The Kill Zone Read online

  “They’re all right, Mr. Rencke,” the OD said. “They were airlifted to the navy hospital in San Juan. They’ll be flown back sometime tomorrow.”

  Rencke started to panic. “What are you talking about?” he demanded. “You said they weren’t hurt. Why are they at the hospital?”

  “Nobody’s hurt, sir. It’s Mrs. McGarvey. She’s under sedation. The doctors don’t want to move her. She was very frightened.”

  It was starting. He could feel it in his bones. The walls were closing in on them, and before long they would be so tightly boxed in that none of them would be able to move.

  “Mr. Adkins is calling the senior staff for a briefing at five-thirty in the main auditorium. Do you require an escort, sir?”

  “No. No. I’ll be there.” Otto put the phone down. The air in the apartment was suddenly very thin, as if it were perched atop Mt. Everest.

  He went through the motions of putting on a jacket without thinking about what he was doing. He left a note for Louise on the kitchen counter so that she wouldn’t worry about him. He couldn’t stand knowing that Mrs. M. was in a hospital, or that she needed to be in the hospital. Besides Mac, Mrs. M. was his Rock of Gibraltar. His ideal of a strong woman.

  He called for a cab and on the way out to the CIA he sat hunched in a corner of the backseat. He felt guilty. He should have known that something like this would happen. He should have guessed that an attack would be made on Mac before the hearings were over. He had treated his researches as an academic project. But Mac had serious enemies who did not want to see him make DCI. Even after all this time—Vietnam over with, the Cold War run its course, the bad guys either dead or in retirement. Ineffectual. Old. Without mandate. Without purpose. No reason now.

  Other than revenge.

  He’d been renting a small stone house that had been used for the caretakers at Holy Rood Cemetery in Georgetown when Mac came out of retirement for him. Otto had been doing some computer consulting on the side, but in those days computers were so new that the few people who had them mostly knew what they were doing. Or they knew so little that they didn’t know enough to understand that they needed help. The caretakers’ house was cheap: Who wanted to live in a cemetery? But it had fitted his funereal mood.

  He had his computers and his cats, and he didn’t know the depth of his loneliness and discontent.

  But then Mac had come to put him to work hacking the CIA’s computers for information on the East German secret police, Stasi. That was the beginning for him. The Agency kept coming back to Mac for help, and Mac kept coming back to Otto.

  Mac had legitimized his life.

  He got to the CIA before many of the other senior staffers, and he went directly up to his office in the computer center. He checked a couple of his ongoing search programs, which were looking for references to Dr. Nikolayev in Moscow communications, especially SVR telephone intercepts that NSA was providing him. There was nothing yet. But, then, the computers had to sift through tens of thousands of telephone calls that involved tens of millions of words and combinations of words.

  A couple of minutes before five-thirty he took the elevator down to the first-floor main auditorium. More than fifty people had gathered in the front rows. In addition to Adkins and the deputy directors of the CIA’s four directorates, a lot of section heads and desk supervisors had also been called in.

  The mood was subdued. Mac had had his share of scrapes and close calls, but a lot of the people here today only vaguely knew the full extent of what their new director had gone through. But they all knew about this, and they were mad. One of their own had been a target.

  Adkins came in and went directly to the podium. He held up his hand, and an immediate hush fell over the room.

  “About three hours ago a civilian helicopter which was to have picked up Mr. McGarvey, his wife and their bodyguard, Dick Yemm, exploded, killing the pilot. The incident occurred on the uninhabited island of Hans Lollick in the Virgin Islands, where Mr. and Mrs. McGarvey were having a picnic lunch.” Adkins looked up from his notes. “We do not believe that the explosion was an accident. We think that the incident was an assassination attempt on the life of Mr. McGarvey.”

  An angry murmur passed through the audience. Though it was what most of them suspected, hearing the deputy DCI say it out loud made it official.

  “The director and his wife were airlifted by the U.S. Coast Guard to the American navy hospital at San Juan, Puerto Rico, where they will remain under observation until sometime tomorrow, when they will be flown back to Washington. A detail was dispatched from Andrews to provide security at the hospital. It’s my understanding that they’ll be arriving within the hour.”

  Rencke sat on the edge of his seat, holding tightly to the back of the seat ahead of him. He was three rows from anyone because he was afraid that someone would see the guilt on his face.

  “An investigative unit is being put together that will work with an FBI crime scene and forensics team and experts from the NTSB. They expect to be on-site first thing in the morning. In the meantime, a U.S. Navy SEAL team, which was dispatched from Guantanamo Bay, has arrived on Hans Lollick to secure the remains of the helicopter.”

  Adkins paused again to gaze out over the audience. He looked as if he’d aged ten years since yesterday. He was having his own problems at home, and now this.

  Rencke did not feel any pity for him, however. They all were in the same boat. If anything, besides guilt, he felt fear. He should have known. He’d seen the developing lavender; he should have realized that something like this would happen.

  “The media is not on the story yet, and we’re going to try to keep it that way for as long as possible,” Adkins told them. “The explosion was witnessed from St. Thomas, and the Associated Press did pick up the story, of course, but they don’t know who was involved.”

  “Come on, Dick, they’re going to put it together,” said Deputy Director of Operations David Whittaker. “They’ll see the SEALs, and they’ll find out soon enough that the Bureau and the NTSB are investigating the crash.”

  “All air crashes are investigated,” Adkins said. “This one will be no different as far as the media are concerned. We’ll keep this a secret for as long as possible, and that’s a direct order from Mr. McGarvey. I spoke with him by phone two-and-a-half hours ago. It’s his intention to show up for work Monday morning as if nothing happened.”

  “How do we justify this meeting?” Tommy Doyle, the deputy director of Intelligence asked. There were almost always media watchdogs outside all major government agencies. The CIA was no exception.

  “Pakistan will announce its intention to test a thermonuclear weapon. We got the heads-up from State this morning.”

  “That’s been on the burner for two weeks,” Doyle argued.

  “Yes, but it becomes official on Monday. We’re here today to outline the Agency’s intelligence strategy.”

  “Who had access to the helicopter?” Whittaker asked.

  “That’s one of the items our team will be looking for,” Adkins said. “We suspect that there will be a fair number of possibilities.”

  “How do we know that it wasn’t an accident after all?” Whittaker pressed. “Maybe there was an electrical short in the fuel tank. Not unheard of.”

  “We don’t have that answer either, David. But Mac and Yemm agree that from where they were standing it appeared as if the explosion originated in the cabin of the aircraft.”

  Rencke closed his eyes. He could almost feel the heat of the explosion on his face. A determined assassin, willing to give up his life in the attempt, was almost impossible to stop. The key was to get to him before the attempt was made.

  He opened his eyes. Maybe it was the helicopter pilot.

  “This was a close one,” Adkins said. “Any operation that is below a Track Three will be put on hold for the duration. I want every man and woman, every asset, domestic and foreign, focused on finding out who wants to kill Mr. McGarvey, and bring them to j
ustice.” Adkins closed his file folder. “Soon,” he said.

  Rencke jumped to his feet. “Mr. Adkins,” he shouted.

  “Yes, Mr. Rencke.”

  “How about Todd Van Buren and Elizabeth?”

  “They’re skiing at Vail. We have a security team on the way out there, and the FBI has sent two agents up from Denver. We’re keeping this low-key, Otto. Mac wants it that way. They’ll be okay.”

  “Oh, wow, okay,” Rencke said. He stood for a time, then left the auditorium.

  Everyone had been looking at him. He felt their eyes all the way down the long corridor. Freak, queer boy. Nerd. Geek. He’d endured it all as a kid. The memories never went away. And now the only family he’d ever known was in danger, and he couldn’t do a thing to help keep them safe.

  Stupid, stupid man. Bad, bad dog.

  He was too tired to wait for a cab, so he had a driver from the Office of Security take him home. They rode in silence. The snow had finally stopped falling, but there were still slippery spots on the highway. When they passed the place where he’d had his accident he couldn’t see any sign that it had happened. It was another world, another lifetime ago.

  “Thanks,” Otto mumbled in front of his Arlington apartment building.

  “Have a good one,” the driver said, and took off.

  Otto hunched up his coat collar and watched the taillights disappear around the corner. He was cold and felt more alone than he had in years. For a little while he felt as if he didn’t belong to anyone, as if he didn’t fit in anywhere. Stuff and nonsense, he told himself, looking up at the second-story windows of his apartment. But he felt it just the same.

  Louise Horn met him at the door, a deeply concerned, motherly expression on her long, narrow face. She was an air force major and worked at the National Reconnaissance Office as an image interpretation supervisor. She was almost as bright as Otto, and nearly as odd. Until Otto she’d never had any real friends or family; her parents were both dead, and there were no siblings. She and Otto had been living together for less than a year, but he was her entire world. There was no mountain too tall for her to climb for his sake, no task too difficult. His pain was her pain. She felt every bit of his hurt now, and her reaction was written all over her sad face.

  “What’s happened?” she asked, taking his coat and tossing it aside.

  Now that he was home and safe, his fear bubbled to the surface, and he began to sob. Louise Horn’s wide, brown eyes instantly filled, and she took him in her arms. She was six inches taller than he, so she had to hunch over, but she didn’t mind. For Otto she couldn’t possibly mind. He was the most brilliant man she’d ever known, and he was in love with her. She would have gladly cut off her legs at the knees to accommodate him.

  For a second he was embarrassed.

  “They tried to kill Mac and Mrs. M.,” he blurted. His stepfather would call him a big baby if Otto cried when he was being sexually abused. It was a sign of weakness that he hated in himself. When he was on his own, before Mac and before the CIA, he counted every day that he didn’t cry a victory. He’d wanted to cry at the briefing in the auditorium and in the car on the way home. But he didn’t.

  “Are they okay?” Louise Horn asked.

  “I think so, but they’re in the hospital until tomorrow.” Otto looked into Louise Horn’s eyes. “I should have known. I could have prevented it from happening. I could have helped. But I didn’t. I’m stupid, stupid. Baddest dog—”

  “No,” Louise Horn said sharply. “You’re not stupid. You’re anything but.”

  “I’m going crazy, I’m losing it. Oh, wow, I’m not smart enough now. It’s going—”

  She took his hands. “Listen to me, my darling. You are not losing your mind, and you definitely aren’t losing your smarts.”

  “It’s lavender, but I can’t see anything else.”

  “The problem that you’re facing is a tough one, that’s all. You’ve been there before, and you’ll be in that stadium again. So break it down. Analyze the pieces. Understand it. Make it yours. Absorb it.”

  She wasn’t ashamed of him. She wasn’t laughing at him or calling him names. There was nothing in her eyes except genuine concern.

  “One step at a time,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Otto told her.

  She studied his face for a few moments, then smiled. “I’ll make dinner for us. Now tell me everything that you can. What are they doing in Puerto Rico, and what about Todd and Liz?”

  THREE

  SOMEBODY HAD TRIED TO KILL HER. IT WAS IMPORTANT THAT HE AND LIZ DROP OUT OF PUBLIC VIEW RIGHT NOW.

  VAIL

  It was nearly 6:00 P.M. and off piste it was already getting dark. Elizabeth was about twenty yards ahead and to the left of her husband, moving fast through the trees along the side of the last bowl before they came out over the ridge behind the groomed and lit slopes.

  It had snowed heavily last night and most of this morning. Most of the territory they’d covered today had been unmarked by anyone else’s skis. The feeling was exhilarating.

  Liz had laid off the wine, as her doctor had told her, and she had skied well. Better, Todd had to admit, than he had. And she was four months pregnant.

  But he was getting worried about her. He’d wanted to quit two hours ago and return to the chalet. She was pushing too hard, as usual, and she wouldn’t listen to him.

  “This is my last shot before I get as big as a house, and everybody starts worrying about me again,” she argued.

  He’d not been able to resist her big green eyes, the promise in her face, in the way she held herself. He saw a lot of his mother in her—spoiled, willful, but almost painfully desperate to be needed. For somebody to depend on her.

  His father had made a killing on Wall Street before he was born, so Todd never knew what it was like to live an ordinary life. He’d grown up rich, so he never thought about money. At least not consciously. If you wanted something, you simply acquired it. He was nearly thirteen before he understood the meaning of the word need, or the concept of dependency.

  He was allowed to pick from a litter of prize-winning English sheepdogs. He wanted to tie a paisley bandana around the dog’s neck and teach it to catch Frisbees on the fly.

  Flyer was his dog. He made his parents, and especially the house staff, understand in no uncertain terms that no one else was to go near the dog. No one was allowed to feed, water, or train the animal, which slept at the foot of Todd’s bed in the west wing of their Greenwich mansion, except for Todd.

  All went well for the first six months, until summer, when Todd and his parents left for their annual eight-week tour of Europe. Since nothing was mentioned to the staff, they thought the Van Burens had taken Flyer with them, and Todd’s parents had assumed that their son had given the staff instructions. Flyer was Todd’s responsiblity.

  Flyer was eight days dead by the time one of the servants noticed the smell and opened young Master Van Buren’s room. Flyer had died of thirst and starvation, but not before the poor animal had tried to claw and chew its way out of the room.

  Forever after Todd maintained an extremely acute sense of duty, of responsibility and of need. Not a day went by that he didn’t think about what had happened. He still had occasional nightmares about Flyer’s desperate attempts to escape.

  Elizabeth cut sharply left off the narrow track to pick up a series of moguls; on the side of a very steep and heavily wooded slope.

  “Goddammit,” Van Buren shouted. He turned after her, carving a sharp furrow in the powder, sending a rooster tail of snow downslope.

  She disappeared in the darker shadows amongst the trees, leaving him with no other option than to follow her tracks.

  “Liz! Goddammit, slow down!”

  He caught a glimpse of her bright yellow ski jacket farther to the left, and much farther down the slope than he thought she’d be, and she disappeared in the trees again. He saw that he could bear right and cut her off near the bottom, where she would hav
e to traverse toward him along the lower part of the ridgeline. They were less than three hundred yards from Earl’s Express Lift. He could make out the top of the lead tower but not the chairs. The lights were on. It meant that the lower slopes were in darkness, and there was less than a half-hour of daylight up here.

  He spotted her yellow jacket again, then lost it, and found it again. She had made a sharp turn to the right and was just unweighting her skis, coming partially out of the powder, when there seemed to be a flash at her feet.

  She planted her left ski pole as if she was setting for a sharp turn to the left, but her body continued in a straight line.

  It was all happening in slow motion. Van Buren was above her and less than twenty yards away when she struck the bole of an eight-foot pine straight on. He heard the crash and snapping of the branches, then the watermelon thump as her helmet hit. She crumpled to the snow.

  Van Buren panicked. It was his wife and child down there. But then his training kicked in, and he skied down to her. He activated his emergency avalanche transponder that most off-piste skiers carried with them. The ski patrol would pick up the emergency signal and home in on the transponder’s exact location within minutes.

  There was blood on the side of Elizabeth’s head. It had run down under her helmet to the collar and right shoulder of her yellow ski jacket.

  Van Buren released his ski bindings, got rid of his poles, raised his goggles and tore off his gloves. He shook so badly inside that he had trouble keeping his balance as he ducked under the tree branches and knelt in the snow beside Elizabeth.

  Her eyes were fluttering, and her breathing came in long, irregular gasps. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth. Her complexion was shockingly white, and the way she was slumped forward against the tree made him sure that her neck and maybe her back were broken.

  He was afraid to touch her for fear that he would cause further damage. “Liz,” he said to her. “Sweetheart, it’s me. Can you hear me?”

  She didn’t respond.