The Cabal (31 page)

“Was he carrying any hardware that was obvious?”

“Probably a pistol, unless he’s crazy. But his only luggage was a small nylon overnight bag.”

“What else?”

“He came into the hotel alone, but I got a look at the car and driver who dropped him off. Didn’t get the tag number, but the guy driving was obviously an Iraqi.”

“Anyone we know?”

“I never saw him before. Anyway he just dropped McGarvey off in
front and then drove off. The car was a Range Rover and shot up pretty good. Holes looked recent. Still shiny metal. Bandits on the Basra Highway, I imagine.”

Sandberger gripped the telephone a little tighter, checking his anger. It was the outcome he’d expected, because Kabbani had been an incompetent fool. Now the police chief was dead, the people he’d hired down south probably dead as well, and McGarvey was here in Baghdad. But it was not the outcome he’d hoped for.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Call Kangas and Mustapha. But wait until nightfall. I don’t want them doing a daylight operation. They can go in after dark. But you’ll have to stick it out there to see which way McGarvey moves, and keep us advised. But I’d rather you lose him than have him spot you. Are you clear on that point?”

“Yes, sir,” Weiss said. “But you have to understand that if I do lose him, and our guys miss, he’ll come after you.”

“Not the worst-case scenario,” Sandberger said, and he glanced over at his personal bodyguards, Carl Alphonse and Brody Hanson, seated at one of the tables by the entrance. Unlike the idiots Kabbani had sent to ambush McGarvey, and even Kangas and Mustapha, the two men with him now were among the best he’d ever worked with. Tough, ruthless, and, above all, capable. If they had any fault it was their arrogance. But they had the skills and experience to back it up.

McGarvey was here and he would not live through the night. Sandberger found that he was looking forward to getting back to Washington. He and Gordon would have to make a decision about Foster and the Friday Club. The money was fabulous but the risks were beginning to rise to an unacceptable level. Time to get out, he decided. But in order to do that Admin would have to manage a number of erasures.

Kangas and Mustapha were about to go downstairs to the bar for a couple of drinks and something to eat when the phone in their suite rang. This day had been long and boring, and at one point Mustapha
had suggested they say the hell with it and head back to the States. Kangas answered and he recognized Weiss’s voice.

“He’s at the Baghdad Hotel as we thought he would be. He’s in six oh seven.”

“Did he come alone?”

“An Iraqi driver brought him in, but left immediately. And it didn’t look as if he was carrying any heavy hardware, though he’s almost certainly armed.”

“Where are you?” Kangas asked. He snapped his fingers and gestured to Mustapha that the mission was a go.

“Somewhere near enough so that I can watch his movements. He went upstairs around noon, and he hasn’t come down since.”

“Did he spot you?”

Weiss had supplied them with Knight’s Armament PDWs that, on full automatic, fired the 6 × 35mm cartridge at seven hundred rounds per minute, and three thirty-round magazines each. With the stock folded and the suppressor removed the super-compact weapon was less than eighteen inches long. Mustapha was fixing his weapon diagonally across his chest with a big Velcro pad.

“He saw me, but I don’t think he felt that I was any sort of threat or he would have done something about it by now,” Weiss said, and he gave Kangas a description of McGarvey’s new look.

Kangas had another thought. “Where will Mr. Sandberger be tonight?”

“That’s none of your goddamn business.”

“Yes, it is. This guy came here to take him out. If we get over to the hotel too late he might be on his way over to wherever the boss is staying.”

“Mr. Sandberger is well protected.”

“Yeah, so was the pope.”

Mustapha was wearing a Kevlar vest and he pulled on a dark blue Windbreaker, which he zipped up. It was obvious he was carrying, but then so were a lot of others in the city.

“He’s staying at the Ritz-Carlton in the Green Zone.”

“Good. Tell him to stay there until we’re finished,” Kangas said. “We’re on our way.”

“Not until tonight.”

“We’ll handle this now,” Kangas said and hung up.

Well rested after sleeping all afternoon, McGarvey took a shower and dressed in blue jeans, a dark pullover, and dark blazer. The Glock 17 Hadid had supplied him with went in a holster on his hip, beneath the jacket, and the silencer and spare magazines in a pocket.

He went to the window and looked at the lights in the Green Zone across the river. Many sections of the city were dark or nearly dark, like his mood he thought. Otto was a friend, but he didn’t understand loss and rage. Nor should he need to understand.

Rencke called on the sat phone, just as McGarvey was about to walk out the door. “You may have more trouble coming your way.”

“What is it?”

“A pair of Admin’s tough guys showed up in Baghdad yesterday evening. Timothy Kangas and Ronni Mustapha. Ex-CIA NOCs. They were fired a few years ago for using excessive force, operating outside their charters, and more or less telling the establishment to screw itself. One of my programs monitoring Sandberger and his people tripped, but I didn’t catch it until a few minutes ago.”

“Are they staying with Sandberger, or Admin’s people?”

“No, and that’s what triggered the search engine. They’re staying at the Baghdad Airport Hotel, and they have open-ended first-class tickets on United, which was another trigger.”

“They know I’m here and they were sent over to take me out,” McGarvey said. “It makes getting a message to Sandberger that much easier.”

“I looked at these guys’ jackets, Mac. They’re good. And I suspect they’ve been ordered to stay away from Admin’s operations in the city. You’re a separate contract. But it doesn’t mean they won’t call for help if they think they need it.”

“It’ll hinge on what they know. My work name and this hotel.”

Rencke hesitated a second or two. “If they have that info it means we have a leak here. And it’d have to be someone fairly high up in Ops. Maybe even the seventh floor.”

“Work out a sting.”

“Shit, shit. I hope to hell I’m wrong, kemo sabe. Honest injun.”

“Contact Hadid and tell him I’ll need a ride out of Dodge in about two hours,” McGarvey said.

“Where do you want him to pick you up?”

“Have him circle the block around the Ritz-Carlton. I’ll find him.”

“Watch your ass, Mac,” Rencke said.

McGarvey broke the connection, pocketed the phone, and looked around the suite. He wasn’t coming back, and there was nothing else he needed to take with him except Watkins’s passport. It didn’t matter about his fingerprints; even if some Iraqi investigator did lift them, the FBI wouldn’t cooperate with an identification, nor would the CIA.

Downstairs, the lobby was deserted except for the same bald clerk as before. When McGarvey approached the desk, he looked up, his eyes watery. “Sir?” he asked.

“Two friends of mine may be looking for me. If they show up tell them that I’ve gone next door to the Hamara Hotel to have a drink.”

“Of course, sir. Your name?”

“Tony Watkins,” McGarvey said and he walked out and started down the path over to the much larger hotel, when something out of place caught the fringes of his attention, and he turned suddenly to go back as if he had forgotten something. The same westerner who’d been sitting in the lobby at noon was now sitting behind the wheel of a fairly new C
class Mercedes sedan, parked to one side of the concrete blast barrier. It was a different pair of armed guards on duty this evening. They were sitting on lawn chairs in front of a pile of rubble ignoring the man in the Mercedes, nor did they bother to look up when McGarvey, apparently changing his mind again, turned back and headed to the Hamara.

Portions of the long walkway between the hotels were in darkness, and McGarvey picked a spot where he could wait in the shadows from where he could see anyone coming from the Baghdad Hotel, yet they would not be able to see him.

He’d thought at the time that it was odd that a man was seated alone in the lobby of the hotel, but since there’d been no contact, he’d all but put it out of his mind. Now he knew that the man was a spotter, sent by Admin to keep tabs on him. As soon as the muscle that had been sent over to deal with him showed up, the spotter would direct them to the Hamara.

And he only had to wait five minutes before two men came up the path. They looked like NOCs, anonymous, not particularly large or beefy, and they moved easily on the balls of their feet, their attention in all directions, like rotating radar beams. They were expecting trouble.

McGarvey eased a little farther back into the shadows so that he was partially hidden behind the bole of a palm tree.

The two were dressed nearly alike, baggy khakis and dark Windbreakers with more bulk than was likely. They were wearing vests under the jackets, and by the look of it even in the dim light McGarvey could tell they were carrying some heavy hardware strapped to their chests. The Windbreakers were zippered, which was a mistake on their part. It would be awkward for them to draw their weapons.

McGarvey waited until they were just past then drew his pistol and stepped out on the path. “I expect that you’re looking for me.”

They both reached for their weapons.

“I have no intention of killing you this evening, unless I’m forced into it,” McGarvey told them, and they stopped. “Please turn around.”

They did as they were told, their jackets half unzipped, and he saw their weapons.

“Knight PDWs. Nice. Which one of you is Tim Kangas?”

The one on the left pursed his lips.

McGarvey nodded pleasantly toward the smaller man on the right. “That means you must be Ronni Mustapha. Former NOCs, and I’m told quite good, though you had a little trouble with discipline and following orders.”

“We’re here,” Kangas said. “What do you want?” He showed no fear, only a wariness; he was looking for an opening.

“You were sent here by your boss at Admin to kill me. Fair enough. But I’m here just to gather some facts. Maybe we can work something out.”

“What’s in it for us?” Muataspha asked.

“Your lives, of course,” McGarvey said.

“What do you want?”

“Someone placed an IED at Arlington Cemetery. Was it on Admin’s orders? Roland Sandberger or Gordon Remington?”

“We don’t know,” Kangas said.

McGarvey suddenly raised his pistol to point directly at Kangas’s head and took several steps closer. “I asked you a question. The people killed in that explosion were my wife and daughter. I’m motivated.”

“We know about you, Mr. McGarvey, but it wasn’t us at Arlington. And if it was Admin we were not told.” No fear showed in his eyes, just the same wariness.

“Why were you sent here to assassinate me? Who ordered it?”

“Our boss, Mr. Remington.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been declared a threat to our operations,” Mustapha said. “I’m sure the order originated from Mr. Sandberger because of an incident between the two of you in Germany.”

“Toss your weapons in the bushes,” McGarvey said, and he watched their eyes as they very slowly did as they had been told. They were professionals. They knew how to back away when the odds were not in their favor so that they could live to fight another day.

“Now what?” Kangas asked.

“Go back to the airport hotel, and in the morning get on your United flight back to the States,” McGarvey said. “My issue is with Sandberger, not with his foot soldiers. But if I see you again I’ll kill you. Do we have an understanding?”

“Yes,” Kangas said, and McGarvey stepped back off the path to let them pass. “What do you want us to tell Mr. Sandberger?”

“Whatever you want,” McGarvey said, and he watched as they walked back the way they had come, his body bathed in sweat. It had taken everything in his power not to kill them. But they were just foot soldiers, and he wanted word to get to Sandberger.