The Kill Zone Read online

  “What happened? How is she?”

  “She’s going to be fine,” Adkins said. “I spoke with the emergency room doctor who said that she was lucky she was wearing a helmet.” Adkins looked terrible. He was taking this personally. “They were skiing off piste, and she ran into a tree. The fact she was wearing her helmet, and that she’s young, probably saved her life. That, and Todd was carrying an avalanche locator, which he keyed as soon as the accident happened. The ski patrol got to them in minutes. They stabilized her and choppered her down to Denver.”

  McGarvey reached for the phone, but Adkins stopped him.

  “It’s not such a good idea if you call them just yet, Mac.”

  “What else?” McGarvey demanded.

  “We have people out there with them. They’ll be okay. The problem is that they haven’t been told about what happened to you. I don’t think they need that kind of news right now.”

  “Is my daughter going to be all right, Dick. No bullshit now.”

  Adkins nodded. “The docs say she’ll come out of this just fine. But she lost some blood, and there was the truama to her head, even though she was wearing a helmet.”

  McGarvey forced himself to calm down, take this latest round of trouble one step at a time. He nodded for Adkins to continue.

  “Jared called about ten minutes ago,” Adkins said. Jared Kraus was the director of the CIA’s Technical Services Division. “He’s on the ground at Hans Lollick. He said the explosion was definitely Semtex. No doubt whatsoever. And a lot of it, by the looks of the damage.”

  “Someone’s after me,” McGarvey said, distracted.

  “Yeah,” Adkins agreed. “But who?”

  Ms. Swanfeld came to the door. “Mr. McGarvey, the President is on Secure One for you.”

  “I want a staff meeting in my conference room at ten o’clock,” McGarvey said, reaching for the phone.

  “We’ll know more about Colorado by then—”

  “A full staff meeting, Dick. Somebody with an old grudge is gunning for me, but we still have an intelligence agency to run.”

  Adkins did a double take. “How about first things first?”

  “We don’t have the luxury.”

  “Then go out to Cropley and let us handle the situation without having to duck every time someone comes near you,” Adkins blurted angrily.

  “Staff meeting at ten, Dick,” McGarvey said. He picked up the phone and turned away. “Good morning, Mr. President. You know what happened to us in the VI?”

  “Your security people sent us the heads-up last night. How are you doing?”

  “It was a close call, but no one got hurt except for the civilian helicopter pilot. We’re working to see if he was in on the plot.”

  “It wasn’t an accident then?”

  “No. It was an attempted hit.”

  The President was silent for a moment. “Any idea who it might be?”

  “We’re working on it. We’ll get them.”

  “Will they try again?”

  “Probably.”

  Again the President was silent for a beat. “Do you want to withdraw your name, Mac? Get out of there? No one would blame you if you did. You’ve given your share.”

  McGarvey took his time before he answered. The morning sun was very bright. It looked cold outside. The air was superclear. “A few days ago I might have considered it, Mr. President. But not now. I won’t leave like this because someone is gunning for me.”

  “I know the feeling,” President Haynes said. Last year McGarvey had broken up an assassination attempt on the President and his family. It had been a very close thing. “the media is starting to make noises. How do you want to play it?”

  “As a nonevent for now. I don’t think it would do my chances in the Senate much good if they thought that I was a lightning rod for the crazies.”

  “Okay, if there’s anything you need, let me know. And say hello to your wife and daughter for me. They’re all right, aren’t they?”

  “So far.”

  “Well, good luck then.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President.”

  He didn’t like to leave it at that, with lies. Once you started down that path there was almost never a redemption. People remembered lies much longer than they remembered the truth. But he wasn’t sure of anything, or anyone, now.

  Whoever pushed the button in the VI was no stranger, because if they were, it meant there was a mole somewhere here, within earshot of the director’s office. Neither possibility was comforting.

  Adkins came to the door. “Staff is set for ten. All but Otto.”

  “Why?”

  “No one knows where he is. He’s not here, but Louise swears that so far as she knows he’s at his desk.”

  McGarvey closed his eyes for a moment. “Is she lying?”

  “I think so. Whenever Otto wanders off she gets hyper. She sounded okay this time.”

  “Have Security find him.”

  “Why bother?” Adkins asked with a trace of bitterness. Looking for Otto had become an almost full-time job.

  “Because he probably has the key to finding out who’s gunning for me,” McGarvey explained. “And because he’s one of us. And because I said so.”

  Ms. Swanfeld walked into his office ten minutes later. She looked pale.

  “Mr. Director, it’s your son-in-law on three. He’s calling from Denver General Hospital.”

  McGarvey had been trying without much luck to concentrate on the India-Pakistan NIE updates that Otto had prepared two days ago. He looked up, a vise around his heart. “Thank you.”

  He picked up the telephone after Ms. Swanfeld withdrew. “What happened, Todd?”

  “Elizabeth has been hurt. She’ll be okay, but it wasn’t an accident, that’s why we’re using our work names.”

  “Someone is with you?”

  “We’re secure,” Todd said. He sounded shook-up, but steady.

  “Okay. From the top. What happened out there?” McGarvey asked.

  “We were skiing off piste when Liz’s bindings came apart and she hit a tree head-on. But they were set to blow. Somebody packed them with Semtex. She never had a chance.”

  The whispering was loud now, like a waterfall just around a bend in the path.

  “But I don’t know about the detonator. Probably an acid fuse, anything else would have been too big. Technical Services can retrieve her skis and check it out.”

  “That means somebody out there at Vail must have set them.”

  “That’s what I figured.”

  “Let me talk to her,” McGarvey said.

  “She’s in the recovery room,” said Todd, his voice deflated. “She’ll be out of it for a while.”

  “You said that she’ll be okay—”

  “Yeah. But we lost the baby.” Todd choked up. “She never had a chance, the doctor said. They tried to save her. But they couldn’t.” Again Todd was overcome, and he had to stop.

  All the air had left McGarvey’s office. He looked up. Adkins was there listening in on the extension. He was slowly shaking his head.

  “It was our daughter, and they killed her,” Todd said. “There was no reason for it, Mac. They could have come after me, one-on-one. I would have fought them any time, anyplace under any conditions they wanted. Christ.”

  “Stick with her, Todd,” McGarvey said. He had to force the words out of his throat, force his lips to move.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. God help me, I should have made her stay home. I should have been more responsible.”

  SIX

  THE SCRATCHING, NAGGING WAS BACK. THE WATERFALL HURLING ITSELF DOWN A MILLION FEET TO CRASH MADLY ON THE JAGGED ROCKS DROWNED OUT RATIONAL THOUGHT.

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  No one was safe now, McGarvey thought.

  Word about the attack on the director’s daughter spread through the building like wildfire. Or at least McGarvey supposed it had. Bad news always traveled faster than good.

  It had been a girl. An innocent ba
by, lost for no reason. Who would be next? he had to ask himself as he sat at his desk once again trying without much success to concentrate on the NIE and Watch Report.

  How he was going to break the news about the baby to Kathleen he couldn’t even guess. But he had a fair idea what it would do to her when she found out.

  No one was safe, he thought, staring at the open folder on his desk. But that wasn’t quite true. The run wasn’t on the Company; it was on him and his family. Otto was almost like a son to them. There weren’t many people who knew that fact, but it wasn’t unknown in some circles.

  And now Otto had gone missing again. McGarvey had to hope he was safe. Security had its hands fiill, but they were looking for him, just as they were in Denver protecting Todd and Elizabeth, and just as they were working the puzzle on Hans Lollick Island. But McGarvey wasn’t sure of himself, of how he fit here, what kind of a job he was supposed to be doing, or even what kind of a job he was capable of.

  The closer people got to him, the more they depended on his good judgment and his strength. That was their common mistake, because the fact was he wasn’t any stronger than anybody else. He didn’t have all the answers. When it came right down to it, he’d abandoned his wife and daughter when they were young and needed him the most. He’d had his pride; no one was going to tell him how he would conduct his life. So he had run, and no one near him had ever been safe again.

  In the end now he had come full circle.

  Was it one last go-around? he asked himself. Or was this just another operation in a string of operations that stretched forever into the future?

  Ms. Swanfeld came to the door. “Your staff is in the conference room,” she told him. She looked tired and frightened. It was the first time he’d ever seen the combination of expressions on her face. She held a crumpled handkerchief in her left hand. McGarvey recognized that like the others she was looking for reassurance that everything would turn out fine.

  “They’ll be okay,” McGarvey told her. He was in charge. His blanket of protection covered them all.

  “What’s happening to us, Mr. Director?”

  “I don’t know, but I have a feeling that we’ll find out pretty soon and put a stop to it.” He gathered his notes and the NIE and Watch Report and went across to the conference room.

  Adkins, along with the deputy directors of Operations, Dave Whittaker, and Intelligence, Tommy Doyle, and a few of their key staff were gathered. Missing were Jared Kraus, who was heading up the investigation in the USVI, and the deputy director of Management and Services, whose departments, except for Security, had little to do with these kinds of operations. Dick Yemm sat in for Security and Bob Johnson for Technical Services.

  Also still missing was Otto Rencke.

  “No word yet on Otto?” McGarvey asked, taking his seat at the head of the long table. The conference room was windowless. It was mechanically and electronically isolated from the rest of the building, and from the outside. Anything said or done here would leave the room only in the minds and the notes of the people present.

  “He’s not on the grounds, and he’s not at his apartment,” Yemm said. “Major Horn isn’t screaming for help, so I don’t think that he’s in any trouble. But I do have people out looking for him although we’re starting to get spread out pretty thin, Mr. Director.”

  “Keep on it,” McGarvey ordered. He opened his NIE briefing book, which outlined all the problems worldwide that the CIA was tasked to gather intelligence on. But before he began he looked at his people. Old friends, some of them. They had histories in the CIA. Just like Aldrich Ames, he supposed. But he wouldn’t become another witch-hunter. The CIA could not withstand another full-scale mole hunt.

  “We have to assume that there’s a purpose to these attacks,” he said. “Some sort of an ultimate goal, other than my death.”

  “We can’t know that,” Adkins replied, as if he had expected McGarvey to say something like that.

  “The first attack was against Otto—”

  “He admitted working on the brakes himself, Mr. Director,” Johnson reminded.

  “Yes, but I want his car checked again. Front to back, including fingerprints and any material containing DNA that you can find.”

  “I’ll send a forensics unit over first thing Monday morning.”

  “Today,” McGarvey countered. “This morning, please.”

  “Yes, sir,” Johnson said.

  “The second attack was against me, my wife and Dick. We can’t assume that the bomb was meant solely for me. The Semtex had probably been placed inside a beach bag that was the exact twin of the one my wife was carrying. Maybe she was the target.”

  “I’m sorry, boss, but if it was anyone except for Mrs. M., she would be the prime suspect,” Yemm said. He didn’t turn away from McGarvey’s sudden flare of anger.

  “What are you suggesting, Dick?” McGarvey asked coolly.

  “We have to keep an open mind. Just because the bomb was in a look-alike beach bag doesn’t mean you weren’t the target.”

  “What about my daughter? Where does she fit into the pattern? Her ski bindings were packed with Semtex. No mistaking who they were after.”

  “Let’s take the opposite argument then,” Adkins said. “Otto was a target. Your wife and now your daughter were targets.” Adkins shook his head. “What’s the objective? Get you to quit?” He glanced at the others around the table. “It wouldn’t make me want to give up. Just the opposite. I’d be a hundred times more motivated to nail the bastards.”

  “I agree,” Yemm said. “You were the target on Hans Lollick. Nothing else makes much sense. And Otto, if that was an attempted hit, was misdirection to make us look elsewhere. Same with your daughter.”

  “Hell, they could be thumbing their noses at you,” Adkins said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. It’s someone very close to you. Someone who knows your schedules, your habits, your tradecraft. Someone you’ve crossed paths with before. Someone who’s made a complete study of you. Like a stalker would.”

  Another word, other than stalker, came unbidden to McGarvey, but he pushed it aside.

  “And that includes most of us,” Yemm said. “Maybe Otto, too. And Todd Van Buren.”

  A silence descended over them because of the enormity of what Adkins and Yemm were suggesting. Was it better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one, McGarvey wondered, as Voltaire had. Or was he required now to trust no one?

  He had retired from field operations because he was sick and tired of constantly looking over his shoulder; forever wondering from which direction the bullet would come; forever looking for hidden meanings in what everyone said or did. He wanted a normal life. One in which he was finally free to love and be loved. Yet he’d wanted to make a difference. To prove himself worthy of his friends, his family, his sister in Utah, with whom he had not spoken in years.

  Ever since Santiago, however, he’d had trouble trusting his own judgment, his own worth. Now he was being asked to mistrust everybody else. Everybody.

  Get out. Run, run, while you still can. The monster was coming. Even now it was gaining on him, and he was afraid to look over his shoulder for fear of what he might see.

  “That’s one possibility, Dick,” he said, trying to sound reasonable. “But not the only one. We need to reexamine Otto’s car, and we need to crossmatch the Semtex in Hans Lollick with what they used in Vail. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” No one responded. They were waiting for him to make a point. Even now they wanted his protection. “We need a motive,” he finished lamely.

  “Someone doesn’t want you confirmed as DCI,” Adkins said. “That’s simple.”

  “Beyond that,” McGarvey said. “I can’t buy someone thumbing his nose at me, as you suggest. It would be a stupid risk for him to take if he wanted me out or dead.” He shook his head. “Something else is going on that we don’t know about.”

  “Relieve yourself of duty, Mac,” Adkins suggested earnestly. “Postpone the Senate hea
rings. Take your wife and daughter to Cropley. Let us work it out.”

  McGarvey wanted to be angry, but he couldn’t be. Not with Adkins or the others. Elizabeth and the baby weighed too heavily on his mind. He looked down at the open NIE briefing book.

  The telephone at his elbow chimed softly. He picked it up. “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt, Mr. Director,” Ms. Swanfeld said. “But there is trouble at your home.”

  It was another hammerblow to his system. “What is it?” he asked mechanically.

  “Security didn’t say, except that Dr. Stenzel is en route, and that they would like you to come home immediately.”

  “Tell them that I’m on my way,” McGarvey said. “But my wife is not to be moved from the house until I get there.”

  “I understand.”

  Yemm was already at the door.

  McGarvey got to his feet. It was hard to keep his head on straight. “You might be right about Cropley after all,” he told Adkins. “In the meantime, I want you to call Fred Rudolph over at the Bureau. I’d like a twenty-four/ seven surveillance operation placed on the Russian embassy, specifically on their known or suspected SVR people.”

  “Do you think the Russians are behind this?” Adkins asked. He seemed startled.

  “I don’t know. But we need to get some answers. Something that makes sense.”

  McGarvey was always glad to get home. But this morning the house did not seem warm or inviting. The windows were dark and somehow forbidding, as if they contained horrible secrets within.

  A neighbor, whom he didn’t know, was in his driveway across the cul-de-sac. He wore a bright plaid robe. He’d come out to get the Sunday paper. He raised his hand and waved. McGarvey waved back.

  “Brian Conners,” Yemm said at his shoulder. “His wife is Janet. They check out.”

  McGarvey could only guess what the Connerses thought about the goings-on over here. If they knew the extent of the trouble, there would probably be a moving truck in their driveway right now.