Allah's Scorpion (51 page)

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Authors: David Hagberg

BOOK: Allah's Scorpion

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The smile faded from bin Laden’s lips. “The money to fund the
jihad
comes from Saudi Arabia.”

“I know.”

“I can give you the names, and—”

“I don’t care,” McGarvey said. He squeezed off a shot, striking the terrorist leader in the middle of the forehead, driving him backwards, the Qur’an sliding off his lap.

Bin Laden was dead and the war was over. Or at least it was for him.

McGarvey went the rest of the way into the room, and unloaded his pistol, one careful shot after the other, into bin Laden’s face, his neck, and his chest.

For several long seconds he stood over the terrorist leader’s body, a tremendous sense of sadness coming over him. It had been the same after every kill. He could remember all the faces of his victims. Now bin Laden’s would be added to his nightmares.

He ejected the spent magazine from his pistol, pocketed it, and loaded a fresh one into the handle, cycling a round into the firing chamber.

Next he took a cotton swab and small plastic Baggie from one of his pockets, dabbed some blood from bin Laden’s head wound, and sealed the cotton swab in the Baggie.

They would want proof.

He took one last long look at bin Laden’s lifeless body, then turned and
sprinted down the corridor toward the main elevators at the front of the building, the wound in his hip getting steadily worse with each step.

He keyed his radio. “I’m heading to the elevators.”

“Hustle, kimo sabe,” Rencke replied. “I’m picking up chatter on the local ISI channel. They’re on their way here. And Graham showed up in the parking garage five minutes ago. He and his driver are gone.”

“I’ll be with you in two minutes,” McGarvey radioed. “What about Gloria?”

“I can’t raise her,” Otto said. “The main elevators are unlocked.”

“How about Joe?”

“Nothing from him either.”

“Christ,” McGarvey muttered. He went through the large prayer room and took the corridor in the opposite direction from the dormitory. At the far end, a plain steel door opened to a small lobby across which were two elevators, one of the cars standing open.

He was in a quandary if he should go back and take out the two mujahideen coming up the stairs, which would delay the authorities finding bin Laden’s body, or just leave now. But they were not worth the risk or the extra time.

He stepped aboard the elevator and punched the button for the ground floor. Something was wrong on the street out front, and the hairs stood up on the nape of his neck as the doors closed and the car started down.

But Otto would have warned Bernstein and Gloria that trouble was coming their way. They would have been prepared.

It was an express elevator and it took less than one minute to reach the ground floor. McGarvey stepped to one side and raised his pistol as the doors opened. But except for Rencke and the two trussed-up guards behind the security console, the atrium lobby was empty.

“Shut down all the elevators!” McGarvey shouted, hobbling across the lobby. “We’re getting out of here right now.”

Before McGarvey reached the main doors, Rencke had locked down the elevators and was right behind him, his pistol in hand.

Outside, the night air was warm, and extremely humid. In the not too far distance they could hear a lot of sirens, but there was no traffic here for the moment. The blue and white Toyota van that Bernstein was driving was still parked across the street, and Gloria’s Fiat hadn’t moved from the end of the block across from the entrance to the building’s underground
garage. There was no sign of Graham’s Mercedes, or that there’d been any trouble. But if he’d emerged from the garage he would have driven directly past Gloria.

McGarvey hurried across the broad plaza and then across the street where he approached the driver’s side door of the van from the rear, and looked inside. The window was down and Bernstein was slumped over, blood all over the seat from a gunshot wound in the back of his head. There was no doubt he was dead.

“What do we do?” Rencke asked, his voice still steady despite the fact that he was not a trained field officer.

“We have to leave him,” McGarvey said tersely, and he headed as fast as his legs would carry him back to Gloria’s Fiat, sick at heart by what he thought he would find. Somehow Graham had managed to get past her and take Bernstein unawares. Christ, he had warned them both about the bastard.

Gloria was also slumped over the seat, blood matting the hair on the left side of her head, but she was starting to come around and trying to sit up. “What happened?” she stammered.

The sirens were very close now.

McGarvey pocketed his pistol, tore open the door, and helped Gloria to sit up and slide over the gearshift lever to the passenger side. He got behind the wheel and as soon as Rencke was in the backseat, started the engine and took off. Just as they were turning the corner at the end of the block, McGarvey looked in the rearview mirror in time to see three pickup trucks filled with armed men pulling up in front of the building. They were bin Laden’s security forces, responding to a call for help.

How it would play out between them and the Pakistani intelligence officers who were closing in was anyone’s guess, but McGarvey was certain that the ISI had been cooperating with bin Laden and al-Quaida all along.

“Call your people at the airport and tell them that we’re on our way,” McGarvey told Rencke.

“Already did. The jet will be ready and cleared for takeoff when we get there,” Rencke said. He gave his handkerchief to Gloria to stanch the blood seeping from a gash in the side of her head.

“What happened?” McGarvey asked her.

Her eyes were slightly crossed, the pupils dilated. She had probably suffered a concussion. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she mumbled.
She seemed to pull herself together a little. “What’s going on? Did you get him?”

Something niggled at the back of McGarvey’s head, but he nodded. “He’s dead, and we’re on our way out.”

Gloria closed her eyes. “Thank God, darling,” she said. “I was desperately worried about you getting away alive.” She opened her eyes again, and managed a smile. “Let’s go home now, okay?”

EPILOGUE

HONG KONG

Ten days later, on an early Friday evening, Rupert Graham was finishing dressing for dinner in the palatial bathroom in his suite at the super-luxurious Conrad Hotel on Queensway Road with its magnificent views of the harbor and the city. He had thought that after the Panama Canal, the York River, and finally Karachi, being beaten three times by McGarvey, that he would be filled with the overwhelming need to go after the bastard and destroy him. But it hadn’t happened. He was at peace with himself for the moment, though he knew that mood wouldn’t last forever.

He evened out his bow tie, and walked back into the bedroom to put on his Armani white dinner jacket. Four nights ago he had begun seeing Jillian’s face in his dreams again, and for the first time in possibly more than a year he had actually enjoyed a day of sightseeing as an ordinary tourist.

Ignoring the television that was tuned to CNN, he poured a glass of Krug champagne that the room service waiter had opened and put on ice, and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor. He raised the glass. “To Kirk McGarvey,” he spoke softly. “We
will
meet again in due time and when you least expect it.”

He smiled broadly, but then something intruded on his pleasant reverie. He turned back in time to see a photograph of a bearded bin Laden on the television screen. Three days ago a pair of U.S. Predator drones had fired two missiles into a compound in the Fish Harbor section of Karachi on a tip from unnamed sources that bin Laden had been attending a meeting there. It was presumed that he had been killed in the attack, but the Al Jazeera network had received an audiotape this morning that was identified as the voice of bin Laden, who claimed to be very much alive and planning the next major strike against America.

Graham raised his glass again, and drank. “But you are dead, old boy. There isn’t a chance that McGarvey could have missed.” He chuckled. “The king is dead, long live the king.”

There was no way of knowing what would come next, but it was a safe bet in Graham’s mind that the
jihad
was far from being over. Very far from being over.

CIA HEADQUARTERS

“It’s not over, Mr. President,” McGarvey said. He and Adkins were having a teleconference with the president and Dennis Berndt, his national security adviser, in the Oval Office.

“But bin Laden is dead,” the president said. “The DNA from the blood you brought back is a match.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The problem we’re faced with now is how to handle the news,” Berndt cautioned. “There could be a tremendous backlash throughout the entire Muslim world if we announced that bin Laden is dead.”

“What do you think, Mac?” the president asked.

“I’m not a politician, it’s one of the reasons I made such a lousy DCI, but like I said it’s not over, and won’t be until we can find a political solution.”

“Like getting out of Saudi Arabia, or pulling our support from Israel?” the president asked, a touch of edginess in his voice.

McGarvey shrugged. “That might help, Mr. President, but I doubt it. The only way al-Quaida is going to be reigned in is for countries like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and Syria and Iran to withdraw their support. Once they stop their funding, and close down the training bases, al-Quaida will feel the squeeze. But even more than that, we need to make sure they’ve got nobody to recruit.”

Berndt chuckled. “How do you propose we do that?”

“That’s your job,” McGarvey said. “But you might start with education.”

“Reforming their school systems is just not possible,” the president said.

“Not theirs, Mr. President, ours,” McGarvey said. “Half the people in our own country couldn’t have found Afghanistan or Iraq on a map until we invaded, and they were all over the news.”

“More than half,” Berndt said.

“Almost every ambassador we send out can’t speak the language of the country they’ve been assigned to. And damn few of them have the slightest idea of the cultures they’re expected to deal with on a rational basis.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” the president said.

“No, sir, you’re probably right.”

CHEVY CHASE

It was late and the safe house was finally quiet after Otto and Louise had gone home, and Todd and Liz had left with the baby. McGarvey stood at the open patio door looking out at the night. It was warm and humid, though not as bad as Karachi. And the Washington suburbs certainly smelled better.

Katy had stayed up here with him until he was finished with his debriefings. Lieutenant Commander Weiss turned out to be nothing more than a guy who had inherited a small fortune from an aunt. He was only guilty of being an asshole. Which left someone at Guantanamo who was on al-Quaida’s payroll. The FBI was working with the ONI on the problem, and it would only be a matter of time before they caught the bastard.

Two days ago, Gloria had come out to the Farm where McGarvey had been going through the three scenarios—the Panama Canal, the York River, and the M. A. Jinnah Centre—as a training exercise. She was being reassigned to the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and wanted to say goodbye. They had gone for a walk through the woods by the river, the morning bright and beautiful.

“I just wanted to say goodbye, and thanks for everything you did for me,” she said. “McCann wanted to stick me on the Cuban desk.”

“You would have done a good job there,” McGarvey said. He wasn’t sure how he felt about her. She was a beautiful woman, bright, well trained, not a complainer, but there was something about her that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She had a chip on her shoulder, and she had a desperate need to prove herself, but he had worked with people like that before. It was something else.

“I’m a field officer,” she said. “It’s all I ever wanted to do.” She turned away for a moment, and when she looked back, her eyes were bright. “I love you, and that will never change. I just wanted you to know that I won’t make trouble for you. It’s my problem, not yours.”

There was nothing to say.

She reached over and kissed him lightly on the cheek. “Goodbye,” she said.

“Penny for your thoughts,” Katy said behind him.

McGarvey turned. “I didn’t hear you coming.” He drew her close. “I was thinking about Gloria Ibenez. She’s on her way to Mexico City.”

“She’s in love with you.”

“Yeah,” McGarvey said.

Katy smiled and gave her husband a squeeze. “Can’t fault the girl’s taste,” she said. “What’s she going to do down there?”

“I don’t know. I’m out of the loop now. I’m retired, remember?”

Katy laughed. “Yeah, right,” she said. “Just give me long enough to finally get settled in our new house. Deal?”

“Deal,” McGarvey promised, and he kissed her.