Retribution (9781429922593) (33 page)

“What do you have in mind?” she asked. “Something here in Washington where we can control the situation?”

“Norfolk. Greg Rautanen—the Ratman—one of the SEAL Team Six guys. He's married but they don't have any children, and right now his wife is living with her sister in Seattle. He's screwed up, and maybe an alcoholic, and probably on the verge of having his house foreclosed.”

No one had to ask how he'd come by the information, because it was obviously Otto's doing.

“Why him?” Louise asked, not liking what she was hearing.

“No family close at hand, no friends, no social or neighborhood ties. He's a lone wolf. If it's just the two of us, the collateral damage will be minimal—zero if I can help it. And the guy was a SEAL Team Six operator.”

“Okay, so you want them to come after you,” Louise said. “I see that. But first you'd have to advertise where you are. How?”

“Dick Cole.”

“DEVGRU's chief of staff?” Pete asked.

“Acting chief of staff,” Otto clarified. “There're some unspecified issues in his file, which means it's just a temporary assignment until he screws up again, at which time he'll be dumped. He's already been passed over twice for his first star, and the third time is the deal breaker.”

Louise was shaking her head. “What good will it do telling him what you're up to?” she said. But then she suddenly got it. “You think he's a leak?”

“Schlueter knew too much about my movements,” McGarvey said. “Cole did a stint in the Pentagon, and I'm betting that he still has some contacts over there willing to do him a favor from time to time.”

“Only the CIA knew what was going on. He'd have to have a friend in Operations.”

“Which he doesn't, as far as I can determine,” Otto said. “I've doubled-checked everyone on Marty's staff who could have had access to that kind of stuff.”

“Another Snowden—maybe a contractor?” Pete asked.

“I don't know,” McGarvey admitted. “But my first impression in his office was that the guy had some agenda of his own, and he was seriously pissed off at me for coming to him with questions about his ex-wife.”

“I'm sorry, but if that's a hunch, it's one of your worst,” Louise said.

“I'll find out when I talk to him again and tell him what I'm going to do, and why.”

“Which is?” Otto asked.

McGarvey hadn't told anyone what his plan was, though he suspected that Otto had probably figured it out when he'd been asked to find one of the SEAL Team Six guys who was alone for the moment. And maybe someone who was screwed up and had been written off because of it. None of the guys were homeless yet, but Rautanen was close to becoming so—one of the 25 percent of homeless men who were combat veterans. No one gave a damn about them, not the military in which they had served or a nation for which they had laid their lives on the line.

“I'm going to tell Cole that Schlueter is coming after me, as well as the SEAL Team Six operators, and I'm going to use him as bait.”

Louise took a deep draft of her beer. “Now, why didn't I think of that,” she said.

Pete was nodding. “I'll cover your back.”

 

FIFTY-EIGHT

Coming through customs at Mexico City's Benito Juárez International Airport Felix Volker was in a rare good mood. Today was his thirty-ninth birthday. He was fit, he was going into an op that wasn't going to be easy—therefore it would be satisfying—and when it was done, he would be a rich man, relatively speaking.

He'd been born to a factory worker father outside of Leipzig in what had been the war-shattered east zone, and a mother who spent her days reading smuggled American movie magazines rather than cook or clean. His two older sisters—dead now for all he cared—had taken after their mother and were nasty-tongued slobs who had taught him all about sex, starting when he was about five.

Felix had made his way across the border into the west in the woods south of Lubeck with his uncle Bruno a year before the fall of the wall when he was thirteen. For the next four years he bounced between construction jobs and some state-sponsored welfare programs until he was eighteen and could join the Bundeswehr, where he had been taught to kill with a variety of weapons, including his bare hands, and where he had learned to love the smell of blood and the other bodily fluids that leaked out of a man at the time of his death.

At times, waking in the middle of the night with an erection, he remembered his dreams; they were never about sex, but always about killing. And when he was in the middle of the act of assassination, he always became sexually aroused. Fucking Pam at her tiny apartment had meant nothing more to him than a stylized act of murder.

At the time of his other-than-honorable discharge from the KSK the shrink had recommended that he seek psychiatric help. “You end up killing your family—your father and mother and especially your sisters—over and over again, with nothing to show for it. In the end you will certainly destroy yourself.”

In the end Volker had waited until the army psychiatrist had gone on a skiing holiday with his mistress outside of Munich and had killed them both in their chalet bed in the middle of the night.

The military investigators had questioned him, but in the end they left him alone, figuring that the doctor had probably been murdered by the husband of his mistress, himself a psychiatrist. Nothing ever came of it.

He took a cab to the Royal Hotel in the Zona Rosa, where he had a quick lunch, and then took a cab back out to the airport, where he was dropped off at the Air Canada entrance. When the cab was gone he walked down to the American Airlines counter, where he checked in electronically.

Fifteen minutes later he showed his boarding pass and passport to the security agent and was passed through the electronic scanning devices back into the international terminal.

Walking down to his gate for the flight to Atlanta, his heart rate never rose above fifty—about the same as when he killed someone. It was another aspect of his physiology that had baffled the KSK shrink. Whenever he was in a high-stress situation—on the battlefield or in bed having sex—it was always the same. His heart never worked hard. It was as if he didn't care. Which he didn't.

*   *   *

The flight to Atlanta was uneventful, and once he was through customs with just his one carry-on bag he took the shuttle over to the Hilton, where he checked in under his work name, Tomas Spangler, a Swiss citizen from Bern, paying for it with an American Express gold card.

The room was nice. Upstairs he ordered a roast beef sandwich and a couple of beers from room service, and while he waited he stared indifferently out the window toward downtown several miles away.

While on an op he'd lived for short periods in luxury hotels as well as shit holes. He'd never cared which. He'd also slept in bombed-out buildings, under a tarp in a construction zone, behind a pile of rocks in a battle zone in Afghanistan, and aboard a stinking freighter. That he was in the United States didn't matter either. The location, that is. He was here to do a job, after which, depending how big his payday was, he would take a couple of years off, though he had no earthly idea where he might hole up or exactly what he might do—nothing except killing interested him much.

When the sandwich and beers came he gave the man a nice tip and went back to the window to stare at essentially nothing, while he mechanically ate his meal and drank the beers.

Afterward he used his encrypted cell phone to call Pam. “I'm here.”

“When will you be in place?”

“Tomorrow. What about the others?”

Pam didn't answer; she was gone.

*   *   *

First thing in the morning Volker checked out and took the shuttle back to the airport. He rented a Ford Taurus at the Avis counter, using the Spangler credit card, ID, and international driving license. By eight thirty he was on I-85 heading northeast toward Norfolk.

He tuned to a country-and-western station and matched his speed with most of the other traffic. The morning was bright and sunny, and for the first time since he could remember, he was actually horny. And he smiled.

 

FIFTY-NINE

Driving through the night, stopping only at rest areas and gas stations, where they refueled the car and got sandwiches and drinks, Pam pulled into the parking lot of an IHOP just off I-66 in Arlington at nine in the morning. The parking lot was nearly full.

Pam was hopped up on adrenaline, and even if they had stopped somewhere for the night she knew that she would never be able to get to sleep. Not now that they were getting so close. And especially because she was going to come face-to-face with Gloria again.

Ayesha, who'd slept most of the way, except when they passed well to the west of New York City before connecting with I-95 south, woke up when they stopped. “Where are we?”

“Outside of Washington.”

“But what is this place?”

“We're meeting someone here for breakfast,” Pam said.

“Who?”

“A friend.”

Gloria sat in a booth near the back. She was a mousy-looking woman, somewhat dumpy, with short, light brown hair, thin lips, and close-set eyes. She was dressed in jeans and a light top. When she saw them her eyes widened like a deer caught in headlights.

“Hello,” Pam said.

Gloria took a moment to speak. “You didn't say you were bringing someone.”

They sat down. “Ayesha Naisir.”

“The major's wife. Jesus Christ, how could you bring her here? Considering the situation.”

“She's providing the operational funds now. It was she who put money into your account.”

“I thought it was you,” Gloria said. Her voice was reed-thin and high, almost like the upper-register notes in a clarinet, but soft. She leaned forward. “This is not good.”

“I'm sorry, who exactly are you?” Ayesha asked.

“You have my bank numbers, that's enough.”

“It was a blind account. No name.”

“Yes,” Gloria said sharply. “And it will remain that way even after your silly countrymen blow themselves and India off the map. Have you any comprehension what's about to happen, unless the Chinese manage to convince President Mamnoon Hussain to stand down?”

“There'll be no war.”

“I wish my government were as sure as you are, Mrs. Naisir. But here you are, a long way from home, about to finance the mass murder of some American heroes.”

“You're an American, helping with the murders,” Ayesha shot back. “Where is a logic that Allah would understand?”

“Fuck you and your prophet and all your people.”

Ayesha started to rise, but Pam held her back. “We don't need this,” she said. “We have a job to do.” She looked pointedly at Gloria. “Including what I promised you.”

“I won't wait much longer.”

“You won't have to.”

Gloria hesitated, but then she lowered her eyes. “The money's under the table in an attaché case. One hundred thousand. I've written down the address of a gun shop in Richmond whose owner will cooperate. She'll supply you with whatever you want, no paperwork. But the price will have to be right.”

Pam reached down and found the handle. “What about Norfolk?”

“A couple of detectives are investigating the murder of the one guy and his family. ONI is on it too, but they're not making much progress. They're thinking a home invasion gone bad. Because that's probably what they've been told to think.”

“By whom?”

“I don't know,” Gloria said. She was bitter all of a sudden. “It wasn't those boys' fault. They were just following orders. God, duty, honor, country. Hoo-rah.”

“What about McGarvey?”

“He's back here. A CIA jet picked him and the woman up in London and brought them to Andrews, where they were met by someone from the CIA. Probably the DDO and a couple of his goons.”

“I met the woman,” Pam said. “Any idea who she is?”

“Pete Boylan. She worked as an interrogator until she was transferred to the Clandestine Service. But I haven't been able to find out much more than that about her.”

“Are she and McGarvey lovers?”

“There's speculation.”

Pam was sure of it, because of McGarvey's zeal storming the Rawalpindi safe house to rescue her. All very romantic. “Where'd he go after Andrews?”

“To Langley overnight, but then he disappeared.”

“Where?”

“Unknown, but almost certainly he's with his friend Otto Rencke, who's the reigning computer geek at the company. You might want to take care with McGarvey's violence, but you'd better take special care with Mr. Rencke's computer expertise. The man is a black-magic witch.”

“If he moves I want to hear about it immediately.”

“There's something else,” Gloria said. “But we're not sure what it means.”

“Yes?”

“Petty Officer Greg Rautanen, he's one of the SEAL Team Six guys. Lives alone, a drunk, screwed up. Anyway, the ONI opened a new file on him. Some inquiries we apparently made, and it put up a red flag. Whoever hacked his file didn't do a good enough job of it to hide their tracks.”

“Doesn't sound like this Rencke character.”

“That's just it; my sources said it looked as if the hacker came in with a sledgehammer on purpose. He wanted to be burned. Maybe he wanted to let someone know that Rautanen had been singled out for some reason. It maybe was a message.”

Pam saw it. “The son of a bitch,” she said softly.

“What?” Ayesha asked.

“He knows I'm coming,” Pam said. “He doesn't know when or exactly where, except that it'll be in Norfolk. So he opened the door for me with this Rautanen guy. ‘Here I'll be,' he's told me. ‘Come get me.'”

“If he's expecting us, we need to come up with another plan,” Ayesha said.