Retribution (9781429922593) (27 page)

“You should not have come,” he said at length. “I have the situation under complete control.”

“I'm here, and I want to meet him.”

“As you wish.”

*   *   *

One block out Naisir called his wife to let her know he was close, but she didn't answer until the third ring, and his gorge rose.

“We've had some trouble,” she said, and she sounded out of breath.

“Is it McGarvey? I'm just around the corner.”

“No. It's the woman. She murdered Sipra. The others want to take her apart, but I convinced them to wait until you arrived. But the situation won't remain stable for much longer.”

“Open the gate.”

The gate opened as Naisir came down the street, and he drove into the courtyard, the gate immediately closing behind him. Ayesha met him at the door.

“It was your foolish order to have her raped,” she said. She was agitated. And she eyed Pam. “What are you doing here? We don't need you.”

“I think you do.”

Jat, the smallest of the four dacoits was waiting in the hall. The look on his face was neutral.

“Where is the woman?” Naisir demanded.

“This is not what we contracted for.”

“Where is she?”

“Upstairs. Swati is guarding her. We demand that she be eliminated immediately.”

“You demand nothing,” Naisir said.

The dacoit looked at Pam and Ayesha, and his expression darkened. “This is not right.”

Naisir turned to start up the stairs, but his wife put a hand on his arm. “There is a further complication,” she said. “I put the battery back in her phone and gave it to her. I wanted to try one last time to make her see reason and call off McGarvey.”

Naisir held his temper in check. He and Ayesha had had their differences, but he could not honestly remember the last time they'd argued or been cross with each other. She'd grown up with five older brothers, and that pressure, added to her privileged upbringing, had made her a fighter. She was an intelligent, tough, opinionated woman—not without loving kindness and gentleness—but a backbone of pure steel when the need arose.

“She is a trained CIA agent. You should not have done that.”

“Nor should you have ordered her rape.”

“Stay here,” he told his wife. “And you too,” he told Pam.

Upstairs Swati was standing in the open doorway to the front bedroom.

Naisir dismissed him, but it took the man forever to finally turn around and leave, an expression of insolence and even hate on his face. He and the others wanted blood.

Pete was seated on the floor, talking to someone on the phone.

Naisir pulled out his pistol as he strode across the room to her and placed the muzzle against her forehead. “Give me the telephone.”

Sipra's body had been removed, but the table and one of the chairs were overturned, and there was a light brown stain on the wood floor.

“Got to go,” Pete said. She ended the call and handed up the phone. “The last guy who tried to kill me didn't end up so good.”

“Who were you talking to?”

“You wouldn't know him.”

“McGarvey?”

“Actually, no. So how about either pulling the trigger or taking the fucking pistol out of my face?”

 

FORTY-SIX

Milt Thomas parked his taxi across the street from the tea shop and walked over to where McGarvey was seated. Just at that moment, Otto phoned.

“I just finished talking to Pete,” Otto said. “The body of the dacoit she killed was removed, and a second one was guarding her when Naisir showed up.”

“Exactly where is she?”

“I got a good fix before Naisir took the phone and yanked the battery. She's in an upstairs room in the middle of the building, with no outside wall. But before she disconnected she told me that she was sure she heard at least two other voices downstairs, which confirms what we already knew. In addition to Naisir and his wife, there were four dacoits—three of them now—plus the Schlueter woman. All of them are most likely armed, but they're going to want to know what we know before they do anything.”

“If they get the chance,” McGarvey said. “Milt's here with his cab. Soon as I get Pete out, we'll make our way back here and then out to the airport.”

“You're not going to wait until tonight?”

“They'll be expecting me to wait until then. I'm going now. Call if you see trouble coming our way.”

“If he was going to call the cops or some of his own people he wouldn't have hired the dacoits, nor would Schlueter have shown up. They want you and Pete dead, after which they'll get rid of your bodies somewhere up in the mountains. It'd be hard to convince anyone that you hadn't just vanished into thin air. Maybe a kidnapping by rebels that went bad,”

A waiter came and Thomas ordered a sweet tea.

McGarvey got to his feet. “Unless something goes wrong, Pete and I should be back here before you finish your tea.”

“What if something does go wrong?”

“Walk away from it. Otto will know what to do.”

Thomas nodded. “Good luck, Mr. Director.”

*   *   *

It took about six minutes for Mac to make it around the corner and to the end of the short block halfway down which was Naisir's safe house. A small pickup truck trundled by, but the neighborhood remained deserted, even though he got the distinct feeling that someone was watching him.

Crossing the street, he took one of the bricks of Semtex out of his pocket, and when he reached the safe house he used the adhesive strip to attach it to the gate just below the top hinge. He inserted an electric fuse into the explosive, setting the timer for ten minutes, then rang the doorbell.

 

FORTY-SEVEN

A large black bird flew overhead at the same time the sun was covered by a small cloud, and the gate swung open with a slight squeal of metal on metal. For just an instant McGarvey was half-convinced the three things were a sort of omen. Pakistan was an evil place.

But he didn't believe in such things. He had come here initially to kill Naisir or at the very least talk him into pulling the financing from Schlueter. But now he was here simply to rescue Pete. Nothing else was on his immediate agenda. Everything else—stopping the attacks against SEAL Team Six and exacting revenge for the two and their families who had already been murdered—would have to come later.

He'd had nightmares about these kinds of scenarios for most of his adult life. Every woman he'd come to care for, including his wife and daughter, had been killed because of him. Because of what he did. Because of who he was. Who he worked for. The operations he'd carried out.

He started across the courtyard where the BMW, the Fiat, and the Lexus were parked in a row and thought about the people inside: what they wanted, and what they were willing to do to get it. That and their arrogance would be their downfall.

The battered metal front door, its paint chipped, swung inward and Naisir was there, an Italian-made 12-bore Franchi SPAS 12 antiriot shotgun in his right hand, the muzzle pointed at McGarvey.

“You're sooner than we expected.”

“Ordering one of the dacoits you hired to rape the woman I came with changed everything, Major. Hand her over to me and we'll walk away.”

“This morning you told me that you wanted to have a talk with Ms. Schlueter.”

“That'll have to wait. All I want now is an exchange.”

Naisir smiled faintly. “Exchange for what? I have both of the women here.”

“Exchange for your life.”

“You arrogant bastard,” Naisir said, and he racked a round in the short-stock shotgun and pointed it at McGarvey's chest. “I'll shoot you where you stand.”

“Do it and you'll end up in front of a firing squad or at the end of a rope, and you know it. Your government would have no trouble sacrificing one of its low-ranking officers to make sure its relations with Washington were not damaged.”

“Your bodies will end up at the bottom of some mountain gorge up north.”

“You might want to ask yourself what I was doing cruising around the Secretariat and parliament buildings. And why I parked in front of the German embassy, where I sat on a bench and made a couple of calls.”

“Doesn't make any difference.”

“There are security cameras all over the place up there, so a lot of people know that the former director of the CIA was nosing around. And right about now, they're asking themselves why.”

“There is no connection to me.”

“I also stopped by your house and left a message that I wanted to speak to you. And the people at the hotel would certainly not hide the fact that you and I met. The real fact of the matter is, the only reason you've made it this far in the ISI is because of your wife's family. Their patronage connections have pulled you along, and the sad part is that you probably are too dumb to understand it.”

“For god's sake, if the man wants to talk to me let him in,” Schlueter said from inside the front hall.

“Are you armed?” Naisir asked McGarvey.

“Of course I am.”

“Give it to me.”

“I'll tell you what. My pistol is in a holster under my jacket at the small of my back. If I try to reach for it you can go ahead and shoot me. You can always claim that it was self-defense.”

“Kill him now,” another woman said. It was Naisir's wife.

“No,” Schlueter said sharply. “First we need to know what proof he has. If he wants to trade, it'll be his woman for information.”

Naisir came out of the house and stepped aside, the shotgun steady in his hands.

McGarvey moved up to the open door and hesitated just a moment at the threshold. The Schlueter woman, halfway down the short corridor that led to the rest of the house, was flanked by two large men, all of them holding pistols. A third man stood partway up the stairs, a pistol in one hand, while he held tightly to Pete's arm with his other. Ayesha was halfway up the stairs, the only one not armed.

Bringing Pete out of the room where she had been kept was a mistake.

“You okay?” he asked her.

“Just dandy. Did you bring the cavalry?”

“No. But they know where we are.”

“You shouldn't have come.”

McGarvey stepped inside. “I wanted to talk to Frau Schlueter. Her husband said to say hello.”

“Well, here we are,” Pam said. “And unless you've brought some proof that I'm in any way involved with the two unfortunate incidents in the States, I'll kill you and the woman.”

“Major Naisir and I bumped into each other in Berlin, and after we waterboarded Steffen Engel he mentioned Major Naisir's name. And here you are, the two of you, waiting for me. I wonder why that is?”

“You're a loose cannon, Mr. Director,” Schlueter said. “You have nothing; otherwise you
would
have brought the cavalry. Kill him.”

McGarvey reached back with his right hand, grabbed the barrel of the shotgun, and swiveled left out of the doorway. The shotgun went off, spraying the side of the house.

Schlueter or one or more of the dacoits opened fire, at least three rounds striking Naisir in the side of his torso and one in his head just above his cheekbone.

Grabbing the shotgun McGarvey poked it around the corner and fired two quick blasts down the hallway, keeping his aim low and to the left, well away from the stairway.

The returning fire was intense, chips from the concrete block walls flying everywhere, one of them taking a nick out of the side of McGarvey's neck.

The shotgun wasn't silenced, nor were the weapons the dacoits were using; someone in the neighborhood or in a passing car or truck was bound to sit up and take notice and call the police.

“Mac, one out the back door,” Pete shouted.

McGarvey stepped back a pace and turned his head to the side. “On my way,” he said. He laid the shotgun down and pulled out his pistol, the silencer already attached.

One of the dacoits poked his head out of the door, and McGarvey shot him. The man fell forward on his face, his body twitching.

“Mac—” Pete screamed, but she was cut off.

He rolled around the corner into the house in time to see Pam Schlueter and Naisir's wife turn the corner at the head of the stairs, the one dacoit, his big paw around Pete's head, over her mouth and nose, right behind them.

“Down,” McGarvey shouted.

Pete pulled back, her feet over the next step back. The dacoit turned, off balance because of her sudden move, and fired one shot that went wild.

McGarvey fired three rounds, at least two of which hit the Pakistani in the side of the head, driving him further off balance, his knees buckling.

Pete pulled out of his grip and shoved him away, sending his body tumbling down the stairs with a terrific racket.

Turning on his heel Mac went to the door, the last dacoit suddenly there, and they nearly collided. Before the other man could disentangle himself, Mac had the gun out of his hand and pushed him back.

“Leave now and you'll live,” McGarvey said.

But the bigger man danced to the left as he charged forward and batted Mac's gun away, sending it skidding across the courtyard. He grabbed Mac in a bear hug, his arms locked as he squeezed.

Mac head-butted him, and the dacoit staggered back, losing his grip. Mac was on him in an instant, driving the knuckles of his closed fist into the man's Adam's apple, crushing it, and blocking air to the lungs.

Still the dacoit tried to reach for Mac, who stepped into him and drove his fist into the man's nose, then the side of his face just below his left eye, and then once, twice, into his chest just over his heart.

But the bastard refused to go down.

The Semtex charge on the gate went off with an impressive bang, and just for an instant the dacoit turned toward it.

Mac hooked a foot around the man's left ankle and pulled his leg out from under him.