The Cabal km-14 Read online

  “Is it someone we can find and punish, Daddy?” she asked, her grip tightening on his arm.

  “Yes,” he said close to her. “I’ll find them, I promise you.”

  “No trial.”

  “No trial,” he said.

  Six men who’d come up from the Farm to represent everyone there, took up positions on either side of the coffin as pallbearers, and Liz turned to look at the people gathered on the side of the road, waiting to follow the coffin down the hill.

  “We have to wait,” she said. “Otto and Louise aren’t here.”

  McGarvey looked around, but she was right, and a tiny worry began to nag at the back of his head. “They’re probably hung up in traffic. They’ll get here, but we need to start now.”

  Liz glanced at the people waiting, then up into her father’s face. “Okay, Daddy,” she said.

  McGarvey nodded at the pallbearers, who gently lifted the coffin off the trolley, and with the chaplain in the lead they started down the hill, Liz’s and Katy’s bodyguards nearby, reminding everyone that this business was far from over.

  Dick Adkins and Dave Whittaker held back, even though it would be up to Dick to present Todd’s widow with the flag, and McGarvey suspected they wanted to distance themselves from him until they saw which way he would jump. After Germany they were treating him like something volatile, nitroglycerin ready to explode at the slightest mishandling.

  When the mourners were seated, and the coffin placed on the lift’s framework over the open grave, the chaplain began, and when he spoke Todd’s name out loud, Liz squeezed her eyes shut. Todd’s parents were dead, and only a few distant relatives had shown up. He’d once explained to McGarvey that his family was filled with odd ducks. They had sacks of money, but no one much cared for one another. It was one of the reasons he’d fallen for Liz. For as long as he could remember he’d wanted a wife and children, loads of kids and in laws and people who cared.

  The chaplain was speaking about service above self, love of country, dedication, bravery, and finally the ultimate sacrifice of a man in his prime; platitudes, but comforting, except McGarvey was having a tough time settling down.

  He glanced over at the two bodyguards from the Farm, and they acted nervous, too, their heads on swivels as if they expected something to happen at any moment. Adkins and some of the others seemed ill at ease, though Whittaker was apparently paying attention to the service.

  None of this made any sense to McGarvey; not Todd’s death, not the obviously fake disk, not the murders of the Washington Post reporter and his family, not Sandberger and Administrative Solutions, especially not the Friday Club, because if there was a pattern he wasn’t seeing it. Yet everything within him, all of his senses, all of his experiences, his entire hunch-mechanism, if that’s what it could be called, were singing. Trouble was here and now, and he wasn’t armed.

  * * *

  The funeral was short, and after Adkins presented Liz with the folded flag he and Whittaker, who’d avoided eye contact with McGarvey, headed back up the hill to their limo, Dick’s bodyguards preceding them. The chaplain came over and shook hands with Liz and Katy and McGarvey and he, too, left, the other mourners stepping over to where Liz and Katy were seated to pay their respects.

  Neither Katy, nor especially Liz, was engaged in any of it; they were in a different world, which made McGarvey feel all the more helpless. Senseless; so goddamned senseless, and yet there was a reason for Todd’s assassination.

  When the last of the people were finally gone, McGarvey helped Liz and Katy to their feet, and walked back up the hill with them, their bodyguards never more than a few feet away.

  At the road, he helped them into the CIA limo that would take them back to the Farm until the situation was resolved one way or the other, or until in McGarvey’s estimation it was safe for Katy to take their daughter, with bodyguards, back down to their home on Casey Key.

  McGarvey stood at the open door, and touched his wife’s cheek. She was looking up at him, her eyes large and moist. She hadn’t cried during the service, she’d already shed her tears, and there would be more to come, but for now she was holding on.

  “I can’t go with you now,” he told her, and she nodded.

  “I understand,” she said. “And I know it’s foolish for me to say it, but be careful.”

  “I will.”

  “Hurry back to me, darling,” she said. “I miss you terribly.”

  He reached in and kissed her. Liz looked at him. “Take care of Audie,” he said. “For now, that’s what’s important.” But she didn’t respond.

  No one said a thing to McGarvey when he walked back to the SUV and got in the backseat, Ansel and Mellinger beside him, and Pete behind the wheel with Green riding shotgun. They were subdued, and the deputy federal marshals knew enough to keep their peace, and McGarvey was happy for it. He didn’t want to start any trouble, but the funeral, and being with his grief-stricken wife and daughter, had put him right at the edge.

  The hearse had left immediately after the coffin had been carried down to the grave, and the chaplain and mourners were all gone now, leaving only the CIA’s Lincoln limousine a half-dozen car lengths up the road.

  Pete started to pull out, but McGarvey stopped her.

  “Let’s follow them,” he said. “I want to make sure they get out of here okay.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pete said, and although the marshals didn’t like the delay they continued to hold their silence.

  Something heavy was in the air, McGarvey could feel it, feel that something wasn’t right. He powered down the window and looked out, but except for the Tomb of the Unknowns up the hill no one was at any of the other graves or monuments within sight.

  “That’s bulletproof glass, Mr. Director,” Ansel said, but McGarvey ignored him.

  It was nothing but an imagination that was severely overworked, he told himself, as the Lincoln started down to the South Gate, and Pete fell in behind.

  “They’ll be okay,” Pete said. “They have good minders who know their business. And once they reach the Farm no one will be able to touch them.”

  “They have to get there first.”

  Pete glanced over her shoulder. “Something wrong?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” McGarvey said. “I want to follow them down to the Farm.”

  “No way,” Ansel said, but Dan Green looked over his shoulder at McGarvey.

  “I think it’s a good idea, Mr. Director,” Green said. “Just to be on the safe side.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  The limo with the two women followed by McGarvey’s Cadillac SUV headed down Miles Drive that connected with Grant and then Clayton to the South Gate, at the same time Kangas got behind the wheel of the Taurus, Mustapha riding shotgun with the mobile phone detonator, a dreamy expression on his face. They had switched from the LeSabre, they had used before as an ordinary tradecraft precaution.

  “Watch the delay,” Kangas said, pulling out of the parking area onto Memorial Drive, heading as quickly as was prudent in the direction McGarvey and his women had gone.

  “The numbers are in,” Mustapha said. “All it wants is the nine.”

  Kangas suddenly had a sharp premonition of doom, almost like the battlefield hunches that your time was numbered. He was spooked, in part because he’d temporarily lost sight of the two CIA cars around the curve, and in part because although McGarvey hadn’t looked like much in person, the man’s reputation was nothing short of fearsome.

  “There they are,” Mustapha said, and Kangas saw the SUV through the trees below and to the left.

  He started to turn onto McPherson Drive, which led straight down to Grant, when a Toyota SUV with a man behind the wheel and a woman riding in the passenger seat suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and he had to brake hard to avoid a collision. When the Toyota passed he pulled in behind it, but they were going too slow, and he was conscious only of the possibility that if they missed McGarvey this afternoon they’d have to try again
. It was a prospect he did not relish, especially if someone discovered the IED under the storm sewer lid. McGarvey would put it together and realize that someone was gunning for him.

  “Get around them,” Mustapha said. “We won’t make it in time.”

  “We don’t want to get stopped.”

  At the bottom of the hill where Grant met Clayton Drive, Kangas spotted the limo and McGarvey’s SUV through the trees approaching the South Gate. They’d run out of time. Except for some blind stupid bad luck they would have been in perfect position by now.

  Mustapha was fingering the cell phone’s keypad. “What do you want to do?”

  It was a matter of seconds before the two cars would go through the gate and pass over the IED.

  “We’ll have to take the shot from here,” Kangas said, making the only decision that was possible.

  The car they were following turned onto Clayton, evidently heading to the South Gate, and just past the intersection Kangas slowed nearly to a halt, no cars behind them or ahead of them at that moment.

  Their view of the gate, and especially the driveway beyond it leading to Southgate Road, was mostly obscured by a line of trees. But it was the best they were going to do for now.

  “What the hell am I supposed to do?” Mustapha demanded. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

  “Get ready with the nine,” Kangas said. “I’ll tell you when.”

  “Goddamnit…”

  “Stand by,” Kangas said as the limo passed through the gate. “Okay.” With a two-second delay from the time the last number was entered and the signal went to the IED, the timing would be tight. But they had no other choice.

  He could just make out the hood of McGarvey’s SUV passing the gate.

  “Now,” he said sharply.

  Mustapha pressed the nine, but almost instantly a large explosion hammered the quiet afternoon, blowing branches off several trees directly in their line of sight.

  No delay, the single thought flitted across Kangas’s mind.

  TWENTY-SIX

  One moment Katy’s limousine was there and in the next instant it was replaced by a bright flash, followed immediately by an overpowering bang and a millisecond later a concussion that knocked all the air out of McGarvey’s lungs.

  Glass seemed to be flying everywhere inside the SUV, which swerved sharply to the left, slammed into the ditch at the side of the driveway, and stopped at an odd angle, its front bumper stuck in the upslope of the swale, throwing everyone inside forward against their restraints.

  The front airbags had deployed but a large piece of smoldering metal had blasted through the windshield on the passenger side, slicing the airbag and decapitating Dan Green in a spray of blood that splashed McGarvey and the two federal marshals.

  Pete Boylan had been shoved back by the airbag, and she was pawing at the material, but she seemed to be in a fog, not really aware of what had just happened.

  McGarvey could just make out what remained of the Company limo, the wreckage lying on its side. Nothing was left of it except the engine block and some twisted lengths of metal attached to the badly distorted frame, which couldn’t be recognized as being a part of a car just a moment ago. Very little of the cabin was intact, nor were any bodies visible, though four people had been inside the car. Flames and dark, greasy smoke rose from the wreck.

  All of that came to McGarvey in the first second or two after the explosion, the horrible thought crystallizing in his mind that his wife and daughter had been killed right in front of his eyes. Not twenty feet away from him.

  Every part of his body ached; it felt as if he’d been run over by a truck, and sounds were distorted. It was as if he were in a dream state where he couldn’t make his arms and legs function.

  Ansel on his left had pulled himself up and he was saying something impossible to understand. And Mellinger had been shoved aside, and lay doubled over on the floor up against the right rear door.

  McGarvey managed to reach over him and yank the door handle, but the car’s frame was bent and the door jammed. He braced his back against Ansel, who was struggling to come to his senses, and kicked at the door, once, twice, and on the third time it screeched open.

  Ansel was trying to grab for him, but McGarvey scrambled over Mellinger, who was starting to come around, and tumbled out into the ditch.

  He got to his feet and for another second stood, drunkenly swaying, until he was able to climb up onto the driveway and totter toward the burning wreck. But the intense heat and thick black smoke stopped him from getting close.

  And it hit him, fully hit him, Katy and Liz were dead. There would be no bringing them back, nor would there be much of anything left to bury.

  He raised his right hand to shield his eyes against the brightness of the flames, wanting to see his wife and daughter, their remains, but nothing was there. The blast had come up from the road, blowing out the bottom of the limo that had apparently been an ordinary VIP vehicle, and therefore unarmored.

  In the far distance he thought he might be hearing a siren, but then it was gone, and he wasn’t sure he’d heard anything.

  In pieces now it was really hitting what had just happened, and more than that, why it had happened, and he focused on two names: the Friday Club and Administrative Solutions.

  He saw the expressions on Sandberger’s and Remington’s faces in Germany.

  He heard Todd’s voice on the cell phone.

  He felt his wife’s body against his as he’d hugged her before the funeral, and saw the devastated look in Liz’s eyes.

  And Otto and Louise not showing up.

  Nothing was making any sense to him, and it was driving him nuts.

  He paced a few feet to the left, and then to the right, like a caged animal seeing its freedom just beyond a fence. For this moment he was hammered into inaction, if not submission, so overwhelmed by what had happened even he was having trouble fully comprehending the situation. The fear that his family would someday pay the price for what he was had always preyed on his mind; in fact, he had left Katy early in their marriage in what he’d come to believe was a false hope of saving her, or removing her from danger.

  And now he asked himself if he’d been right to come back, and that burden was the most terrible thing he’d ever faced in his entire life. He was mad at himself and afraid for what might happen next. What he might do. What self-control remained after Todd’s assassination had been erased.

  Someone was shouting his name, and he turned in time to see Ansel coming across the driveway, his pistol drawn, Mellinger just a few paces behind. For a split second he had no idea what they wanted, and what Ansel was shouting, but then it came to him in nearly the same force as the explosion, that he was their prisoner, and they were going to take him into custody.

  Todd’s death had been hard enough on him, but this, now, was devastating, and there was no telling what a former black ops officer, an assassin, might do next. The safest thing would be to get him someplace safe, under lock and key until he could be calmed down and this mess sorted out.

  “On the ground,” Ansel shouted. “On the ground now!”

  McGarvey watched the big man charging across the driveway, his pistol coming up.

  “On the ground,” the federal marshal shouted again.

  Mellinger had drawn his pistol, but he looked a little shaky.

  At the last moment, McGarvey stepped aside out of the line of fire, kicked the side of Ansel’s left knee, which caused the man to stumble, and twisted the Glock 22 out of his grip.

  Ansel reached out and tried to break his fall, but McGarvey shoved him aside with his knee, and turned to face Mellinger, pointing the pistol at the federal marshal’s face.

  Mellinger pulled up short eight or ten feet away, almost losing his balance. He was still shaky and he knew it.

  “Throw your gun away and get on the ground.”

  “I can’t do that, Mr. Director.”

  “I don’t want to shoot you, but I will,” McG
arvey said, conscious that he was running out of time here. He could definitely hear sirens in the distance now, and there was no way he was going to give himself up.

  “You’re under arrest for…”

  “You saw what just happened here, goddamnit!”

  “Mr. Director, you are my prisoner,” Mellinger said doggedly. “And I am taking you in.” He started to raise his pistol.

  “I’m sorry,” McGarvey said, and he shot the man once in the left thigh, knocking him to the pavement, and before the federal marshal could react McGarvey was on him kicking his pistol away.

  “You son of a bitch,” Mellinger shouted.

  “I didn’t kill you or your partner, remember that,” McGarvey told the federal marshal.

  He backed away and looked again at the remains of the Company limo, a black rage threatening to consume him. All he could think about was getting away from here. The sirens were getting much closer now.

  He turned as a Toyota Land Cruiser SUV pulled up, and raising his pistol he hurried across to the driver’s side.

  The window powered down, and Otto was there, dressed in a black suit, the tie correctly knotted, his long normally out of control hair neatly brushed. He was gripping the wheel with both hands, tears streaming down his cheeks, and he was trying to talk, but couldn’t.

  His wife, Louise, leaned over from the passenger side. “Get in the car, Kirk,” she shouted.

  He hesitated for just a second, not sure how he could go on. But then he knew how he was going to do it, and he knew why, and he yanked open the rear door and jumped in.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  On Jessup Drive, above the South Gate, Kangas had seen everything, pulling up just after the explosion. He hoped to see McGarvey’s car destroyed, but instead the limo bearing the man’s wife and daughter had gone up in a flash, with no possibility that anyone inside could have survived.

  McGarvey had jumped out of the Escalade and had taken down two men, both of them armed, and had even shot one of them in the leg, before he’d commandeered the Toyota SUV.