The Kill Zone Read online

  “Do you think that he’ll tell anybody?” McGarvey asked. Kathleen was in the Gulfstream’s head, touching up her makeup.

  “The first man he sees,” Yemm said. “But he’ll pass along my warning, too. We’ll be okay.”

  The crew would stay at a nearby hotel for the weekend. They were busy securing the aircraft’s systems. Even here at the airport, security was a problem.

  Yemm made a brief call with his cell phone. “Island Tours is sending over a helicopter,” he told McGarvey when he was done. “It’ll be faster than the boat.”

  “Good idea,” McGarvey said. He, too, was tired after the busy week.

  The Island Tours Bell Ranger helicopter came over and settled down on the tarmac twenty yards from the Gulfstream. McGarvey glanced out the door. It was just the pilot in the blue-and-white machine. He wondered how fast news traveled in the islands, if the pilot knew who his passengers were.

  He and Yemm gathered up their bags, and when Kathleen was finished in the head they walked across to the chopper. He wondered if two days was going to be anywhere near enough time for them to come down.

  McGarvey and Kathleen rode in the back while Yemm rode shotgun next to the pilot. They headed immediately over Lindbergh Bay, then Water Island, skirting the south coast of St. Thomas. The sun had just dropped below the horizon, but already it was dark, and the hills rising up behind the city of Charlotte Amalie were studded with lights.

  Three cruise ships, lit up like store windows at Christmas, were getting under way from the main docks east of downtown. The entire harbor was filled with more than one hundred boats of every size and description; most of them cruising sailboats escaping the northern winter. Traffic along the waterfront and commercial docks in town was heavy. This was a weekend at the height of the season; everyone in the islands played.

  Pillsbury Sound, which separated St. Thomas from St. John, was only three miles wide. As they rounded Long Point, the smaller island came into view, as did the British Virgin Islands of Tortola and Jost Van Dyke to the north. All of the islands, including dozens of smaller ones, many of them uninhabited, rose out of the sea like something out of a James Michener South Seas adventure.

  McGarvey had been here before, but he never got tired of the scenery. He could feel his tension beginning to subside.

  Kathleen was looking out the window, her shoulders hunched forward as if she were carrying a huge weight on her back. She was strangely silent.

  McGarvey touched her arm. “Are you okay, Katy?”

  “They don’t have a clue,” she said. “Most of them. This is where they come when they want to climb off the real world. Tune out.” She sounded tired and bitter.

  He studied her profile. An unaccountable sadness rose up inside of him for all the years that they had lost together. But it was getting better, and he would make sure that they stayed on track. His premonitions of disaster were nothing more than the result of a guilty conscience. For years he had gone to sleep every night dreaming about the people he’d killed in the line of duty. Those dreams were coming back to haunt his waking hours now.

  Yemm motioned for McGarvey to put on a headset. “The pilot wants to know if you’d like to do a little sight-seeing tonight.”

  “No. We want to get settled in.”

  “There’s no staff, so we’re on our own for dinner.”

  “Just what the doctor ordered, so long as the kitchen is stocked.”

  “It is.”

  “How about tomorrow, sir?” the pilot came on. “Would you be needing our services? Perhaps an air tour of the islands. The Baths are a little crowded, but still nice. Or perhaps a picnic on Hans Lollick. No one lives over there, and I can guarantee you a deserted beach.”

  “The picnic sounds good,” McGarvey replied. “Let’s make it for lunch. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Very good, sir. And we will even provide the picnic lunch.”

  McGarvey heated a can of tomato soup and made BLTs. He brought their supper along with a pot of tea for Kathleen and a beer for himself on a tray out to the long veranda, which stretched the length of the main house. Kathleen sat in a tall wicker chair, her bare feet up on the rail, her eyes half-closed.

  “Penny,” McGarvey said, setting the tray on the low wicker table next to her.

  “I never want to go back,” she replied dreamily.

  “It’s a thought. But I think we’d get tired of the isolation after a while.”

  “Do you want to bet?” She sat up and looked at the tray, her eyes bright. “He can run the CIA and cook.”

  “The bacon is burned on one side and raw on the other. But if you don’t mind, I don’t mind.”

  She poured a cup of tea, and McGarvey opened the can of Bud. The house was perched on top of a steep hill that looked southeast across Coral Bay toward the open sea. The sky was filled with stars, but the horizon where the sky met the sea was impossible to make out. The trade wind breeze had died to a whisper, bringing with it smells of the lush jungles on the islands. The air was as soft as lotion, in the mid to high seventies. The television and phones in the house were shut off. They would remain that way. Yemm had retired discreetly to his wing of the house. Liz and Todd had arrived safely at Vail. And Washington and Langley were an entire universe away.

  McGarvey had changed into a pair of swimming trunks and nothing else. He sat back, put his feet up on the railing and sighed.

  “That’s a pleasant sound,” Kathleen said.

  Several small boats were anchored in the bay. Their tiny masthead lights were white pinpoints on the water, swaying slowly in the gentle swells.

  “Presidents run the country from Camp David,” she observed. “Why couldn’t you run the Agency from here?”

  “I’d miss the traffic.”

  She looked at him and grinned. “Yeah, right.”

  “I’d never get anything done,” he said after a while.

  She shrugged.

  McGarvey could feel himself drifting. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance. Here they crowed all hours of the day and night, not just at dawn. It was island time, Murphy had explained it to him the first time he came here. Inappropriate and yet appropriate.

  Something about that thought percolated at the back of his head, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it might mean.

  “Soup’s getting cold,” Kathleen said languidly.

  “Yeah,” McGarvey agreed. He put down his beer, got up and held out his hand. “Let’s go to bed, Katy.”

  She smiled up at him. “Best offer I’ve had all day.”

  SATURDAY

  FOURTEEN

  “IT’S LIKE BEING STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND … ALMOST OVERWHELMING, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.”

  VIRGIN ISLANDS

  They were up with the rising sun a few minutes after 6:00 A.M. Yemm had already started breakfast. While Kathleen was taking a shower, McGarvey got a cup of coffee and went out to the swimming pool. The morning was gorgeous. The pool, held against the side of the hill by a concrete retaining wall, was filled to the brim. Swimming in it seemed as if you were flying over the hills and the sea below.

  “What would you and Mrs. M. like to do this morning?” Yemm asked from the open patio doors.

  “Let’s see if we can round up some horses. I’d like to go riding on the beach.”

  “No problem. The chopper won’t be here until eleven.”

  “In the meantime, I’m coming in for a swim,” Kathleen said from the open bedroom doors at the other end of the house.

  McGarvey looked up. She stood, one knee cocked, one hand on the doorjamb, completely naked, a big grin on her pretty face.

  “I think that it’s a good time to get back to the kitchen, I smell something burning,” Yemm said, and he disappeared back into the house.

  Kathleen came around to the deep end of the pool, walking on the balls of her feet, her narrow back arched, her movements like those of a runway model’s.

  She gave her husband a lascivious look, then di
ved cleanly into the water, surfacing a few seconds later right in front of him. “Last night was nice,” she said in his ear as she pressed her body against his. “How about an encore before breakfast?”

  “If you’re going to act this way when we’re on vacation, we’re going to leave town a lot more often,” McGarvey said.

  “Making up for lost time,” she murmured.

  Their ride took them almost as far as East End, about six miles from the compound. Their horses were dove gray Arabians, gentle and very well trained, with a good turn of speed if they were left to it. Yemm had never sat on a horse in his life, but within fifteen minutes he could at least keep up with McGarvey, though not with Kathleen, who’d competed in equestrian events as a young girl and well into her college years at Vassar.

  She was a superb horsewoman, and McGarvey was content to let her run circles around him without rising to the challenge. She was a pleasure to watch. He admired competence above almost everything else.

  With the sun on his bare shoulders, his face shaded by a straw hat, the powder white sand, the aqua blue sea framed by the dense, intensely green jungle growth that rose into the hills, this was paradise.

  McGarvey pulled up to let Kathleen ride on ahead. She was in her own world, just then, oblivious to the fact he had stopped.

  “Mrs. M. knows how to ride,” Yemm said at his side.

  “Yes, she does. But I don’t think she’s been on a horse for twenty years.”

  “Some things you don’t forget how to do,” Yemm commented.

  “How are we doing on time?” McGarvey asked. He refused to wear a watch today.

  Yemm glanced at his. “We should start back.”

  “What about the horses?”

  “I’ll call the stable to come pick them up.”

  Kathleen looked around, realizing that she was alone, and pulled up short, wheeling her horse around.

  McGarvey gave her a wave, turned his horse sharply back the way they had come, and jammed his heels into the animal’s flanks. He took off down the beach as if he’d been shot from a cannon. He’d been raised on a ranch, and learned to ride about the same time he’d learned to walk. The horse was an extension of his own body; instead of two legs, he had four.

  He leaned forward, giving the horse its head, and he flew along the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. It had been a long time since he had ridden like this, but Yemm was right; there were some skills that you never forgot.

  Yemm shouted something from down the beach. McGarvey looked over his shoulder as Kathleen came up next to him.

  He was leaned forward, riding flat-out, but Kathleen sat very high, her back straight, one hand on the reins as if she were on a leisurely trail ride.

  She smiled sweetly, blew him a kiss with her free hand, and barely nudged her horse’s flanks with her bare knees. The animal took off as if it had switched gears. The sound of her laughter drifted back to Mac, and he shook his head.

  He reined his horse back to a slow canter, allowing Yemm to catch up with him. Kathleen looked back, then slowed her horse to a walk.

  “Nice race, boss,” Yemm said.

  The Island Tours Bell Ranger helicopter touched down in the compound precisely at eleven. It was the same pilot as last night. His name was Thomas Afraans, and he was a native West Indian of Dutch ancestry. His English was British of the last century; but he seemed very knowledgeable and competent about flying.

  The picnic lunch was caviar with toast points and lemon wedges, a good champagne, fried chicken and cold lobster, potato salad, French baguettes, an assortment of sliced cheeses and pickles, and, for dessert, strong black coffee in a large thermos, Napoleon brandy and petits fours.

  They flew northwest across the jungle interior of St. John, coming out at Cinnamon Bay, where they crossed the Windward Passage between the islands.

  Afraans kept up a running commentary about the fantastic scenery passing beneath them. There were dozens of islands between the north coasts of St. John and St. Thomas. Almost all of them were uninhabited. Lovango and Congo Cays, Mingo and Grass Cays, then Middle Passage across to Thatch Cay.

  All of the islands were within sight of each other, many of them seemingly within swimming distance. Boats of all sizes and descriptions were everywhere; everything from tiny outboard motor boats to husky interisland cargo ships.

  “The U.S. Navy comes here, too,” Afraans told them. “To St. Croix. Mostly nuclear submarines. Now, my Lord, that is a sight to behold.”

  Hans Lollick Island, less than three miles off the north coast of St. Thomas, was the largest of the smaller unihabited islands. There were only a couple of places to land along its oblong shoreline. For the most part the island quickly rose from the water in a series of cliffs and densely overgrown hills to the interior summit almost seven hundred feet above sea level. But the beach that Afraans touched down on was broad and white, and was protected by headlands northeast and southwest that formed a perfect cove about eight hundred yards across.

  Yemm jumped out first and helped Kathleen down. She immediately walked down to the water’s edge. There was almost no wave action, and the water was so perfectly clear that they could see fish swimming and their shadows on the white sand bottom.

  They unloaded the picnic baskets and coolers and took them up to the edge of the wide beach in the shade of the trees.

  “I will be back at two o’clock to pick you up, if that is agreeable, sir,” Afraans told McGarvey.

  “Two is fine,” McGarvey said.

  “If there is trouble, you may simply call our dispatcher. Your cell phone will easily reach from here.” Afraan’s smile widened. “But, please, sirs. You will experience a most enjoyable time today. Guaranteed.”

  Yemm went to set up their picnic after the helicopter left. McGarvey went to Kathleen and took her hand. She seemed a little subdued, almost withdrawn. Her moods were volatile.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “It’s like being stranded on a desert island,” she replied dreamily. “Almost overwhelming, if you think about it.” The helicopter was rapidly disappearing in the distance. “There’s no noise here.”

  “Would you like to go back?”

  She looked up at him and shook her head. Then she smiled, coming out of her mood. “This is fine here, so long as I’m with you.”

  “Go for a walk?”

  “Sure,” she said.

  They headed northeast along the beach, up to their ankles in the warm water. Kathleen was right, he decided. There were no sounds except for the splashing of their feet in the water. No people talking or laughing, no steel drum bands, no jet aircraft for the moment, no birds. The weather, the scenery and now the silence; it was a total contrast to Washington.

  “You rode really well, this morning,” McGarvey told her.

  “Thanks,” she said softly.

  “Impressed the hell out of Dick. There’s no way we could have kept up with you.”

  “I picked the best horse.”

  McGarvey had to laugh. “That’s clever. But I think that you would have beat us if you’d ridden a donkey.” He put an arm around her narrow shoulders, and they walked for a time in silence.

  There was a jumble of large black boulders blocking the end of the beach. Beyond them, the sea came to the edge of a sheer cliff that rose a hundred feet or more into the jungle. They had to turn back.

  She stopped. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Kirk.”

  He gave her a critical look. Except for her long face she seemed perfectly fine. Her old self, with a little color already from the sun this morning.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “One minute I’m so happy I could burst. But then I get so sad I want to cry. Half the time I’m frightened out of my mind for you, for us, for Elizabeth and the baby.”

  “Stress. Overwork. You’ve been running off in all directions lately, trying to make everybody happy all the time. That’s one of the reasons we’re here this weekend. Maybe
take the edge off the pressure for both of us.”

  “I hope so,” she said. She didn’t sound very sure.

  “Combine that with worrying about the Senate hearings, my job, and some of the bad things that have happened to us in the last few years, it’s a wonder we’re not both in a loony bin somewhere.”

  She clutched at his arm. “It’s like somebody’s sneaking up on us again. In the night I think I can hear them.”

  McGarvey felt instant goose bumps on the back of his neck. “Nobody is coming after us, Katy,” he told her with more conviction than he felt.

  She looked back to where Yemm had finished setting up their picnic. “I want to get off this island, Kirk,” she said. “Right now. I mean it.”

  “Katy, there’s nothing wrong—”

  “Goddammit, I want to get out of here!” she shrieked. She was at the edge of hysteria; her eyes were wild, her face screwed up in fear.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart. We’ll call for the helicopter. We can have our picnic back at the house by the pool. Nothing’s going to happen.”

  Yemm had heard the scream and he headed up the beach at a dead run, his pistol in hand.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s like I’m going crazy. I’m hearing voices inside my head. Warning me. Telling me someone’s coming.” She gave her husband a plaintive look; as if she were drowning and she wanted him to hurry up and rescue her. “I don’t like it here. I’m afraid.”