Soldier of God (36 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
Kathleen McGarvey was fifty and pregnant, in her mind a sublimely ridiculous combination, but she was not an invalid. Her husband was off trying to find a key to lure Prince Salman into the open so he could be taken down, and she had an idea that she knew where to find it.
Kirk was only one man. That was Karen Shaw’s take. And she was correct. Despite his abilities, despite his heart, he was one lone man against an organization that had brought down the World Trade Center towers. On top of that he did not have the active support of his own government.
After Kirk left to meet Otto, Kathleen had changed into a pale cream pants suit with a plain white blouse, brushed her hair, and put on some makeup. She was just finishing when Liz came to the bedroom door.
“You look nice, Mom, but what are you doing?” Liz said.
Kathleen put on a pair of small, gold hoop earrings as she watched her daughter’s reflection in the dresser mirror. Elizabeth would be the toughest hurdle “Getting ready to go out.”
“No,” Liz blurted.
Kathleen turned to face her daughter with a look of mild amusement. “What did you say?”
“Dad wants us to stay put,” Liz answered. She looked determined.
“Your father is out laying his life on the line. Once again. Your husband is helping with security. The FBI, the police, the National Guard are all out doing their duty, trying to stop the monsters.Yet you and I are simply going to sit here and do nothing?” Kathleen shook her head. “I don’t think so, sweetheart.” She smiled. “Is that what you want to do?”
“I think we should stay here,” Liz replied, with a little less certainty.
“We’re either going to be a part of the problem or a part of the solution. And I do not want to be in the former category.” What she wanted to do was right; she was convinced of it. “You weren’t on the cruise ship.
You didn’t witness what those monsters are capable of doing. I did.” She got her purse and went to her daughter.
You didn’t witness what those monsters are capable of doing. I did.” She got her purse and went to her daughter.
“Goddammit, Mother.”
Kathleen brushed a strand of hair off her daughter’s forehead. “Don’t swear, please; it’s ugly. I simply want you to take a drive with me into Georgetown. I want to have a quick peek at something, and we’ll come right back.”
“At what?” Liz asked, crossly.
“Get a jacket or something to cover up your gun, and I’ll tell you on the way,” Kathleen said. She gave her daughter a peck on the cheek, then brushed past her. “We’ll take my car. I’ll drive and you can ride shotgun.”
If the truth be told, Elizabeth much preferred doing something to sitting around the house guarding her mother from an attack that probably wasn’t going to happen.
In any event, providing any real security against a determined attack at the house would be impossible to do alone. One gun was simply not enough of a deterrent.
The car was a smoked silver Mercedes 560SL, which Kathleen drove fast and impatiently. “We’re going to take a quick look at Darby Yarnell’s old house,” she said.
“He’s dead,” Elizabeth said. “Somebody else owns it.” She had seen the entire file a couple of years ago when she had gone looking into her father’s past. But the business of her mother having an affair had not been included. She’d learned of it for the first time two days ago, and her gut still hadn’t recovered from knowing that her mother was not perfect after all.
They headed out of Chevy Chase on Connecticut Avenue, crossing over to Wisconsin Avenue atTenley Circle, traffic almost back to normal despite the bin Laden threat.
“Do you know who owns it?” Kathleen asked, glancing at her daughter. “The Saudi government,” she said without waiting for a reply. “It’s a think tank.”
Elizabeth had not known that part. There was no reason for her to have gone looking. But it made sense, especially if Khalil was a Saudi. And all of
a sudden it dawned on her what her mother was attempting to do, and her blood ran cold.
a sudden it dawned on her what her mother was attempting to do, and her blood ran cold.
“Turn around now, Mother,” she said. “We’re going back home.”
“No,” Kathleen said. They were passing the U.S. Naval Observatory grounds on their left. The vice president lived there, and a pair of National Guard Armored Personnel Carriers were parked on the main driveway. Directly across the avenue were the embassies of Fiji and three other small countries.
“I’m serious. We are not going to Yarnell’s old house, because I know what you want to do, and I’m not going to let you.”
Kathleen was unfazed. “If you know that much, then you know why I have to do this for your father. Khalil might not come to the house after me, but if he sees me parked outside his front door, he might try something. The second anything starts to happen, we’ll get out of there and let your father know.”
“That’s my point,” Elizabeth said, frantically. This was sheer madness. “What am I supposed to do if they come out guns blazing?”
“They wouldn’t do that in the middle of Georgetown in the middle of a sunny morning.”
“Well, if they do, you could get us both killed,” Elizabeth shouted. “All three of us,” she added, bitterly, knowing whatever she could say was going to do no good.
“Somebody has to stop him before it’s too late,” Kathleen said. “At least we have to try.”
Khalil was in the second-floor operations center, where a detailed street map of Chevy Chase was displayed on a wide-screen computer monitor, while on another, photographs of Kathleen McGarvey scrolled down the screen. With him were the four security officers who al-Kaseem had assigned to him for the kidnapping. At this moment their driver was parked in a garage around the block in a Comcast Cable truck that they would take to the McGarvey house. They would neutralize whatever security was in place and grab Kathleen McGarvey.
Key to the operation would be making sure that Kirk McGarvey wasn’t
home. Khalil did not want to go up against the man again, not without the leverage that holding the man’s wife hostage would give him. They were working on the surveillance operation to do just that.
home. Khalil did not want to go up against the man again, not without the leverage that holding the man’s wife hostage would give him. They were working on the surveillance operation to do just that.
There could be no mistakes because McGarvey would move heaven and earth to protect her. He’d already demonstrated that. But if his wife were to be taken to an absolutely secure location, his effectiveness as a player in this little drama would be neutralized.
The revenge would be sweet. Especially after the attacks when Kathleen McGarvey would be returned to her husband. When her body would be returned.
The normally calm al-Kaseem appeared at the steel security door in a hurry; he was flushed. “She’s here.”
Khalil looked up. “What are you talking about?”
“Kathleen McGarvey and another woman are sitting in a Mercedes directly in front of this building. I recognized her from the photographs.”
For a moment Khalil was unsure of himself. Someone had traced him here, and the woman had the audacity to show up and challenge him. McGarvey knew!
“I’m telling you to stop this before it gets totally out of hand,” al-Kaseem said. It was an order he was not qualified to give. Khalil was of a higher rank within the royal family than al-Kaseem was. But the intelligence chief had his own orders, which were to keep a very low profile until whatever was going to happen was over with. Already more than eight hundred Saudi citizens had been airlifted back to Riyadh, where they would wait out the attack and the backlash that was expected to last a year or more. There were to be absolutely no incidents involving Saudi citizens in the U.S.
Khalil decided that whatever the reason the brave but empty-headed woman had come here, the advantage was his for the taking.
“We’ll take her now,” he said.
“You’re not bringing her into this facility,” al-Kaseem shouted.
Khalil looked at the intelligence officer as if he were an insect. “I’ll take her wherever I please.”
Elizabeth knew that this was all wrong, sitting in plain sight in front of the Saudi-owned building. Her mother’s aim was to flush Khalil out of
hiding, if this is where he was, using herself as bait. After Alaska, the terrorist had a strong incentive to hit back.
hiding, if this is where he was, using herself as bait. After Alaska, the terrorist had a strong incentive to hit back.
The problem was that her ruse might be successful. Without backup they would be sitting ducks out here.
“You’ve made your point, Mother,” she said. She pointed to the closed-circuit cameras mounted behind the tall iron fence. “They know we’re here. So let’s go.”
Katy seemed to be disappointed. “I thought someone would have come out to find out what we wanted.”
“Be glad they didn’t,” Elizabeth said. She was getting seriously spooked.
A white panel van turned the corner on Thirty-second Street, and came up the narrow Scott Place. It moved slowly, as if the driver was looking for an address. Elizabeth could see no one in the passenger seat, but her muscles instinctively tightened. They were in a dead-end cul-de-sac with no room to maneuver. If they were cut off, they could be in trouble.
“Start the car, Mother,” she said, urgently. She unsnapped the restraining strap on her pistol.
Katy was looking at the approaching van. She nodded. “I think you’re right,” she said, and she reached for the key.
The van glided slowly past them. The driver didn’t look over, and for just a second Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief, but then she stiffened. “No,” she said. The van supposedly belonged to a cable TV company. But the driver was wearing a suit and tie. It was all wrong.
She drew her pistol and thumbed the safety catch to the off position, when her door was jerked open and the muzzle of a pistol, held by a very large, very determined man, was jammed into the side of her head.
“There is no reason for you to lose your life,” he warned. His English was heavily accented. He was a Saudi. “We want her, not her bodyguard.”
Elizabeth raged inside. Dumb. Dumb. She had been dumb. It was entirely her fault that they were in this situation. But she wasn’t going to compound the trouble by making a stupid move. So far no shots had been fired.
She nodded.
The heavyset man reached in with his free hand and took her gun. He said something in Arabic over the top of the car.
Kathleen’s door was opened by a large man in a dark business suit, a pistol in his hand. He reached in, shut off the car, took the ignition keys, and tossed them across the street. Kathleen turned to Liz and started to speak, but Liz cut her off.
“Do exactly as they say, Mrs. McGarvey. I’m sure they mean you no harm. They just want you as a hostage to neutralize your husband. Do you understand?”
For a long moment Kathleen looked as if she was on the verge of making a move against the man pointing the gun at her. But then she visibly relaxed and gave Liz a nod, a look of apology in her eyes.
The Saudi security officer checked to make sure that there was no oncoming traffic or pedestrians, no one to see what was going on; then he helped Kathleen out of the car and hustled her back to the Comcast van parked directly behind them.
“If you try to follow us or if our movements are hindered in any fashion, we will kill her,” said the officer holding the pistol on Elizabeth. “Tell your boss to go home and stay there. His wife will be returned unharmed in two days.”
There it was, Liz thought. The man had made a mistake. He knew the timetable for the attack. Two days.
Whatever the outcome of the latest threat to America, McGarvey figured that he would never be welcomed back to any job in U.S. intelligence. Even if he could somehow avoid jail time, his career was over. And it felt odd to him after more than twenty-five years to be branded a pariah, and by none other than the president himself.
McGarvey didn’t want his friends to be tainted by association. In the face of martial law anyone perceived to be a threat to the nation could be shot. Yet he needed help.
“What I want to do will probably blow up in our faces,” McGarvey told Otto Rencke. They stood facing each other in the shelter hut in the woods between the fifteenth fairway and the golf-course maintenance barn. No one was on the course this morning. Some things had not gotten back to normal.
“Boy oh boy, Mac, the shit has truly hit the fan over Monaco,” Rencke hooted. He was hopping from one foot to the other. It was a little shuffle he did when he was nervous or excited.
“I know. Dick filled me in on the way back from Andrews. He told me that you managed to get to Berndt. What was his reaction?”
“He took the stuff, and he wished me good luck,” Rencke said. “It’s something, ya know. He’s a good guy. If anyone can convince the president, he can. But everybody’s coming up with zip. Nada. The bad guys are here, and we’re making arrests. But all the wrong guys.”
McGarvey had seen this coming well before 9/11. Because of skyjackings in the seventies the U.S. had put air marshals on most commercial airliners. The skyjackings finally stopped, in large measure because of the sky marshals. But instead of continuing with the program, the budget was cut, sky marshals were taken off the airlines, and 9/11 occurred. Now the sky marshals were back, and al-Quaida wasn’t going to use skyjackings again, and yet that was Homeland Security’s main area of concentration.
No one was seeing the facts for what they were. To stop the attacks we had to go to the sources of the money. Which were certain members of the Saudi royal family.
“Do you have anything new on Khalil?”
“Salman showed up at the embassy this morning. And the FBI sent a surveillance team over to keep watch. But when he left a couple of hours later, they lost him.” Rencke spread his hands in wonderment. “I don’t think their hearts were in it. Nobody believes he’s one of the bad guys.”
That too was about what McGarvey expected. “Have they found him yet?”
“Not as of a half hour ago.”
That didn’t make sense to McGarvey. Salman had come to the U.S. so that he would be in plain sight when the attacks came. For him to shake his FBI tail and disappear somewhere in Washington was just the opposite of what he had done before. But, if Salman was Khalil, he might have
slipped out of sight because he had something to do concerning the attacks, perhaps send a signal that would start the clock ticking.
slipped out of sight because he had something to do concerning the attacks, perhaps send a signal that would start the clock ticking.
Or he had gone hunting
.
.
McGarvey had left his cell phone at the house. He did not want to be traced. Not with what he was going to do, contrary to direct orders from the president. He stepped around Rencke and gazed across the fairway toward his house. He could see a corner of the roof and the chimney, but nothing else. Still there was no one else in sight. Nor were there any sounds: no lawn mowers, no barking dogs, sirens.
No sounds of gunfire or cries for help.
The country was holding its breath. Waiting.
No sounds of gunfire or cries for help.
The country was holding its breath. Waiting.
Rencke was closely watching him. “What is it, Mac?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”
“Call my house.”
“Okay,” Rencke said. He took out his cell phone and hit the speed dial. “Who do you want to talk to?”
“Whoever answers.”
“It’s ringing,” Rencke said.
McGarvey turned back, snapshots of what Khalil and his people had done on the cruise ship flashing in his head. He could still hear the mother’s screams for her infant in the freezing water.
Rencke shook his head, a frightened expression in his eyes. “It’s your answering machine. No one’s picking up.”
At that moment they both heard a car coming very fast up the gravel road to the maintenance barn. McGarvey drew his gun, flicked the safety catch off, and motioned for Rencke to drop down out of sight.
Let it be Khalil,
he told himself.
Let it end here and now.
he told himself.
Let it end here and now.
Elizabeth hauled her mother’s Mercedes around the maintenance barn to the cart path leading to the fifteenth fairway and jammed on the brakes, sending gravel and loose dirt flying. She’d been continuously on the phone to the Watch officer at Langley, who’d put out an APB to Washington Metro Police and the FBI to look for the Comcast maintenance van. She gave the license number, and made sure the Watch officer understood that under no circumstances was the van to be stopped.
By the time she had retrieved the car keys, the van was long gone, so she hadn’t even tried to go after it, relying on the Watch officer to get it right.
Two minutes ago the FBI surveillance unit in front of the Saudi Embassy on New Hampshire Avenue, just off Juarez Circle, reported the van entering the parking garage at the rear of the building.
Elizabeth her heart in her throat, leaped out of the car and raced up the path through the woods to the shelter hut, hoping that she wasn’t too late to catch her father and Otto. No one was around. In fact the maintenance area was deserted. But not many people were out playing golf when the country was on red alert.
She saw the fairway and then the hut at the same moment a figure moved in the relative darkness inside. “Shit,” she said under her breath, and she reached for her pistol. Something had gone wrong here.
Before she could veer off the path and get her pistol out, her father stepped out of the hut. “Liz, what are you doing here?” He had his gun out. Otto was right behind him.
“They’ve got Mother,” she cried, reaching them. “It was my fault. I shouldn’t have let her leave the house. We shouldn’t have gone to Yarnell’s. It was a set-up, like they were waiting for us.” She said it all in a rush.
McGarvey holstered his pistol, controlled anger in the set of his features. “Slow down, Liz. Who has her?”
“It was the Saudis. They had a gun to my head, and told me that she wouldn’t be hurt, provided that you stayed out of the way And they said that she’d be released in two days.”
“Oh, wow, that’s the timetable,” Rencke said.
“Were you able to follow them?” McGarvey asked, his tone still reasonable.
“They were too fast, so I had the Watch officer call DC Metro and the Bureau,” Elizabeth said. “They spotted the van going into the Saudi Embassy just a few minutes ago.” She tried to gauge her father’s mood. He was like a volcano on the verge of exploding. She’d read his missions files, and had seen him in action more than once. He never went off halfcocked, but when he moved it was awesome.
“This has to go to the president,” Rencke said. “He can put pressure on the Saudi ambassador.”
McGarvey shook his head, his jaw set. “You can try, but the Saudis will deny they have her.”
“They didn’t hurt her, Daddy,” Elizabeth said. Tears welled in her eyes. She hated to cry. It was weak. “I’m sorry. It was my fault. But I did exactly what they told me to do so that no one would get hurt. I didn’t want that.” She closed her eyes. “Oh, God.”
McGarvey took her in his arms. “Take it easy. It’s not your fault. You didn’t kidnap her. And I know you did your best.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes and looked up into her father’s face. “We’ll get her back, Daddy,” she said. “You’ll get her back, won’t you?”
“Count on it, sweetheart,” McGarvey said, his gray-green eyes already seeing beyond her.
Other books
The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman by Angela Carter
Wren Journeymage by Sherwood Smith
The Dragon Guardian by Jessie Donovan
A Gentleman's Luck by Hill, Nicole
Breadcrumbs For The Nasties (Book 1): Megan by Novak, Steven
The City Below by James Carroll
Kathleen Kirkwood & Anita Gordon - Heart series by The Defiant Heart
A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut
Rayqelle's Revenge ---Book 1--- Special Holiday Edition (Ratchet) by Cole Black, Shon
