Retribution (9781429922593) (24 page)

“One million dollars.”

The amount took Naisir's breath away. He had access to such amounts from the same black ops fund—ironically money from the Pentagon—that he was using to pay Schlueter. But questions would be asked, especially when the United States began its retaliatory raids, which were inevitable unless McGarvey and the woman were simply to disappear and Chopra was the one to have his head chopped off. The man was nothing more than a CIA legend, after all. His death would be the supreme irony.

“Agreed,” Naisir said. “But I have another idea.”

“I'm listening.”

And Naisir told him.

*   *   *

It was only a few minutes after six when Naisir, watching from the mezzanine balcony, spotted McGarvey getting off the elevator, crossing the now-busy lobby, and heading out the front doors. The woman wasn't with him, but Naisir waited to see if she was covering his back. After a full minute when she didn't show up, McGarvey appeared in the door and looked up to the mezzanine balcony.

Even at this distance, Naisir got the same shock of recognition he'd had in Germany. The man standing just inside the doors was a dangerous animal, far more deadly than anyone Naisir had ever met, or even knew of. And he instantly had the thought that no matter how many bullyboys Gakhar sent, they would be not enough.

McGarvey headed across to the lobby lounge, and Naisir took the stairs down, reaching the table just as McGarvey was ordering a coffee.

“You're early,” Naisir said, sitting across from the American. He ordered a coffee, sweet.

“So are you, but then it pays to be cautious in our line of work.”

Naisir almost asked, what line of work, but he didn't. “What are you doing in Pakistan?”

“I came to try to talk some sense into you. We know that you work for the ISI, of course, and that the twenty-four SEAL Team Six operators and their families have been targeted for assassination because of the raid in Abbottabad. And I want you to call it off before your involvement goes public and the White House is forced to react.”

“None of that is true, of course,” Naisir said evenly. He had the almost overpowering urge to pull out his pistol and shoot the smug bastard in the head here and now.

“You didn't pull the trigger, of course, though you tried to have me taken out in Berlin. But your subcontractor, Pam Schlueter, has hired a team of specialists to do the job for you. We know this for a fact because we have one of them in custody, and he provided us with her name. And yours. So here I am.”

“Speculation.”

“I don't work on speculation, Major,” McGarvey said. “So what's next for us?”

“I reiterate that I am in no way involved in any attack against your military personnel in any theater, and demand that you and the woman you came here with leave Pakistan at once or I will have you both arrested.”

“I don't think so. You were in Mr. Chopra's suite a little while ago, so you know by now that he is a phantom. But your superiors still want you to bring him in, or more likely have him killed. Arresting or killing a former director of the CIA would be another thing. Something your government could not allow to happen.”

Naisir continued to hold himself in check. He hated this man more than he had hated any other man or thing, and he promised himself that he would make every effort to piss on the corpse after Gakhar's men were finished and before they took it up north. “Leave within the next twenty-four hours or you'll never get out of here alive.”

“That'll give us plenty of time to meet Ms. Schlueter when she arrives. I'd like to have a little chat with her as well.”

Naisir jumped up, his heart pumping hard. “I can promise you one thing, you son of a bitch.”

McGarvey looked up at him. “Yes?”

“You will rot in hell,” was all Naisir could think to say, and he turned on his heel and stalked away, certain that the bastard American was laughing at his back.

 

FORTY

Naisir's safe house was a plain two-story cinder block building that had once been painted white. It was protected by a tall wall, also of cinder block access through which was an iron gate off the street. This was a middle-class neighborhood of cab drivers, people who worked in shops or factories, people who made rugs, hammered silver, or worked construction. At this hour of the morning the narrow street was devoid of all but the occasional delivery van or bus.

Pete took one pass in the blue Chevy Aveo she'd rented at the airport and parked just around the corner in a spot where she could watch the front gate with the passenger side–door mirror.

She phoned Otto. “I'm in place.”

“Is that you in the Aveo at the corner?”

“Yes. Is the wife still inside?”

“She hasn't moved, but she's made three phone calls in the past hour. A pretty fair encryption system, Chinese I think, but I'll have it shortly.”

“Any idea who she called?”

“No, but I'll have that too.”

Pete checked the load on her pistol. She would have preferred something a little heavier, perhaps a Glock or a SIG, but the Walther in the 9mm version had some decent stopping power, even if fired with the suppressor attached. “Anything I should know about before I go calling?”

“It looks clear from my vantage point, but we don't know much about the wife, except that she comes from a wealthy family.”

“Besides her husband's connections she'll have some of her own. But I want to know what she's doing here.”

“Naisir just left the hotel, so he might be on his way down. But I think he sent her ahead to get the place ready.”

“For what?” Pete asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

“For you and Mac to get there. For Schlueter to arrive. They figure that you guys will probably show up in the middle of the night, so they think they've got all the time in the world.”

“Do you think the cops will be here too, or maybe some muscle from the ISI?”

“No one official for now. They'll want to keep this thing as quiet as possible while they decide what to do about the SEAL contract.”

“Now that we're here, they can't seriously be thinking about going ahead.”

“People have done crazier shit,” Otto said. “So watch yourself, and she's just the guy's wife, nothing more sinister, as far as we know.”

“As soon as you decrypt her phone calls let me know if trouble might be coming my way. Otherwise I'm just going to hold down the fort till Mac gets here.”

“Lots of stuff could go wrong, so maybe it'd be better if you waited for Mac no matter what happens.”

“I'm not going in to shoot it out with her, if that's what you mean,” Pete said.

“That's exactly what I meant, plus all the shit that we haven't thought of yet,” Otto said. “One good thing on our side is that as far as I can tell there is no surveillance operation on the place. So you're going in clean, although there might be someone else in the house with her. But I don't think so.”

“I'll find out,” Pete said.

She sat behind the wheel for a full minute watching the house and the neighborhood. Somewhere a dog was barking. A jet took off from the airport, which was only a couple of miles away. Nothing moved on the street, nor were there any people out and about, though she had the distinct feeling that she was being watched.

The iron gate swung open on its electric motor, which came as a surprise to Pete. She started the car, expecting to see Naisir's wife drive out in her green Fiat convertible. When the woman didn't come, Pete switched off the engine and walked across the street, where she stopped just at the gate.

Ayesha's car was parked to one side in the narrow courtyard. Nothing moved, and after a couple of seconds Pete slipped inside and started across to the door.

The top of the wall was embedded with sharp spikes about eighteen inches tall set at three- or four-inch intervals, so climbing out of here would be just about impossible. For just a moment Pete thought about phoning Mac, but only the wife was inside, and as far as Otto had been able to determine the woman was not on the ISI's payroll. Nor was she any sort of a agent for any other intelligence or law enforcement agency. She was nothing more than a housewife whose family happened to be wealthy.

Pulling her gun, Pete went the rest of the way to the door, which was unlocked. She pushed it open with the toe of her sneaker and paused for a moment to listen for any sounds from inside. But the house was quiet.

Stairs went up from a narrow vestibule. A corridor ran back to the rear of the house. She went to the second floor. Three doors led from the hallway, all of them closed.

Downstairs she paused again to listen for anything, the slightest noise that Ayesha was somewhere close. But the place remained silent, and Pete began to get a little spooked. Pointing the pistol down and away from her leg, she started along the corridor, careful to make absolutely no sound, trying to keep her breathing even, though her heart was racing.

The smart move would have been to turn around and find another way out of here till Mac arrived, but she kept telling herself that she was armed, and she'd faced worse situations working with him.

The end of the corridor opened to the right into a broad living area furnished in the Western fashion, with couches, wingback chairs, and a flat-screen LED television. Tall sliding glass doors faced a small garden backed by the rear wall that, like the one in the front, was topped with sharp metal spikes. Several small lime trees were in full bloom, but the rest of the garden looked as if it had been neglected for a long time.

Ayesha Naisir rose up from one of the wingback chairs that faced away from where Pete was standing. She was a short, slender woman with long black hair and wide dark eyes. Beautiful in an exotic way, even in jeans and a snow-white peasant blouse that revealed her bare shoulders, she smiled and stepped away from the chair, her tiny feet bare, her nails painted bright pink.

“I wondered who would show up first, you or Mr. McGarvey, though I really didn't expect either of you until sometime tonight, or perhaps in the early morning,” she said. Her English was flawless with a hint of British accent.

“Who else is here with you?” Pete asked.

“No one, though my husband should be here soon. He called and said that he and Mr. McGarvey had a pleasant chat at the hotel, though the outcome was anything but.”

“Then I guess we'll just sit down and have a little chat of our own while we wait for them to show up,” Pete said. She motioned toward the couch.

“It might be a little more complicated than that, I'm afraid,” Ayesha said. She came around to the coffee table in front of one of the couches and picked up what looked to Pete to be a television remote control, pushed a button, and then set it down.

Too late Pete realized it wasn't a TV remote, but the control to close the gate.

Ayesha came forward and Pete raised the pistol.

“Are you going to shoot me?”

“If need be.”

“Then you would be in very grave trouble,” the woman said, stopping an arm's length away.

Pete pointed the pistol at the woman's head. “Your husband has hired a team of assassins to kill twenty-four American servicemen in the United States, along with their wives and children. They've already murdered two of them, so it isn't I who am in trouble. It's your husband and the government he represents.”

“Twenty-four soldiers who violated my country's borders to conduct an illegal raid and murder several people.”

“Terrorists.”

“Like you, in my home with a pistol pointed at me,” Ayesha said, a little color coming to her cheeks. “Why are you here?”

“To find out the truth,” Pete shot back. “To stop the murders.”

“You've told me that you and Mr. McGarvey already know the truth. Go home before it is too late.”

“It's already too late,” Pete said. She stepped forward and jammed the muzzle of the silencer into Ayesha's forehead, just as her phone rang and someone came down the corridor.

 

FORTY-ONE

McGarvey ordered a car with a GPS from the concierge, who apologized, saying that it would take thirty minutes to arrive. Naisir had obviously flashed his ISI credentials to the manager, so the entire staff was on edge, though if he'd said anything negative about the two Americans, it wasn't apparent in their attitude except that everyone was ultracareful.

He went back to their suite, where he tried to call Pete, but the phone switched to a recording that his call was being forwarded to an automatic voice message system.

Otto called at that moment. “Pete's in trouble.”

“I just tried to call her. But her phone switched to voice mail.”

“An old Lexus showed up down the street from the safe house, and in the next pass it was in the compound and four guys were getting out.”

“Goddammit,” McGarvey said. He was afraid of something like this. “Was Naisir with them?”

“I don't think so. These guys were a lot larger than him. But I got the car's tag. I'm running the registration now.”

Switching the phone to speaker, he laid it on the bed and got his pistol, the silencer, the spare magazines, and the small bricks of Semtex and fuses. “I want to know when Naisir arrives.”

“The Lexus is registered to Zeeshan Manzoor Sial Import/Exports. Hang on.”

Mac holstered the pistol, put on his lightweight black blazer, and pocketed everything else. All that was left in the suite was their overnight bags, a few bits of spare clothing, and their toiletries kits. He didn't think they'd be back for any of it.

“I'm not coming up with any actual import or export license applications, but they maintain an account under that name at the Habib Bank AG Zurich in Rawalpindi. I've not cracked it yet, but their business credit cards are platinum. I think I'll go to Zurich and see if it'll be easier to get in.”