The Kill Zone Read online

  There was nothing. No movement. No sound. Not even the alarm. Kathleen had forgotten to turn it back on.

  “Katy?” he shouted. He’d left his phone in the car.

  “Kirk?” she called from upstairs.

  “It’s me. Are you okay?”

  “Oh, Kirk, thank God,” Kathleen cried. She appeared at the head of the stairs, the pistol still in her hand, pointed toward the open front door.

  “Put the gun down, Katy. Everything’s fine now—”

  A tremendous explosion shattered the night air, flashing like a strobe light off the thickly blowing snow, the noise hammering off the fronts of the houses in the cul-de-sac.

  McGarvey fell through the doorway and turned in time to see a huge fireball, blown ragged by the wind, rising into the sky from where the van and Yemm had been.

  SIX

  MAC HAD GIVEN HIM THE LEGITIMACY THAT HE HAD SEARCHED FOR ALL OF HIS LIFE. RENCKE HAD A PLACE.

  FORT A.P. HILL, VIRGINIA

  Arkady Aleksandrovich Kurshin was the only man ever to have nearly bested McGarvey.

  Looking up from the covering file for Operation Countdown, Rencke wondered how he could have forgotten the Russian assassin’s name. Baranov had been the manipulator behind Kurshin’s delicate, even balletic, but deadly moves. And yet it was Kurshin who had stolen a nuclear missile from a U.S. storage bunker in what was then West Germany. It was Kurshin who had managed to hijack a U.S. Los Angeles class nuclear submarine and kill its entire crew. It was Kurshin who had nearly embroiled the entire Middle East, including most of the oil-producing nations, in a nuclear confrontation with Israel. And it had been Kurshin who had finally led McGarvey to his face-to-face confrontation with Baranov.

  McGarvey had been maneuvered to the meeting with the KGB spymaster in a Soviet safe house outside of East Berlin. But the purpose of the meeting was never made clear. It was possible that Baranov simply wanted to kill McGarvey. It was equally possible, maybe even likely, that Baranov thought he could somehow turn McGarvey as he had turned Yarnell and Evita Perez and Artime Basulto and even John Lyman Trotter, Jr., McGarvey’s friend in the CIA.

  It would have been a coup. A triumph of epic proportions. Like turning Luke Skywalker to the dark side in the Star Wars movies.

  It didn’t happen, of course. In fact, Baranov’s wild gamble had turned against him. McGarvey assassinated him, and then back in West Berlin, where Trotter had been waiting for word from Baranov, McGarvey killed his old friend. Trotter had been a Baranov man. Seduced by the Georgian’s delicate touch; by the sheer brilliance of his personality.

  Rencke closed his eyes. Baranov’s had been a siren song to just about every one of his targets. Those he could not convert, like Powers and McGarvey, he marked for elimination; Powers when he had become DCI, and McGarvey once in East Germany and again now.

  On a separate level, McGarvey’s confrontation with Arkady Kurshin came about a year after East Berlin, in the tunnels beneath the ruins of a castle in Portugal. Rencke had read that chilling report. The two assassins, McGarvey and Kurshin, each at the height of their powers, had come head-to-head in a tunnel filled with Nazi gold and the bodies of some dead Jews. There was an explosion, darkness, the tunnel filling with water.

  Rencke shook his head. He felt claustrophobic each time he thought about it. That had been a close call; one that by McGarvey’s own admission, could have gone either way. He’d been lucky.

  There had been other operations. Baranov was at least fifteen years older than McGarvey. He’d had fifteen years more experience. Fifteen more years to develop his tradecraft.

  But it should have been all over in the East Berlin safe house. And in the tunnel in Portugal.

  Rencke got up and went out to the central corridor. There were forty men and women working here, and yet the vast cavern seemed to be deserted.

  The answers, if there were any after all these years, were here somewhere. But he still could not make sense of what he knew.

  There were common threads. Points of similarity and even contact between all of Baranov’s players. Between Yarnell and Powers. Between Kurshin and McGarvey. Even between Evita and Basulto. Bridges that linked them together, with Baranov as their center span.

  Someone was trying to assassinate McGarvey because he had become boss of the CIA. It was a Baranov operation that had been put in place as long as twenty years ago. One that had recently been triggered.

  Nikolayev was one of the keys. One of Baranov’s players. Who else? Where were the bridges?

  Someone came out of the main office by the elevators and headed toward him. He caught the motion out of the corner of his eye, and he turned his head.

  He knew. It came to him all at once. Suddenly he saw everything. Or at least most of it. All the clues had been in front of him since August, but he had never looked directly at them like he was looking now directly at the clerk. Delicate. Simple. Even beautiful.

  And frightening beyond anything that Rencke had ever imagined.

  A young air force staff sergeant whose name tag read FEDERMAN, came down the corridor in a rush. He was agitated. “Mr. Rencke, the operations officer is trying to reach you, sir. It’s urgent.”

  Rencke looked at the young man, still amazed at what had been hidden in plain sight in front of him all this time.

  “Sir, this has to do with the director.”

  Rencke slowly focused. “What did you say?”

  “The OD said that there’s been another attempt.”

  “Shit. Shit.” Rencke turned and hurried back into the conference room, where he phoned Langley.

  “Operations.”

  “This is Rencke. What’s going on?”

  “There’s been an explosion in front of Mr. McGarvey’s home in Chevy Chase. Security is on the way, and the Maryland Highway Patrol is already there.”

  “Was anyone hurt?” Rencke tried with everything he possessed to stay on track. Not to go crazy. But it wasn’t easy.

  “We don’t have all the details yet, sir. The director was not hurt, but the security detail might have been involved.”

  “That’d be Dick Yemm.”

  “Yes, sir. He does not respond to his pages. Mr. Whittaker has been informed, and he’s issued the recall for all his officers.”

  “Send a chopper down here for me. I’ll be waiting by the main parking lot.”

  “Sir, that won’t be necessary—”

  “Do it now,” Rencke said menacingly. “Right now.” He hung up, but sat in front of the phone for a full minute as he came to grips with his emotions, which were jumping all over the place.

  He knew the why, he had a fair idea of the how and a very short list of the who. But he needed the proof, because nobody, not even Mac, would believe him without it.

  First, he had to make sure that Mac and Mrs. M. were okay. And Liz. He couldn’t forget about Liz.

  Rencke bundled up his computer, not bothering to shut it down or log off the repository’s mainframe, and took the elevator to the surface.

  He was stopped at the security checkpoint in the arrivals hall, and his bag was quickly searched before he was allowed to pass through.

  The snow had tapered off somewhat, but there were halos around the lights. Rencke ran across the driveway, past the flagpole and the bronze Civil War cannon on the median, and stopped at the edge of the nearly empty parking lot.

  He started to hop from one foot to the other. The helicopter wasn’t here yet. He cocked an ear, but he could not hear it approaching.

  “Goddammit.” If his ride wasn’t here in five minutes, they’d pay. Someone would pay with their balls.

  He took out his cell phone and speed dialed McGarvey’s number. It rang four times, then rolled over to the locator at Langley. Rencke broke the connection. Mac had his hands full right now dealing with the mess.

  He telephoned the hospital and asked for Kathleen McGarvey’s room.

  “I’m sorry, sir, Mrs. McGarvey was discharged from the hospital this
afternoon,” the operator informed him.

  “On whose orders?”

  “I don’t have that information, sir. You have to talk with the patient’s doctor.”

  “Okay. Okay. Connect me with Elizabeth Van Buren’s room, please.”

  “One moment, sir,” the operator said. She came back. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Van Buren was also discharged this afternoon.”

  Rencke cut the connection and speed dialed Liz and Todd’s home phone. Todd answered on the first ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Is Elizabeth with you?” Rencke blurted. “She checked out of the hospital.”

  “She’s here, in the tub,” Todd replied. “Is something wrong, Otto?”

  Rencke closed his eyes, the cold air suddenly felt good on his hot face. He was relieved. At least Elizabeth was safe for the moment. “They made another attempt on Mac. There was an explosion in front of his house. But the OD said he was okay.”

  “What about Mrs. M.?”

  “She checked out of the hospital, and now I can’t reach her.” He heard the helicopter in the distance. It was another cause for relief. “I’m heading over to their house now. Whittaker might recall you, but don’t do it, Todd. Stay there with Liz until we can figure out what we’re going to do next.”

  “Mac told me that he was opening the safe house in the morning. Told me to stick it out here until then.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Okay, there’s a call on my other line. It’s the Company.”

  “Take care of Liz.”

  “Hey, I love her, too, remember?”

  Rencke speed dialed his own apartment, but there was no answer. He and Louise had agreed that she should return to work at the NRO. She was doing nobody any good by staying home. She wanted to be with him 24/7, but that wasn’t possible.

  But he had hoped that she might have come home a little early today. He desperately wanted to talk to her. To hear her voice. He needed comforting.

  A navy Seasprite Lamps-I, three-man, multipurpose helicopter came in low from the northeast and touched down in the parking lot in a flurry of blowing snow.

  The copilot helped Rencke into the empty crew seat, and handed him a crash helmet, which he donned and plugged into the ship’s communications system.

  “I need to get to the director of Central Intelligence’s house,” Rencke spoke into the mic. “It’s up in Chevy Chase. If you don’t know the way, your operations officer can get it from Langley.”

  “We know the way, sir,” the pilot said, and the machine lifted into the air with a sickening lurch.

  Rencke hated all helicopters. In fact he didn’t care much for any kind of transportation except the World Wide Web.

  He hunched down in his seat and pulled his seat harness a little tighter. His shoulder was hurting him, and for the first time today he realized that he was hungry. It was time to go home, where Louise would have something good waiting for him. She claimed that she was a horrible cook, but he knew better.

  The view out the cockpit windows was nothing but swirling snow, with a kaleidoscope of meaningless lights somewhere below. Air pockets caused the helicopter to jump all over the place. But the pilot and copilot seemed unconcerned.

  Washington was like a powerful magnet from which Rencke could not escape. He’d been lonely as hell in Rio, but happy as a clam in France. Until Mac came calling with his problems. He told himself that he had no choice. Mac was his friend. Mrs. M. and Liz were like family. He had to help them. He had to be here in Washington near them, to keep them out of trouble, to keep them safe from harm.

  But the truth of the matter was that he’d searched for legitimacy all of his life. When he was fourteen his father started beating him and calling him a queer boy. And that same year his mother, in a drunken rage, told him that she wished that she’d had an abortion rather than giving birth to him.

  In college he’d been treated with some respect because he was bright, but he’d been kicked out when they found him screwing the dean’s secretary on the dean’s desk. That was at a Jesuit university. They didn’t even ask him to leave. He just packed up that afternoon and got out.

  And in the air force he’d been treated okay, that is after he’d made it through basic training, because he had a handle on mathematics. But that job had lasted only a couple of years, when he was caught having sex with a supply sergeant. A male supply sergeant.

  In the CIA, after he’d doctored his records, he thought that he’d found a home. Though he didn’t have a lot of friends in those days, at least he had some respect, even though he knew that they called him names behind his back.

  Then Mac came along. Right off the bat Rencke knew that McGarvey was his kind of a person. Just standing in the same room with him gave you a confidence you never had before. And when Mac patted you on the shoulder and told you that you did good, it was like a frosty pitcher of cream and a plate of Twinkies. It didn’t get any better.

  But Mac was drawn again and again back to Washington. So Washington had become Rencke’s magnet because Mac was a friend and because Mac believed in him.

  Mac had given him the legitimacy that he had searched for all of his life. Rencke had a place.

  CHEVY CHASE

  The helicopter touched down at the far end of the cul-de-sac just long enough to drop Rencke off. He turned away as it rose into the blowing snow and peeled off to the south.

  There were police cars, fire rescue units, two ambulances and a dozen civilian vehicles choking the street. All of them had their red or blue lights flashing. The effect was surreal in the snow. Police tactical radios were blaring, and there had to be at least fifty uniformed cops along with FBI agents in blue-stenciled parkas and a lot of civilians, most of whom were CIA security officers.

  Rencke made his way over to the remains of the van and the burned-out shell of the DCI’s limo. The Bureau’s forensics people were sifting through the wreckage, finding and removing bodies and body parts. Flash cameras were going off all over the place.

  A Montgomery County sheriff’s deputy intercepted Rencke. “Let me see some ID.”

  Rencke held up his CIA card, and the cop shined a flashlight on it, comparing Rencke’s face to the photograph.

  “Mr. McGarvey’s over in his driveway,” the cop said.

  Rencke mumbled his thanks and skirted the people and equipment gathered around the remains of the van. It was probably one of the on-station vehicles they’d used to stand watches in front of the house. The explosive device that had destroyed it had been very powerful. There was debris all across the cul-de-sac and up in people’s front yards. The force of the blast had been enough to partially destroy the limo parked several yards away.

  Looking at the wreckage of the scene reminded him of what the aftermath pictures of the chopper explosion in the Virgin Islands looked like.

  McGarvey stood at the end of his driveway with a group of CIA security people, a MHP captain and the FBI’s Fred Rudolph. They looked up as Rencke approached.

  “Where’s Mrs. M.?” Otto asked, unable to contain himself any longer.

  McGarvey smiled tiredly and laid a comforting hand on Rencke’s arm. “She’s okay. She’s inside, and there’s somebody with her.”

  “Oh, wow, I was really scared, ya know.” Rencke glanced over his shoulder at the technicians and security people working around the van. “Where’s Dick?”

  “He didn’t make it. He’s dead,” McGarvey said. “He got caught in the explosion.”

  “Who else?” Rencke asked. His throat was constricting.

  “Janis and Peggy, and a couple of guys from Security. Looks like they had been shot to death before we arrived. Then the van was booby-trapped. Whoever it was drove a dark blue Mercedes.”

  Rencke closed his eyes. He was sick at his stomach. He felt like a traitor. Dick Yemm had been on his short list of suspects. He and his Beltway computer friend, who was ex-KGB.”

  “We’re heading to the safe house in the morning,” McGarvey sai
d.

  “Why not now?” Rudolph interjected.

  “Not in the dark,” McGarvey told him. “And not until we can get everybody calmed down.”

  “We’ll set a trap,” Rencke said. “You and I, Mac, wherever it leads. We’ll set a trap. Cause I know …”

  “You know what?” McGarvey asked sharply. He was concerned, troubled, even a little apprehensive. Rencke had never seen that kind of a look on Mac’s face before. It frightened him badly.

  He stumbled back a pace, confused now by all the lights and movement. He felt like a moth that was fatally caught in the light of a very powerful flame. A seductive flame. He was being drawn to his destruction.

  “We’ll do it, Mac,” he cried in anguish. Tears streamed down his cheeks, his long, frizzy red hair whipped wildly in the wind, and his jacket was open, revealing his dirty MIT sweatshirt.

  He began hopping from one foot to the other The cops and security people watched him in open amazement. He was a spectacle.

  He looked up and spotted a pale, round face in an upstairs window for just a moment before it disappeared.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he muttered.

  FOUR

  THE 23RD PSALM

  The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die and you to live. Which is better God only knows.

  —Plato’s Apology

  Man is a prisoner who has no right to open the door of his prison and run away … A man should wait, and not take his own life until God summons him.

  —Plato’s Phaedo

  WEDNESDAY

  ONE

  “VASHA WAS FAMOUS FOR SPREADING LIES AND DISUNITY LIKE ROSE PETALS ON FRESH GRAVES. HE ALWAYS MANAGED TO INCLUDE THE THORNS.”

  OVER THE ATLANTIC

  Six miles above the unforgiving winter ocean, Otto Rencke tried to put a cap on his fear.

  The cabin aboard the Company’s VIP Gulfstream was luxurious compared to the cramped cockpit of the Aurora. But the jet was slow, and Rencke was impatient. The only light came from the open cockpit door. It was four in the morning, and the crew thought that he was sleeping. They left him alone, which is what he wanted, what he needed, so that he could put his thoughts in order.