Retribution

FIFTY

Otto had arranged for one of the CIA’s Gulfstream VIP jets to pick them up at Heathrow and take them across the Atlantic. They landed at Joint Base Andrews in the middle of the night and taxied over to the navy hangar the company used.

Marty Bambridge was leaning against a big Cadillac Escalade, a scowl on his face. Two men in dark Windbreakers stood nearby, and two others were waiting at a second Cadillac.

“Looks like we have a welcome home committee,” Pete said from her window seat. “And Marty doesn’t look happy.”

“Has he ever been?” McGarvey asked. He’d figured the sort of reception they’d get, especially if Bhutani, the ISI’s director general, complained to Page. But the DCI’s private phone line was one area where Otto never hacked. It was a point of honor.

“We may have had some certifiable idiots on the seventh floor, but they were patriots doing the best they knew how,” he’d explained once.

They thanked the pilot and crew, who had treated them to a late breakfast last night then left them alone so that they could get some rest.

McGarvey went down the stairs first. Pete, whose knee still bothered her, hobbled after him. She’d refused his arm.

“I won’t give the bastard the satisfaction,” she’d said.

Marty came over to them. “I’m not going to start anything with you two this morning, except to tell you that you’re staying on campus in one of the safe houses. You’ll be debriefed after breakfast, after which it will be decided what the hell to do with you.”

“By you?” Pete asked.

“That will be way above my pay grade, but the White House has been made aware of your little escapade, and no one over there or on the seventh floor is particularly pleased.”

“Has the media gotten hold of it yet?” McGarvey asked. In this case he couldn’t blame the deputy director of operations for being angry. The man was caught between a rock and a hard place.

“Thank God, no. But no one expects that to last much longer.”

“No one’s linked the two dead SEALs with the bin Laden operation?”

“The navy has, of course, but apparently there are some other complications.”

“I expect there have been,” McGarvey said. Captain Cole was one of them, and the SEAL Team Six guys were the other. They were cutting off their noses to spite their faces. It was crazy, and yet Mac could see it from their perspective. They were proud, they were tough, they were DEVGRU operators, the meanest sons of bitches on the planet.

“I hope you’re not going to be difficult tonight. It’s too late and I’m too tired to put up with your shit.”

“We’ll go along for now,” McGarvey said.

“Good,” Bambridge said. “You’ll ride with me. Ms. Boylan will ride in the second car.”

“No. And we won’t be separated at the safe house.”

Bambridge’s anger immediately deepened. “I don’t want to force the issue, goddamnit.”

“No, you don’t, Marty. And neither do we. We’ll sit still for the debriefing, and then we’ll get out of the company’s way. But you have to know that the problem hasn’t gone away, even though I was personally responsible for the deaths of an ISI officer and three of the four dacoits he’d hired to kill Pete and me. That was after they’d kidnapped her and tried to rape her.”

“I killed the bastard,” Pete said.

Bambridge shook his head. “God save us all,” he said. “Backseat in my car for the both of you.”

One of the security officers opened the door for them. “Welcome back, Mr. Director. Rough op?”

“It had its moments. Davis?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How are your wife and son?”

“Just fine, sir. Thanks for asking. But we’ve added a girl.”

“Congratulations.”

“Jesus,” Bambridge muttered.

The safe house, one of several on campus, had once been someone’s home out in the Virginia woods just up the hill from the Potomac. Three bedrooms upstairs under low-hanging eaves, and downstairs a kitchen, living room, and the dining room, which had been converted into a soft interrogation or debriefing conference space, with a table for six. A flip of the light switch turned on an electronic suite of equipment: everything said or done in the room was recorded by six cameras and several sensitive microphones mounted in full view on the walls and ceiling. In addition, body temperatures of everyone in the room were continuously monitored, as were facial expressions, which were measured against a series of parameters that Otto had designed to detect stress. The equipment was more reliable than a lie detector apparatus.

The entire house was in a Faraday cage — wire mesh inside the walls and ceiling that made cell phones or any sort of Wi-Fi equipment useless.

They had been left alone, on their word that they wouldn’t run off. Shortly after dawn a company chef came over and fixed them coffee and a full breakfast of eggs Benedict, hash browns, and orange juice.

Toiletries and fresh clothes in their sizes had been brought over — jeans, polo shirts, and underwear.

At eight sharp, Bambridge, along with Pete’s former partner, Dan Green, showed up. As a team they had been the CIA’s most effective interrogators, until she had been bounced over to the National Clandestine Service. She hadn’t been given a field assignment after she had joined forces with McGarvey a couple of years ago on an operation here in the Washington area. For that reason, among others, she’d been out of favor with the DDO.

Green who was a short little man, under five feet, with a head too large for his slight body, and wide, soft brown eyes that seemed to understand and completely sympathize with everyone, came into the front hall with a big smile. He and Pete embraced.

“I heard that you and Mr. McGarvey were back in town and I had to come over to at least say hi,” he said.

“I’m glad it’s you,” Pete said. “We can get this over with in an hour.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Bambridge said.

“Ms. Boylan doesn’t know how to lie, sir,” Green said.

The four of them went into the dining room, and Bambridge made a show of flipping the switch. When they were settled around the table, Green began.

“Mr. McGarvey, let’s start, shall we, with a simple narrative outline of the facts, the times and places, the casualties, the circumstances. The to-and-fro details. We’ll fill in the blanks later, if you don’t mind.”

“It didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to,” McGarvey said.

“These sorts of things never do, do they?”

McGarvey ran through everything, including the business in Norfolk and the interrogation of Steffen Engel, which led them to Pakistan and the business at Naisir’s safe house. It took less than ten minutes.

Bambridge was obviously uncomfortable, but he kept his agitation to himself and said nothing.

“Anything to add or subtract?” Green asked Pete.

“Only that the bastard major ordered one of his goons to rape me. But I killed him instead.” She looked pointedly at Bambridge. “I’m pretty sure that wasn’t in the ISI’s playbook.”

“And the major’s wife and the German terrorist, Pamela Schlueter?”

“They’re at large,” McGarvey said.

Green turned to Bambridge. “I’m finished, sir.”

“I have a few more questions,” the DDO said.

“They are telling the truth.”

“You can’t be sure.”

“Yes, sir, I can,” Green said. They all got up and Green and Pete embraced again. “You were limping. Are you okay?”

“I banged up my knee a little, nothing serious,” Pete said. “May and the kids are fine?”

Green smiled. “Do you have any idea what an orthodontist charges for braces?”

“Not a clue.”

“Don’t ask,” Green said. He shook hands with McGarvey. “Good to see you again, sir. And good hunting.”

FIFTY-ONE

Bambridge drove McGarvey and Pete over to the Old Headquarters Building, busy with the morning shift arriving, and upstairs they went to the director’s seventh-floor office. Walt Page and Carleton Patterson were waiting for them and Otto breezed in a moment later.

“Am I late?” he asked.

“No,” Page said and he directed them to have a seat. His expression was even sterner this morning than normal. His was a banker’s face in the middle of a financial meltdown.

McGarvey and Otto had talked at length over the Atlantic last night about the situation here, the only puzzle being the assassination of Wolf at the hands of some unknown gunman. The biggest question of all was the BND’s reluctance to find out why he’d been killed. Apparently he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and he was robbed and his car stolen. The stripped VW Jetta was found the same day in an industrial section of Berlin. Case closed.

It was their relationship with Pakistan — similar to that of Washington’s. The ongoing fight against the Taliban was primary: all other considerations were off the table.

“We’re in a difficult situation, for which I’m expected to give some advice to the president as quickly as possible,” Page said. “The fact of the matter is I have nothing of value to tell him.”

“The situation with the attacks on SEAL Team Six team is not over,” McGarvey said, but Page raised a hand.

“If you’re right about that, which you very well may be, it’s not the situation I’m talking about. Pakistan and India have been rattling sabers over the past twenty-four hours. As of early this morning our surveillance satellites detected the activation of missile installations along the border with Kashmir. Pakistan’s Ra’ad ALCMs and India’s new Nirbhays, both of which are nuclear-tipped, are at the ready or will be very soon.”

“It’s happened before,” McGarvey said. “And you can’t tell me that we had anything to do with the escalation.”

“It can’t have helped,” Bambridge told Page. “I assume that you’ve had the time to read the transcript of their debriefing this morning.”

“Yes,” Page said.

“And so have I,” Patterson said. “Nothing in it would indicate some flash point being crossed, though their actions at this time, as Marty suggested, could not have helped. A gun battle between an ISI major and his wife, plus another woman, and the former director of this agency and one of our current employees was a political slap against President Mamnoon Hussain. The fact that you entered Pakistan under false passports — diplomatic passports — was another serious slap against this agency and the White House.”

“The president’s national security adviser knew the score,” McGarvey said, though he didn’t know why he was defending himself.

“Yes, and he told you that you would be on your own,” Page said. He was angry. “But not that you would drag along Ms. Boylan, not that you would use our assets on the ground, or borrow one of our Gulfstreams and crew to pick you up in London.”

“That was my doing, Mr. Director,” Otto said.

“That’s beside the point. Our Islamabad station is in shambles and Don Simmons has threatened to resign just when we need him the most.”

“Did Milt Thomas get out?”

Page was vexed. “Yes. He managed to make it overland just outside Peshawar, where an army helicopter picked him up and flew him across the border to Jalalabad. Also a consequence of the mess you created. As it was they made it across the border minutes before a pair of Pakistani fighter jets showed up.”

“He’s a good man. None of it was his fault.”

“No,” Page said sharply. “Yours.”

“Yes,” McGarvey said, suddenly sick to death with all the bullshit. Page was a good man, but he was too caught up in the political consequences of dealing with a crisis — not of his making, or of anyone else’s in his office — that he had lost sight of the reality of the situation.

“That’s a refreshing change,” Bambridge said.

“The saber rattling between Pakistan and India is just that. Showmanship for their electorates. Pakistan’s president is under a lot of pressure because the country is falling apart. Their financial structure is crumbling, electricity is a major problem even in the bigger cities — Islamabad included — and although we’re winning the war against the Taliban, a sufficient percentage of his electorate support the terrorists to the extent that they resent our drone strikes. So what’s a beleaguered head of state supposed to do? Fix the problems? Impossible in the short run. So he does the next best — shift the focus elsewhere.”

No one said anything.

“I sat in your chair, Walt, and I didn’t much like it,” McGarvey continued. “Tell the president what you know and leave the speculation to someone else. This is the Central Intelligence Agency — not the Central Second-Guessing Agency. Leave that to the national intelligence director; she seems to be good at it.”

“So where does that leave you at this point?” Page asked.

“Has there been any direct response from anyone in Pakistan about what went down?”

“None. Pat Garrick assured me that there’ve been no phone calls or e-mails in the past thirty-six hours concerning the — incident.” Air Force Lieutenant General Patrick Garrick was director of the National Security Agency, which monitored just about everything electronic just about everywhere.

“About what I expected.”

“John wants to have a chat with you.” John Fay was the president’s national security adviser.

“I’m not going to have the time,” McGarvey said, and he got to his feet. “If there’s nothing else, Mr. Director?”

Bambridge was pissed off, but Page held him off. “Tell me that you’re not going back to Pakistan.”

“I’m staying here. They’re coming to me.”

“You’re convinced that the attacks against the SEAL Team Six will continue?” Patterson said. “Even though they know that you have become personally involved?”

“I think so. Partly because they believe that neither the CIA, the FBI, nor the ONI are willing to get involved.”

“Could be the two murders are isolated incidents?”

“No,” McGarvey said. “I’m going to need Ms. Boylan and Otto.”

“Not a chance in hell,” Bambridge said.

“Try to stop me, sir, and I’ll resign,” Pete said, getting up.

Otto was grinning ear to ear as he got to his feet. “You wouldn’t want me to resign. Be your worst nightmare.”

“You’re convinced the threat is real?” Page asked.

“Yes, I am.”

“What next, then?” Patterson asked.

“We’re going to try to save these guys from themselves.”

FIFTY-TWO

Page’s advice to Bambridge was to stay out of McGarvey’s way. And after his DDO was gone, he asked Patterson to remain. “I’d like an extra set of ears.”

“Do you think he’ll take your call?”

“Won’t hurt to try,” Page said, not at all surprised that the company’s general counsel had suspected what was coming next. “We’ve talked before. Unofficially.”

Patterson nodded.

Page phoned the ISI’s director general on an unofficial private line. It was a little past four in the afternoon in Islamabad, and the call was answered on the second ring.

“Good afternoon, Tariq. I hope that your day was not as difficult as mine has started out to be.”

“Good morning, Walter. My day has been interesting, but then it is an expected part of positions men like us manage to get ourselves into.”

“How are Maryam, and your children and grandchildren? In good health, I hope?”

“Yes, of course, thank you for asking. But I don’t spend as much time with my wife these days as I would like; she is almost always with our daughter and the two babies.”

“She must be in her glory.”

“And Betty is well?”

“Yes, I’ll send her your regards.”

“Please do,” Bhutani said. “What is on your mind, my friend?”

“The developing situation in Kashmir. It has us concerned.”

“It has been a running debate for some years now; you know this as well as anyone. But I can assure you that there will not be a war any time soon.”

“I thought not.”

The line was silent for several beats, until Bhutani came back. “Kashmir is not the reason you telephoned. What is on your mind, Walter?”

“The recent trouble in Rawalpindi. I’ve been told that one of your officers had been shot to death in some altercation.”

Bhutani chuckled. “I must congratulate your Mr. Simmons and his agents for their fast work. Our Federal Investigation Agency is conducting an independent inquiry. The first reports I’ve seen indicate that Major Naisir was gunned down by bandits. We call them dacoits. Very probably hired by enemies of the major’s wife. Her family is wealthy, and wealth always attracts its adversaries. I’m told that there have been incidents of the same nature in the past, and unfortunately there may be others in the future.”

“It is unfortunate,” Page said.

“What concern is the death of one of my junior officers to the CIA?”

“We were trying to track the whereabouts of one of our citizens — Indian-born — who we think might be dealing in arms smuggling to the Taliban fighters on the border. We traced him as far as a hotel there in Islamabad, and perhaps he was in Rawalpindi on the day of the shooting. I was hoping that if he was involved, you would let us know.”

“Yes, we too are investigating this man. Poorvaj Chopra. He has disappeared, and it may be possible that he was involved, but there have been no witnesses.”

“If an American citizen was involved, then you have my apologies, and a promise that I’ll do everything within my power to see that it does not happen again.”

“But then it is an internal problem, one that we will handle. Once he is arrested, he will be placed under the jurisdiction of our legal system.”

“If he were to reach our embassy, however, he would be placed under arrest, and I would hope that he could be brought back to the United States to stand trial.”

“That would be a matter for our governments to decide,” Bhutani said.

“Of course.”

“Is there anything else that we need to discuss?”

“No, but thank you for your assurance on the situation in Kashmir. May I pass it along to the White House?”

Bhutani hesitated for just a beat. “Merely as my opinion, Walter. My job, like yours, is merely to gather information and offer advice. Whether our governments actually take such advice is another matter.”

“I understand, Tariq. A pleasure talking with you.”

“Likewise,” Bhutani said, and he rang off.

“He knows that Chopra does not exist,” Patterson said. “I could hear it in his voice. It’s very difficult to lie in a language other than your own.”

“But he didn’t name McGarvey.”

“It would not have accomplished a thing, except to admit that there might be something to the story that Pakistan is financing an operation against SEAL Team Six.”

“Even the White House and the navy can’t accept it, because of Pakistan’s tacit acceptance of our drone strikes, and now because of Kashmir. The situation is too incredibly delicate.”

“I agree. So what do we do?”

“Just like I told Marty, stay out of McGarvey’s way.”

“We can’t support him.”

“No,” Page said. “But Otto will and so will Ms. Boylan, and I’m sure that Otto’s wife still has her connections. The real problem is the same as it has always been. There’s not much that we can do for him.”

“One of these days he’ll find himself outgunned,” Patterson said gloomily. He got to his feet. “I’m getting too old for this.”

“So am I,” Page said. “Let’s hope Mac isn’t.”

FIFTY-THREE

Ayesha walked up the gentle slope in the Islamabad Graveyard, past row after row of stones and tablets back to where her husband had been buried the morning after his death, as was Islamic custom. It was early evening. The lights of the city were behind her; only the lights of the PAEC General Hospital were visible up the hill from her.

She’d parked her car at the side of the Faqir Aipee Road, just off the Kashmir Highway and had gone the rest of the way on foot. She was leaving for Germany later this evening, her packed bags in the car. It was possible that she would never be able to come home, and she wanted to say good-bye one last time to her husband.

He had been a good man to her, never resenting her family’s fortune or her advice. In fact she believed that over the past several years, since the incident with President Musharraf, he had actually depended on her. And for that she felt the loss all the more keenly.

But she did not cry. She’d been the only girl in the family, and she’d grown up tough, entirely capable of holding her own among men. Her father and uncles and brothers never cried, nor did she.

She got to his grave site and stepped to one side of the simple headstone. He could have been buried in the military cemetery, but he’d once told her that he belonged here with the common people. He was no hero, nor would he ever be, so he felt it wasn’t right that he should be buried with soldiers who’d died on the battlefield. Nor did he want to be buried in the private cemetery where Ayesha’s people were laid to rest.

So here he was. A common man: in fact one of the last to be buried in a cemetery hardly a half century old and already full.

“He should not be here,” General Bhutani said behind her.

She turned. “You startled me, General.” Two bodyguards stood a few meters away.

“It wasn’t my intention, Ayesha. But he deserved a soldier’s burial.”

“He wanted it this way, but not so soon.”

“I agree. Too soon. And for the wrong reasons — still another affront to our dignity.”

She looked again at her husband’s gravestone. “Why did you come here, at this particular time? Certainly not to visit the grave of a simple major?”

If Bhutani took any offense at her tone, he did not show it. “I was told that you were leaving for the airport, and I wanted to talk to you in person — not on the telephone — before you left.”

“You followed me?”

“Yes. And I wasn’t surprised when you stopped here.”

Bhutani and his family were crude, in Ayesha’s father’s opinion. Only a generation or two from simple mountain tribespeople. Lacking in manners and modern sensibilities. Perfect for the role of ISI director. And in many ways, in her estimation, exactly the same as McGarvey, the former director of the CIA. Violent men, devious, skulking around, peering into other people’s lives for some prurient interests in the name of national security. And she was sure that her expression showed her contempt, because his face darkened.

“Why are you going to Germany? What’s there for you so soon after your husband’s death? The rug business?”

“A vacation before we and India destroy each other over petty religion. I have a plane to catch. I don’t want to be late.”

“It will be held if you are not on time,” Bhutani said, his tone harsh now. “Or not, if I have you taken in for interrogation.”

“I don’t think you would want to do that, General Bhutani. The consequences might not be to your superiors’ liking.”

“A risk I am willing to take in order to convince you that I am on your side. I know about Ms. Schlueter and the operation your husband hired her to run, just as I know about her part in the incident in Rawalpindi. She is back in Germany now, and I believe that you are joining her there, perhaps to avenge your husband’s death by continuing the mission.”

“And which mission is that?” Ayesha demanded. Her heart pounded. Buffoon or not, Bhutani was powerful.

“Retribution for the American raid at Abbottabad. Two have been eliminated; twenty-two remain.”

“I would think that you would have your hands full spying on India to bother with something so insignificant.”

“Not insignificant to some in our government who want to see such a thing happen. Of course your husband understood the delicate balance we have to maintain between ourselves and Washington and between us and our population.”

“You didn’t support him.”

“But we did, to the extent that was politically possible.”

“He’s dead!”

“He was a soldier; he understood the risks.”

“Now you want me to take up the battle.”

Bhutani smiled wryly. “Isn’t that why you’re flying to Germany tonight?” he said. “We can support you financially, and with intelligence information, but the actual operation will have to be carried out by whoever Ms. Schuelter hires. They’re expendable.”

“As am I?”

“Yes,” Bhutani said.

Ayesha held her silence for a moment. She hadn’t expected the ISI director to be here, though what he was telling her was expected. But now that it was in her face, to some extent even more than the fact of her husband’s death, when she was on the verge of flying to Berlin, it was superreal for the first time. People were going die — possibly she herself.

She glanced again at her husband’s grave. “What are my chances?”

“I don’t know, but I expect they will be near zero for the entire mission unless you convince Ms. Schlueter to first take care of one thing.”

“Mr. McGarvey.”

“Yes. You must do everything within your power to eliminate the man, and my agency will supply you with money.”

Ayesha looked at him. She was a businesswoman. “How much money?”

“Unlimited,” Bhutani said. “Kill McGarvey.”

FIFTY-FOUR

Ayesha phoned Pam from the airport to tell her she was in Germany. It was midnight local time, and she asked for directions or for someone to pick her up.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“Protecting my investment. Did you receive the money?”

“Yes, and we’re making plans at this moment. Go home, Mrs. Naisir. Grieve for your husband. Help your family with their rug business and leave this sort of thing to me.”

“You didn’t do so good in Rawalpindi.”

“Because of the setup, which was your husband’s fault. I’m sorry, but you and I were lucky to get out of there alive, and I think you understand that. Go home.”

“If you force the issue, I’ll send no more money. You’ll be on your own. In any event I have some other news for you, and a direct request from someone very important, but we have to discuss it in private.”

“You have no idea how difficult you’re making the situation by coming here,” Pam said.

“It’s your call,” Ayesha countered. “I can get a hotel room for the night and fly home first thing in the morning, in which case you’re going to gain some powerful enemies. Either that or you can come pick me up.”

“What airline?”

“Air Berlin.”

“Fifteen minutes,” Pam said, and hung up.

Ayesha finished her tea. Then she shouldered her carry-on bag and went down to the baggage claim area to wait at the doors, not at all sure exactly why she had come to Berlin, except that she wasn’t used to giving away her money without maintaining some control.

Pam arrived in a beat-up red Mercedes that had to be at least twenty years old. Ayesha got in. “We have a lot to talk about,” she said.

“We certainly do,” Pam said. “We’re meeting with my operators tonight, and they’re going to have some pretty tough questions about why you’re sticking your nose into this business. And they have the right to some straight answers because their lives are on the line.”

“The situation in Pakistan right now is very tense.”

“Your government can’t seriously be thinking about going to war over a worthless piece of real estate.”

“Probably not, but our relations with the United States have weakened.”

Pam glanced at her. “Who knows you’re here?”

“General Bhutani.”

“The director of the ISI?”

“Yes, and he’s agreed that the service will pick up the cost of the operation. He made an offer of unlimited funding, but with one condition.”

“Which is?”

“That we kill McGarvey before finishing with the SEALs.”

The abandoned warehouse in Spandau, Berlin’s industrial sector, had once housed the manufacture and storage of high-voltage transformers and heavy-duty electrical switches dating back to before World War II. For a time, after the wall had come down and the two Germanys had reunited, the sprawling and partially damaged facility had been used to temporarily billet and process the hundreds of thousands of internal refugees fleeing the former east zone.

It had been closed down five years ago, and now only some Turkish, Polish, and Romanian squatters came and went. It was scheduled to be demolished sometime in the coming months. In the meantime the police never bothered with the place.

Pam drove in through an open service door and parked at the foot of some stairs that led to what had been a foreman’s office overlooking the work floor.

Two men armed with 9mm Uzi submachine guns waited just inside the door. Two others were spread out against the back wall of the room beyond three metal desks, a couple of file cabinets, and a large drafting table. Many of the ceiling tiles were down, and the floor was littered with debris and animal droppings. Only the background glow from the city penetrated the windows, many of which were broken.

Pam explained that Ayesha had come not only with additional money but with instructions, which the four men didn’t want to hear. But they lowered their weapons.

Felix Volker, one of the two at the door, looked Ayesha up and down. “Money’s good, but I’ll be fucked if I’ll take orders from some raghead broad.”

“Then leave now while you still can, Herr Volker,” Ayesha shot back.

“Son of a bitch, how do you know my name?” Volker demanded. He looked at Pam. “Is it you with the big mouth?”

“No.”

The general had given Ayesha a dossier on the men Pam Schlueter probably had working for her. He had gotten it from Ayesha’s husband, who had gotten it from Pam herself. “Herr Bruns,” Ayesha said to the other man just inside the doorway. “Herr Woedding, Herr Heiser.”

“So you know our names, so what?” Woedding said. He was toying with the safety catch on his weapon, a wildness in his eyes, as if he were about to crack up.

“The intelligence service of my country is pretty good. They’ve agreed to help with the first part of the mission, after which you would be on your own, except for the funding.”

“Apparently it didn’t do your husband or the street muscle he hired any good. It got them killed.”

“One man.”

“Yes, Kirk McGarvey, the former director of the CIA, and once upon a time a pretty good shooter in his own right.”

“He killed my husband, and we want him dead. Job one.”

Woedding looked at the others. “Maybe we’ll kill McGarvey, as you wish, then take our money and run.”

“We’d find you.”

Woedding shrugged. “We’re pretty good.”

“We have no gripe with the SEAL Team Six guys,” Heiser said. “They were just soldiers like us.”

Nothing like you, Ayesha wanted to say, but didn’t. “With McGarvey out of the way, I can’t see you turning down the money.”

“You weren’t specific,” Pam said. “How much money?”

“Name your price, Frau Schlueter. We’ll double it.”

FIFTY-FIVE

Walter Page’s limousine was admitted through the White House West Gate a few minutes past six in the afternoon. He was met at the portico by John Raleigh, an aide to John Fay.

“Good afternoon, sir. They’re waiting for you in the Situation Room.”

Fay had called him at two requesting the meeting. He’d only said it had to do with the Kashmir situation but wouldn’t elaborate. Page had spent most of the afternoon in the Watch down the hall from his office where five analysts dealt with a constant stream of information coming from U.S. satellite assets and other intelligence resources from around the world.

All he’d learned was that India and Pakistan continued to mobilize their forces along the border, but to this point there’d been no accidents, no exchange of artillery fire, as had been common for several years.

The only disquieting facts were that both sides had a significant portion of their missiles fueled and made ready, and that a small contingent of Chinese military advisers had arrived in Islamabad early this morning.

Raleigh left him at the open door to the Situation Room in the West Wing. The mood among the people around the long table was subdued. The president had not yet arrived, but his chief of staff was already seated, as were a stern-faced Fay, the secretary of state, the director of the National Security Agency, the director of National Intelligence, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the secretaries of Defense, Treasury, Interior, Homeland Security, the ambassador to the UN, and the attorney general. The thirteen, plus Page, constituted the majority of the Security Council.

Most of the others looked up and nodded when he came in and took his seat.

Madeline Bible, the director of National Intelligence, was seated next to him. She leaned over. “What’s this about the Chinese in Islamabad?”

“I just got it myself, and our confidence is not all that high. I was going to ask what you’d heard and what your sources were.”

The president came in and everyone rose. He swept to his chair and motioned them down. “Thank you for coming on such short notice. As you all know, the situation in Kashmir between Pakistan and India has ratcheted up overnight. I’m told that a shooting war has become a real possibility.”

“I’m afraid that’s the conclusion my people have come to,” Bible said. “I’ve prepared a brief summary, which outlines the intelligence data we’ve collected over the past several months.” She passed copies of the thick spiral-bound report to the president and the others.

“Give me the highlights,” Langdon said.

“Until this morning I would have advised that the chances of an all-out conflict were less than twenty percent. Something under the normal level over the past several years. But we learned that a delegation of high-ranking Chinese military officers arrived in Islamabad this morning and met with President Mamnoon Hussain and his cabinet, including his military advisers. Though the exact content of that meeting is unknown, we must presume that the Chinese have offered their help in the form of advice, possibly of a strategic nature.”

“No,” Page said out loud. “I’m sorry, Madeline, but that’s reckless.”

She started to object, but the president held her off.

“Walt?”

“My people tell me that the Chinese may have sent a peace delegation. Zhang Wei and Xiang Pandi are with the group.”

“I’m not sure I know the names.”

“Intellectuals,” Dr. John Boettner, the secretary of state, said. “Doves. Peace advocates. They’ve argued in some of the journals that a nuclear war between Pakistan and India over Kashmir could easily spread east over the Himalayas into China.”

“Words are cheaper than bombs,” Bible said.

“It would be in their best interest to prevent a nuclear exchange,” Page said. “In addition I spoke with General Bhutani yesterday afternoon, and he assured me that there would be no war.”

“That was an unauthorized contact, Walt,” Fay said.

“My call was unofficial and was about another completely separate matter.”

“Yes?” Fay prompted when Page didn’t continue.

The president interrupted. “You have something of a personal relationship with the general, isn’t that right?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve been to Islamabad twice to see him, and we met again in New York at last year’s Global Conference on Intelligence Issues. When I spoke to him yesterday I couldn’t detect any stress in his voice.”

“Were there translators?” Bible asked.

“No, his English is adequate. But my people tell me that it’s difficult at best to lie in a language foreign to your own.”

“I know some pretty good liars,” Bible said.

I’ll bet you do, Page wanted to say, but he held his tongue. He didn’t like the woman, and it had nothing to do with her gender. She was a politician first, an intelligence director second.

The president turned to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Bruce Ringers, who’d held just about every important post in the military since his graduation from West Point thirty-five years ago, including combat roles in Kosovo, the first and second Iraq wars, and briefly at the beginning of the conflict in Afghanistan. He and Secretary of Defense Matthew Koratich were close personal friends, and the secretary-chairman working relationship was better than any in history. Under the two men things were getting done — including the top-down reorganization of the entire military-industrial juggernaut.

“What’s your assessment, Bruce?”

“They’ve been there before, and each time they’ve backed off before things could go too far.”

“I hear a but in there.”

“Yes, sir. Having that much military hardware in such close proximity is inherently dangerous. Sooner or later someone will make a mistake, which could touch off a conflict. In this case an exchange of nuclear weapons, even if only theater size, could touch off a much larger regional war. The casualties would be massive.”

“Surely that’s not their intent?” the president asked.

“No, sir,” Koratich said. “But as Bruce said, mistakes will happen sooner or later.”

“The Chinese have sent a delegation to Islamabad. Maybe we should send someone to New Delhi. Or if the situation is already dangerously close to the brink, you might want to telephone Prime Minister Narendra Modi.”

“I’ll do both,” Langdon said. He turned again to Ringers. “What’s our military response?”

“If you mean go to a DEFCON 4, I’d advise against it. Not unless you would want a measured response if hostilities actually start.”

“Christ, no,” the president said. After a beat he got to his feet. “Keep me advised,” he said, and he left the room.

Page was the last to head down the corridor when Fay pulled him aside. “The president would like to have a brief word. We’ll meet him in the Oval Office.”

“I’ve had no update on McGarvey,” Langdon said. “I assume he went to Pakistan. Is he back safely?”

“Yes, sir,” Page said. He went through everything that had happened in Islamabad and at the safe house in Rawalpindi, including McGarvey’s opinion as a former DCI that the current issue over Kashmir was merely saber rattling by President Mamnoon Hussain to appease a population sick of power outages and an economy that was in meltdown.

“Nothing was settled by his going to Pakistan?” the president asked.

“No, sir, except that an ISI major who apparently was the paymaster for the group that has already killed two of the SEAL Team Six operators and their families was himself killed in a shootout.”

“Then it’s over?”

“McGarvey doesn’t think so.”

“What’s next?”

I think he’s going to offer himself up as a lightning rod.”

FIFTY-SIX

KLM Flight 1824 from Berlin landed at Montreal’s Trudeau International Airport a few minutes before five in the afternoon after a ten-and-a-half-hour flight. All but the first class passengers looked shell-shocked.

Ayesha was traveling under a very good British passport that identified her as Suzanne Reynolds from London. She went through customs and immigration with no trouble and headed down to the rental car counters as planned.

Pam was four passengers behind her, traveling under a U.S. passport identifying her as Janice Whittaker from Milwaukee.

“Do you have anything to declare?” the agent asked her, looking at her customs form.

“No,” Pam said, keeping her face straight. It was possible McGarvey had come up with a photo of her, but it wasn’t likely that it would have been distributed to airports here in Canada. Before they had left Berlin she had dyed her hair dark brown and had her passport photo taken wearing glasses.

The immigration officer stared her for several long beats, but then handed back her passport. “Welcome to Canada, ma’am.”

Downstairs Ayesha was waiting near the Hertz counter on the ground floor of the parking garage. She looked nervous. “Was there a problem?”

“No.”

“You were delayed.”

“You should have stayed in Islamabad, if you’re going to act that way. This is the easy part.”

“I’m sticking with my investment. I won’t get in the way.”

“You’re already in the way,” Pam said, and she got in line for a car.

Ayesha’s husband had been made of the same stuff as his wife. He had been the paymaster and he had stuck his nose where it hadn’t belonged because he wanted to be the one in charge. He had made a mistake by coming face-to-face with McGarvey, and it had ended with his death. It had been so stupid. But without his connection to the money there would not have been an operation, a fact he had pointed out to her from the beginning. Now she was stuck with the woman.

Pam looked back at her and smiled. Perhaps the woman would be shot to death in the end after she had made the final payment. Like husband, like wife.

The car was a Ford Fusion with a full tank of gas. Forty-five minutes after they’d touched down, they were merging with heavy work traffic on Highway 20, heading north toward the Highway 10 Pont Champlain Bridge across the St. Lawrence River that would lead to Highway 15 south, and shortly thereafter the U.S. border and Interstate 87.

“We need to get something perfectly clear before we hit the border,” Pam said. She’d been checking her rearview mirror since they’d left the airport. So far as she could tell they were clean.

“Don’t lecture me,” Ayesha shot back.

“I will and you’ll listen, because our lives depend on it. The guys you met in Berlin are professionals. All of them ex-special forces with the German army. Some of the best badasses in the world, and they won’t stand for any of your rich-girl shit.”

“But I’m the one with the money.”

“Money is important, but they value their lives more. If for one instant they think that you’re leading us down a back alley with no way out, they’ll kill both of us with no compunction and run.”

“I said that I’d stay out of the way.”

“More than that, keep your mouth shut.”

Ayesha turned away for a moment. “Why are you constantly looking in the rearview mirror?”

“Because McGarvey is a sharp bastard, and by now he’s probably guessed that I’m coming after him. In fact he may be counting on it. And I wouldn’t put it past him to have someone looking for me.”

“For us,” Ayesha said quietly. “I’m doing it for my husband; you’re doing it for money.”

“For more than that. Much more.”

Traffic had thinned out just before the border, which was about fifty-five miles south of Montreal, but then bunched up at the checkpoint. On the Canadian side they had to show their driving licenses and the car rental contract when it was their turn. They were ten cars back.

“Busy today,” Pam said, handing their papers out the window.

“They’re looking for someone,” the border patrol agent said.

“Anyone specific?” Pam asked, hoping that Ayesha wouldn’t panic.

“They’ve been paranoid since 9/11.”

“Can’t blame us.”

The agent looked up and smiled. “I guess not,” he said. He looked at Ayesha. “You okay, ma’am? You look a little green.”

Pam didn’t have a pistol, and they were pretty well stuck here, with no way back and no way forward.

Ayesha smiled weakly. “We just came crossed the Atlantic. Calm flight. But I get airsick no matter what.”

The officer nodded. “My wife’s the same way, and nothing helps.” He handed back their papers, stepped aside, and waved the next car forward.

Pam drove the several yards to the line on the American side. “You did good,” she said. “But you don’t have much to worry about. If they catch you they’ll merely send you back to Pakistan. I’m a different story.”

The wait was nearly a half hour, and the line behind them was long enough that cars were backed up on the Canadian side. When it was their turn at one of the lanes Pam handed their papers out the window to the border agent, while another used a mirror on a long handle to check the undercarriage.

“Open the trunk, please,” the officer said as he looked over their passports and the car rental contract.

Pam opened the trunk and a third officer went around to the back.

“Where were you born?” the officer asked Pam.

“Milwaukee.”

“Still have relatives there?”

“My mom and dad are dead, and I have no brothers or sisters. Friends.”

“Where do you work?”

“In the bottling plant at Schafer’s Brewery. It’s on Wisconsin Avenue.”

“What was the purpose of your visit to Canada?”

“Honeymoon. We got married last week.”

The customs officer looked at her, and then at Ayesha, who was embarrassed. After a beat, he handed back their papers. The officer at the rear closed the trunk lid and the one with the mirror stepped aside.

“If your partner is going to live here, she’ll need a green card.”

“Yes, sir,” Pam said and the officer waved them on.

Ayesha started to say something, but Pam held her off until they were well out of sight of the border crossing and on the open interstate.

“We’re partners, so don’t forget it.”

“But why? It’s disgusting, and illegal.”

“Not here, but I wanted to give the asshole something to focus on other than our papers. And it worked.”

FIFTY-SEVEN

They were temporarily bunking at the Renckes’ off-the-grid house on a pleasant street in McClean across the river from Falls Church. The company knew that Otto had his bunker, but no one on campus thought it was such a good idea to go looking for it.

McGarvey had taken Pete over to All Saints Hospital in Georgetown to get her knee looked at. The small facility tucked away on a side street was used to treat wounded intelligence service officers — mostly from the CIA — in secret. Luckily, it was nothing more than a dislocated kneecap that would heal itself in time.

They stopped afterward at their apartments and got fresh clothes, and in McGarvey’s case, his go-to-hell kit of spare Walther and magazines, several sets of IDs, and cash — in case he needed to get out of the country in a hurry.

“You think it could come to that?” Pete had asked.

“If we miss Schlueter I might have to follow her. And there might not be enough time to get my things.”

It was early evening by the time they got back. Louise was doing steaks on the grill in the backyard.

“She does the cooking. I open the beer and wine,” Otto said, grinning.

The weather was pleasant and they sat at a picnic table out on the patio. Otto had taken to smoking cigarettes — three each day — but although Louise was on his case she really didn’t push it. Smoking was bad, but it had replaced his old habits of drinking heavy cream by the quart and eating Twinkies by the dozen. He’d actually slimmed down and looked pretty good.

Mac and Pete slept in separate rooms, Louise’s doing, and no one mentioned anything about it, though everyone, including Mac, felt the tension and the way Pete looked at him.

“There’s been nothing from the Pakistanis about the incident, which isn’t all that surprising considering what they’re facing right now,” Otto said. “So what’s next?”

“The White House and the company are staying out of our way for the moment, and the navy is ignoring the whole problem,” McGarvey said. “All but three of the guys are out of the service, none of them retired, and so far none of them has asked for help.”

“Proud,” Louise said.

“Yeah.”

“Remind you of anyone we know?”

McGarvey was at a loss.

“She means you, Kirk,” Pete said.

He guessed that they were right, but it was neither here nor there. “Schlueter and her team are coming back to finish the job, and I think that the ISI will continue to finance them. And the timing is probably good considering the fact that our focus is on the situation between them and India, especially now with the Chinese involved.”

“Their first target has to be you,” Otto said. “You stopped them once in Norfolk, and you threw a monkey wrench in the works in Islamabad.”

“Right. And I’m going to make it easy for them. I’m going to be right out in the open, so as far as they’re concerned they’ll be getting two for one.”

“We’re going to make it easy for them,” Pete said.

“No.”

“Have Marty fire me and I’ll tag along as a civilian.”

McGarvey started to press his protest, but Louise interrupted.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked. “Something here in Washington where we can control the situation?”

“Norfolk. Greg Rautanen — the Ratman — one of the SEAL Team Six guys. He’s married but they don’t have any children, and right now his wife is living with her sister in Seattle. He’s screwed up, and maybe an alcoholic, and probably on the verge of having his house foreclosed.”

No one had to ask how he’d come by the information, because it was obviously Otto’s doing.

“Why him?” Louise asked, not liking what she was hearing.

“No family close at hand, no friends, no social or neighborhood ties. He’s a lone wolf. If it’s just the two of us, the collateral damage will be minimal — zero if I can help it. And the guy was a SEAL Team Six operator.”

“Okay, so you want them to come after you,” Louise said. “I see that. But first you’d have to advertise where you are. How?”

“Dick Cole.”

“DEVGRU’s chief of staff?” Pete asked.

“Acting chief of staff,” Otto clarified. “There’re some unspecified issues in his file, which means it’s just a temporary assignment until he screws up again, at which time he’ll be dumped. He’s already been passed over twice for his first star, and the third time is the deal breaker.”

Louise was shaking her head. “What good will it do telling him what you’re up to?” she said. But then she suddenly got it. “You think he’s a leak?”

“Schlueter knew too much about my movements,” McGarvey said. “Cole did a stint in the Pentagon, and I’m betting that he still has some contacts over there willing to do him a favor from time to time.”

“Only the CIA knew what was going on. He’d have to have a friend in Operations.”

“Which he doesn’t, as far as I can determine,” Otto said. “I’ve doubled-checked everyone on Marty’s staff who could have had access to that kind of stuff.”

“Another Snowden — maybe a contractor?” Pete asked.

“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted. “But my first impression in his office was that the guy had some agenda of his own, and he was seriously pissed off at me for coming to him with questions about his ex-wife.”

“I’m sorry, but if that’s a hunch, it’s one of your worst,” Louise said.

“I’ll find out when I talk to him again and tell him what I’m going to do, and why.”

“Which is?” Otto asked.

McGarvey hadn’t told anyone what his plan was, though he suspected that Otto had probably figured it out when he’d been asked to find one of the SEAL Team Six guys who was alone for the moment. And maybe someone who was screwed up and had been written off because of it. None of the guys were homeless yet, but Rautanen was close to becoming so — one of the 25 percent of homeless men who were combat veterans. No one gave a damn about them, not the military in which they had served or a nation for which they had laid their lives on the line.

“I’m going to tell Cole that Schlueter is coming after me, as well as the SEAL Team Six operators, and I’m going to use him as bait.”

Louise took a deep draft of her beer. “Now, why didn’t I think of that,” she said.

Pete was nodding. “I’ll cover your back.”

FIFTY-EIGHT

Coming through customs at Mexico City’s Benito Juárez International Airport Felix Volker was in a rare good mood. Today was his thirty-ninth birthday. He was fit, he was going into an op that wasn’t going to be easy — therefore it would be satisfying — and when it was done, he would be a rich man, relatively speaking.

He’d been born to a factory worker father outside of Leipzig in what had been the war-shattered east zone, and a mother who spent her days reading smuggled American movie magazines rather than cook or clean. His two older sisters — dead now for all he cared — had taken after their mother and were nasty-tongued slobs who had taught him all about sex, starting when he was about five.

Felix had made his way across the border into the west in the woods south of Lubeck with his uncle Bruno a year before the fall of the wall when he was thirteen. For the next four years he bounced between construction jobs and some state-sponsored welfare programs until he was eighteen and could join the Bundeswehr, where he had been taught to kill with a variety of weapons, including his bare hands, and where he had learned to love the smell of blood and the other bodily fluids that leaked out of a man at the time of his death.

At times, waking in the middle of the night with an erection, he remembered his dreams; they were never about sex, but always about killing. And when he was in the middle of the act of assassination, he always became sexually aroused. Fucking Pam at her tiny apartment had meant nothing more to him than a stylized act of murder.

At the time of his other-than-honorable discharge from the KSK the shrink had recommended that he seek psychiatric help. “You end up killing your family — your father and mother and especially your sisters — over and over again, with nothing to show for it. In the end you will certainly destroy yourself.”

In the end Volker had waited until the army psychiatrist had gone on a skiing holiday with his mistress outside of Munich and had killed them both in their chalet bed in the middle of the night.

The military investigators had questioned him, but in the end they left him alone, figuring that the doctor had probably been murdered by the husband of his mistress, himself a psychiatrist. Nothing ever came of it.

He took a cab to the Royal Hotel in the Zona Rosa, where he had a quick lunch, and then took a cab back out to the airport, where he was dropped off at the Air Canada entrance. When the cab was gone he walked down to the American Airlines counter, where he checked in electronically.

Fifteen minutes later he showed his boarding pass and passport to the security agent and was passed through the electronic scanning devices back into the international terminal.

Walking down to his gate for the flight to Atlanta, his heart rate never rose above fifty — about the same as when he killed someone. It was another aspect of his physiology that had baffled the KSK shrink. Whenever he was in a high-stress situation — on the battlefield or in bed having sex — it was always the same. His heart never worked hard. It was as if he didn’t care. Which he didn’t.

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful, and once he was through customs with just his one carry-on bag he took the shuttle over to the Hilton, where he checked in under his work name, Tomas Spangler, a Swiss citizen from Bern, paying for it with an American Express gold card.

The room was nice. Upstairs he ordered a roast beef sandwich and a couple of beers from room service, and while he waited he stared indifferently out the window toward downtown several miles away.

While on an op he’d lived for short periods in luxury hotels as well as shit holes. He’d never cared which. He’d also slept in bombed-out buildings, under a tarp in a construction zone, behind a pile of rocks in a battle zone in Afghanistan, and aboard a stinking freighter. That he was in the United States didn’t matter either. The location, that is. He was here to do a job, after which, depending how big his payday was, he would take a couple of years off, though he had no earthly idea where he might hole up or exactly what he might do — nothing except killing interested him much.

When the sandwich and beers came he gave the man a nice tip and went back to the window to stare at essentially nothing, while he mechanically ate his meal and drank the beers.

Afterward he used his encrypted cell phone to call Pam. “I’m here.”

“When will you be in place?”

“Tomorrow. What about the others?”

Pam didn’t answer; she was gone.

First thing in the morning Volker checked out and took the shuttle back to the airport. He rented a Ford Taurus at the Avis counter, using the Spangler credit card, ID, and international driving license. By eight thirty he was on I-85 heading northeast toward Norfolk.

He tuned to a country-and-western station and matched his speed with most of the other traffic. The morning was bright and sunny, and for the first time since he could remember, he was actually horny. And he smiled.

FIFTY-NINE

Driving through the night, stopping only at rest areas and gas stations, where they refueled the car and got sandwiches and drinks, Pam pulled into the parking lot of an IHOP just off I-66 in Arlington at nine in the morning. The parking lot was nearly full.

Pam was hopped up on adrenaline, and even if they had stopped somewhere for the night she knew that she would never be able to get to sleep. Not now that they were getting so close. And especially because she was going to come face-to-face with Gloria again.

Ayesha, who’d slept most of the way, except when they passed well to the west of New York City before connecting with I-95 south, woke up when they stopped. “Where are we?”

“Outside of Washington.”

“But what is this place?”

“We’re meeting someone here for breakfast,” Pam said.

“Who?”

“A friend.”

Gloria sat in a booth near the back. She was a mousy-looking woman, somewhat dumpy, with short, light brown hair, thin lips, and close-set eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a light top. When she saw them her eyes widened like a deer caught in headlights.

“Hello,” Pam said.

Gloria took a moment to speak. “You didn’t say you were bringing someone.”

They sat down. “Ayesha Naisir.”

“The major’s wife. Jesus Christ, how could you bring her here? Considering the situation.”

“She’s providing the operational funds now. It was she who put money into your account.”

“I thought it was you,” Gloria said. Her voice was reed-thin and high, almost like the upper-register notes in a clarinet, but soft. She leaned forward. “This is not good.”

“I’m sorry, who exactly are you?” Ayesha asked.

“You have my bank numbers, that’s enough.”

“It was a blind account. No name.”

“Yes,” Gloria said sharply. “And it will remain that way even after your silly countrymen blow themselves and India off the map. Have you any comprehension what’s about to happen, unless the Chinese manage to convince President Mamnoon Hussain to stand down?”

“There’ll be no war.”

“I wish my government were as sure as you are, Mrs. Naisir. But here you are, a long way from home, about to finance the mass murder of some American heroes.”

“You’re an American, helping with the murders,” Ayesha shot back. “Where is a logic that Allah would understand?”

“Fuck you and your prophet and all your people.”

Ayesha started to rise, but Pam held her back. “We don’t need this,” she said. “We have a job to do.” She looked pointedly at Gloria. “Including what I promised you.”

“I won’t wait much longer.”

“You won’t have to.”

Gloria hesitated, but then she lowered her eyes. “The money’s under the table in an attaché case. One hundred thousand. I’ve written down the address of a gun shop in Richmond whose owner will cooperate. She’ll supply you with whatever you want, no paperwork. But the price will have to be right.”

Pam reached down and found the handle. “What about Norfolk?”

“A couple of detectives are investigating the murder of the one guy and his family. ONI is on it too, but they’re not making much progress. They’re thinking a home invasion gone bad. Because that’s probably what they’ve been told to think.”

“By whom?”

“I don’t know,” Gloria said. She was bitter all of a sudden. “It wasn’t those boys’ fault. They were just following orders. God, duty, honor, country. Hoo-rah.”

“What about McGarvey?”

“He’s back here. A CIA jet picked him and the woman up in London and brought them to Andrews, where they were met by someone from the CIA. Probably the DDO and a couple of his goons.”

“I met the woman,” Pam said. “Any idea who she is?”

“Pete Boylan. She worked as an interrogator until she was transferred to the Clandestine Service. But I haven’t been able to find out much more than that about her.”

“Are she and McGarvey lovers?”

“There’s speculation.”

Pam was sure of it, because of McGarvey’s zeal storming the Rawalpindi safe house to rescue her. All very romantic. “Where’d he go after Andrews?”

“To Langley overnight, but then he disappeared.”

“Where?”

“Unknown, but almost certainly he’s with his friend Otto Rencke, who’s the reigning computer geek at the company. You might want to take care with McGarvey’s violence, but you’d better take special care with Mr. Rencke’s computer expertise. The man is a black-magic witch.”

“If he moves I want to hear about it immediately.”

“There’s something else,” Gloria said. “But we’re not sure what it means.”

“Yes?”

“Petty Officer Greg Rautanen, he’s one of the SEAL Team Six guys. Lives alone, a drunk, screwed up. Anyway, the ONI opened a new file on him. Some inquiries we apparently made, and it put up a red flag. Whoever hacked his file didn’t do a good enough job of it to hide their tracks.”

“Doesn’t sound like this Rencke character.”

“That’s just it; my sources said it looked as if the hacker came in with a sledgehammer on purpose. He wanted to be burned. Maybe he wanted to let someone know that Rautanen had been singled out for some reason. It maybe was a message.”

Pam saw it. “The son of a bitch,” she said softly.

“What?” Ayesha asked.

“He knows I’m coming,” Pam said. “He doesn’t know when or exactly where, except that it’ll be in Norfolk. So he opened the door for me with this Rautanen guy. ‘Here I’ll be,’ he’s told me. ‘Come get me.’”

“If he’s expecting us, we need to come up with another plan,” Ayesha said.

“On the contrary. We’re going to do exactly what he wants us to do,” Pam said. “What he thinks we were going to do all along.”

SIXTY

Greg Rautanen’s tiny bungalow was across Lake Edwards from where Steffen Engel had been taken down, and just down the block from a large apartment complex. The entire neighborhood was run-down, trash everywhere, most of the buildings in disrepair. And despite the fact it was just ten in the morning, knots of desperate-looking black kids, most of them in their teens, were hanging out on just about every corner.

McGarvey and Pete had flown down to Landmark Aviation at the Norfolk Airport where Otto had a new rental Hummer waiting for them. “Tough neighborhood,” he’d told them. “The car might impress the kids, but I don’t know how Rautanen will react, seeing the same kind of vehicle he used in the service.”

“He might freak out?” Pete asked.

“The guy’s screwed up, but there’s no knowing how bad he is. A lot of them come out so hyperaware that a car turning the corner down the block could trigger the memory of someone coming at them in a car loaded with explosives. He could react pretty violently to defend himself. A lot of them come out of the service as gun nuts, but some don’t want anything to do with any kind of weapon. They even barricade themselves inside their houses on the Fourth of July. Most of them have nightmares — even waking nightmares. Somebody happens to walk in on them during an episode like that and it could get hairy. Chronic detachment, lack of sleep, depression, of course, fear of any kind of a crowd, like in a mall or a movie theater. It’s why a lot of them end up getting divorces or going on the streets and living alone under a bridge or in the woods in a cardboard box.”

“And this Rautanen is like that?” Pete had asked.

“Probably,” Otto said.

“We’re going to use this poor guy?” Pete asked. “Put him on the firing line as bait?”

“He’s already on the firing line,” McGarvey told them. “Schlueter and whoever she’s hired are coming after me, but they also mean to kill as many of the twenty-two SEALs who are left — and that includes Greg Rautanen.”

They passed Rautanen’s house and at the end of the block turned around and came back. The lawn had not been tended in a very long time. An old kitchen range was lying on its side next to the short dirt driveway. A ratty old pickup truck with plates that were two years out of date was parked in the carport. The yard was filled with full trash bags.

McGarvey drove up and parked in the street, but left the engine running.

“We can’t use this guy, Mac,” Pete said. “It isn’t right.”

“I don’t know how long this is going to take, but if something starts to go down, beep the horn.”

They were a block away from the apartment buildings where a half-dozen kids were watching them.

“Don’t use your weapon unless there’s no other choice,” McGarvey said. “I don’t want to get into a shootout with a bunch of kids. End up as a race riot.”

Pete was looking at them. “This could go south in a New York minute,” she said.

“In more than one way,” Mac agreed.

He got out of the Hummer and went up to the house. The front door was slightly ajar. The curtains were drawn and no lights were on inside. The place smelled of rotting garbage, and maybe pot.

McGarvey eased the door a little farther with the toe of his shoe. “Greg,” he called softly.

No one answered.

“My name’s Kirk McGarvey. I used to work for the CIA, and right now I’m here to help you.”

“Get the fuck out of here.”

“Two of the operators on Neptune Spear have already been taken down. The bad guys want the rest of them. Makes you a target.”

Mac heard the distinctive sound of a shotgun being racked. It was an attention getter, and Mac’s gut tightened. No telling how far over the edge the guy was.

“You have exactly two mikes to make a one-eighty,” Rautanen said.

“I’ll wait in the truck with my friend if you want to call someone and verify who I am. You might want to try Captain Cole.”

“He’s a prick.”

“You’ve got no argument from me. But I shit you not, Ratman, your ass is seriously on the line here. There’s a world of hurt coming this way, and I’m here to watch your back.”

Rautanen was silent for a long time.

“Ratman?”

“Shut the fuck up, only my friends have the right to call me that. Who’s the broad?”

“She’s a CIA Clandestine Service officer who’s going to watch both of our backs.”

“I don’t need you.”

“Like Pete Barnes and Brian Ridder and their familes?”

“It’s just me,” Rautanen said, and McGarvey could hear the desperation in the man’s voice. “And no one gives a shit, because I can take care of myself.”

“If they can find you here, which they will, they’ll find your wife in Seattle.”

Rautanen didn’t reply.

“Hiding won’t help. It’s why I’m here. I want to use you as bait.”

The house was silent.

McGarvey pushed the door all the way open, at the same time Pete hit the horn. He turned around, the barrel of the 12-bore Ithaca Stakeout shotgun inches from his face.

“She opens fire it’d be a reflex reaction — my finger on the trigger,” Rautanen said, a crazy look in his eyes. “You’d be one dead motherfucker.”

“We’d both be dead, and your problem would be solved,” McGarvey said. “Your problem. It’d still leave the other guys.”

Pete had gotten out of the Hummer, her .45-caliber Wilson conceal-and-carry pistol in a two-handed grip.

“Your Ithaca is starting to attract some attention,” McGarvey said.

Pete started to come forward, but McGarvey waved her off. “So either shoot me or let’s get inside and I’ll tell you what I have in mind.”

Rautanen glanced at the kids down the block. “They won’t come anywhere near my place. They think I’m crazy. And you know what, McGarvey, I am outta my fucking skull.”

“My friends call me Mac. Lower your weapon and we can talk. But we need to get some shit straight ASAP, because I think whatever is coming your way will probably happen tonight.”

Rautanen’s hand steadied and he moved close enough so that the muzzle of the shotgun touched the bridge of McGarvey’s nose.

“Mac?” Pete said urgently. She moved forward so that she was only a couple of feet away, her pistol aimed at the side of Rautanen’s head.

“It’s Greg’s call,” McGarvey told her. He shrugged. “So shit or get off the pot, Mr. Rautanen.”

After a moment, Rautanen grinned and lowered the shotgun. “Friends call me Ratman,” he said. “You want a beer?”

SIXTY-ONE

Felix Volker got off I-95 at Kenly, North Carolina, a town of around one thousand people a few miles southeast of Raleigh. He turned off not so much that he was hungry, although it was just before noon, but because he was tired of driving and he wanted a drink. Tonight, when he got to Norfolk and hooked up with Schlueter and the others, there’d be no alcohol. He was too thirsty and too keyed up to wait until after the op.

He took the narrow county road under the interstate northwest and followed his nose to a small redneck country bar. A few pickups were parked in front — gun racks in the rear windows, a hunting dog in one chained to a ring. The dog put up a baying when he pulled up and got out of his rental car.

Tobacco and corn fields stretched out in either direction across the relatively flat coastal plain that ran one hundred miles all the way down to Pamlico Sound and the Atlantic Ocean where the tourists went.

The day was already beginning to heat up, and by this afternoon he figured the lowlands would be unbearably humid. It was something he didn’t like. Germany’s climate was mild, especially south around Munich, and even farther north in Franconia around Nürnberg where he’d lived for a couple of short stretches. Snow in the winter, but nothing extreme. Warm in the summer, but not hot. Schon.

He was dressed this morning in dark jeans, a dark polo shirt, and thick-soled walking sandals. He left his black jacket in the car and headed toward the front door, when a couple of thickly built young men — maybe in their early twenties and farmers by the look of them — came out.

“Well, son of a bitch,” one of the kids said as Volker passed them and went inside.

The bar ran across one-third of the room. To the right there was a pool table, a dartboard against the rear wall, and an old-fashioned jukebox in the corner. The men’s room was to the right, the women’s to the left. Two older men in bib overalls were seated at the bar, behind which was an older woman with long gray hair.

Volker took a stool away from the two men, who turned and looked at him as if he were someone from a different planet.

“What’ll it be?” the bartender asked. Her accent was very southern, difficult for Volker to understand.

“A beer, please. Dark, not so cold.”

“Sam Adams,” the woman said. She poured it from a tap and set it down. “Two dollars.”

Volker paid her, and took a deep drink. It was too cold and weak, almost like water to him, but it was okay. “Danke,” he said.

“You’re German,” she said.

He nodded. “Just passing through. I was thirsty.”

“Are you hungry? We have burgers and pizza. Frozen, but not so bad.”

“No. Just time for one beer and then I have to be on the highway to Atlanta.”

The two farm boys came in, big grins on their faces, and came to the bar. “Better give us a beer, Maudie,” the taller, stockier one said. His massive head sat on a thick neck and broad shoulders.

“Thought you boys had to get back to work,” the bartender said, but she poured them a couple of beers.

“Wanted to say hi to the gentleman with the girly footwear,” the other one said. His face was round and filled with freckles. “Hadn’t seen him around here before.”

“I don’t want any trouble in here, like Friday.”

Volker sipped his beer but didn’t look at them. They wanted trouble, of course, and he was of a mind to give it to them. But it would be foolish on his part, as well as theirs.

“Not very polite, you son of a bitch,” the big one said. “Didn’t your mama teach you nothing?” He grabbed Volker by the arm and tried to pull him around.

Volker put his beer down, turned, and smashed a tremendous right fist into the kid’s face, just above the bridge of his nose, driving him backward on his butt, blood gushing down his chin.

“Jesus,” the bartender said. She took a cell phone out of her pocket, but Volker reached across the bar and took it from her.

The second kid hit Volker in the side of the neck.

This is not why he had come to America, to have a duel with a couple of country boys. It would have been much easier if he had been allowed to have his one beer and drive away. But it was too late for that now.

He broke the bartender’s cell phone on the kid’s forehead, then slammed the doubled-over knuckles of his left hand into the boy’s Adam’s apple, crushing his windpipe.

The two old men sat where they were, slight smiles on their weathered faces.

The kid staggered backward, clawing at his throat, trying desperately to breathe. His face was turning beet red, and Volker figured he’d be on the floor unconscious in about ten seconds and dead within a minute or two.

The bigger farm boy got to his feet and charged, but Volker turned and stepped into him, shoving him up against the bar. Reflexively, after hundreds of hours of hand-to-hand combat drills, Volker used his bulk to get the kid turned completely around, grabbed his head, and twisted sharply, the spinal column where it attached to the base of the skull breaking with an audible pop. The boy dropped to the floor like a stone.

Volker looked up as the woman disappeared out the back door. He finished his beer. Then he went over to the old men who had not moved and broke both of their necks, letting their bodies crumple to the floor.

He looked out the front door to make sure that no one else had driven up. Then he crossed the barroom and went out the back door in time to see the woman come out of a small house fifteen meters across a backyard, her purse in one hand and a baseball bat in the other.

She spotted him and fumbled in her bag as she sprinted to a dusty Saturn SUV, its blue paint badly faded in the southern sun.

Volker reached her just as she got to the driver’s door.

She dropped her purse and swung the bat, just missing the side of Volker’s head. She was frightened but determined. Volker figured she had to be at least in her late fifties or early sixties and had more spunk than the two farm boys put together. It was a shame.

He snatched the bat from her hands, and as she spun around trying to get away he swung it one-handed into the side of her head, cracking her skull, driving her against the side of the car.

She raised a hand to ward off the next blow, the bat breaking her arm, and her legs started to go out from under her.

Methodically, with not much feeling, Volker hit her in the head again, knocking her to her knees.

Barely conscious, she could only whimper, no fight left in her.

Volker swung the bat, hitting her in the temple. Her head bounced against the car door, leaving a long bloody streak as she fell face-first into the dirt.

For a long time Volker looked at her. He couldn’t tell if she was still breathing, but it was of no matter. She was dead, or as good as dead.

He glanced at the back of the tavern. Too easy, he thought, dropping the bat. Norfolk would be more interesting.

SIXTY-TWO

This time around Dick Cole met McGarvey in front of admin. It was noon, and McGarvey half-expected the captain to take him to lunch at the O Club so they would be on neutral ground, with witnesses in case something went wrong. Instead Cole walked around to the east side of the building and headed in slow trot down a dirt path toward some woods a hundred yards away.

No one was in sight, but in the distance — in the direction they were headed — the sounds of automatic weapons fire and the occasional sharp crack of a small breaching explosion drifted up to them.

Cole, dressed in Cryes and bloused boots, ran with an easy gait. McGarvey wore jeans, a light-colored polo shirt, and Topsiders. He’d been required to leave his pistol in his car outside the front gate. The day was warm and the path downhill was easy.

They ran in silence for a few minutes until they reached the woods, where the path split off in two directions. Cole took the route up a fairly steep hill.

“If you need to pull over let me know,” Cole said.

Rautanen was right — the guy was a prick. There were lots of his type in the military and as civilians in government; this didn’t make them bad, just self-important assholes.

McGarvey picked up the pace. “No, thanks,” he said.

If Cole was irritated he didn’t show it; he just matched the pace. “I was a little surprised to get your call. What can I do for you this time?”

“I came down to let you know what I’m going to do. See if you wanted to coordinate efforts. They were your guys, after all.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but there’s no way in hell any military organization on this planet, now or ever in history, could hope to keep track of all of its discharged — retired or otherwise — personnel. Logistically it’s impossible. Surely you can understand.”

“These guys were special, captain.”

“Nothing I can do.”

“They did a tough job for us, and now we’re just tossing them aside.”

“I’m following orders,” Cole shot back.

McGarvey had heard the same excuse before. Lots of times. “I figured you’d say something like that.”

Cole pulled up short and glared at him. “What the hell do you want me to do? Why the fuck did you come back here?”

“Just to let you know what’s in the works.”

“If it’s about my ex-wife, forget it. I told you before, she’s not involved. It’s not like her. She’s a bitcher, not a doer.”

“I hear you,” McGarvey said. “Do you want to know what I’m planning?”

“Frankly, no,” Cole said, and he took off up the hill.

McGarvey kept the pace. “His name is Greg Rautanen. A chief petty officer, out of SEAL Team Six for about three years now.”

“Never heard of him.”

“He was one of the operators on Neptune Spear. Bit of a basket case now. Wife left him, so he’s all alone.”

“A lot of operators come through here.”

“He’s agreed to work with me.”

“Doing what?”

“The same people who took out Barnes and Ridder and their families are coming back to finish the job. Only this time it’s me they want. And I’m going to make it easy for them. Rautanen and I are going to hide in plain sight.”

“Here in Norfolk?”

“That’s right. Possibly tonight.”

Cole stopped at the crest of the hill. Below them was an urban battle setting of a dozen concrete-block buildings Six operators appeared around the corner of one of the buildings. One of them did something to a door, then swung wide away from it. Three seconds later the breaching charge blew the door inward, and the six operators charged inside.

“You’re planning on instigating a firefight in some neighborhood, maybe get some innocent people killed?”

“Some innocent people have already been killed.”

“I suppose I could call the ONI, but I’d be wasting my time. The local cops might be interested. But maybe I should just keep my mouth shut and let it play out like you think it will. Get yourself and Ratman killed. For what?”

Bingo, McGarvey said to himself. “Because someone cares.”

Cole bridled. “Listen, you son of a bitch.”

“I’ll find my way back,” McGarvey said.

He turned on his heel and jogged back down the hill and up the other side to the admin building where Ensign Mader, who had picked him up at the front gate, was waiting beside his Hummer.

“Where’s Captain Cole?”

“He wanted to watch the end of a training evolution on the other side of the hill.”

The ensign, who’d been smoking, field-stripped his cigarette, placing the filter in his pocket, and drove McGarvey back to the main gate.

“The captain was seriously pissed off the last time you came down here. Took it out on us.”

“That’s your problem.”

“What the hell are you doing here, sir?”

“Ask the captain.”

“I’m asking you, sir.”

“Stay out of it, Ensign,” McGarvey said harshly. “There’s some serious stuff coming down that’s way above your pay grade. And when the shit hits the fan, which it will, anyone nearby is going to get dirty.”

But Mader was young and gung ho. “These are my people,” he shot back angrily. “I’m not just some fucking drill instructor. I go out on deployments. I’ve been plenty dirty before. And I expect I will be again.”

“We all will,” McGarvey said. But there was no way in hell he was going to tell the kid that he suspected Cole was selling them out. He just couldn’t think of a reason for it.

SIXTY-THREE

Shockoe Slip was a section along the James River not far from downtown Richmond where tobacco warehouses used to do a bustling business. The once-seedy district had been turned into a fairly prosperous area of restaurants, shops, and apartments. Most of the warehouses still existed, though they no longer contained tobacco.

It was three when Pam happened to look across the street from the sidewalk café where she and Ayesha had been sitting nursing sweet ice teas for nearly two hours in time to see three Hispanic-looking kids in their very early teens beating up on a black kid who was maybe eight or nine years old.

“That never happens in Islamabad,” Ayesha said. “The tension between black and white has to be an embarrassment to Washington.”

Pam had listened to her crap the entire way from Montreal. “The Sunnis don’t kick the shit out of the Shi’ites? Give me a break.”

“That’s different,” Ayesha flared.

The young black kid got out from under his tormentors and disappeared around the corner, but no one on the street, in passing cars, or in the restaurants seemed to notice or care.

“I don’t like this place,” Ayesha said. “May we leave?”

“Not yet,” Pam said. The three Hispanic kids had walked away as soon as the black kid had disappeared. It had been too easy, she thought. Too staged. They hadn’t followed him.

A police car cruised past, and as it rounded the corner where the kids had gone, its lights came on and its siren whooped twice.

Thirty seconds later the black kid walked past. “Yo, ladies, Ludlow is waiting,” he said without slowing down or looking at them.

Pam laid down a twenty-dollar bill, and she and Ayesha got up and headed after the kid, keeping back a little, until he went down one of the narrow alleys that ran along the riverside. And then they caught up.

“Friends of yours across the street?” Pam asked.

Close up the kid was small, but he had the facial expressions and features of a teenager who’d spent a long time on the street.

“They’re ragheads, but they’re okay,” he said. He looked pointedly at Ayesha. “Wanna fuck when we’re done with business?”

“No, she doesn’t, you little bastard,” Pam said.

The kid laughed. “You can call me Fredrick, but it’s true I never did know my ol’ man.”

They came to one of the old tobacco warehouses, in a neighborhood of similar three-story buildings that had been converted to apartments or condos. Fredrick punched a code into a door reader. Inside they walked to the rear of the building and took an old freight elevator down to the level of the river’s loading docks.

On the ground floor the lobby had been tastefully painted in soft tans and greens, carpeting, even a small, modern chandelier hanging from the high ceiling. But down here the stone walls were dank and dirty, the floor covered in old uneven planks that were worn down in a path.

At the end of the corridor the kid opened a thick steel door that moved aside on rollers. “Ludlow’s waiting inside for you,” he said. He gave Ayesha another smile. “You change your mind, let me know, I’ll be around.”

The warehouse room was large, with steel shutters over the windows and loading doors facing the river. A dozen safes were arranged along two walls, while a long table covered with a green felt cloth dominated the center. There were no chairs or filing cabinets — nothing else, except lights dangling from the ceiling.

Ludlow, the only name Gloria had given them, came toward them out of the darkness in a corner. He was possibly the tallest, thinnest man Pam had ever met. At nearly seven feet, and perhaps one hundred fifty pounds or so, she thought he might have been a performer in a circus or carnival somewhere — a moko jumbie who didn’t need stilts. But he was old, somewhat hunchbacked, and his crinkly gray hair, narrow black face, and sunken cheeks and jowls made him look like a clown who made you want to cry.

He stopped within arm’s length and offered them a thin smile.

“Ms. Pamela, Mrs. Ayesha, a certain party informed me that you might wish to do some business today,” he said. “You will be engaging in an operation in the open, or will stealth be important?”

“Stealth,” Pam said. Gloria had promised that this guy was one of the best in the business.

“And how many persons will need to be armed?”

“Five, including me.”

“And what of Mrs. Ayesha, perhaps a small defensive weapon?”

“Yes,” Ayesha said.

“No,” Pam said. “The lady is to be a distant observer.”

They had talked about it on the way down from Washington. Ayesha’s argument was that she was paying for the op and she wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to kill the bastard who’d caused her husband’s death. Pam’s argument was that she had no idea of the level of firearms training Ayesha had received, and she didn’t want an amateur in her group with a deadly weapon in hand.

Ludlow waited politely for Ayesha to object. When she didn’t, he nodded.

“May I be told the nature of your operation?” he asked Pam.

“Assassinations, most likely at close range and most likely in quiet neighborhood settings.”

“I see. And may I know if you would like suggestions, or have you already determined your equipment needs.”

“Glock 26 pistols, nine-by-nineteen. Five of them, along with suppressors, and four magazines of ammunition each.”

Ludlow neither approved nor disapproved; he merely nodded knowingly. “You have a choice of magazine capacity — ten rounds, twelve, fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, or thirty-three. Although I must advise that because of the compact nature of the really very excellent little weapon, magazine capacities of above fifteen rounds defeat the general purpose of conceal-and-carry.”

“Fifteen-round magazines will be sufficient.”

“Now then, we come to the matter of holsters.”

“Simple thumb-break paddle holsters will do. Four right-handed and one lefty.” Hesier was left-handed.

“Knives, garrotes, or other specialized equipment?” Ludlow asked. “I can’t imagine that you will be needing flash-bang grenades or any other noisemakers in the setting you describe.”

“No,” Pam said. “But I will need five Ingram MAC 10s, with suppressors, and four 30-round magazines of the .45 ACP rounds. Shoulder stocks will not be necessary, though leather slings to carry the weapons beneath coats or jackets could come in handy.”

“A fine submachine gun, though not particularly accurate beyond ten feet, especially with the suppressor.”

“Accuracy beyond that distance will not be an issue.”

“Anything else?”

“How soon can you have the equipment here?”

“Oh, everything you require is already here,” Ludlow said. “How soon can you have the cash?”

“How much?”

“Fifty thousand dollars.”

Ayesha started to object, but Pam held her off.

“Do you have a secure Internet connection?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll bring the car around, and Ayesha will take care of the payment. But the transfer will not go through until I have personally inspected everything.”

“Nor will I release the equipment until I have confirmation of the transfer.”

“Then we have an agreement,” Pam said.

“Of course.”

SIXTY-FOUR

McGarvey and Pete had checked into a Marriott Courtyard near Cape Henry, the section of the coast where the settlers on their way to Jamestown first landed on the mainland. Pete had agreed to wait until he came back from meeting Cole. She was in the lobby having a cup of coffee when he showed up.

“How’d it go?” she asked. She was excited but trying not to show it.

“About how I expected it to go,” McGarvey said. “Did you get any lunch?”

“No.”

They went out to the Hummer, which McGarvey had parked under the overhang. He drove over to a 7-Eleven, where he bought a six-pack of Bud, and then to a McDonald’s, where they got burgers and fries, and he drove to the park. They had to pay for a sticker to get in.

The day was bright. They sat at a picnic table eating lunch. The ocean a deep blue and unusually calm. Not far away a cross commemorated the site marking the spot where British North America, and eventually the United States, had begun.

“I’m sitting here twiddling my thumbs. What’d he say?” Pete demanded.

“His hands are officially tied. ‘We can’t keep track of every GI who ever served.’ Said he didn’t know Rautanen, but he let it slip he knew the guy’s handle.”

“What’s next? This isn’t going to happen unless he’s the leak, which I find hard to believe. He may be an asshole, from what you said and from what Rautanen told you, but that doesn’t mean he’s selling his guys out.” Pete looked away. “This just doesn’t make any sense, Mac. I talked to Otto about it while you were gone. He said Cole doesn’t appear to have any financial problems. No mistress. He’s married, apparently happily, at least his wife hasn’t filed a restraining order against him or anything like that. He’s been passed over for his star, but his last two psych evals don’t show anything except a mild resentment and frustration that he hasn’t been promoted. He knows that the third time’s a charm, but he’s not going nuts over it.”

“Agreed,” McGarvey said. Driving away he’d come to the same conclusion. But he was missing something. He could feel it.

Pete looked out at the ocean. “Nice day, pretty view, but what the hell are we doing sitting around?”

“Waiting for someone to make their first move.”

“As in going after Rautanen?”

“That, or something else.”

“You’re not making any sense, Kirk. What, ‘or something else’? You told Cole that you were here to provoke an attack against Rautanen. What do you think he’ll do about it?”

“I hope he sends someone to take Rautanen into protective custody, which would prove me wrong about him.”

“Then what?”

McGarvey followed her gaze out to the southeast, where a very large ship heading north was low on the horizon. It was too far to make out any details, but he thought it was either a container ship bound for New York or a naval vessel on its way here. Or neither. Or both.

His cell phone vibrated. It was Rautanen.

“You nearby?” the ex-SEAL asked. He sounded stressed.

“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. What’s going on?”

“A car has made two passes. Government plates. Two people inside.”

“Are they in sight now?” McGarvey asked. He got up and motioned for Pete that they were leaving.

“Could the people coming after me fit that profile?”

“Possible, but I think it could be SPs coming to take you into protective custody.”

“Your call,” Rautanen said.

“If they come back, don’t let them in until I get there,” McGarvey said. “But for Christ’s sake don’t open fire unless they shoot first.”

“Best you boogey — they just pulled into my driveway.”

“On my way,” McGarvey said. “I’ll call you right back.”

“Is Rautanen in trouble?” Pete asked

“Probably not, but I want to make sure. Drive.”

As Pete headed out of the park toward I-64, McGarvey got on the phone to Otto and explained the situation.

“Did you get a number on the plates?”

“Stand by.” Mac put Otto on hold and redialed Rautanen. “I need the number on the car’s tag.”

Rautanen gave it to him. “They’re just sitting in their car. Looks as if one of them is talking on a cell phone.”

“You don’t want to shoot these guys.”

“Incoming rounds have the right of way.”

McGarvey got back to Otto and gave him the tag number. “One of them is apparently on a cell phone.”

“ONI,” Otto came back moments later. “Lieutenant Kevin Hardesty and Chief Petty Officer Caroline Cyr.”

“Can you hack into their phone call?”

“Just a mo,” Otto said. He was back. “They just hung up, but they were talking to someone in Cole’s office.”

“Cole himself?”

“Unknown,” Otto said. “But the two in the car are not your bad guys, so there better not be any shootout.”

“We’re on the way over there right now,” McGarvey said. “Anything new on Schlueter or anyone else associated with her?”

“No. But if she and the guys she hired are as good as you say they are, they could have gotten across our border without raising any flags. I have to assume they’re carrying first-class papers.”

“The problem will be weapons. They’ll have to come up with the hardware somewhere. And if it were up to me, I’d wait until I was close. Reduce the chance of some cop stopping me for speeding and decide to look in the trunk.”

“I’ll get back to you,” Otto said, and he hung up.

They reached the busy interstate and Pete kept up with the fastest cars, about ten miles over the speed limit.

“Looks like they’re ONI,” McGarvey told her.

“Cole’s off the hook.”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey said.

“What are you thinking, Kirk? Is he playing with you?”

“Anything’s possible. He knows I’ve been in contact with Rautanen, and he has to figure that I would expect him to send someone over to pick the guy up, just in case I was right.”

“Which he’s done.”

McGarvey nodded. But nothing was adding up for him. Something was missing. Something just beyond his ken. It was just a hunch, but he’d learned a long time ago to listen to his instincts.

He phoned Rautanen again, but this time no one picked up.

SIXTY-FIVE

Fredrick slid into view out of a door adjacent to Ludlow’s warehouse when Pam pulled up with the car and got out. A trolleybus half filled with tourists rattled by and chugged up a short hill at the end of the block.

“You ladies made a deal; that’s a good thing,” the kid said.

“What’s it to you?” Pam demanded. She didn’t give a damn about the money that wasn’t hers in the first place, but she hadn’t heard from Gloria, and this close to Norfolk she didn’t want to walk into an unknown situation.

“Ludlow says come help the ladies load the goods. Tonight we celebrate.”

Ludlow had unloaded all the weapons from the safes and had laid them out on the felt-topped table, along with three padded ripstop nylon bags with shoulder straps and locks on the heavy-duty zippers

Ayesha stood at the other end of the table, a laptop in front of her. “Do I transfer the funds now?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Pam said. She picked up one of the Glock 26s, ejected the magazine, and ejected the round in the chamber. Holding the slide with her right hand, she pushed the release button just forward of the trigger guard; the slide came backward and up, off the pistol’s frame. She took out the spring and then the barrel and closely inspected each part.

“Are you satisfied?” Ludlow asked.

Fredrick had closed and relocked the service door and stood to one side.

“With this weapon, yes,” Pam said. “May I trust you that the rest of the equipment is in order?”

“Of course. It would be bad for my business otherwise.”

“Bad for your life if you were lying.”

Pam ejected the rounds from the magazine, counting out the full fifteen. The spring seemed tight. No dust or old gun oil clogged the mechanisms. The weapon was new or nearly new and had been expertly cared for.

Pam reloaded the magazine and reassembled the pistol. “Pay him.”

Ayesha and Ludlow hunched over the laptop as Pam inserted the magazine into the handle and jacked a round into the firing chamber.

“Ludlow,” Fredrick cried.

Pam turned as the boy pulled a SIG Sauer from beneath his jacket. She shot him once, hitting him in the middle of the forehead. He went back hard against the door and fell to the wood planks.

Ayesha shouted something.

Ludlow, his arm around her chest, using her as a shield, a SIG’s muzzle pressed against her temple, seem unfazed. “He was a good boy,” he said. “No need for him to die.”

“I didn’t trust him.”

“How shall I explain this to Gloria?”

“Tell her the truth.”

“And what now?”

Pam lowered the pistol, so that the barrel was pointed toward the floor away from her. “You have your money, and as soon as we load the weapons into our car we will leave. If there is to be a second time, do not send an assistant. I deal only with the principals.”

“But then I could shoot you, and this woman. In the end I would have the money and the merchandise.”

“How would you explain it to Gloria?”

“I would tell her the truth,” Ludlow said.

Pam nodded. “It’s not necessary, Herr Ludlow,” she said. She transferred the pistol to her left hand, and holding out her right she stepped closer. “Let’s shake hands on the deal, and the woman and I will be on our way.”

Ludlow’s eyes were narrow, but he started to lower his pistol, when Pam fired one shot catching him in his left eye. His pistol went off, the shot ricocheting off the front of a safe, and he fell back, dragging Ayesha to the floor with him.

Ayesha struggled desperately to disentangle herself from the man’s body. Pam kicked the pistol away, sending it skittering across the floor.

Ayesha got to her feet, deeply frightened and boiling mad. “These people were helping us,” she screeched. “We made a deal in good faith.”

“This isn’t the rug business,” Pam said. “I wanted no witnesses.”

“What about me?”

“You’re my paymaster. I want this operation to be completed and for you to go back to Pakistan and report to the ISI that the contract is finished. I don’t want to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life expecting one of them to come gunning for me.”

“Fine,” Ayesha said. “You can load the weapons in the car while I get my money back.”

Thirty minutes later they had connected with I-64 east of downtown, and Ayesha sitting low in the passenger side, stared at the traffic, the buildings, and the power lines, her shoulders slumped, her head down.

“Are you okay?” Pam asked.

“I’ve been to Moscow and Beijing and London and Paris, but this is different.”

“It is different.”

Ayesha turned to her. “No, I mean different. Moscow is fast, Beijing is frantic, and London and Paris are European. But this place is angry, indifferent. No one cares.”

Pam was anxious, not hearing from Gloria yet, but her mood softened a little. “It just looks that way to an outsider.”

“You’re a German — an outsider.”

“I was married to an American naval officer. I lived in Washington.”

“But you didn’t love him. You got a divorce.”

“He was a pig, I agree, but some of the others were kind to me. They understood.”

“Other women?” Ayesha asked. “We understand what it’s like to be alone in a crowded room.”

“Men too. Grocery clerks, a kid at the Wendy’s, the guy and his wife who delivered our newspapers, the guy who came to fix our air conditioner, even a cop who stopped me once for speeding on the Beltway.”

“Sounds like you were brainwashed. Why did you leave?”

It was easier to remember the bad parts, the things that had nurtured and fed her hate. But sometimes she remembered some of the good stuff. Little League baseball had almost made her want to have a child of her own. The mother and daughter selling Girl Scout cookies almost made her want to climb out of her shell and volunteer — Dick had told her once that America was the land of volunteers. It was a concept that most Europeans didn’t get.

But the television was bad, especially the sports matches — baseball and football, which really wasn’t football at all — that Dick had loved beyond everything but porn.

The food was mostly bland.

The beer was like ice water.

Even the German country bread from the deli was little more than ground-up cardboard. The cheese bland, the butter pale and tasteless. And everything was laced with tons of salt and even more sugar.

And every once in a while, Pam wanted to say: So what? Who gave a damn? Friends told her that if she wanted authentic German food she could order it online, she could watch movies or television programs on her laptop, and she could get Stern magazine and the Berliner Zeitung newspaper delivered to her door, so quit griping.

But she’d never been able to get over her hate.

Her encrypted cell phone chirped. It was Gloria.

“His name is Greg Rautanen. McGarvey and the woman operative he’s with are making their stand there”

“What about the navy?” Pam asked. She was having a hard time concentrating on her driving. They were so damned close.

“The ONI is making a move to take him in for protective custody.”

Something gripped Pam’s chest. “They know it’s me coming?”

“They’ve known it all along,” Gloria said. “Or at least some of them have. They want you to fail, but they’re willing to let you go at it in order to make a point in Washington.”

“Which is?”

“Doesn’t matter. What does matter are your plans. Did you make the merchandise connection in Richmond?”

“Yes. I need the details on Rautanen’s location and his background.”

“I’m sending it to your cell phone. But take care with McGarvey. He may be a has-been, but he’s still very dangerous.”

“I mean to kill him.”

“Good,” Gloria said. “Tell me, how did Ludlow look to you?”

“When I left him?”

“Yes.”

“Dead.”

SIXTY-SIX

At Rautanen’s place a government-issue gray Ford Taurus was parked in the driveway. Pete pulled up and parked on the street. The crowd of blacks at the corner by the apartments had grown, but it didn’t look as if they were getting set to make a move.

“Stay here,” McGarvey said.

He jumped out of the Hummer and pulled his pistol as he hurried up the driveway and looked inside the ONI car. There were no signs of violence in the car or on the gravel driveway leading from it up to the house.

Pete came up behind him. “Last time I stayed back it nearly didn’t work out in your favor,” she said. She’d drawn her weapon.

“Greg knows we’re coming, and I don’t think he’d get into a shootout with a couple of ONI guys trying to bring him in.”

“Depends on how screwed up he is.”

Mac went up to the front door and knocked with the butt of his pistol. “It’s me,” he said.

“Door’s unlocked,” Rautanen said from inside.

“Everything okay?”

“Five-by-five.”

“We’re coming in,” McGarvey said. He holstered his pistol and motioned for Pete to do the same.

The two ONI officers, in civilian clothes, were seated next to each other on the dilapidated old couch. Rautanen was perched on the arm of a matching easy chair, the Ithaca cradled loosely in the crook of his right arm. He was dressed this time in his desert-tan battle uniform, a navy-issue SIG Sauer P226 holstered on his chest.

“About time you guys showed up,” he said. “I was thinking about shooting these two for the hell of it. Not really sure exactly who they are.”

“Lieutenant Kevin Hardesty and Chief Petty Officer Caroline Cyr,” McGarvey said. “ONI, here to take you into protective custody on Captain Cole’s orders.”

“You have to be Mr. McGarvey,” Hardesty said. He was lean, built like a soccer player, with seriously dark eyes and a demeanor to match.

“Yes, and this is my partner, Pete Boylan.”

“First of all, we don’t like people pointing guns at us,” Hardesty said. “Especially when we’re here to help.”

“I don’t like people barging in on me, unless you think I’m breaking some navy reg,” Rautanen shot back. His temper was flaring. “Anyway I’m no longer in the navy.”

“We’re here trying to do you a favor. Captain Cole suggested — not ordered — that we come out to talk to you about a situation that Mr. McGarvey thinks might be coming your way.”

“There’s no proof yet,” Caroline Cyr said.

“Don’t be stupid,” McGarvey shot back. “Barnes and Ridder and their families were shot to death. How many more bodies do you guys want to see piled up until your bosses decide to stop covering their bureaucratic asses?”

Hardesty started to say something, but Caroline held him off. “We’re not the bad guys, Mr. Director. And, yes, we were briefed on you and what you think has been going on. And we were sent here to try to defuse the situation by taking Chief Rautanen into protective custody until the situation stabilizes.”

“The situation won’t stabilize. If they miss Ratman tonight, they’ll go after the other guys.”

“What other guys?” Hardesty said.

“If you don’t know that, asshole, what the hell are you doing here?” Pete asked.

“Following orders.”

“We’re not. In fact tonight some people are going to die here, and we’re going to kill them. Maybe you oughta call for reinforcements, or maybe call the cops on us, because it’s not going to be pretty.”

Hardesty tried to say something, but Pete cut him off.

“Maybe if you guys had been on the ball the other two guys and their families wouldn’t be dead now.” She was on a roll, her eyes flashing. “This isn’t how we’re supposed to treat the folks who go out there and put their lives on the line for the rest of us. Why don’t you pick up a rifle and hump your ass off to the Anwar Province or someplace tropical like that.”

“Did you take their guns?” McGarvey asked.

“No, sir,” Rautanen said, grinning.

“Get out of here,” McGarvey told the two ONI officers. “We appreciate what you’re trying to do, but more’s needed. The attack on our guys stops tonight.”

The ONI agents got up, and at the door Caroline turned back. “You think that something’s going down tonight?” she asked.

“It’s possible,” McGarvey said.

“Is there anything we can do for you, short of sending reinforcements.”

“Tell me what your specific orders are, and who gave them to you.”

Caroline smiled and shrugged. “Ah, well, good luck, you guys. I wish there was something we could do, I really do.”

After they walked out Rautanen went to the window and parted the curtain. “I don’t think the LT is real happy with his chief,” he said. He turned back. “They were here for show, no way in hell they wanted to take me in. Weren’t even surprised when I jumped them out front. Didn’t try to talk me out of anything.”

“I’m not surprised either,” McGarvey said.

Rautanen laid the shotgun on the coffee table and perched again on the arm of the easy chair. “So what’s the op tonight? Who’s coming after me, and why?”

“A group of German contractors hired by the Pakistani ISI, which wants payback for Neptune Spear.”

Rautanen broke out in a big grin. “No shit,” he said. “Are they after all of us?”

“With you it’d be three down, twenty-one to go.”

“Plus one.”

McGarvey shook his head. “Who?”

“The dog. Don’t forget the dog. He was right there with us, man.”

McGarvey let it ride for a beat. “These guys are good. German KSK. They don’t have a hard-on for you guys, but by the same token they don’t give a shit. It’s just another day at the office.”

“Good. Makes it professional. Nice and clean, nothing ambiguous. No second thoughts, no touchy-feelies, no hesitations. You see the shot, you take the shot.”

“Could get hairy,” Pete said, trying to bring him down just a little.

But Rautanen’s grin broadened. “Good. So what’s the op plan?”

“Tell me what you know about the apartments up the street. The layout, the people,” McGarvey said.

“No place you want to be,” Rautanen said. “Good people, most of them, but the kids are seriously pissed off, and I don’t blame them. It’s why I act crazy all the time, keep this place looking like a shit hole, so they’ll stay away.”

“Has it worked?” Pete asked.

Rautanen grinned. “Here I am.”

SIXTY-SEVEN

When they checked in at what had been a Motel 6 on North Military Highway in Virginia Beach, the old guy who was the desk clerk gave Pam and Ayesha a knowing smirk. The place was run-down, in a seedy neighborhood, and attracted all kinds of clientele.

They drove back and parked in front of the end room. Ayesha held her silence until they got out of the car.

“What kind of horrible place is this? We could be in Rawalpindi.”

“We just were, remember?” Pam said. She had no sympathy for the woman, none whatsoever, but she had been telling the truth when she promised to make sure Ayesha got back to Pakistan in one piece. It was for self-defense if nothing else.

They carried the heavy bags inside and flopped them down on the twin beds. The room was reasonably clean, though the sink ran slow when Ayesha splashed some water on her face. The mirror was cracked and one of the fluorescent tubes was burned out.

“My four operators are in the next two rooms,” Pam said. “I’m going to get them together for their briefing. I suggest that you remain here until I come back for the equipment.”

“I’m not staying here alone.”

“Listen to me, bitch. I’m trying to carry out this op while at the same time keep you alive. These guys won’t want to deal with you. For all they know you’re a spy for the ISI who’ll turn them in when this is all over. It’d be easier for them to kill you now so that they won’t have to look over their shoulders for the rest of their lives.”

“Like you.”

“That’s right. The ISI knows who I am, which is why I want to make sure that you get home safely.”

“Interesting,” Ayesha said. “They’ll want me dead to save their own necks, and you want me alive for the same reason.”

“So stay here.”

“No,” Ayesha said. She hefted one of the bags. “Let’s see how my money is being spent.”

Pam considered the woman for a long beat. Without her cooperation the money would dry up. Reestablishing a tie with the ISI would take time, even if it could be done now, considering the tense situation with India. And working with the devil you knew was almost always better than working with one you didn’t.

“Put the bag back on the bed and stay here, I’ll be right back.”

“I said I won’t be left out of this.”

“I’ll bring my people here. They’ll have to find out about you sooner or later — might as well get it done now.”

“Don’t ignore me. I have just as much reason for retribution as you do. Maybe more.”

Pam went to the next room and knocked discreetly on the door. “It’s me,” she said.

The door opened on its safety chain. Volker was there with a shotgun. “Who is the woman you brought here?” he demanded.

They had maintained a lookout. It was something she hadn’t thought about. To this point no one but she and the four operators — Volker and Bruns in this room and Woedding and Heiser across the hall — knew about this place. “Our paymaster from the ISI.”

“Get rid of her and then we’ll talk.”

“Where’d you get the shotgun?”

“A little bar in North Carolina. No witnesses.”

“The gun will be reported stolen.”

“No,” Volker said. “Get rid of the broad.”

“If you want in on this op, it’s on for tonight,” Pam said. “I’ll see your ass next door in five.”

She went across the narrow corridor and knocked on 122. “It’s me.”

Heiser opened the door a crack. “Is it time?”

“I’m in one-twenty-five. Briefing in five minutes.”

Heiser closed the door.

Volker left his shotgun behind, but he and the other three men kept on their feet, their body language tense. Fight or flight, they left their options open.

“The woman’s name is of no importance; she is our paymaster and nothing more,” Pam said. She too was on her feet. The weapons were laid out on the bed between them.

Ayesha stood at the open bathroom door. She had the good sense to say nothing.

“She will not be on either assault team tonight, and before first light all of us will be long gone from here, in our separate directions, considerably richer than we are at this moment.”

“What guarantee do we have that when this is over she won’t out us?”

“None, other than your own tradecraft and the money, which will allow you to go deep.”

“And if we don’t wish to stay ‘deep’, as you put it, forever?” Heiser asked.

At twenty-four he was just getting started. The thought of such an early retirement didn’t sit well with him, hadn’t from the beginning. It was something Pam had understood the first time she met him.

“That would be entirely up to you,” she said. “But once the dust settles, which it surely will — even 9/11 has faded in the minds of most Americans and Neptune Spear will fade in the minds of the Pakistani government — there will be other operations.”

“With you?”

“We’ll see,” Pam said.

After tonight she would be faced with one last operation — hers personally, with Gloria’s help — and she would go permanently to ground somewhere. Possibly in Germany, after some plastic surgery and some bulletproof identity documents, which a lot of money could buy. She would go back to being a small-town girl. Maybe buy a Gasthaus somewhere outside of Munich.

Or maybe she would set up in Frankfurt or Luxembourg or even Zurich as an investment counselor for a specialized clientele. A money laundress and financial expediter for guys like Heiser. It would be the dolce vita: nice clothes, nice cars, nice apartments, fine restaurants, vacations to the Caribbean or South Seas. A boy toy who wouldn’t beat on her.

Anything was possible with money and retribution under her belt.

Volker looked at Ayesha. “If this goes bad and the ISI goons start coming for me, I’ll get past them, and you will be my first kill.”

Ayesha shrugged. “Do you want the money or not?”

Volker nodded at length.

“Then do as you’re told and keep your fucking mouth shut.”

The tension level in the small room rose palpably.

“Kirk McGarvey will be our primary target for tonight. The ST Six operators will be secondary.”

“He’s here?” Bruns asked.

“Yes. At the home of one of the Neptune Spear operators, just a few miles from here. He knows we’re coming, and he’s offered the operator as bait.”

“Shouldn’t be too tough for the four of us to take them down,” Bruns said.

“Tell that to Dieter and Steffen,” Pam said. “But they went in blind, something we won’t do.”

“We’re listening,” Volker said.

SIXTY-EIGHT

Sitting at the kitchen table in Rautanen’s house, McGarvey methodically cleaned and oiled his Walther PPK. He unloaded and reloaded all three six-shot magazines of 9x18mm shells, making sure that the spring in each was not jammed. Finally he reloaded the pistol, jacking a round into the firing chamber, then removed the magazine to load another round, making his pistol a six-plus-one shot.

Pete sitting across from him watched in silence as he pocketed two of the magazines, holstered the pistol at the small of his back, and set the silencer tube aside.

“What can I say to talk you out of this,” she asked at length.

“We’ve come this far, and I sure as hell won’t turn around and walk away.”

“I understand, and I’m not going anywhere. I’m just saying that we should call for backup.”

“They’d spot it and sit on their heels. Time’s on their side.”

Rautanen had been watching the street from the living room window. It was finally dark. He came back to the kitchen and opened a Coke. “Nothing yet.”

“You up for this?” McGarvey asked.

Rautanen laughed but nodded. “You bet your ass, but I think that you’re crazier than I am.”

“Tell him,” Pete said.

“Do you have anything other than the Ithaca and the SIG?” McGarvey asked.

“A KA-BAR, if it comes to that.”

“How many rounds for the guns?”

“Two boxes of double-ought shot, two of slugs for the Franchi, and a couple of boxes of hollow points for the pistol.”

Schlueter would be sending at least three or four shooters tonight, and after what had gone down in Rawalpindi he was sure that her primary target had changed from the ST Six guys to him. Once he had been eliminated they would go on with the op.

“How about you?” he asked Pete.

She nodded. “In for a penny, in for a pound, my dad always used to say.”

“No silencers,” McGarvey said. “I want this noisy.”

“But we don’t know when,” Rautanen said. “Could be an all-nighter, and maybe not go down until tomorrow night or the next.”

“Unless we set the time,” McGarvey said. He phoned Otto, and put it on speaker.

“Is it a go for tonight?” Otto asked.

“I want you to start calling all the Neptune Spear guys right now, even the ones on active duty if you can get through to them.”

“I can,” Otto said.

“Tell them that we think that one of them will come under attack sometime tonight, so sit tight and keep a sharp watch.”

“What do I tell them about you and Pete?”

“The truth. We think that Ratman could be the primary target and we’re setting a trap. But make them understand that Schlueter’s KSK operators might try to draw me out by attacking one of the others. They want to get me into the open and take me down.”

“All you have is a pistol,” Otto said. It was clear he didn’t like the idea.

“Do it.”

“You’ll be outnumbered, even with Pete and Rautanen.”

“Do it,” McGarvey said, and he rang off.

“That didn’t sound encouraging,” Pete said.

McGarvey called Cole’s home phone. A woman answered after three rings, and he asked to speak to the captain. “May I say who is calling?”

“Kirk McGarvey.”

“Yes, just a moment.”

McGarvey got the oddest sensation in just those few words: the woman not only knew who he was but had been expecting his call. Which was nonsense.

Cole was on the line almost immediately. “Who the fuck do you think you are calling me here?”

“I’m at Ratman’s house. I think someone will try to take him down tonight and I’m going to stop it.”

Cole hesitated for several beats. “If you really thought something like that was going to happen, you’d have the bureau surrounding the place. The state, county, and local cops would be in on it. SWAT teams. The whole nine yards.”

“The navy officially doesn’t believe the story, so what makes you think the bureau or anyone else would?”

“I passed it along to the ONI.”

“Yeah, I met them.”

“You didn’t let them take Rautanen where he’d be safe. So what do you want from me?”

“To let you know what’s about to happen.”

“You’re just as bad as Rautanen. It’s a wonder the both of you aren’t out on the streets.”

“Most of those guys are there because in the end it’s a lot easier dealing with the aftermath of three hundred plus days out of every year on deployment. Blown-out knees, bad hips, ankles shot, shoulders beat up, not to mention their mental state,” McGarvey said bitterly. He hung up before Cole could respond.

“I told you he was a by-the-book prick,” Rautanen said.

“Do you and any of the other guys ever get together for a beer or something?” McGarvey asked.

“I’ve never gotten around to it. And I doubt if most of the others do. Doesn’t seem to be any point. By the time the guys get around to quitting, their wives have about had their fill. They pretty much keep them on a short leash.” He shrugged. “Or bug out.”

“No contact with any of them? Not even the occasional phone call?”

Rautanen was about to say no, but he changed his mind. “Tony Tabeek. He and I used to hang around. He called last year after I became a bachelor and asked how I was holding up. I thought it was nice of him.”

“Is he here in town?”

“Over in Virginia Beach.”

“Call him,” McGarvey said. “Tell him you got a call from a guy named Otto who warned you that the rest of the Neptune Spear crew might come under attack sometime tonight. You just wanted to give him the heads-up. Do you think he’ll listen?”

“We were on Chalk One together. He’ll listen.”

Pete handed him Mac’s cell phone. “They won’t be able to trace your call.”

“I want him to use his home phone.”

Rautanen grinned. “They’ve got my phone bugged?”

“I’m counting on it,” McGarvey said. “But wait ten minutes until we’re sure that Otto has had a chance to get to him.”

“Anything else?”

“Tell him that I’m setting a trap.”

Rautanen hesitated a beat. “Do you think they’ll buy it?”

“They will when you tell Tabeek where I’ll be waiting.”

“Standby one,” Rautanen said. He got up and left the kitchen.

“I’m frightened,” Pete said, her voice low.

“You’ll be okay here. It’s me they want.”

“Not for me. I’m afraid for you.”

McGarvey reached over and touched her cheek, and she flinched. “We’re going to finish it tonight. No more looking over our shoulders to see who’s coming up behind us. No more worrying about these guys.”

Rautanen came back and laid a pair of black night-fighting camos and a black watch cap on the table. “You’ll need these.”

SIXTY-NINE

Pam and Ayesha had dinner at a KFC a few blocks from the motel, while Volker and the others spread out to two different places to get something to eat. They were all dressed in ordinary street clothes — jeans and pullovers or baggy shirts.

Their weapons were still back at the motel where they would meet at nine sharp for their final orders. They wanted to minimize the time on the streets when they were armed in case of a routine traffic stop.

The cell phone in Pam’s hip holster buzzed. It was the special program in which the contact information on the remaining twenty-two Neptune Spear SEALs was stored. Every call to their numbers showed up on her phone. Earlier she had intercepted the phone calls from Otto Rencke. This time the call to Tony Tabeek came from Rautanen’s house phone.

“Yo, Tank, this is the Ratman.”

“You got the same call from the CIA?”

“Yeah. Why I called. We’re going to try to head off the shit over at my place. Bait and switch.”

“I’m listening.”

“You know the apartments up the block from here?”

“Yeah?”

“Got a guy named McGarvey, ex-CIA. He figures that I’m number one on their hit list. He’s going to set up at the apartments, and when they come in he’ll be at their six.”

“If that complex is what I think it is, your guy’s got balls.” Tabeek said.

“It is and he does,” Rautanen said.

“What do you want from me?”

“Nada. Just giving you the heads-up, because he thinks you might be next after me.”

“What about the captain?”

“Cole? He’s a pussy. We’re on our own, man. Keep a sharp eye.”

“You too,” Tabeek said.

Pam hung up.

Ayesha was staring at her. “What is it?”

“Tonight’s operation just got easier,” Pam said.

She speed-dialed the other four, Volker first.

“Problems?” he asked.

“Just the opposite. Get back to base. We’re a go.”

She gave the same message to the others, and she and Ayesha got in the Fusion and headed back to the motel. It was a weeknight, but traffic was still heavy. The bars and other dives that always surround a military base like a cloud of meteors were already busy with guys who were off duty.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Ayesha said. She seemed excited, a glow in her eyes.

“McGarvey’s made a mistake,” Pam said. “He thinks he’s set a trap for us, but instead he’s the one who’s backed into a corner.” She explained what she’d overheard and what her plan was.

“Is he that foolish?” Ayesha asked.

“He wouldn’t be if he knew that I was monitoring the phone calls to all the ST Six guys.”

“He’s CIA — he must have a lot of resources at his disposal. Enough to possibly predict that you have the ability to monitor such phone messages. Maybe he’s set a trap for you.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pam said angrily. But something nagged.

“I was married to an intelligence officer who knew all about the CIA, and who liked to tell me about his days. And McGarvey did find us at the Rawalpindi house.”

“This time is different.”

“How so?” Ayesha asked, her tone insinuating and irritating.

“There will be me and four of my operators.”

“We had you, my husband, and four dacoits, plus we had the woman as a hostage, and we were on familiar ground, and yet McGarvey managed to win the day. What makes you think this evening will be any different?”

“Your husband wasn’t a field officer, and the dacoits he hired were amateurs. In the end both you and the woman were liabilities.”

Ayesha looked out the window as they pulled in to the motel’s parking lot. “Your kind always has excuses.”

Pam slammed on the brakes at her parking spot. “I don’t need your shit!”

“But you need my money.”

“You’re staying here until we’re back.”

“I’m going as an observer.”

Pam was on the verge of killing the stupid woman herself and putting the body in a Dumpster somewhere. “What if you get yourself shot by McGarvey or the CIA bitch at Rautanen’s, or even one of my guys? How the hell do I explain it to the ISI? We’ll need the money to continue with the op after tonight.”

“They’ll probably be glad to get rid of me,” Ayesha said. “Believe me, they’re just as interested in finishing this thing as you are.”

“I don’t have a spare weapon to give you, even if you knew how to use it.”

“As it turns out, I’m a fine shot. My husband taught me.”

Pam looked at her in the dim light. “There is an American expression that I learned when I lived here. You might take heed. Be careful what you wish for — you just might get it.”

Volker and the other three showed up at Pam’s room ten minutes later. They were pumped, ready to shoot someone.

“It’s a go for tonight as I expected it would be,” Pam told them. “But it’s likely to be much easier than I first thought it might be. For starters we won’t have to split our forces.”

Her original plan was to have one of her operators make an attack on one of the SEALs who lived within ten minutes’ driving time of Rautanen’s house with the idea of luring McGarvey away. Pam and the other three would be standing by, and as soon as he walked out of the house they would nail him.

“What has changed?” Volker asked.

Pam told him about the intercepted phone calls, including the one that Rautanen had made to Tabeek — one of the operators who’d been on Chalk One.

“It could be a setup, if he knows we’re monitoring their calls.”

“Even if he does, he’s going to do exactly what we wanted him to do in the first place. Only he’ll believe that we’re making an assault on Rautanen’s house. He won’t expect us to come up on him from all directions, leaving him no way out. The Americans in the first Iraq war talked about shock and awe. Well, we’re going to give the bastard a shock-and-awe campaign that he won’t walk away from.”

“What about the rest of the operation?”

“McGarvey’s first, and then we reevaluate the situation in front of us,” Pam said. “But if it looks as if it’s falling apart, we’ll do a one-eighty and get out. You have your escape routes and documents. Drop the weapons in place — they’re untraceable — and walk away.”

“There is a lot of money you promised us,” Heiser said.

“Trust me: once McGarvey has been eliminated the operation will continue. Perhaps not tonight, perhaps not until the dust settles, which it eventually will. But we will finish what we started, one SEAL operator at a time.”

“Okay, what’s the tactical plan?” Volker asked.

“I’ll show you,” Pam said and she brought up a map on her smartphone, shifting the view to the side of the apartment complex facing Rautanen’s house. “The lake is north and the SEAL’s house is east of the apartments, so we’ll come in from the west and split up once we spot him.”

“Will he be outside or inside one of the apartments?”

“Unknown,” Pam said, and Ayesha interrupted her.

“I’ll go in first and do a recon,” she said, and the others simply looked at her.

SEVENTY

McGarvey crossed the backyards of the three houses between Rautanen’s and the edge of the apartment complex. Two of the small ranch styles had been foreclosed on and abandoned, but the middle one was still lived in, though no lights shone from any of the windows this night.

A half-dozen or more black kids had started a small trash fire just off the street at the front of the parking lot. A boom box sitting on a dilapidated folding chair was playing some tuneless rap song the sounds of which echoed off the front of the building.

What little traffic there was at this hour did not linger, even though it was early — before ten o’clock. The drivers counted themselves lucky if they got through this neighborhood without trouble.

Some old junk cars were parked at the rear of the complex. Two of them were up on concrete blocks, minus their wheels. Another was totally trashed; all of its windows broken out and its seats and dashboard cut apart. One had its trunk lid open.

Some of the windows in the half-dozen three-story buildings were lit, but most of them were in darkness. Laundry hung from the railings on several small balconies. Stopping just at the corner of the first building, McGarvey got the distinct sense that he was being watched. Yet the entire complex, like the neighborhood, had the air of abandonment.

From where he stood he had a good sight line of the west side of Rautanen’s house, including the carport and the Hummer. The lights were out: Pete was watching from a bedroom in the rear, and Rautanen from a living-room window in front.

In the far distance a fire truck siren echoed across the lake, and somewhere he thought he heard a train whistle. Night sounds, lonely. Most good people were at home watching TV or getting ready for bed. The predators were out prowling like wild animals in the dark, looking for prey.

Stepping around the corner, McGarvey walked to the front where the black kids stood around the fire in a small metal barrel. It wasn’t cold outside; the fire was merely something to do, a gathering place for them.

The kids turned around, and one of them shut off the music.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” McGarvey said. He stopped about ten feet out. “Got a question for you. Fact is, I need your help.”

For several long beats the kids — who ranged in age from their midteens to maybe nineteen or twenty — were silent. One of them pulled out a knife and another a pistol, which looked to McGarvey like an old .38 Saturday Night Special.

“We’re going to help you into the ground, you dumb sucka,” the older one said.

The kid with the pistol took a step forward.

“You know the guy lives in the house at the end of the block?” McGarvey said. “The one you think is nuts? He needs your help.”

All of them laughed.

“You’ve heard of bin Laden,” McGarvey said, addressing the older kid. “The guy down the block was on the team that went over to Pakistan to take care of him.”

“So?”

“Their government has sent people over to kill him — name’s Greg.”

“Just get your honky ass out of here before we waste you.”

“The people are coming here tonight. If you get in the way they’ll kill you. Thing is, I’m pretty sure they know that I came over to set a trap for them, so I’m number one on their hit list. And they’re carrying more than a couple of knives and one shit-hole pistol that’ll probably blow up soon as the trigger’s pulled. It’s why I need your help — so that I’ll have a chance to stop them from pulling it off.”

“What’s it to us?” the one kid said. A couple of the others looked over their shoulders down the street.

“Thing is, these people have already killed two of the SEALs who took out bin Laden. That, and they murdered the families. Like I said, I’m here to stop them.”

“You a cop?”

“I used to work for the CIA.”

The older kid — their spokesman — was impressed. “No shit?”

“No shit,” McGarvey said. “So this is what I want you guys to do for me.”

The kid with the gun came forward all of a sudden, the pistol pointed straight out.

Before the kid could react McGarvey snatched the pistol out of his hand. The one with the knife started forward, but the older kid put out an arm and stopped him.

“He didn’t come here talking all his honky bullshit for nothing,” their spokesman said.

“That’s what it is, nigger, honky bullshit,” the kid who’d had the pistol slammed back.

“Maybe, but this time’s different.”

McGarvey held out the gun, handle first. “I’d get rid of this before you get hurt.”

Slowly the younger kid took the gun. He turned and walked back to the fire, but he didn’t put the pistol back in his belt.

The entire city seemed to fall silent, except for the crackling of the small fire, which gave off black smoke and the acrid odor of burning rubber. McGarvey had been in a lot of foreign places in a career of a couple of decades, but here and now it almost seemed as if he were on another planet — yet still in his own country.

“So what do you want?” the older kid asked.

McGarvey told him. None of them were happy.

SEVENTY-ONE

Ayesha hid in the shadows twenty feet from where McGarvey stood with the black kids on the corner. She could hear them talking, but she couldn’t quite make out the words, except when one of them called the other a nigger. She knew enough, though, to keep out of sight: the tension was palpable. And when McGarvey handed the gun back to the kid, she’d almost turned around and walked away.

The scene was way beyond her understanding. Everything she’d ever read about the situation between blacks and whites in the United States, everything she’d seen on the television and heard on the radio, had led to the belief common in Pakistan and most other places around the world: that America was on the verge of a race riot.

It didn’t seem to her to be anything like that. McGarvey was outnumbered, but except for the kid with the gun, nothing had happened. It looked to her like they were having an ordinary conversation.

It came to her all of a sudden that the conversation McGarvey was having with the black kids was anything but ordinary, and again she had the sudden urge to turn around and get out of there.

Her cell phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. She stepped farther back into the shadows next to the apartment building’s entrance and answered it. “Yes.”

It was Pam and she sounded stressed. “What’s the situation?”

“McGarvey’s here. I’m about twenty feet away from him and some black kids. I think he’s enlisted them.”

“Enlisted them? What are you talking about?”

“They’re going to help him. Probably act as lookouts. You were right that he’d be here waiting for you, but wrong that if the blacks caught him there would be trouble.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“I’m at the front entrance to the building nearest the houses. Rautanen’s is four doors away — about fifty meters from here.”

Pam had dropped her off about a block away, and she’d made it this far on foot. The other four operators on the team had parked even closer and were standing by to strike, with enough firepower to take out McGarvey and the black kids ten times over.

It was retribution for the strike on bin Laden, the violation of Pakistan’s borders, but more than that for Ayesha; this evening it was supposed to be retribution for her husband’s death. But now that she was this close she found that her feelings were flat. Retribution would not bring Ali back to her — nothing on this earth would. All that was left was for her to someday join her husband under Allah’s pure light in paradise.

Trouble was, she didn’t really believe in all that nonsense. If there was a paradise, it was here on earth, among the living.

“Have you been spotted?”

“No.”

“How many blacks are with McGarvey?”

“Seven. But most of them are kids.”

“Are any of them armed?” Pam demanded.

“McGarvey took a pistol away from one of them, but then he gave it back.”

“What?”

“He gave it back to the kid,” Ayesha said. “Look, I’m getting out of here.”

“Stay there. We’re on our way. Just keep your head down.”

Ayesha cut the connection.

One of the black kids had grabbed the boom box and headed around the corner with a couple of the others. McGarvey had disappeared around the corner of the building, but the rest of them headed directly toward the front entrance where Ayesha was standing.

She turned and headed as fast as she could run down the length of the building, staying as much as possible in the deeper shadows. Thankfully all the streetlights were out and she nearly made it to the corner, when one of the kids behind her shouted something she couldn’t make out.

Ducking around the corner she tripped on some trash and fell on her face, scraping her elbows and smashing her chin into the broken blacktop, blood in her mouth.

She scrambled to her feet and ran headlong to the rear of the building and around the corner, where she pulled up short, gasping for breath. Twenty meters across the rear parking area was another apartment building; there were others to the left. To the right, was a narrow strip of what once might have been grass but was now mostly bare dirt and some weeds and trash. This was where the coordinated attack on Rautanen would take place once Pam’s team had taken care of McGarvey.

No direction was safe. She wanted to get out, find a street where she could get a cab back to the motel for her things and then to the airport where she could rent a car and get clear of the city. Anywhere. She had the credit cards, the passport and other documents, and plenty of money to get out of the country. Anywhere. Perhaps back to Canada, or even Mexico, and from there she could make her way home.

“Who the fuck are you?” someone said to her left.

Ayesha turned. A tall black man, young, maybe twenty, with the menacing look of a Taliban fighter, was two feet from her. Her heart stopped and her legs suddenly went so weak she thought she wouldn’t be able to keep on her feet for another second.

“McGarvey,” was all she managed to say.

SEVENTY-TWO

McGarvey had just come around the rear corner of the building when he heard a woman cry his name. The blacks he’d talked with had dispersed — some of them inside the buildings where they would take up positions on the balconies as lookouts, others on the west side of the apartment complex.

The nearest one to him was the kid with the gun, still out front watching to the east, toward Rautanen’s house.

Everyone was pretty much within hailing distance to warn him their company had arrived.

He pulled out his pistol. Trailing his left hand against the side of the building he hurried in the direction of the woman’s voice. It was dark back here and he was within thirty feet of the east side of the building before he could make out the figure of a slightly built woman, two black kids towering over her, holding her against the wall.

They didn’t spot him until he was ten feet away. One of them turned, a machete in his hand. “Who the fuck are you?” the kid demanded. He had a Caribbean accent, maybe Haitian.

“The woman’s with me,” McGarvey said. He held his pistol more or less out of sight at his right side. “Back away and nothing bad will happen here tonight.”

The other kid, whose left hand was on Ayesha’s chest, holding her against the wall, raised a knife to her throat. “Motherfucker, I’ll slice the bitch.”

“I don’t think so,” McGarvey said, raising his pistol.

The kid with the machete laughed. “So she dies,” he said. “In the meantime I’ll have half the hood down here covering your honky ass.”

“Right now a world of shit is about to rain down on this place. At least four German Special Forces guys armed with automatic weapons are coming this way to kill me, and they won’t give a shit who they have to take down to do it.”

“Bullshit.”

All of a sudden McGarvey recognized the woman. “Didn’t expect to see you here,” he said. “Though I can guess why you came.”

“I came looking for you,” she said.

“You found me.”

“I told Pam that you were talking with some kids out front. They’re less than a block away.”

“Voodoo bullshit,” the kid with the machete said. He was high on something.

“Why do you suppose she’s really here?” McGarvey asked. “Why do you think someone like me is here? To shake up dumb sons of bitches like you and your pal who’re only big enough to shove a woman around?”

The kid with the machete suddenly lunged forward, raising the blade as he came.

McGarvey side-stepped him at the last moment. Just as the machete was coming toward his head, he slapped the kid’s hand aside and grabbed him under his arm, just above the elbow, and then shoved him against the building.

The kid was like a wild man, bouncing all over the place, kicking, screaming incoherently.

“I’ll slice the bitch,” the kid holding Ayesha said.

McGarvey brought his gun around and shot the kid with the machete in the left kneecap. He grabbed the blade and twisted away as the kid howled and dropped to the ground, holding his destroyed knee with both hands.

McGarvey tossed the machete away and strode to Ayesha’s side, pointing his pistol at the kid’s head. “You’re dead in three seconds.”

The kid froze.

“Three, two, one—”

The kid suddenly released Ayesha and stepped back.

“Drop the knife and help your buddy get the fuck out of here before the shit hits the fan.”

The kid did as he was told. Warily eying McGarvey, he hustled to help his friend up, and the two of them limped across the parking lot to one of the buildings in the back.

“Mac,” Pete called from behind him

He turned as Pete came around the corner, her pistol drawn. “Otto monitored a call from her cell phone to Pam. They’re on their way.”

Two of the black kids came around the corner right behind her.

“She’s with me,” McGarvey told them, and they pulled up.

“They know you’re here,” Pete said.

“That’s what I wanted to happen,” McGarvey said. “I want you to take her back to Rautanen’s and keep your head down.”

Pete suddenly reared back. “Mac,” she shouted.

McGarvey turned on his heel in time to see Ayesha just about on top of him, the kid’s knife in her right hand, coming in for the kill. He feinted to the left as she lunged.

Pete fired one shot, catching the woman in the chest just below her left breast.

Ayesha’s momentum carried her into McGarvey and her legs gave out from under her, the knife slipping from her hands.

He helped her to the ground. Her eyes fluttered and she said something indistinct.

He lowered his head so that his ear was at her mouth. “What is it?”

She said something in Punjabi, her voice barely audible.

“In English,” McGarvey said.

“For Ali,” she whispered. “It was for my husband. Always for him.”

She stopped breathing at the same moment automatic weapons fire, what sounded to McGarvey like a suppressed MAC 10, raked the side of the building inches from where he was down on one knee.

SEVENTY-THREE

Pam heard the barely audible gunfire from the east of her position in the middle of the apartment complex. It was either Volker or Woedding. She’d sent the two of them between the buildings in the direction of Rautanen’s house, while Bruns and Heiser had split off to the rear of the second row of buildings, hoping to catch McGarvey in a flanking position.

They’d left the cars at the edge of the complex and had come the rest of the way on foot — the four operators forward while she hung back in case McGarvey tried to make an end run.

She’d set up a common number on their encrypted cell phones. She keyed it. “Report,” she said softly.

“He’s on the east side with the woman,” Volker responded. It sounded as if he was running.

“Is he down?”

“Negative, but we hit two of the blacks with him.”

“What’s your situation?”

“We’re across the parking area.”

More suppressed gunfire came from that direction, followed immediately by several unsilenced pistol shots.

“He and the broad just went inside the building. We’re taking fire.”

“Klaus, Friedrich, kommt!” Pam called.

“We’re twenty-five meters behind the building,” Bruns responded. “We’ll try to get in from the rear.”

“Good. Felix, copy?”

“Ja.”

“What about Ayesha?”

“She’s down. The woman with McGarvey shot her.”

Just as well, Pam thought. She would worry about the money later. “I want this op over with now. McGarvey’s making too much noise.”

“That’s his intention,” Volker radioed back.

McGarvey and Pete huddled just inside the doorway of the apartment building across the parking lot from where Ayesha’s body and the bodies of the two black kids who had agreed to help out were lying.

Pete was on the phone with Otto. She handed it to McGarvey.

“There’s been a fair amount of phone traffic, but they’re using a military-grade encryption algorithm, which is going to take my darlings a minute or so to figure out. But I’d guess that they’re going to try to flank you. They can’t be happy with all the noise you’re making.”

“Have the cops taken any notice?”

“Not yet. Do you want me to give them the heads-up?”

“No.”

“Goddamnit, Mac—”

“If some patrol officer shows up he’s going to get himself killed. And by the time a SWAT team is organized this’ll be a done deal. One way or the other.”

A half-dozen incoming rounds blazed through the open doorway, ricocheting around inside the entry vestibule. McGarvey reached around the corner and emptied his magazine in the general direction of the two shooters.

“Go upstairs and try to find a balcony on the first or second floor, if someone will let you in,” he said as he changed out magazines. “If not, cover me from the landing.”

“I’m not going to leave you alone.”

McGarvey grinned. “You know this isn’t going to work for us if you’re all the time arguing with me.”

“Chauvinist.”

“Just keep your ass down. I want to end this crap tonight.”

She pecked him on the cheek. “For luck,” she said. She hurried past the elevator door, which had an out-of-order sign on it, and bounded up the stairs two at a time.

The cell phone burred. It was Otto again, and he was excited.

“You’ve got two guys in front of you, and I think two more are coming up on your six.”

McGarvey looked over his shoulder at the same time someone out front opened fire, but with what he was sure was a Heckler & Koch 416 with a suppressor, one of the weapons of choice for SEAL team operators.

Rautanen.

Volker took a hit high on his right arm before he knew someone was coming up from the east; he managed to roll left out of the line of fire. Automatic weapons fire from a silenced light submachine gun kicked up dirt and bits of pavement all around him, while at the same time McGarvey or the broad fired a half-dozen pistol shots from just inside the building across the parking lot, two rounds whizzing past his head so close he could feel the shock waves.

“Bastard,” Heiser said, crouching beside him. He fired a sustained burst from his MAC 10, walking the rounds out and up, at least three finally catching the ex-SEAL in the leg, lower torso, and upper chest.

Rautanen went down heavily and lay still. It was impossible for Volker to tell from this distance if the guy was dead or not, but he was down, which for the moment was all that mattered.

“You okay?” Heiser asked.

“Nothing serious,” Volker said. Awkwardly he keyed his cell phone. “Klaus, wo ist?”

“Ready to go in. Give us distracting fire.”

“On three,” Volker said. “They’re going in,” he told Heiser. He waited two counts, then got up on a knee and began firing measured bursts at the open doorway. Heiser followed suit.

Pam was on the phone, but he ignored her call — the time for bullshit orders was over.

McGarvey hunched around the corner, his back against the wall, as the incoming rounds bounced all over the place. It was covering fire for whoever was coming down the hallway from the rear door.

A figure loomed large in the darkness and McGarvey emptied his magazine down the narrow corridor. He changed out the magazine, recharged his weapon, and was about to fire, when a round slammed into his side just above his hip. He felt an incredible burst of pain.

Pete suddenly appeared, firing her pistol around the corner from the elevator door. One of the Germans grunted, but kept firing.

McGarvey’s phone vibrated again at the same moment the firing from the front of the building intensified a half-dozen times over. There were more than four of them, he thought, his head buzzing.

He emptied his last magazine down the corridor, as Pete changed out her last one.

Someone in dark night-fighter camos appeared in the doorway, an H & K at ready arms. For just an instant he thought it was Rautanen, but he was sure that the SEAL was down.

“Pete, get down,” he shouted, at the same time as he threw his pistol at the man’s face. As he began to lose consciousness he got the strangest impression that the guy in the doorway was Dick Cole, with two other similarly dressed figures right behind him.

Pete was there over him as he slipped away, his only regret at that moment was the fact that he had only one kidney and he was sure that the round he’d taken was right there. And being on dialysis for the rest of his life was never what he had in mind.

SEVENTY-FOUR

The room was dim. As McGarvey began to wake up he was conscious of a familiar chemical smell. He thought that he might be at All Saints, which was the private hospital in Georgetown that took care of seriously injured intelligence officers.

Somewhere in the distance he heard voices speaking in very low tones. One of them was a woman’s voice which he recognized as Otto’s wife, Louise. She sounded insistent.

His mouth was gummy and it was hard for him to focus. Everything seemed blurred at first, until gradually he began to make out that he was in bed in a hospital room. The blinds to his left were drawn; even so, he knew it was night.

He tried to turn, but a huge pain slammed his side, and he remembered that he had been shot in the kidney. Two down, zero to go.

A host of other thoughts came tumbling into his head, chief among them Pete. She’d been right there in the middle of it in the apartment building’s vestibule when he’d been hit, and he hadn’t been able to do a damned thing for her. That hurt even more than his wound.

Dr. Alan Franklin, chief of surgery at All Saints, walked into the room, a smile on his hound dog face. “How’re you feeling?” he asked.

“Like someone who’s been shot in the side. How’s Pete?”

“Ms. Boylan is one tough woman, she’s already pushing to get out of bed, and she can’t see why she shouldn’t be in here with you,” Franklin said. He’d worked on McGarvey a couple of times before and he was damned good at what he did. Any hospital in the country would appoint him chief of surgery if he’d only ask. But he was comfortable here. His kind of people, he liked to say. Interesting injuries.

McGarvey was alarmed. He tried to sit up. “Was she hurt?”

“No. And if you don’t take it easy you’ll end up back in the operating room.”

McGarvey lay back, a little woozy. “What happened?”

“A long shot, actually, but you and Ms. Boylan are both O positive and your HL antigen profiles were within the ballpark. She stepped up to the plate for you and I did the operation this afternoon. About nine hours ago.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your remaining kidney was damaged beyond repair, so Ms. Bolan donated one of hers. Saved your life.”

“I want to see her.”

“In the morning. Right now you need to rest.”

“Come on, doc, I just woke up. I have to pee—”

“You’re catheterized.”

“I’m hungry.”

“I’ll order up some broth and maybe some Jell-O.”

“How about a beer, or better yet a Rémy?”

Franklin laughed, and it was the best sound Mac had heard in a while.

“Broth and Jell-O it is. In the meantime I heard Louise out in the hall, which means Otto’s out there too. I want five minutes with them.”

“Five is all you’ll get. The button on the controller by your hand is a morphine pump. Press it if you need some relief.”

Franklin left and before Otto and Louise were allowed in a nurse took Mac’s blood pressure and checked his urine output. She gave him a smile. “You’ll live.”

“Yes, he will,” Louise said, breezing in. She gave Mac a peck on the cheek.

“Close the door,” McGarvey said.

Otto did. He pulled a beer from his pocket, popped the tab, and handed it to McGarvey, who took a deep drink. It was great.

“What about the Germans?”

“All four of them are dead,” Otto said. “Dick Cole came with four ST Six guys and it was over before it started. BND doesn’t want the bodies. They suggested we cremate them and dump the ashes. Happened earlier this morning.”

“Rautanen?”

“He was wearing his Kevlar. Took a hit in the leg and groin, but he’ll survive. He’s in the Naval Medical Center at Portsmouth. Says to say hi.”

“How about the kids from the complex?”

“Three of them are down — two KIA, the third in critical. Cole had him taken to Portsmouth with Rautanen. Least we could do.”

“What about Ayesha Naisir?”

“Her body is on the way to Pakistan as we speak. I think the ISI will stage a robbery attempt or something like that in Rawalpindi. She was shot to death along with her husband.”

“The White House?” McGarvey asked.

“The incident never happened,” Otto said. “But John Fay sends his regards, said thanks.”

“Pam Schlueter?”

“No trace.”

“She’ll turn up sooner or later,” McGarvey said. “But Dick Cole. If he wasn’t the leak, who the hell was?”

“We may never know.”

The door opened and Pete, came in in a wheelchair, Louise helping her. “I heard that you were awake,” she said, coming to McGarvey’s side. “We have about five minutes before Franklin or one of his nurses catches us. So how do you feel?”

“Pretty good,” McGarvey said. “You?”

“Never better,” Pete said. She took the beer from him. “If this is going to work between us, you’re going to have to learn how to share.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

Gloria, her feet propped up on the lower rungs of a stool, sat at her kitchen counter talking to Pam on her cell phone. With Dick upstairs it was too dangerous to use the house phone, but it was a call she couldn’t avoid. She was furious.

“Where are you at this moment?” she demanded.

“Athens, but I’m not going to say here.”

“I can find out.”

“Don’t.”

“You blew it, and then you didn’t finish the most important part of the job. The one I was expecting from you. You need to come back immediately.”

“Don’t be a fool. They know my name.”

“McGarvey is probably dead.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pam shouted. “It’s not only the CIA who knows my name, it’s the Pakistanis. Major Naisir got himself killed and so did his wife. Those ISI bastards will at least want their money back.”

“Give it to them.”

“They won’t go away, and money is the only thing that’ll keep me alive until the situation stabilizes.”

“Then what?” Gloria said. “I need this.” She was pleading.

“I won’t forget you. I’ll be back to finish it.”

“When?”

“I don’t know,” Pam said. “In the meantime I’m getting rid of this phone and all my Internet connections, so you won’t be able to reach me. But I’ll be there, I promise.”

“You can’t quit,” Gloria said. But Pam had hung up.

Her husband, Dick Cole, came in wearing a bathrobe. “Who can’t quit?”

She turned and smiled. “Just a silly girlfriend of mine, who wants to quit her job just when it was getting interesting.” More than anything in the world she wanted him dead.

Cole shrugged indifferently. “Do you want to do some porn and fool around? I got a couple of new movies.”

“Sure, sweetie,” Gloria said, her heart aching. “I’d like nothing better.”