Dance with the Dragon (49 page)

What they couldn’t know was that Gloria was dead, and McGarvey was totally out of ammunition. They would be cautious, which gave him a slight advantage.

He speed-dialed Rencke, who picked up on the first ring. “I lost your signal for a while. Were you inside?”

“Yes,” McGarvey said, keeping his voice low. Someone had entered the willows and was heading his way. “Liu is dead, but I got his laptop. If I can get it to you, we should be able to find out what the hell he’s been up to down here. In the meantime I’m in a corner. I’m going to even the odds, but I’ll be needing an extraction real soon.” He explained the situation on the ground.

“A DEA chopper is standing by. I’ll have it to you in under ten minutes,” Rencke said. “It’s a gunship, but this’ll be a real quiet drug bust.”

“I don’t know how many of Liu’s people are closing in on my position, but it sounds like five or six of them,” McGarvey said. Gloria had lied to him about the number of armed men in the house.

“Soon as you hear the helicopter, call them in on your position through this connection. I’ll patch it through,” Rencke said. “Are the girls with you?”

“They’re both dead. Liu killed Shahrzad, and Gloria took a hit helping me out of the compound. I have her body with me now.”

“Oh, wow, she was clean after all?” Rencke asked.

“Yeah, just a little confused,” McGarvey said. Something moved in the brush less than ten feet away. “Gotta go,” McGarvey whispered. He shut off the sat phone, laid it and his backpack beside Gloria’s body, and slithered the few feet into the lake’s ice-cold water.

He swam twenty feet along the shoreline in the direction of the compound before he came ashore. He quietly made his way into the thick willows and headed back toward where he’d left Gloria.

Someone called out from the general direction where he’d hidden his car, but there was no answer.

It took only a couple of minutes to get back to where he’d started. Two of Liu’s men were there. One of them was bent over Gloria’s body. He’d found the sat phone and backpack and was examining them while the other one watched. Both of them were armed with AKMs.

McGarvey stepped into the narrow clearing. “That’s my property. I’d like to have it back.”

Both men spun around, bringing their weapons to bear.

“You should have kept running,” the one farther from Gloria’s body said. “You’re not going to enjoy what’s going to happen next.”

“Liu is dead. Who’s giving the orders now?”

“You’ll see,” the ex-GAFE operator said.

The other one held up the cell phone. “Nobody’s coming to help a CIA gringo. Mexico belongs to us.”

“It that why you two were drummed out of the army, because you’re patriots?”

“Hijo de puta,”
the nearest man swore. His finger tightened on the trigger at the same moment that McGarvey snatched the end of the gun barrel and twisted it out of his hands.

“Roberto,” the man by Gloria’s body shouted.

The weapon fired one short burst into the trees just as McGarvey shoved the man’s body backward off balance toward his partner, who’d also opened fire. Three rounds slammed into the ex-GAFE operator’s back.

McGarvey stepped to the left as he flipped the AKM end over end, catching it by the pistol grip. He squeezed off one round and hit the operator in the middle of the face, destroying his nose, blowing off the back of his head, dropping him backward on top of Gloria’s body.

The night fell ominously silent.

McGarvey pulled the man’s body off Gloria’s and found two spare thirty-round magazines between the two of them, plus the bullets left in each weapon. He figured he was going to have company homing in on this position any minute now, and he would need all the firepower he could gather.

He transferred the remaining bullets from one of the weapons to the other, stuffed the spare magazines in his pockets along with the sat phone, and slung his pack over his shoulder.

Gloria’s body was covered in her own blood plus the blood from the ex-GAFE operator who’d died on top of her. He lifted her body in his arms, awkwardly picked up the AKM, and headed up toward the road, and at that moment he thought he heard a cyclic noise in the distance to the northeast.

He pulled up short and held his breath to listen, but the sound was gone. It came back almost immediately, and this time knew it was the DEA helicopter Rencke had sent for him. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had maintained a presence here in Mexico for the past several years, working alongside the local authorities in drug-interdiction raids. This flight would supposedly be logged as a routine drug bust. When Liu’s body was found in the compound along with the bodies of the ex-GAFE muscle, the incident would be reported as a shoot-out between rival drug lords.

Whatever names were on the arrest report, McGarvey’s would not appear. Nor would Gloria’s name show up on the list of KIA.

But first he had to get out of here in one piece with Liu’s laptop.

He gently laid Gloria’s body on the ground, took out the sat phone, and speed-dialed Rencke’s number.

“Gotcha,” Rencke answered. “What’s your situation?”

“Two bad guys are down, and the chopper’s inbound.”

“I’m patching you over now,” Rencke said. “Just keep your head down. They’re going to take out anything that moves.”

“Do it,” McGarvey said.

He left the sat phone on and dropped down beside Gloria’s body to wait.

Within twenty seconds the pitch of the helicopter’s blades changed, and suddenly it was screaming at treetop level just above the road, firing its 7.62 mm machine guns.

It was past in seconds, making its turn just above the compound. McGarvey could see it above the trees, its side hatch open, as it fired at someone inside the compound’s walls, then came back over the road.

In under a minute the one-sided fight was over and the Seahawk 60F settled down for a landing on the road, the willows bent over to the ground in a large circular swath.

Rencke was on the phone. “Mac, it’s clear now. They’re waiting for you.”

“We need to get out of the country asap.”

“The Gulfstream is warming up at the airport,” Rencke promised. “But you gotta hustle—Seguridad is taking an interest.”

“On my way,” McGarvey replied tersely.

He lifted Gloria’s body in his arms and made his way up to the waiting helicopter, leaving the AKM behind.

“It’s McGarvey!” he shouted. “Coming out.”

Gloria’s head was lolling back as he hurried up the shallow slope through the trees, her eyes half open, her slack-jawed mouth moving as if she were trying to tell him something. Tell him that everything would turn out for the best now, because in the end she had done something good for the only man she had ever loved.

“Goddamn it,” McGarvey said again. “Goddamn it to hell.”

EIGHTY-SEVEN

CIA HEADQUARTERS

Twelve hours later when McGarvey entered the DCI’s office on the seventh floor of the Building, Adkins, Whittaker, McCann, and the CIA’s general counsel, Carleton Patterson, were seated around the large coffee table at one side of the room, having afternoon coffee.

“Here he is finally,” McCann said.

“We’re glad to see you, Kirk,” Adkins said, and it was obvious he was relieved.

“Where’s Otto?” McGarvey asked. “Is he having trouble with Liu’s computer?”

“He called just a minute ago, said he’s on his way up,” McCann said. “Have you heard about Gil Perry?”

“Did you find him?”

“I should say. With his head blown off. Self-inflicted.” McCann glanced at Adkins and Whittaker. “Couldn’t take the pressure.”

“He was dirty,” McGarvey said. “And so was Updegraf. They were shaking down Liu for a lot of money, threatening to go public with proof that he’d raped and killed some young women in New York and here in Washington.”

“But there never was any proof,” Patterson said. “At least none that the FBI could find. And wouldn’t it be likely that Liu knew this?”

“Almost certainly,” McGarvey said. He was sitting across from McCann, who was giving him a speculative look. Perry had been one of his rising stars, and it was clear by his expression that he put some of the blame on McGarvey.

“Then why pay the blackmail if that was the case?” McCann demanded. “It makes no sense.”

“Because Liu was up to something else, something big that was apparently earning him some serious money. Whatever it was, Otto started picking up the signs six months ago, and his programs started going lavender.”

“Which is why we called you,” Adkins said.

“Don’t keep us in suspense,” McCann said. “What was the man up to that had Rencke all in a twitter? Beyond his usual eccentricities, that is.”

“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted.

“Good heavens, you assassinated a Chinese citizen without knowing if he was guilty of anything other than sexual indiscretion?”

“That’s right,” McGarvey said. He was starting to get tired of the DDO, who in his estimation was an idiot, very much like another man who’d sat in that same chair a number of years ago. They were wannabe spies who hadn’t a clue what they were doing, or how to run what on a good day was the best clandestine service on earth.

McCann turned to Adkins. “What the hell are we going to say when the Chinese government starts asking questions?” he demanded.

“It’s us who should be asking Beijing to explain why they didn’t put Liu away years ago,” Rencke said coming through the door. He looked like hell, his long hair flying everywhere, the shoelaces on his dirty sneakers undone, his eyes bloodshot. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.

“Did you crack Liu’s laptop?” McGarvey asked.

“Piece of cake,” Rencke said. “And I’m telling you guys right now that we’re in some serious shit. There’s trouble right here in River City.”

“You’re putting credence in what you got off some laptop computer that McGarvey stole, without any corroborating evidence?” McCann asked.

“Shut up, Howard,” Adkins told his DDO. He turned back to Rencke. “What have you come up with?”

“Liu got himself into a financial bind, big-time,” Rencke said. “So big, in fact, that his own government was trying to figure out what the hell to do with him. His family and his connections are solid gold, and the intel he was gathering for Beijing was nothing short of stellar.”

“We know all of that,” Whittaker interjected. “Which is why he was connected with the drug people. He was helping launder a lot of money for a percentage, wasn’t he?”

“Exactly. But it wasn’t enough money by a long shot, and he was heading toward enough trouble on that score alone that he was starting to back out of the business. But he had developed another operation that was even better for him.”

“Is that what he started to work on ten years ago in Mexico City?” McGarvey asked.

“No, he was working the drug trade then,” Rencke said. “This shit didn’t start until six months ago, when he turned up down there again.”

“Tell me,” McGarvey prompted.

“There were two guys in the shadows at the compound the night you took the pictures, and Liu wasn’t lying, one of them was an ex-KGB officer by the name of Viktor Sheshtakov. The other one was Iranian intel, just like we thought, by the name of Mohammed Nuri.”

“Wait a second,” Whittaker broke in. “Wasn’t Sheshtakov one of the guys involved with the hit on the Russian in London last year?”

“Bingo,” Rencke said. “Alexander Litvinenko. They poisoned him with polonium-210, which they put in his drink.”

McGarvey had a bad feeling that he knew what was coming next, and if Rencke’s programs were correct, it was far worse than lavender.

“The KGB has been using that stuff for years,” McCann said. “Are you saying that Liu was being supplied with it by this Sheshtakov?”

“Exacto mundo, Howie,” Rencke said.

“Who was he planning to kill in Mexico?”

“No one,” Rencke said. “You see, the nifty thing about this shit is its versatility. You can use it to lace a cigarette. You can put it in an aerosol can of underarm deodorant or room freshener. You can put it in someone’s lunch or in his drink. You can spray it from an airplane, let’s say over Los Angeles. Put it in a reservoir of drinking water. Hell, you could even put a couple ounces of it into someone’s gas tank, and as he drove around town he’d be killing a lot of people, or at least making a bunch of them sick. And once it’s in your system, it’s all over but the dying.”

“Odorless, colorless, tasteless,” Whittaker said. “We worked with MI6 on the Litvinenko thing. It scared the hell out of them. They found radiation traces on at least two commercial jets that flew in from Moscow, but worse than that, they found traces all across London.”

“If not a Mexican, who was General Liu planning on killing, and how was that going to make all this fabulous money for him, as you claim?” McCann asked.

Adkins waved him off. It was obvious from the worry in his expression that he had figured it out, too. “Let him finish.”

“Iran was supplying the money not only to buy a lot of the stuff from Sheshtakov, but to pay Liu millions for his part in the Hezbollah scheme,” Rencke explained.

“Hezbollah in Mexico?” McCann asked. “Give me a break—” But then he too understood. “Son of a bitch.”

“Liu arranged for Hezbollah to get into the country, and from there up to Chihuahua, which was the staging area for the rest of the trip north.”

All the air seemed to leave the DCI’s office.

“Was?” Adkins asked.

“Liu’s part in the operation is a done deal,” Rencke said.

“How can you be sure?” Patterson asked.

“His Swiss account was credited with one hundred million dollars seven days ago,” Rencke said.

“How much of the material got into Hezbollah’s hands?” McGarvey asked.

“More than one hundred pounds,” Rencke said. “And it took just a trace to kill Litvinenko.”

“Well, then we can work with the Mexican Seguridad and close Chihuahua down,” McCann suggested.

“Too late,” McGarvey said, sick at heart. “It’s already here.”

Rencke was nodding. “As of last week, it had already been brought across our border. All one hundred pounds of it.”

“I need to brief the president,” Adkins said, his voice soft.