over so that he could reach the bastard's legs and bring him down, stop him from hurting the boys, when a thunderclap burst inside his head.

 

SEVENTEEN

McGarvey met Weisse for breakfast at eight in the Bristol's smaller dining room. It was a weekday and the place was filled with businessmen, making it an anonymous venue. But the German BND officer seemed ill at ease.

“There was a bit of excitement last night at a parking ramp a few blocks from here,” Weisse said. “Two Turkish gentlemen who the Berlin police believe were involved in the drug and prostitution trade were found murdered. One had his neck broken. The other was shot to death, and his pistol was unloaded and field-stripped.”

Their waiter came and took their orders.

“I think that someone has taken notice that I'm here,” McGarvey said.

“It was your work?”

“Yeah. But what puzzles me is, why me? Why now? I don't see the connection.”

“I'm investigating the murder in Florida, and you've come to meet with me. Someone's watching.”

It's exactly what McGarvey figured Weisse would say. “Home-grown terrorist organizations usually don't have the wherewithal to keep tabs on intelligence officers.”

“But governments do. Pakistan?”

“I haven't been able to convince the DDO at Langley. Maybe you'll do a better job of it with your colonel.”

“Not without concrete proof, which the director says he needs before he can make his recommendations,” Weisse said. “You and I are in the same boat. But what the hell were you doing in that parking ramp?”

McGarvey told him about the dark-complected man across the street from the hotel. “I'm just about certain he was a Pakistani.”

“But you can't prove it.”

“No, but I think he was an ISI officer.”

“We have photos of just about everyone who works at their embassy. Would you mind looking at them?”

“He won't be there. Unless I miss my guess he came to Germany specifically to take me out.”

Weisse looked away for a moment. “He would have to have some good intelligence from your side of the pond. Who knew that you were coming here?”

“You,” McGarvey said.

“But I didn't know your work name, or where you were staying, until you phoned.”

“You did know that I was coming. If the leak came from your shop they could have posted a team with my photograph at the airport.”

“Did you spot anyone?”

“I wasn't really looking,” Mac said. “Anyway, if they'd doubled or tripled me they would have been hard to pick out.”

“How about at the CIA?”

“Only two people, both of whom I would trust with my life. And have in the past.”

Weisse nodded. “The only other possibility that I can see is that you became a target from the start, in which case you could have come under surveillance in Washington.”

McGarvey conceded the point.

“What's your next move?” the German asked him.

“Have the police been given my name?”

“No. As far as anyone is concerned it was good riddance to scum.”

“Then if you'll give me the files, I'll go back to Washington and see what I can piece together. My flight leaves around noon.”

Weisse took a CD jewel case out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. “We're stepping up our investigation of Schlueter and the people we've already identified in her organization. But once again our hands are tied without hard evidence. None of which we've been able to come up with yet, except for the incident in Florida. And we haven't been able to find any clear chain of evidence tying Schlueter to the kill.”

“But he worked for her organization.”

“We think so, but again there's no evidence that his act wasn't rogue.”

McGarvey's cell phone rang. It was Otto.

“Can you talk?”

“I'm with Captain Weisse.”

“It's happened again, this morning in Virginia Beach. A shooter or shooters unknown killed Brian Ridder—he was one of assaulters at Abbottabad. Also shot his wife to death and killed their three boys.”

“No witnesses?”

“No one's come forward so far.”

“What's Marty saying?”

“Not a word.”

“How about the navy?”

“Nothing. Both Barnes and Ridder were out of the service. No longer the navy's problem.”

“The other twenty-two guys need to be warned.”

“I was given strict orders twenty minutes ago to stay out of it. Came from State.”

McGarvey gave him his Air France flight number, which got to Dulles around 6:30
P.M.
“Have someone pick me up. I think this time we'll meet at your place. But tell whoever you send to watch their back. They came after me last night.”

“You okay?”

“Yes. I'll give you the details when I get back, but someone is definitely taking notice. And I have a feeling they're going to speed up their timetable now that I'm in the mix.”

“I'll try a guy I know at JSOC,” Otto said, and he rang off.

“Another one?” Weisse asked.

“Yeah, along with his wife and three kids.”

“Doesn't make any sense.”

“It does if you look at it from the ISI's viewpoint. They were embarrassed by the raid on bin Laden but they couldn't do a thing about it for fear we'd cut off their military aid. This operation is the next best thing.”

“Retribution.”

“It's looking more like it every day. I need you guys to put some pressure on Schlueter and her gang.”

“I'll have to pull some strings.”

“Pull them, Wolf, before it's too late.”

*   *   *

Pete was waiting for him just outside the customs and passport control area, a serious look on her pretty face. “As best as I could tell I came in clear,” she said. “Otto's already at his house waiting for us.”

“Audie?”

“They sent her back to the Farm.”

Audie was McGarvey's granddaughter; Otto and his wife Louise had adopted her after Mac's daughter and son-in-law were assassinated. It had been a staggeringly horrible time in his life, and in the lives of Otto and Louise; as a result, everyone doted on the girl, who still wasn't old enough to start kindergarten. Her go-to place when the bad guys were out and about was the Farm, which was the CIA's training facility on the York River, south of Washington.

They went outside to where Pete had parked her Nissan Altima in the arrivals area, a metro police card on the dash. On the way out to Otto's safe house in McLean, McGarvey adjusted his door mirror so that he could watch for a tail. But if anyone was back there he couldn't make them out.

“Otto said that you ran into a little trouble in Berlin.”

“The Pakistanis are definitely involved. But whether it's an independent group working with Schlueter or an ISI-sanctioned operation I don't know yet.”

“But your guess is ISI.”

“At arm's length. Plausible deniability and all that.”

“So if we catch the bastards with their hands in the cookie jar, it won't go any further.”

“Something like that.”

Pete glanced at him. “Doesn't matter to you either way.”

“Twenty-two guys are still on the line. They've done their part; now it's time for us to do ours.”

 

EIGHTEEN

Louise, tall, all arms and skinny legs, had a good cognac waiting for Mac at the McLean house, and they all sat around the kitchen table looking out over the backyard filled with a swing set and slide and other kid's toys. They'd tried to spoil Audie, but she never changed. She was a combination of her mother and grandmother—sweet and gentle most of the time, unless she was putting her foot down because she thought she was being treated like a baby.

“The guy you followed to the parking garage was Pakistani—you're sure of it?” Otto asked.

“His accent was right, and as far as I can see, the Pakistanis are the only ones with a vested interest in taking out the SEAL Team Six assaulters.”

“What about the Schlueter woman?” Otto asked.

“Probably financial, but she has her own ax to grind,” Mac said. He handed Otto the disk from Wolf. “The Germans know that she was married to an American naval officer stationed as a military liaison to the BND in Munich. Apparently they don't know the details, except that it turned out badly for her, and she could be looking to settle old scores.”

“Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned,” Louise said. “Is this guy still around. Do we know who he is?”

“Dick Cole. He's acting chief of staff for DEVGRU down in Oceana, Virginia.”

Louise made a sour face. “DEVGRU is SEAL Team Six, and I don't think I'm liking this very much. Are you suggesting this guy is helping his ex in some way?”

“The BND doesn't think so. I went through the stuff on the disk at an Air France biz center at Tegel, and it looked to me like the connection with Schlueter and her ex was nothing more than a motivator. Evidently, she not only hates her ex, but she hates Americans in general. The SEAL Team Six thing is just her way of earning a big payday from the Pakistanis.”

“You don't think it's coincidental, her going after the SEAL Team Six guys with or without the ISI's help and her ex's connection?”

“I don't know, but it's something I'm going to ask her the first time I get the chance. As far as I'm concerned, the connection stinks, but to believe that her ex is somehow working with her is a stretch.”

“Maybe you should ask him,” Pete suggested. “At the very least he might be able to tell us something about her that we can use.”

“If he'll talk to me,” McGarvey said. “But someone higher up the food chain may have put a muzzle on him and everyone else having anything to do with the team.”

“Well, it is about money,” Otto said. “I've found that much out. Schlueter has collected two million euros over the past several months, paid into half a dozen accounts in places as far away from Germany as the Caymans and as close as Warsaw. The problem so far is the source. I'm coming up with blanks, which tells me that the encryption and remote remailers her paymasters are using are damned good.”

“Government grade good?” Mac asked.

“Yeah, but new. Could be one of those hackers from Amsterdam. Some of those kids were pretty good. State-of-the-art shit.”

“The ones who hacked into our power grid?”

“Could be. But I'll find them, and if there's a connection back to Islamabad I'll nail it too.”

“If we can cut off the lady's funds, maybe she'll back off,” Pete said.

“Don't count on it,” Louise said.

“In the meantime I'm going over to see Walt, and get his take,” McGarvey said. “If someone is putting on the brakes, he'll at least tell me who it is.”

“Do you want me to tag along?” Otto asked.

“For now I want you to stick with the money trail. But see what else you can dig up on Captain Cole. Check his financials.”

“Tread lightly, Mac,” Pete said. “He might have been a son of a bitch and a wife beater, but it doesn't mean he's a traitor.”

*   *   *

Walter Page, the DCI, had a young guy in a white polo shirt and jeans waiting for McGarvey in the lobby of the OHB to escort him up to the seventh floor. He introduced himself as Dr. Steve Ellerin who'd been brought over from Harvard to help work out a political and intelligence scenario that made any sense for our future with Saudi Arabia.

“I've been given an office and a staff—better than mine at Harvard—and the run of the place, but for some reason they won't trust me with a gun,” he said grinning.

“Welcome to the club. They don't trust anyone else around here with guns, except for the security people.”

They were alone on the elevator up and Ellerin kept looking at McGarvey. “I've heard about you,” he said, just before they reached the seventh.

“Any of it good?”

Ellerin chuckled. “All of it interesting. You ever think about writing a book?”

“Not about this,” McGarvey said as the doors opened.

They went down to the DCI's suite where the Harvard doc left him. “Nice to meet you, sir.”

Page's secretary announced him and he went in. Page sat behind his big desk. Carleton Patterson, the CIA's general counsel who'd been with the company for as long as anyone could remember, sat across from him.