Retribution (9781429922593) (15 page)

“It's a definite go, then?” Engel asked.

“Yes,” Pam said. She passed each of them an iPhone. “Programmed are the names, addresses, and brief bios of your targets. You'll each do three tonight. They're all in the immediate Norfolk–Virginia Beach area and I've grouped them in the general vicinity of each other to minimize your travel time. Once you've eliminated one target you will immediately go to the next, erasing the first from the phone on the way.”

“Fifteen in one night will create a hell of a stir,” Volker said, the happiest anyone had seen him in a while.

Pam passed out their new passports and other papers, as well as tickets on separate airlines for destinations ranging from Mexico City to Caracas. They were to make their own arrangements for getting to San Diego for the next phase. “You'll be leaving first thing in the morning, and I'll send word when I expect you to be in California. But the delay will not be very long.”

No one objected.

She passed out bundles of cash, $15,000 to each of them, along with the Glock pistols, silencers, and ammunition.

All of them checked the pistols' actions and loads before they looked at the passports, papers, travel documents, and cash. The KSK had trained them to be thorough. First priority: make sure of your tools.

“Fifteen tonight—if nothing goes wrong—which makes seventeen,” Heiser said. “Leaves seven more? From the original team.”

“Plus one.”

They all looked up.

“Kirk McGarvey,” Pam said. “Anyone heard of him?”

“Former CIA director,” Volker said. “Supposed to be some kind of badass. But I'd heard that he bought the farm down in Cuba a while back.”

“You heard wrong. And he's gotten himself involved in trying to save some lives. He might even be here in Norfolk tonight, the white knight in shining armor.”

“Could be a problem.”

“Whoever takes him down gets a bonus—four hundred thousand euros.”

“I'm looking forward to meeting the gentleman,” Bruns said.

“Good to know, Klaus. But you'll have to earn the bonus before you spend it.”

“The bastard is ancient.”

“Fifty.”

“
Leicht,
” Bruns said. Easy.

“I hope you're right. It'd be the best bonus I've ever paid.”

“Do you think this man will be a problem?” Volker asked.

“It's a real possibility,” Pam said. “One that we have to consider. But think on this: the man did serve as the CIA's director, but before that and since then, he's been involved in what they call ‘special projects.' Black ops.”

Volker nodded. “The man is an assassin.”

“A very good one.”

“I understand. He's just like us.”

Pam nodded. From what Naisir had told her, McGarvey was nothing like her operators. The man was a killer, for sure. Like a James Bond. But he worked for his country, not for money.

“Of course one can never be certain about that aspect, because the man is wealthy in his own right,” Naisir had said. “Worth at least several millions.”

“Yet according to you he teaches philosophy at some small college in Florida. How much sense does that make?”

“From our way of thinking, not much. But be very careful, Ms Schlueter, that his study of Voltaire does not blind you to his formidable abilities.”

 

TWENTY-FIVE

Wiski and Wonder lived next door to each other in matching one-story bungalows, with carports, ratty little lawns, and roofs that needed repairs in a Norfolk neighborhood called Hollywood Homes, which was a subdivision of Lake Edwards. Their houses were at the end of a dead-end street within sight of the lake.

The neighborhood was quiet, lights on in almost all of the houses, but no traffic, no one outside, quiet except for someone's stereo playing in one of the houses.

It was two when McGarvey showed up, backing his dark blue rental Taurus in the driveway of a house with a
FOR SALE
sign on the lawn.

No cars were parked on the street; though many of the carports were filled with junk, the cars, and in two cases pickup trucks, were parked in the driveways or on the lawns. Even in the dark the neighborhood looked unkempt, and he thought that it was a hell of a place for people who had served their country, especially at the level these guys had, to end up.

He lowered the window and sat back low so that only the top of his head would show and settled down to wait.

A dog barked somewhere. He sat up ten minutes later when he heard two pistol shots from the apartment complex across the lake. He waited a full five minutes listening for sirens, but if the police were ever summoned they weren't responding.

His cell phone vibrated. It was Otto.

“I picked up a nine-one-one call from one of our guys south of Naval Air Station Oceana four minutes ago and gave the cops the heads-up. Turned out to be a false alarm; one of the neighbors came over with a six-pack.”

“Did they ask who you were and how you hacked into their system?”

“I didn't give them the chance, and there's no way they'll trace my call. But so far the rest of the numbers have been quiet. How about you?”

“Someone across the lake fired a couple of shots, sounded like a pistol—nine or ten millimeter—a few minutes ago.”

“Nothing showing on any of the police channels in your area.”

“Maybe the neighbors over there are used to it,” McGarvey said. “Anything from Pete or Wolf?”

“They showed up about fifteen minutes ago, but I haven't heard anything.”

“Give them a call and make sure everything is okay. Something starts to go down, I want to hear about it immediately.”

“You've got the willies?” Otto asked.

McGarvey was about to reply when the hackles on the back of his neck rose. He turned in time to see a dark figure darting between two houses across the street on the side facing a strip of woods away from the lake, three doors down from Wiski's place.

“Might have something,” he said softly.

He waited for a few moments to see if whoever it was showed up on the other side of the house. It was possible that one of the neighbors was out and had gone back inside.

“Mac?”

The figure darted across the open backyard to the rear of the next house.

“Looks like it's going down now,” McGarvey said getting out of the car.

“I'll give Pete and Wolf the heads-up. Do you want backup?”

McGarvey ran across the street and headed toward the cul-de-sac. “I'm going to try to take this guy alive. But if it starts to get noisy and someone calls the cops, let me know.”

“Will do,” Otto said.

McGarvey took out his pistol and made it to the end of the block; the neighborhood was almost deathly silent. A couple of lights were on in one of the houses behind him, but all the others were dark. Even the one streetlight was burned out.

He pulled up behind a pickup truck in the driveway of the house next door to Wiski's and listened for a long ten seconds, until he thought he heard a quiet shuffle of footsteps on gravel.

Easing to the left, he crossed to the front of the SEAL's little house, and at the east corner he peered around the side in time to see a man dressed in dark slacks and a dark shirt of some kind doing something to a window.

“Not this time,” McGarvey said, raising his pistol.

The man leaped to the left almost as agilely as a ballet dancer, pulled a pistol and fired two silenced shots, both of them plowing into the side of the house.

Mac fired once, aiming low for the man's legs, but missing as the figure disappeared around the back of the house, firing a third and fourth shot over his shoulder.

Sprinting back to the opposite side of the house Mac was in time to see the figure dart between the two houses. He gave chase, stopping briefly at the rear corner to take a quick look. But the yard was empty. Nothing moved in the darkness.

“I don't mean to kill you unless it's necessary,” Mac said, scanning the shoreline.

Something moved behind him.

“How kind of you, Herr McGarvey,” a man said, in a heavy German accent.

Mac rolled around the side of the house an instant before a pistol was fired inches from the back of his head; the shot, even though suppressed, was very loud at such close range.

The man grunted something.

Mac rolled back around the corner, the muzzle of his silenced pistol connecting sharply with the man's broad forehead. Engel reared back and Mac stepped forward, keeping the pistol in direct contact with the guy's head. He got the instant impression that he was in a cage with a wild but calculating animal.

“Drop your weapon,” McGarvey said.

Engel moved his head left at the same moment that he batted McGarvey's gun away. He raised his own pistol, firing off one snap shot at hip level, just missing McGarvey.

Mac managed to grab the German's gun hand and, with his other in the guy's face, forced him back against the side of the house. Except for the silenced shots this was all almost completely noiseless.

Slowly Engel slumped back, releasing his grip on his pistol, letting McGarvey take it from his hand and toss it aside.

Mac stepped back. “How did you know that I would be here tonight?” he asked, though he didn't expect an answer that would be of any use. It wasn't going to be that easy.

Engel was outwardly calm. He shrugged. “What now?”

“You and I are going someplace where we can have a little talk about SEAL Team Six and Frau Schlueter's interests in them.”

“I don't think so,” Engel said, and he produced a Glock 81 field knife, which looked something like a slimmed-down version of the U.S. Special Forces KA-BAR. Deadly in the right hands.

Mac stepped back out of range, his hands to either side. “The KSK fields some sharp operators, but of course the stupid ones like you and your pal down in Florida and the others out tonight usually riff out. That your story?”

Engel said something in German under his breath and charged, feinting first to the right. McGarvey waited for the actual thrust from the left and managed to deflect it, hooking the German's arm under his left, and bending the man's wrist back nearly to the point of breaking.

Wordlessly Engel tried to smash his fist into the side of Mac's head, but each time Mac slipped the blow and increased the pressure on the man's knife hand, forcing him back against the side of the house again.

“A jail cell is better than a pauper's grave, don't you think?” Mac said.

Engel hooked a leg around McGarvey's and they went down, Mac on the bottom. Engel slowly brought the tip of the knife around so that it was inches away from Mac's throat.

For a long beat or two, McGarvey resisted, but then all at once he caved in, rolling left as the knife came down. This time he snatched the blade out of the German's hand, flipped it end over end, and rapped the heavy pommel sharply against the man's forehead, momentarily dazing him.

Getting out from underneath, McGarvey pulled the syringe kit out of his pocket and injected a few cc's of methohexital directly into the side of Engel's neck. He needed the man docile for what came next. The German was struggling out of his momentary daze, but the powerful sedative took hold almost immediately and he lay back, his body going slack except for the rise and fall of his chest.

McGarvey found both pistols and pocketed them, then quickly searched the German, coming up with a cell phone.

The neighborhood remained quiet.

He hit the speed dial and a woman answered immediately. “Steffen?”

“I have your man. Call the other two off and go home, Ms. Schlueter. It's over for tonight.”

The woman was silent for a long time. When she spoke it sounded as if she was talking in her sleep, her voice dreamy and distant. “For tonight,” she said and she was gone.

Mac phoned Otto and told him what had happened. “Nothing from Pete or Wolf yet?”

“No. You okay?”

“Fine. Have them meet me at Landmark and have the crew standing by for immediate takeoff.”

“Do you want me to call Martinez?”

“I'll do it,” McGarvey said. “We dodged a bullet this time, but it's not over.”

“It never is, kemo sabe,” Otto said.

Engel was heavy, but not impossibly so. McGarvey managed to heave him off the ground into a fireman's carry and headed back to where he had parked his car.

 

TWENTY-SIX

Raul Martinez was waiting for them at a government hangar on the side of Miami International Airport opposite the civilian terminal. The morning sun was not up yet; the airport just starting to come alive with the first commercial flights out.

On the way down from Norfolk, Wolf had identified their prisoner as Steffen Engel, a former KSK hand-to-hand instructor, one of the serious badasses in the Kommados who'd been kicked out for excessive force.

“Definitely one of Schlueter's handpicked shooters,” Wolf said. “But there's little or no chance he'll cooperate with us, no matter how persuasive you think you are. At least not here in the States. Maybe the Saudis would have better luck.”

McGarvey glanced at Pete, who had a little sad smile on her lips. She'd told him once that sometimes she might not like the method, but if the reasons were strong enough she'd have no problem.

“It's the real world,” he'd told her.

“Shitty.”

Martinez, who was the CIA's chief of operations in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood around the Calle Ocho, was a slender dark man who knew just about everyone in south Florida and the Keys, along with most of their secrets. But Cuba was fast becoming a cause of the past. Fidel was dead, his brother retired, and the exiles were getting old; memories were fading, becoming less urgent each year.

He'd arrived with two husky Cubanos in coveralls in a light gray panel van with
FROSTPROOF AC SERVICE
and a Hialeah logo on the sides. When McGarvey came down the stairs Martinez gave him a hug.