Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel Page 23

  “A penny,” Pete asked, coming out with the sandwiches and cold beers.

  “We’re at square one, because I don’t have a clue what the hell is going on except that al-Daran wants to kill me and I don’t think it’s for revenge.”

  “You believe Echo?”

  “I think that he and his contacts have come up with some scheme to discredit Weaver. But I can’t make myself believe that these guys want me dead.”

  “You know some of them, I’ll bet.”

  “A few of the names on Otto’s list rang a bell.”

  “Then talk to them,” Pete said. “One-on-one. Unofficially, as a part of the old-boys network.”

  “I know some of the names, but it doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

  “Maybe not, but I’m betting that just about everyone in the business has a great deal of respect for you.”

  “You’re prejudiced.”

  “Damned right I am.”

  McGarvey’s phone chirped. It was Otto.

  “Are you at Pete’s?”

  “Yes. I met again with Echo, and he denies knowing anything about al-Daran.”

  “What about Colonel Chambeau?”

  “No one home.”

  “Echo may not know al-Daran, but I’d bet good money that he warned his brother-in-law that you were on the way over.”

  “Put a trace on him.”

  “Already in the works,” Otto said. “But listen. Tony Flynn, the OD in Housekeeping, is going to phone you in a minute or two. He called me and I asked him to give me time to talk to you first.”

  McGarvey’s gut tightened. Otto almost never talked this way. “I’m listening.”

  “This is a recording of a call that came in a little while ago.”

  May I help you? a woman asked on the recording.

  “She’s the night operator at our seven-oh-three number,” Otto said.

  I am called al Nassr. I wish to talk to Mr. Kirk McGarvey about his granddaughter, Audrey. I will call this number again at one A.M. local. Have him standing by, please.

  I’m sorry, sir, but I don’t know the name.

  Thank you, darling. Just pass the message along.

  “Audie is okay,” Otto broke in. “Louise has taken her to stay with a friend. Under the circumstances the Farm didn’t seem like such a hot idea.”

  “What friend?”

  “I don’t know who it is, and I don’t want to know. Just an extra layer of safety.”

  McGarvey glanced at his watch. It was just a few minutes before one.

  “It was al-Daran, my voice program pegs it at eighty-seven percent plus. British accent, especially in his use of the word darling.”

  “He’s not hiding his identity.”

  “No.”

  “Audie’s safe?”

  “There’s no one other than you who I’d trust my life with as much as I trust my wife.”

  “Agreed,” McGarvey said, the rage boiling inside of him almost impossible to control. He wanted the son of a bitch right here, right now, in front of him. Mano a mano.

  Pete was looking at him with sympathy and understanding and love in her eyes. She reached out to touch him, but he pulled his arm away.

  “Did they get a trace on the call?”

  “Throwaway cell phone somewhere a couple of blocks south of Union Station,” Otto said. “And before you ask I didn’t roll any assets; he’s long gone by now.”

  “He’s set up a back door for himself. Means he’s worried.”

  “Soon as we get a trace we’ll roll,” Otto said. “It’s his first mistake.”

  “His second,” McGarvey said. “Threatening my granddaughter was his first.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Kamal stood in the shadow of a doorway just across O Street NW from McGarvey’s apartment building on the third floor of a brownstone, Tepping’s computer bag over his shoulder. From there McGarvey would have a nice view of Rock Creek Park, where, it was said, he often took morning runs.

  He glanced at his watch. It lacked one minute of one, and except for the bars and restaurants down along M Street NW and the block or two toward the river before Whitehurst Freeway, which were still busy, this part of Georgetown was quiet.

  No lights showed in McGarvey’s windows, which really didn’t mean much. The CIA would have contacted him by now—him and his friend Otto Rencke—and he could be standing up there in the darkness watching from a window.

  Kamal resisted the urge to step out of the shadows and wave. Instead he used the last throwaway phone to make the call.

  McGarvey answered on the fourth ring—just a little show of willpower. “Yes.”

  “You know who this is?” Kamal asked.

  “What do you want?”

  “You, of course. Same as it has been since Monaco, and then New York, where you interfered with my plans. I won’t allow it to happen again.”

  “We know about the training camp in Mexico. Whoever you’ve hired will be stopped if they try to cross the border.”

  “The same as your immigration coppers stop all the other illegal immigrants coming to work on your farms and in your orchards? Or just to have their babies born on U.S. soil?

  “What are you sending them to do?”

  “Oh, you know. A little mayhem.”

  “Is that why you met with Ron Hatchett in Beijing?”

  Kamal was rattled, but he recovered his composure as quickly as he had lost it. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know that name, nor have I been in Beijing for a number of years.”

  “I’ll ask again, what do you want?”

  “You’ve not asked about your granddaughter.”

  “No need. She’s safe.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t send her back to the Farm, not after what happened to you there. Which means she’s with Otto Rencke or perhaps his wife, Louise, the satellite expert. Bunkered down somewhere. But of course the kid wasn’t the point, was she? It’s you and me, something we both want.”

  “You’re using another throwaway phone, which you probably bought at Union Station. Otto will have your present location by now.”

  “No need for that. I’m standing in the doorway of the building just across the street from your apartment. I can step into view and you can take a shot from your window, if that’s your style.”

  Kamal moved out of the shadows.

  “Or?”

  “Or we can meet across the street in the park. On the path along the creek where you run whenever you’re in town.”

  “If I see you I’ll kill you.”

  “Please, without due process? Not very sporting for a former DCI.”

  “I’m not a law-abiding man,” McGarvey said. “I’ll even give you a head start. Ten minutes. The cops are on the way right now, but I really don’t want them to arrest you.”

  “You mean try,” Kamal said.

  He shut off the phone, and at the corner he tossed it down a storm drain and hurried up to P Street NW and from there down the pathway into the park.

  * * *

  “I’ve lost contact with his phone on the corner at Twenty-sixth,” Otto said. “He probably tossed it in a Dumpster.”

  “Or took the battery and SIM card out,” McGarvey said as he hurried down the stairs and to the front door. Nothing moved on the street for the moment.

  Pete was right behind him, also connected with Otto. “Or wrapped it in aluminum foil,” she said.

  “The signal wasn’t cut off, it faded.”

  “He’s already ahead of me,” McGarvey said.

  “Do you want backup?” Otto asked.

  “No. He’ll just run, and take out a couple of cops on the way.”

  “We’re on our way,” Pete said as McGarvey opened the front door.

  “You’re staying here,” he said.

  “Not a chance in hell.”

  “If he knows that you’re close, he’ll figure that we’ll come after him together. He could just as well double back and wait upstairs in your apartment or someplace
with a good sight line for us to come back.”

  Pete started to protest, but Otto cut her off.

  “Mac is right.”

  Pete looked down the street toward the park. “Christ,” she said. She turned back and gave McGarvey a peck on the cheek. “Get yourself killed and I’ll never speak to you again.”

  “Deal,” McGarvey said and he took off running toward the park.

  * * *

  Kamal crossed to the other side of the parkway and made his way back along the creek until it made a double bend just at 26th Street. He perched on the edge of a picnic table in plain view of anyone coming into the park.

  It was far too long of a distance for any accuracy with a pistol. But once McGarvey came across the road he would almost certainly try for the shot.

  He pulled the ultra-compact ArmaLite AR-7 out of the shoulder bag and took out the parts from inside the camouflaged stock. The receiver attached to the stock, the barrel went in next and was screwed down, along with a laser sight, and finally a fifteen-round magazine of 40-grain round-nosed .22 long-rifle ammunition.

  As he worked he kept looking up to watch for McGarvey.

  The survival rifle issued by the U.S. Air Force for pilots who were shot down inside enemy-held territory was small and lightweight, but even though it fired only the .22-caliber bullet, a head shot would easily take down a man.

  McGarvey would spot him from across the creek, but he would not survive the encounter.

  * * *

  McGarvey crossed 27th Street and went directly into the park, keeping low and moving fast. His best guess was that al-Daran had crossed to the other side of the creek, possibly up across P Street, where there was a pathway.

  The man would have come back down somewhere across from the end of O Street or even Dumbarton and would be waiting.

  Washington had been drier than normal for the past several months and the creek was low and slow enough for McGarvey to wade across.

  Away from the streetlights and stanchions along the parkway, the opposite side of the creek was in relative darkness.

  McGarvey pulled out his pistol, and still keeping low, but moving with more caution now that he felt he was close to al-Daran, he worked his way through the trees and occasional opening back upriver, toward Dumbarton.

  Fifty yards later he pulled up short.

  A man was seated on top of a picnic table, something cradled in his lap.

  It was Kamal, and he was holding what looked like a small rifle of some sort.

  McGarvey raised his gun, when someone fired a pistol from behind him, the round smacking into the tree beside which he’d been standing.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Kamal rolled over the edge of the picnic table, the rifle pointing downriver. It had been an unsilenced pistol shot. At first he thought that McGarvey had somehow managed to get behind him.

  Something or someone moved to the left not more than ten or fifteen meters out.

  Kamal brought the rifle up but whoever it was had pulled up short.

  Someone else moved a bit farther away, and Kamal brought the rifle around.

  It had to be McGarvey out ahead and his woman coming up from behind. But the former DCI favored a Walther PPK while his girlfriend used a Glock 29 Gen4. The pistol shot he’d heard had been fired from a much larger weapon.

  They could have switched to different pistols, but somehow he didn’t think that was the case. Whoever it was who’d fired the shot was not the woman, and definitely not McGarvey. He didn’t think that either of them would have missed.

  Taking care with his movements so as to make as little noise as possible, Kamal laid the rifle on the table then took his pistol out of its holster as he moved off to the right, and made his way downriver to a spot he figured would be just behind the nearest shooter.

  * * *

  Thirty yards to the west McGarvey pulled up and hunched down, watching for a movement through the trees and undergrowth back the way he’d come. A taxi came up N Street NW and made the corner onto 24th Street NW, its headlights flashing through the woods.

  Before it was dark again, McGarvey got the strobe-like image of a figure about twenty yards away moving toward him.

  Not al-Daran; the terrorist had been off to the right. This was the shooter who’d come up from behind. From the left in the direction of the parkway.

  McGarvey’s phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Otto.

  “Pete just got to me. She’s on Twenty-seventh, said she spotted two guys getting out of a car in front of her place and heading on foot toward the park.”

  “Is she behind them?” McGarvey asked, keeping his voice to a whisper.

  “Yes. She thought she heard a shot. Was it you?”

  “No. Tell her to stay put, but if anyone comes out of the park other than me, take them down.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m on one of them right now.”

  “I can get you backup.”

  “I’d rather have answers than dead bodies. There’re three of them including al-Daran. I want one of them alive.”

  * * *

  The man Kamal approached was looking toward the left, downriver, his complete attention on something in that direction. He was dressed in dark slacks and a dark shirt.

  From two meters out Kamal could make out the large pistol in the man’s hands. The single round had been a 10 mm, and the pistol had the unmistakable lines of a SIG Sauer. Almost certainly the fairly new P220.

  Somewhere farther to the left someone else moved, then stopped.

  McGarvey had come here to the park, but so had at least one other man, the one holding the SIG.

  The man didn’t realize that someone was on his six until Kamal was within arm’s length, and he started to turn.

  “I will shoot you unless you decock your weapon and let it fall to the ground,” Kamal said softly.

  The man was slightly built, a half-head shorter than Kamal. He stiffened, then slowly turned his head to look over his shoulder directly into the muzzle of Kamal’s pistol, and into Kamal’s eyes.

  “Al Nassr,” the man said. He wasn’t afraid.

  It was a shock. “How do you know my name?”

  “We’ve come from New York to help you.”

  “We?”

  “I’m Ahmad, my partner is Hamza. But McGarvey is here. We were just in time to see him cross the parkway.”

  “Who in New York sent you and exactly why?”

  “The chief of station, and as I’ve already said we’re here to help you.”

  “With what?”

  “I’ve already told you that too.”

  “I’m losing my patience.”

  “We’re here to make sure that Mr. McGarvey doesn’t survive the night, so that your plans may go ahead.”

  “I don’t need your help,” Kamal said and as the Saudi intel officer began to raise his pistol Kamal shot him in the forehead at point-blank range.

  * * *

  The sound of the pistol shot cracked through the woods like a bullwhip.

  McGarvey took two steps to the right in time to see a dark figure dart out of the shadows about thirty feet away and duck behind a tree, keeping it between him and the direction of the pistol shot.

  The figure was smaller than Kamal and McGarvey was certain that it wasn’t Pete.

  He phoned Otto. “Where’s Pete?”

  “She’s in the park just opposite N Street, just like you wanted.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I have her GPS position.”

  “Tell her to look sharp. The next one out of the park could be Kamal.”

  A siren sounded somewhere in the distance to the southwest. Otto heard it over the phone at the same time McGarvey did.

  “Someone reported the gunfire,” Otto said. “I’ll give the cops the heads-up.”

  McGarvey pocketed the phone, and keeping his pistol aimed center mass at the back of the figure hiding behind the tree, started forward.

  Nothing else
moved out ahead, in the direction of the single pistol shot. But Kamal was out there; McGarvey could feel him.

  Five feet out, McGarvey stopped. “Toss your gun aside and I will not shoot you.”

  The man stiffened and then started to turn, his gun hand coming around first.

  “Stop now.”

  The man did.

  “No reason for you to die. If you’re here to help al Nassr you’re too late. I suspect he’s already killed your partner, not the other way around.”

  “Tell me who you are, and we can make a deal,” the man said. His English was good but his accent was Arabic.

  The siren was much closer now, and a second came from the northwest, but farther away.

  “I’m Kirk McGarvey and I want some answers.”

  The man suddenly turned, bringing his pistol around.

  McGarvey dodged left as the Saudi fired once, the shot going wide. Mac fired twice, one shot hitting the man in the side just behind his left shoulder, and the second plowing into his head just behind his ear.

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  Kamal stood in place beside the GIP housekeeper’s body, considering his options.

  The first of the police were very close now, just across the creek on the parkway. More sirens were inbound, some on the other side of the park, probably on 26th Street. They were responding to sounds of gunfire and were trying to contain the situation.

  McGarvey was somewhere close, just downriver, and he’d almost certainly killed the other GIP operative.

  If the New York muscle had stayed out of it, McGarvey would almost certainly be dead by now. And possibly his girlfriend too.

  He didn’t want it to end this way, with McGarvey. He wanted to finish the business once and for all. But he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life in some jail—possibly in Guantánamo.

  None of the other actions he’d set in place really mattered to him. He could just walk away now and return to his life in France.

  All that passed through his head in one piece, and the solution came to him as it always did in these sorts of circumstances.

  He knew how he was going to finish the job he’d been hired to do, plus the one for his own amusement, and in the end he would kill McGarvey, who would have no other recourse than to help try to save innocent lives.