Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel Page 2

  She remembered thinking later that until that point the day had been absolutely gorgeous; pale blue sky, a few puffy fair-weather cumulus clouds drifting in from the Gulf and some of the snowbirds already leaving for the north. But then the day had been shattered for her.

  “Hi, Otto. Tell me that you and Louise and Audie are at the airport right now as a surprise, and I’ll come to pick you up.”

  “Mac’s been seriously hurt. His car blew up, and they took him to Sarasota Memorial.”

  A million horrible images flew through her brain at the speed of light, and she nearly sideswiped a pickup in the lane next to hers until she got herself under control.

  “How badly?” she demanded, flooring the gas pedal.

  “The docs are evaluating him now. He’s alive but not conscious. Lots of damage to his back and legs. I think he wasn’t inside the car when it blew, probably getting out.”

  “I’m just a few miles away. What else?”

  “I’ve chartered a Lear from Dolphin Aviation there at the airport to get him up here as soon as he’s stabilized. Franklin and his team will be ready at All Saints as soon as Mac arrives.”

  Dr. Alan Franklin was the chief medical officer at a private hospital in Georgetown, not far from the Jesuit university campus. Its only patients were wounded intelligence officers, mostly from the CIA, who were brought to the small state-of-the-art facility. Mac had been patched up there a couple of times, and Franklin, one of the very best trauma doctors anywhere in the world, had taken care of Pete.

  “What else?”

  “I talked to their chief of trauma and he wants to keep Mac there. Guy name of Singh. I checked and he’s damned good, but he’s not in Franklin’s league. I want him out of there.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  “It won’t be that easy. Singh carries a lot of weight and if he says Mac’s not fit to be moved, it won’t happen. Not unless Mac’s wife demands it.”

  “I can play the part,” Pete said. No force on earth was going to stop her from getting Mac up to All Saints. If she had to shoot the son of a bitch she would do it. “But someone might ask for my ID.”

  “They can check online. You and Mac were married by a JP right there in Sarasota May third last year. Louise and I were witnesses.”

  The light at Palmer Ranch was red but she blew through it, angry drivers slamming on their brakes and honking their horns.

  “There’s another wrinkle coming your way,” Otto said. “Five minutes ago the AP said that it had unconfirmed but reliable reports that the former director of the CIA had been assassinated in a car bomb attack. The media will be all over the place by the time you get there.”

  “My God, it’s not true, is it?”

  “He’s in bad shape, but no,” Otto said. “But obviously it was no accident.”

  “Someone is gunning for him, it’s happened before. Maybe we should call the Bureau in Tampa for some help.”

  “I want to make them think that they’ve succeeded.”

  “That he’s dead?”

  “Yes.”

  “Soon as an ambulance shows up to take him to the airport, they’ll know.”

  “I’m sending a hearse,” Otto said. “It’ll be up to you to convince the hospital to confirm his death. It’s a matter of national emergency. Doesn’t matter what you tell them, just do it!”

  Pete had been so taken up with her own fear that she hadn’t heard it in Otto’s voice until this moment. “I’ll get him out of there. But I’m not armed.”

  “Won’t matter. Nobody is going to shoot someone delivering a corpse.”

  * * *

  Dr. Roshan Singh was a large dark-skinned man with thick dark hair and wide, nearly pitch-black eyes. He came out of the operating room fifteen minutes after Pete had arrived and met her in the empty waiting room.

  Seeing the look on his face, Pete was instantly more frightened than she’d ever been in her life.

  “You are Mrs. McGarvey?” he asked, his voice deep from his chest.

  “Yes. How is he?”

  “May I be frank with you, Mrs. McGarvey?”

  “Please.”

  “He seems like a tough fellow, and he should survive if he makes it through the night. He’s stable, but there are complications, not the least of which are his burns, which are susceptible to infection. But there is likely brain trauma. We won’t know until after he wakes up and we can evaluate him if he’s suffered any serious cognitive degeneration.”

  “Christ,” Pete said softly, and she reached for something to keep from falling.

  The doctor held her arm. “We’ve induced a coma, and we’re going to keep him there to give his body a chance to start healing itself. His leg can wait.”

  How much more, Pete wanted to ask. “His leg?”

  “He’s almost certainly going to lose it from below the knee.”

  She closed her eyes for a moment.

  The doctor led her over to a couch and he sat down next to her. “Your husband is not going to die. He’s obviously been through other traumas—gunshot wounds, I would guess. And it looks as if he has only one kidney, which itself was replaced at one point or another not too long ago.”

  “It was mine. We’re a match.”

  “He was the director of the CIA and a field officer. I assume he got the wounds in the line of duty. Including this today.”

  “Someone tried to kill him. And they’ll try again if they believe he survived.”

  “The hospital has a security staff.”

  Pete almost laughed. “Not good enough.”

  “The police will be notified.”

  “I’m taking him out of here within the next fifteen to twenty minutes. I want you to prep him to leave.”

  Singh was not impressed. “I’m sorry, but that is not possible.”

  “A jet is standing by to take him to Washington. We have a private hospital in Georgetown where he’ll be treated.”

  “No,” Singh said and he started to get up.

  Pete put a hand on his arm and drew him down. He tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let him.

  “A hearse will take him to the airport, for a funeral service at Arlington. The president will attend.”

  “He’s my patient, goddamnit.”

  “His injuries were too grave. There was nothing you could do for him. It was unfortunate.”

  “I will call security and have you restrained.”

  Pete phoned Otto. “He’s not cooperating.”

  “Let me talk to him.”

  Pete handed the phone to the doctor, who reluctantly took it.

  One minute later, he handed the phone back. His expression was that of a stricken man. “You bastards,” he said. “You unutterable bastards.”

  FOUR

  Kamal waited in the old Ford pickup, the bed filled with paint cans and dirty tarps, at the airport arrivals gate in Atlanta, wearing dirty white coveralls but the same blond wig as before when one of the security cops came over. Several flights had come in and the place was a madhouse of private cars, limos, cabs and buses.

  “You can’t wait here, pal.”

  “I’m picking up a friend.”

  “Move it.”

  Gomez, a backpack slung over his shoulder, came out of the doors. Kamal honked and waved him over. “Sorry, but here he is, and I’m out of your hair.”

  With any luck the cop would remember the brief incident, and provide a decent description of him and his flat Midwestern accent in the unlikely event that someone came asking questions. But with McGarvey he’d learned to take no chances. The man was dead, but he had very well connected friends who would stop at nothing to learn the who and the why. And if they got this far Kamal was going to point them in the direction of his own choosing.

  Gomez got in and Kamal headed away.

  “You did a good job,” Kamal said, switching to his French accent.

  “Thank you, sir. It went almost like you said it would.”

  “Did
you see the actual explosion?”

  “I saw it, and felt the heat.”

  “And McGarvey’s body?”

  “I couldn’t see much of anything through the smoke and flames. But he was behind the wheel when I pushed the button. The was no possibility for him to survive. Just some body parts, there couldn’t have been much left.”

  The first glimmerings of doubt crossed Kamal’s mind. “CBS reported his body was taken to Sarasota Memorial.”

  “I’m surprised anything was left to take to any hospital,” Gomez said. “I’m telling you, Mr. Hollman, the explosion was huge, no one could have survived intact.”

  They got onto I-285, the ring road around the city, and headed north. Kamal was seeing visions of McGarvey in Monaco and again in New York. Just snapshots. His Saudi intel contact at the time had warned him about the former director of the CIA.

  “The man is nothing short of formidable,” Sa’ad al-Sakr had told him when they met in Paris and again on an encrypted satphone link. “If you come face-to-face with him, either kill him on the spot or run away. If you escape you may consider yourself a very lucky man.”

  “But you didn’t see him,” Kamal asked.

  “Only when he got in his car. Then I pushed the button and walked away, just like you told me. Is there a problem?”

  “No.”

  Gomez looked in the door mirror as a jetliner took off and headed south. “My flight leaves at eight. I don’t want to miss it.”

  “You won’t,” Kamal said, something the boy had told him suddenly bothersome. “You said it went almost like I told you it would. What did you mean, exactly?”

  “I put the bomb under the seat, walked off, and when Mr. McGarvey got behind the wheel I pushed the button.”

  “Those were exactly my instructions.”

  Gomez was becoming uncomfortable; he kept looking in the door mirror as if he expected someone to be following them.

  “Tell me.”

  “It was an old Porsche convertible. A two-seater, very small.”

  “But you put the bomb in the car, not on the ground under it.”

  “In the car, yes.”

  “Under the driver’s seat.”

  Gomez hesitated. “Someone was coming across the parking lot. I only had a second or two to lean over the door and shove the package under the seat.”

  “The driver’s seat.”

  “Like I said, the car was very small.”

  “The driver’s seat.”

  “No, the passenger seat,” Gomez said. “It was the best I could do. There wasn’t enough time.”

  There was nothing to be said. The car was small, the Semtex more than sufficient for the job. McGarvey was dead. His body had been taken from the hospital to the airport for transport back to Washington. He would be buried with full honors at Arlington.

  Kamal had the errant thought that a carefully crafted attack on the graveside service would be fitting, but then he was getting ahead of himself.

  “Stick to the plan,” his tactics instructor had told the class at Sandhurst. “Believe in the plan, believe in yourselves as tactical geniuses.”

  The twelve candidates in the class had gotten a chuckle.

  “But what if the plan is crap and goes south?” one of them asked.

  “Then you’re buggered. So make damned sure that your plan is not only a good one, but is flexible. Because, as the Frenchies say, Merde arrive. Shit happens.”

  The only time he’d ever failed was when he’d gone up against McGarvey. And above all things he hated failure the most.

  But the man was dead, he kept telling himself. Trouble was, he had a hard time believing it.

  * * *

  Interstate 20 East took them back into the city center. Gomez didn’t say a word. It was obvious to Kamal that he knew he’d screwed up. He hadn’t followed his instructions to the letter. And he was afraid to make any more excuses.

  Downtown, Kamal took Peachtree up to the central parking ramp just off Ellis Street NE. It was early evening and traffic was fairly light, the garage mostly empty because the downtown weekend wouldn’t really start until later.

  Kamal took his ticket from the dispenser and drove up to the second floor, where he parked in a slot on the west side.

  “You can catch a cab back out to the airport,” Kamal said. He gave the kid a hundred dollars in cash. “When you get back, call the number and stay available, do you understand?”

  “There’ll be something else for me?” Gomez asked hopefully.

  “Life changing,” Kamal said.

  He took out his silenced Glock G29 Gen 4, in the 10mm version, and fired one shot into the kid’s heart.

  Gomez slumped over in his seat, his head coming to rest against the window frame.

  Kamal put an insurance round into the side of the Mexican’s head. He got out of the truck, pulled off his coveralls and blond wig, dropped them into the truck bed, and walked up the ramp to the third floor, where he’d parked his rental Impala earlier this afternoon.

  Leaving the ramp he paid his ticket and drove over to the shopping mall at Underground Atlanta, where he left the car, and took a cab over to the Ritz Carlton, where he’d stayed for the past two nights.

  He’d tipped well, and the doormen recognized him, as did the staff at the front desk.

  “Unfortunately I have a flight to Chicago first thing in the morning,” he told the girl at the front desk. He used his German accent. “I’ll need a wake-up call at five.”

  “Of course, Herr Zimmer. Will you require limo service?”

  “Yes.”

  “I hope that your business in Atlanta was to your satisfaction.”

  “Completely,” Kamal said and he went up to his suite.

  Dinner en suite, he thought. A good bottle of wine—probably Krug—and a decent woman afterward. But not for the entire night. Just for a few hours of entertainment.

  He deserved it.

  FIVE

  The Lear touched down at Joint Base Andrews a little before nine-thirty in the evening. Pete had sat beside McGarvey holding his hand most of the way down. Her fear still roared inside her like a nearly out of control freight train, but a blinding rage had built up beside it.

  Whoever had done this to him would pay, and pay dearly, if it was the last act she’d ever do on this earth.

  The media were kept away and the only ones to meet them in the navy hangar that the CIA used from time to time were Otto and a pair of minders from the Company, along with the hearse driver and two paramedics from All Saints.

  Otto came aboard and gave Pete a hug.

  “He’s breathing okay, and his pulse is strong,” she said, amazed that she had a voice and could actually talk without completely breaking down.

  Otto looked at his old friend, and shook his head. But his expression remained completely neutral. There was nothing in his eyes that Pete could see.

  The paramedics came aboard with a backboard. As they were strapping him in, Otto went forward, Pete behind him to get out of the way.

  Otto showed the pilot and co-pilot his CIA identification. “So far as you gentlemen know, you did nothing more than transport a body from Sarasota. A woman was aboard the flight, but you were never told her name. A hearse delivered the body to your aircraft and another hearse picked it up here and drove away. Are we perfectly clear on these points, gentlemen?”

  The pilot looked past Otto and Pete as the paramedics took Mac out the hatch. He was clearly impressed. “Yes, sir.”

  “Good,” Otto said, pocketing his ID.

  “I was a Navy SEAL We all know about him. Will he make it?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “We’re pulling for him.”

  Pete was at the hearse when Otto came out of the aircraft. “I’m riding with him,” she said.

  “You’re coming with me. Franklin is worried about infections.”

  “Goddamnit.”

  “There’s nothing we can do for him now,” Otto said. “Y
ou’ve brought him this far, now let the docs take over.”

  Tears welled up in Pete’s eyes as the paramedics climbed aboard, shut the doors and the hearse sped away, no sirens, the minders right behind in their armored Caddy Escalade.

  A fuel truck was trundling over to service the Lear.

  Pete came into Otto’s arms. “Dear God, I don’t know what to do now. What about Audie?”

  “Louise took her down to the Farm soon as we heard. She should be getting back here within the next hour or so.”

  The Farm was the CIA’s training facility near Colonial Williamsburg. Whenever there was any trouble Audie was hustled down there, where she’d become the unofficial mascot. The staff and students doted on her. It was the safest place other than the bunker inside the White House.

  Otto had driven over in his battered old Mercedes diesel, a car he’d had forever.

  “You okay to drive?” Pete asked.

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  Mac was already upstairs in the third-floor operating room when Pete and Otto arrived at the hospital and went up to the waiting room just down the hall.

  “We’ve been here way too many times,” Pete said.

  “Nature of the business,” Otto replied.

  “It’s a sick business, and I’m getting fucking tired of it.”

  “Me too sometimes, but what else is there?”

  “Retirement.”

  Otto shrugged. “They’re lined up in the wings waiting for the chance to come after us. That was no random accident down there.”

  Marty Bambridge, the deputy director of the CIA’s National Clandestine Service—unofficially known as the Directorate of Operations—got off the elevator and came down the corridor to them. He was a small man with narrow shoulders and a nearly permanent scowl etched on his face. He and Mac had never gotten along, but in the past year or so they had come to a cease-fire agreement.

  “How’s he doing?”

  “We just got here. He’s being prepped now,” Otto said.

  “He’s in an induced coma,” Pete told him. “His color and pulse seemed okay on the way up. But he looks like shit.” She turned away.