Soldier of God (46 page)
Authors: David Hagberg
There were no bottles left in Yarnell’s old wine cellar, but the racks that had held several thousand different vintages in a climate-controlled environment were still in rows and columns like shelves in a library. The four-inch-thick, solid oak door had held up well under the small Semtex charge, but the modern electronic lock had not.
McGarvey’s ears were still ringing from what he figured was a flash-bang grenade that had gone off about halfway up the corridor. He’d been last through the door into the old wine cellar behind Katy and the prince, so he had taken the brunt of the blast. But for the moment they were safe here.
“What’s he trying to do?” Salman demanded, shrilly. “Kill us all?” He wasn’t so arrogant now.
“That’s exactly what he means to do,” McGarvey said. Katy had
stumbled when he shoved her through the open door, and he had to help her to her feet. She was shaky on her legs, and she held her gut with one hand while steadying herself against her husband with the other.
stumbled when he shoved her through the open door, and he had to help her to her feet. She was shaky on her legs, and she held her gut with one hand while steadying herself against her husband with the other.
“If you mean to get us out of here, darling, right now would be as good a time as any,” she said.
McGarvey was frightened. “Is it the baby?”
She looked up at him, her eyes round and bright in the dim light from the corridor. She appeared frail and vulnerable. She nodded. “Maybe,” she said. “He hit me in the stomach, and I was bleeding for a while.”
For a second he was almost as afraid for his own sanity as he was for Katy and the baby. Afraid that he would do something in a stupid rage that would get them all killed. But he’d never lost his head before, and it wasn’t about to happen now. This was no longer only about Khalil.
He and Katy were on one side of the open door, while Salman was crouched in the darkness on the other side. “You stupid American bastard,” the prince said, his voice low, menacing. He looked like a wild animal ready to spring. “You brought this down on yourself. You all did.” He took a quick look out into the corridor.
“Go out there and he’ll kill you,” McGarvey warned.
“It’s never been personal. But with you it’s different. Ever since you disgraced Osama and blasphemed the name of Allah.”
“Al-Quaida wants to get rid of your government, and yet you people help them,” McGarvey said.
“You don’t get it,” Salman practically shouted. “The Arabian Peninsula is for Arabians. Not infidels.”
“Then tell us to leave.”
“Not until the oil is gone,” Khalil shouted from the end of the corridor.
McGarvey grabbed Katy’s arm and fell back with her, away from the doorway, shielding her with his body an instant before Khalil sprayed the corridor with automatic weapon fire. Bullets slammed through the empty wine racks, ricocheting off the concrete walls, fragments flying everywhere.
McGarvey was hit low in the left shoulder. He grunted with the shock of impact.
“Kirk, my God, you’re hit,” Katy cried.
“It’s okay,” he whispered, urgently. He shoved her away and went to the doorway, where he stuck his gun around the corner and fired six shots into the corridor before he pulled back. He ejected the spent magazine, slapped another in its place, and cycled the slide.
Salman was watching him, wide-eyed.
“You’ll have to do better than that,” Khalil taunted. He fired a second short burst, but then the lights went out, plunging them into nearly complete darkness.
The basement was utterly silent for just a moment, until something moved across from McGarvey. It was Salman.
“It’s me,” he shouted. “I’m coming out. Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Don’t do it,” McGarvey shouted, but it was too late. The light was too dim to see anything, but he heard the prince bolting out the door and into the corridor.
Khalil let him get only a few steps outside the wine cellar before he fired. Salman’s body was flung back into the wine cellar, crashing into one of the wine racks.
McGarvey immediately stuck his gun around the door frame and fired four shots as fast as he could pull them off. He thought he heard a muffled cry of pain, but he couldn’t be sure.
“One down, two to go.” Khalil’s voice came out of the darkness. “Unless, of course, you want to send your wife out. It’ll just be you and me. I promise I won’t hurt her—again.”
McGarvey figured that the terrorist was in one of the rooms off the corridor, out of the line of fire. “Turn the lights back on, and I’ll send her out,” he called.
Katy whimpered something, but he reached back with his free hand and touched her cheek. She quieted immediately.
“I didn’t turn the lights—” Khalil cut himself off in midsentence. He had made a mistake.
McGarvey seized on it immediately. Otto was across the street. He had sent a message. Liz was probably over there too. She would have been the one to figure out his plan of escape, which depended for its success on Darby Yarnell’s paranoia about his wine collection. The man had installed not only climate-control equipment down here, but he had also installed an alarm system.
And a fire suppression system. Sprinklers.
McGarvey thought he heard a siren very faintly, but it was there. If the fire department had already been called, they wouldn’t come inside unless an alarm in the building went off.
He reached around the door frame, fired off a couple of shots, then grabbed Katy and hauled her farther away from the door.
Khalil did not return the fire.
McGarvey took out his cigarette lighter, lit the flame, and held it up toward the ceiling, providing a small circle of light.
Katy was alarmed. “What are you doing?” she demanded. Her eyes darted to the doorway. “He can see us.”
McGarvey found one of the sprinkler heads. He moved over to it and held the lighter’s flame directly beneath the heat sensor. “The fire department is outside. I’m giving them a reason to break in and rescue us.”
Something metallic clattered on the concrete floor just outside the doorway and rolled into the wine cellar at the same moment the sprinkler system went off, spraying water everywhere.
McGarvey extinguished his lighter and tossed it aside. In one smooth motion he gathered his wife and bodily propelled her farther into the room, putting two solid-oak wine-storage racks between them and the doorway before he shoved her to the floor and laid on top of her.
He knew he had hurt her, but before she had a chance to cry out, the grenade that Khalil had tossed down the corridor went off with a tremendous bang, sending thousands of coil-spring fragments flying in a thirty-foot radius.
McGarvey was hit in his legs and in the soles of his feet, the razor-sharp pieces of wire slicing easily through the leather of his shoes.
He rolled off Katy and painfully scrambled up on one knee, his pistol trained in the general direction of the open door, though in the darkness and with the noise of spraying water it would be nearly impossible to hear or see anything.
Suddenly the building’s battery-backup fire-alarm system came on with a deafening shriek, and a red emergency lantern lit up at the end of corridor.
“Stay here; help is coming,” McGarvey told his wife.
Kathleen grabbed his sleeve. “Don’t leave me,” she cried, in desperation.
“You’ll be okay here for now,” he told her. “But I can’t let him escape again.”
“It doesn’t matter what he did to me—”
“He knows where the terrorists are going to hit us,” McGarvey tried to explain. “I have to get to him before it’s too late.” He looked into his wife’s eyes, willing her to understand what he had to do. “This is our last chance, Katy.”
She was struggling with herself; McGarvey could see it in her face. But she finally released his sleeve and nodded uncertainly. “Go. Do it,” she said. “Stop him once and for all.”
McGarvey brushed a kiss on her cheek, then got up. He fell to his knees before he took one step, the sharp pain from the fragments embedded in his feet impossible to bear.
“Kirk,” Katy cried.
Not this. Not now. He wasn’t going to let the bastard get away.
With Kathleen clutching at him, he laid his pistol down and tore off his shredded shoes and socks. The bottoms of his feet looked like hamburgerpatty pincushions, with a dozen or more wire fragments sticking out. Blood splattered everywhere under the spray from the sprinkler head just above them.
Keeping one eye on the doorway lest Khalil was ignoring the fire alarm and would press his attack, McGarvey started pulling bits of wire out of his feet. Katy, seeing what he was doing, helped him, her tears mingling with the sprinkler water.
It took less than a minute before he picked up his gun and got back to his feet with Katy’s help. The pain was bad, but it was bearable.
“No matter what happens, stay here. Hide somewhere until either I come for you or someone from the fire rescue team gets down here. They’ll be searching the building.”
“Oh, God,” Katy said. Blood was everywhere around McGarvey’s chewed-up feet. “Can you walk?”
He gave her a thin smile and nodded. “It looks worse than it is,” he told her. “Now find someplace to hide.”
He turned and headed for the corridor door, painfully crawling over the shattered remains of several wine racks that the grenade had destroyed.
Nothing on the face of the earth would stop him this time. Khalil was going to die.
Khalil reached the front stair hall in a black rage.
He’d had absolutely no idea that McGarvey would come up with such a move. Water flew everywhere, soaking carpets and paintings. Fifteen or twenty security analysts, translators, and communications people were scrambling down the stairs and across the hall to the front door to get away from a nonexistent fire.
Fools. They were like sheep being led to the slaughter.
For just a second he was stopped in his tracks. Unless McGarvey had been killed or seriously hurt in the blast, he would have been coming up from the basement when he realized that the attack had been abandoned. He was a resourceful man, for whom Khalil had finally developed a healthy respect.
There was a great deal of commotion outside the front gate. Fire trucks, police cars, and ambulances jammed the street. A crowd was already gathering. It would be the same in the back.
It suddenly struck Khalil that the fire department had been called
before
McGarvey had set off the sprinkler system. By a CIA team somewhere nearby. The same team that had cut the electricity to the building as a signal to McGarvey.
before
McGarvey had set off the sprinkler system. By a CIA team somewhere nearby. The same team that had cut the electricity to the building as a signal to McGarvey.
He had to admire the ingenuity. But the letters to the families of the four martyrs had to be saved, or destroyed, at all costs.
Which left him two problems: getting into al-Kaseem’s safe, and then making his escape before McGarvey caught up with him.
The first staffers had reached the front gate and opened it, allowing the firefighters into the compound. At least two civilians, one of them a woman, were right there with them.
They were CIA; there was little doubt in Khalil’s mind. But he was out of time now.
Khalil glanced over his shoulder to make sure that McGarvey wasn’t there, then sprinted across the stair hall and pushed past the last few of al-Kaseem’s staffers coming down the stairs.
No one tried to stop Khalil as he raced to the head of the stairs and rushed down the corridor to al-Kaseem’s office at the rear of the building. The door was open, and two security officers were hastily shredding documents from the safe.
They looked up when Khalil appeared in the doorway. One of them reached for his pistol, but before he could get it out of his shoulder holster, Khalil raised the M8 and fired two shots, both hitting the man in the chest and knocking him back from the shredder, where he collapsed in a bloody heap.
The other security officer stood clear of the safe and spread his hands away from his sides. The sprinkler head in this room was not working. In a fire, Saudi intelligence
wanted
any stray documents left out—to be burned up.
wanted
any stray documents left out—to be burned up.
“We don’t have much time before the American authorities reach this room,” he told Khalil, with some urgency. “I must be allowed to finish—”
“I gave Rashid four envelopes to keep in his safe. Have they been destroyed yet?” There were a great many people in the stair hall downstairs.
The security officer glanced at the desk. The four thick manila envelopes—each containing a death letter, a personal note from bin Laden himself, and fifty thousand in U.S. hundred-dollar bills—were in a neat stack.
Out in the open. The bastard had not safeguarded them. Al-Kaseem’s intention all along was to hinder the operation, not help it.
Out in the open. The bastard had not safeguarded them. Al-Kaseem’s intention all along was to hinder the operation, not help it.
Khalil’s rage spiked. He fired four shots into the security officer’s chest, driving the man against the wall.
McGarvey cautiously peered around the door frame into the pantry hall, his pistol at the ready. Water cascaded down the stairs into the basement, and even through the din of the fire alarm he could hear a commotion at the front of the house. The fire department had arrived.
A body of a man was sprawled on its side in the corner. He had been shot under his chin, the back of his head half blown away. McGarvey had no idea who it was, but he was pretty sure who had killed him.
The man had gotten in Khalil’s way and had lost his life for the mistake. It was possible that the terrorist had slipped out of the building and in the confusion had made his escape. But McGarvey doubted he’d had the time. And Liz and Otto would have been watching for just that. Everyone who was evacuated from the building would be held until they could be identified.
Elizabeth came down the corridor in a dead run, her gun drawn. She spotted her father through the spray, and immediately brought her pistol up as she pulled up short and dropped into a shooter’s stance.
“It’s me,” McGarvey shouted.
For a second she held her position, covering the pantry hall, but then she eased up, raising her pistol. “Daddy?” she called.
McGarvey came up the last step into the hall and showed himself. “Did Todd come with you?” He was running out of time if he wanted to catch Kahlil one-on-one. He had to hurry.
Elizabeth’s shoulders sagged in relief. She said something into her lapel mike, but then she saw that he was wounded, and she gave a little cry and went to him. “You’re hurt.”
“Never mind that,” McGarvey said. “Is Todd with you?”
“Yes, he’s in the front hall making sure all the Saudis are getting out. Otto told us to watch for Salman or anyone who looked like him. But we haven’t seen him.” She glanced at the body. “Who’s that?”
“I don’t know, but Khalil probably killed the poor bastard, and I think there’s a good chance he’s still in the building somewhere,” McGarvey said. “I want the fire department out of here right now. Tell them it was a false alarm, anything, but no one else is to get out of here.”
“We set up a perimeter. The Bureau and some of our people are on it,” Elizabeth said. “What about Mother?” she demanded, and McGarvey could see the fear in her eyes as she girded herself for bad news.
“She’s downstairs in the room at the end of the hall. As soon as you get the building secured, I want you to get her out.” His jaw tightened thinking of Katy huddled in a corner in the dark. But he didn’t want her
moved until he was sure it was safe to do so. Khalil could spring up around any corner.
moved until he was sure it was safe to do so. Khalil could spring up around any corner.
“Is she okay?”
“He beat her up,” McGarvey said, tight-lipped. “She needs to get to the hospital as soon as possible.”
“The dirty bastard,” Elizabeth said. “She would have told him that she was pregnant. But it didn’t make any difference.”
Looking into his daughter’s angry eyes, he realized that this had nothing to do with revenge. Or it should not. It would give him a great deal of pleasure to kill the terrorist for what he had done in Alaska and here, and for all the 9/ 11s in the past and yet to come.
McGarvey wanted to see the expression on the man’s face when he knew that he was dying. Would he be defiant, angry, frightened, remorseful?
But Khalil had to be captured alive if at all possible, no matter how badly McGarvey wanted to kill him, because he was the key to stopping al-Quaida’s attack in less than forty-eight hours.
McGarvey touched his daughter’s cheek in the downpour. “Get Todd on it, and then get your mother out of here. I won’t be much longer,” he told her.
“Be careful, Daddy,” Elizabeth said.
At that moment the sprinkler system shut down, followed by the fire alarm. In the sudden silence, McGarvey started for the stair hall, all of his senses alert for Khalil’s presence. Behind him, Elizabeth was urgently issuing orders to her husband to clear the building, and then she went down into the basement.
Soon there would be nobody left except him and Kahlil.
It was exactly what he wanted.
Upstairs, Khalil came to the door as the water stopped and the fire alarm was silenced. Two firemen had just reached the head of the stairs, and he pulled back.
Killing them would be meaningless, though Kahlil had to admit to himself that he wanted to lash out at this moment, hurt someone, damage their confidence by his savagery. Firemen had been the heroes of
9/11. There would be a certain symmetry to destroying these two men.
9/11. There would be a certain symmetry to destroying these two men.
He had his letters. He would leave now, evacuated with the others. Once outside he could slip away.
But he wanted McGarvey, which meant he would have to remain in the building a little longer, no matter how dangerous for him it would be.
But suddenly he knew the solution, as simple as it was satisfying.
Khalil leaned the M8 up against the wall, took out his stiletto, and holding it out of sight behind his leg, stepped out into the corridor. The two firemen were heading back to the stairs. “Don’t go,” he called to them. He allowed a note of desperation in his voice.
They turned, startled. He couldn’t see their faces behind their masks, which was exactly how he wanted it.
“Get out of there,” one of them said, gesturing for Khalil to come. “The building’s being evacuated.”
“I can’t,” Khalil said softly, as if he were afraid. “My friends—” He looked back in al-Kaseem’s office. “They’re hurt. I need help. Please.”
The firemen hurried back, and Khalil stepped aside to let them enter the office.
The first one pulled up short when he saw the bodies of the two security officers and all the blood. Khalil swiveled into the second fireman, and slipped the stiletto under the lip of his helmet, driving it into the base of the man’s skull, killing him instantly.
As the fireman collapsed, Khalil withdrew his stiletto and turned to the first man, who had spun on his heel and was pawing at the microphone on his shoulder. But he was too late. Khalil yanked the fireman’s air mask off his face, and drove the stiletto up under his chin, angling it inward, burying it in his brain.
The fireman reared back in horror, a terrible gagging noise at the back of his throat, but then his eyes slowly went blank, and he sank to the floor as if he had been deflated.
For just a moment Khalil savored the man’s death. It was a pleasure to watch. Almost sexual.
It was the ultimate expression of intimacy between two men, between the killer and his victim, and Khalil never wanted to rush the climax.
But this time had to be different if he was going to escape.
He bent over the second fireman and fumbled with the straps holding
the compressed-air cylinder on the man’s body. But the buckles had become tangled, so he sliced the harness away and pulled the tank off.
the compressed-air cylinder on the man’s body. But the buckles had become tangled, so he sliced the harness away and pulled the tank off.
The house had become silent again, though as he hurriedly removed the fireman’s helmet, then his coat, boots, and fire trousers, he could hear a great deal of commotion outside—more sirens, police radios, engines on the ladder trucks, and the many voices of the crowd that had gathered.
In the confusion he would simply be another fireman whom no one would notice. His only regret was his unfinished business with McGarvey and the man’s wife. She was fascinating, a woman unlike any other he’d ever met. He would have enjoyed teaching her humility, and especially watching her eyes as her life faded.
Khalil pulled on the fireman’s trousers and boots, then stuffed the four manila envelopes into the bib of the coveralls. He donned the heavy yellow coat, but not the gloves. He wanted his hands free in case there was to be a fight.
In a rush now, anxious to be away, he took the seventeen-round Glock from one of the dead security officers, checked to make sure the magazine was full, then stuffed it in his coat pocket.
He cut the hose from the tank, strapped the air mask on his face, then put on the helmet. There was no way now that anyone would recognize him. He pocketed the stiletto.
And who could say for certain what events would conspire to bring McGarvey and him together one last time? It was a day to look forward to.
McGarvey reached the head of the stairs as a fireman came out of a doorway at the end of the corridor.
His wounds and loss of blood had sapped his strength more than he realized, and he was winded from just coming up the stairs. There was a great deal of activity outside on the street. Todd and Otto were out there, watching for someone to come out of the building. Him or Khalil.
But he had not counted on a fireman still being here. He concealed the pistol behind his leg. “Is there anyone else up here on this floor?”
“No,” the fireman said, advancing down the corridor. “And you don’t belong here. Get out.” His voice was oddly strangled.
Something was wrong. Out of place. But it seemed as if a fog was starting to engulf McGarvey’s brain. He shook his head. The approaching fireman seemed to waver out of focus.
“You’re hurt,” the man said. His voice was distant. Yet it was somehow familiar.
“Someone might still be in the building,” McGarvey argued. The words were thick in his mouth. “The third floor. Has anyone checked up there?”
The fireman spotted the pistol in McGarvey’s hand. He stopped a couple of yards away. “Who is it that you think you’re going to shoot?”
“Is there anyone on the third floor?” McGarvey demanded. Every second spent here was a second longer for Khalil to make his escape. But it wasn’t going to happen this time. Not like in Alaska. Not after what he’d done to Katy.
The terrorist had laid his hands on her. He had hurt her. Inflicted pain on her. Frightened her.
The terrorist had laid his hands on her. He had hurt her. Inflicted pain on her. Frightened her.
Khalil would pay for his crimes on this day.
The fireman glanced down at the empty stair hall. His radio came to life. “Donnelly, Lee, where are you guys?” He turned back to McGarvey and hesitated for a long moment.
There was something about the man that McGarvey couldn’t put a finger on. A familiarity that was just out of his grasp in the fog. Something else. There was something wrong. He should know what it was.
The fireman put his right hand in his coat pocket, but then hesitated. He shook his head. “I’m not going to deal with an armed man,” he said. “Stay and search the whole building if you must.” He brushed past and started down the stairs.
McGarvey turned to watch the retreating figure. The name stenciled on the back of the fireman’s coat was Donnelly. But he hadn’t answered the radio call. He wasn’t wearing gloves. And although he was wearing a breathing mask, he was not carrying an air tank, and the hose dangled over his shoulder.
The fireman stopped halfway down the stairs, and looked back up.
McGarvey started to raise his pistol, his arm impossibly heavy. “Khalil,” he said.
Khalil pulled a bloody stiletto out of his pocket, and in one smooth powerful motion threw it underhanded.
The razor-sharp blade sliced into McGarvey’s right shoulder just below his collarbone, the pain immediate and intense. His entire right side went numb, and as he fell back, a tremendous wave of nausea overcoming him, he dropped his pistol.
Not like this, the single thought crystallized in his brain.
Khalil reached in the same pocket and was pulling out a pistol, when McGarvey yanked the stiletto out of his shoulder and launched himself down on top of the terrorist.
He hit Khalil in the chest, and together they crashed down the stairs into the hall, the terrorist’s gun going off with a huge boom next to McGarvey’s ear.
A great many people were right outside. Someone was shouting something, and McGarvey thought it might be Liz’s voice, but he was focused on Khalil, who had lost his air mask.
McGarvey was looking directly into the killer’s black eyes, bottomless, cold, indifferent, completely without emotion even now.
Blood pumped from the wound in his shoulder, and McGarvey knew that he would not remain conscious much longer.
There was something wrong with Khalil’s left arm, but he grabbed McGarvey by the throat with his right hand, and his powerful fingers began to clamp down.
“Bastard
!” The single thought crossed McGarvey’s brain as his world started to go dim. With the last of his strength he raised the bloody stiletto to Khalil’s face, and before the terrorist could deflect the blade, he drove it to the hilt into the man’s right eye.
!” The single thought crossed McGarvey’s brain as his world started to go dim. With the last of his strength he raised the bloody stiletto to Khalil’s face, and before the terrorist could deflect the blade, he drove it to the hilt into the man’s right eye.
The terrorist’s body convulsed once, and then lay still, the light going out of his other eye.
A great tiredness overcame McGarvey, and he let himself go with it, only vaguely aware that his daughter and wife were at his side, calling his name, until his world went dark.
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