Joshua`s Hammer (37 page)

Karachi, Pakistan

The three-wheel Flat delivery truck with prandesh deliveries, ltd. stenciled on its doors raided to a stop in line at the west wharf of the International Terminal Customs Center. When it was his turn, the driver, a small man with wide dark eyes, handed a copy of the bill of lading, repair order and temporary customs release form to the uniformed inspector.

As the inspector took the forms back into the customs shed, Kamal Azzabi lit a clove cigarette and nervously drew the sharp smoke deep into his lungs. He had picked up the package and paperwork at a repair shop near the airport. He didn't know what was in the container, nor did he want to know. His only job was to deliver it to dock 24 west.

No problem, except that he had been paid too much cash, which made him suspicious, and he had been warned not to deviate from the route laid out for him or else someone would come for him and his family.

He'd almost turned down the job, but he needed the money and his mullah had asked him to do it as a personal favor. It was nearly time for afternoon prayers and then supper. That and the monetary windfall was all he could think about. Even the terrific heat didn't bother him today.

A couple of minutes later the inspector came back with another uniformed officer and a large black dog on a leash. Azzabi tossed his cigarette away, and it was all he could do to keep from pissing in his pants. It was drugs back there. He was suddenly convinced of it, and he was going to jail for the rest of his life. Why else would they have brought out the dog?

He started to get out of the truck to come clean, tell them about the money, when the customs inspector came over.

"Did you pick this up for repairs yourself?" the inspector asked.

Azzabi had no idea what the man was talking about. But he bobbed his head. "I don't remember."

"Well, it says on the order that it was you."

Azzabi stole a glance in the rearview mirror. The dog's forepaws were on the back of the truck bed and he was sniffing the fiberglass container.

"Is this the same cargo that you picked up from dock 24 yesterday or isn't it?"

Azzabi bobbed his head again. "Yes, of course it is," he said. His bladder was very loose.

The customs inspector signed the forms and handed them back. "Okay, you're clear."

Azzabi just stared at him for several seconds. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the other officer heading back to the customs shed with his dog.

"Is there something wrong with your hearing?" the inspector shouted.

"No, sir," Azzabi said, and he drove out onto the crowded docks busy with the activities of loading and unloading ships of all sizes, shapes and descriptions, his truck just another delivery van among literally hundreds.

The 694-foot container ship M/V Margo was in the final stages of loading the last of more than two hundred containers on its wide cargo deck when Azzabi went up the boarding ladder and found the load master The huge man glared at him. "What do you want?"

Azzabi handed him the papers. The load master glanced at them, then looked down at the truck. He said something into a walkie-talkie, then signed the receipt, handed it back and walked off, shouting something at two men perched atop the stack of containers towering six high.

By the time Azzabi got back to his truck the package was gone. "Good riddance," he muttered with relief and drove off, wondering if he should tell his wife the full extent of his windfall or keep a little for himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Chevy Chase

Ahmad sat forward as Kathleen McGarvey's gunmetal gray Mercedes 560SL convertible came off Laurel Parkway and headed south on Connecticut Avenue toward the city. He got a good look at her as she passed and he was mildly vexed that she did not seem distraught.

The dark blue windowless van with government plates came right behind her. The driver's eyes slid casually past Bahmad behind the wheel of the Capital City Cleaning van at the stop sign on Kirke Street, and then he was gone in traffic.

"Was that her?" Misha bin Ibrahim asked from the back. He and the other one, Ahmad Aggad, who had come down from Jersey City, were idiots, but they would do as they were told and they were expendable.

"Yes, we're going in now," Bahmad said. He waited for a break in traffic then crossed Connecticut Avenue and headed up Laurel Parkway.

Her house was at the end of a cul-de-sac. In the two days it had taken Bahmad to arrange for the help, the van and the other equipment they would need, he'd spot-checked the neighborhood and done some phone calling.

On both days Kathleen McGarvey left her house around eleven in the morning and returned between two and three. Presumably she'd gone out to lunch. It was only slightly bothersome that she'd apparently not yet learned about her husband's death, but things like that often took time, and it might not be something the CIA wanted to make public so soon.

Both days she'd been followed by the same van. None of the databases he'd run the tag numbers through were more specific than to list them as General Accounting Office, which could be anyone. Most likely the CIA for special domestic operations, or even the FBI's counterespionage division.

He got lucky with his phone calls. The problem was watching her house until the daughter showed up without alerting the woman or her watchdogs. But the house two doors down from Kathleen McGarvey's would be unoccupied for another two weeks. It was a break. He'd phoned each of the houses on the block and when he'd called the one at 15 Laurel Parkway a recorded announcement was kind enough to inform him that the Wheelers would be out of the country on vacation until July third.

"I don't understand if we're going after the daughter, why not watch her apartment?" bin Ibrahim said.

Bahmad glanced at him in the rearview mirror, cowering in the back with the white coveralls. "Because she has moved out and we can't be certain when she'll return."

"How do you know she will come to her mother?"

"She'll show up here, leave that part to me. Your only responsibility for now is to keep watch for her yellow Volkswagen and call me the instant it shows up."

"Then we will kill her?"

Bahmad nodded.

"We have no problem with that, brother, but what about afterwards? I do not want to spend the rest of my life rotting in some jail cell." "Nothing will go wrong," Bahmad said. "If you follow my orders no one in the neighborhood will even know that anything has happened until we're long gone the same way we came in. By the time they find this van you'll be on a plane for London, and once you get there you'll be in the pipeline on the way home."

"If I see a clear shot I'm taking it," Aggad said contentiously. He'd been in the States for five years and he was used to being his own boss.

"You'll get yourself caught and shot down."

"No way, man. I'd be long gone before the cops even got the call."

Bahmad looked at him in the mirror, his expression completely bland. "I'm not talking about the police, Ahmad," he said softly. "I'm talking about me."

The two in the back fell silent.

"You will do exactly as you are told if you want to get paid, and if you want to live to spend your money. Do you understand?"

They nodded resentfully. They knew nothing about Bahmad except that he came highly placed in bin Laden's organization. But in the few hours they'd been with him since he'd picked them up at the Greyhound bus station in Baltimore they'd come to respect if not fear him. He exuded extreme self-confidence and competence. In this business that almost always meant extreme danger to anyone who might cross him.

The neighborhood was quiet when they backed into the driveway of the two-story Tudor. Bahmad keyed the variable frequency garage door opener, and the door came open. He backed the van inside, and while bin Ibrahim and Aggad were unloading their weapons, surveillance equipment and supplies, he defeated the house alarm system and let himself in through the kitchen.

The house was quiet, the curtains drawn. A quick check of all the rooms revealed that the family was truly gone.

"No lights, and stay well back from all the windows," Bahmad instructed them. "We've done this sort of thing before," bin Ibrahim said.

"See that you do it well this time," Bahmad replied. "Use the cell phone to call me as soon as the yellow Volkswagen shows up. The phone is encrypted, so it is safe."

"How far away will you be?" Aggad asked.

It was a reasonable question. "Twenty minutes, twenty five at the most."

"Okay, let's hope it's soon," Aggad said glancing toward the living room. "I don't want to have to deal with snoopy neighbors."

"No one in this neighborhood has taken any notice that we're here," Bahmad assured them. "It's why we waited until the woman and her bodyguard were gone. Just keep your heads down and your eyes open."

"Consider it done," Ibrahim said.

Aboard Gulfstream VC111 EnRoute to the U.S.

"It'll be good to be home, even if it's only for a little while," Thomas Arnette said, returning from the head and dropping into his seat. "I hear you," McGarvey forced a smile. He felt detached, as if he wasn't connected to his body, but he had to pull himself together because they weren't out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot.

Arnette, who worked as a case officer for Alien Trumble and now Jeff Cook in Riyadh, had been assigned to stick with McGarvey. He was short, slender and dark with an easy, ingratiating smile that belied his sharp intelligence. He was one of Trumble's handpicked Arab experts. Each time McGarvey had come awake in the hospital, Arnette had been there. And it was Arnette who had arranged McGarvey's early release and this flight. "When do you go back?"

Arnette smiled tightly. "I'll check with the Middle East desk tonight, and then fly back tomorrow. Jeff is going to have his hands full, because it's going to start getting pretty dicey. There's anti-American riots just about everywhere, and there's no telling when they'll escalate to some real violence."

"It's spreading from Kabul?"

"Like wildfire," Arnette said, giving McGarvey a critical look. "Mr. Adkins ordered us to keep you out of the loop until you got back to Langley. It was the doctors' suggestion, actually. They wanted to give you a little time to mend." "I don't know what's worse, imagination or the truth."

They were the only passengers aboard the air force VIP jet. The attendant was doing something in the galley, and the door to the flight deck was closed. "It's a bitch, Mr. McGarvey, but whoever ordered the missile attack ought to be hung. It flat-out didn't work." Arnette was Georgia country, and very pragmatic. His type was rare in the CIA, or anywhere else in the government for that matter.

"It didn't work last time either."

"But we keep trying. Just like the Energizer Bunny."

McGarvey laughed, and a sharp stitch of pain grabbed his side. It felt as if his ribs were going to pop out of his body right through his skin. And his head was ready to explode. He winced.

"Are you okay?" Arnette asked, concerned.

Sweat popped out on McGarvey's brow, but he nodded. "I'll live, but I have to go to the head."

"You gonna make it on your own?"

"Unless we hit an air pocket." McGarvey hauled himself to his feet, spots jumping in front of his eyes. "Trouble is that I've spent the last few days flat on my back and I've stiffened up a little."

"That's not what the docs said."

McGarvey glanced out the windows. They were finally over the Atlantic, and there was nothing to see. But they'd be in Washington in a few more hours. "Get me another brandy would you, Tom?"

"How about something to eat?"

"Sure. But another drink first." McGarvey made it back to the head, and when he was inside and had the door locked, his legs began to buckle and he sat down on the toilet lid. He could see the reflection of his face in the mirror above the tiny sink, but the edges were blurry as if something was wrong with the glass. The compartment was getting dark too, but when he looked up at the light fixture he could tell that it was on.

He tried to stand but couldn't, and he slumped back, his head against the bulkhead. The plane was spinning around and around making him sick to his stomach. The wound in his side ached with a dull throb, and his entire body was drenched in sweat. But the worst was his head, which pounded as if someone had stuck a high-pressure air hose in his ear and was filling up his skull.

The compartment was almost completely dark now, he couldn't even see his own reflection, but there were flashes of lights behind his eyeballs; lightning streaks across his brain in time with sharp, piercing stabs of deep pain inside his head.

For several seconds it was all he could do just to sit there and hold on, his arm draped over the edge of the sink. But then the episode passed almost as quickly as it had begun. The lights came back on, the plane stopped spinning and the shooting pains inside his head faded. He released the deep breath he'd been holding and let his body sag.

After a minute or so he got up, splashed some cold water on his face, dried off with some paper towels and went out to the main cabin and back to his seat.

"Are you really okay, Mr. McGarvey?" Arnette asked, looking up.

"I've felt better, but I don't have much of a choice here. I'll have a ton of shit to deal with when I get back."

"That you will."

The attendant came back with their drinks. "Dinner will be ready in about a half-hour. Steak and lobster, and I have a nice Nouveau Beaujolais that oughta go down pretty smooth."

"Sounds good," Arnette said,

When the attendant was gone, McGarvey started to raise his drink, but something Arnette had said suddenly struck him, and he put the glass down.

"You said that Dick wanted me kept out of the loop while I was in the hospital. What'd you mean? Exactly."

"They didn't want you getting upset. Besides, you were mostly out of it on pain killers."

"You said that our missile strike didn't work?"

Arnette nodded uncertainly.

"Did bin Laden survive?"

"Yeah," Arnette said morosely. "There's not a doubt in anyone's mind that he's going to hit back. But when, where and with what is anybody's guess."