Retribution (9781429922593) (36 page)

“Agreed,” McGarvey said. Driving away he'd come to the same conclusion. But he was missing something. He could feel it.

Pete looked out at the ocean. “Nice day, pretty view, but what the hell are we doing sitting around?”

“Waiting for someone to make their first move.”

“As in going after Rautanen?”

“That, or something else.”

“You're not making any sense, Kirk. What, ‘or something else'? You told Cole that you were here to provoke an attack against Rautanen. What do you think he'll do about it?”

“I hope he sends someone to take Rautanen into protective custody, which would prove me wrong about him.”

“Then what?”

McGarvey followed her gaze out to the southeast, where a very large ship heading north was low on the horizon. It was too far to make out any details, but he thought it was either a container ship bound for New York or a naval vessel on its way here. Or neither. Or both.

His cell phone vibrated. It was Rautanen.

“You nearby?” the ex-SEAL asked. He sounded stressed.

“Fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. What's going on?”

“A car has made two passes. Government plates. Two people inside.”

“Are they in sight now?” McGarvey asked. He got up and motioned for Pete that they were leaving.

“Could the people coming after me fit that profile?”

“Possible, but I think it could be SPs coming to take you into protective custody.”

“Your call,” Rautanen said.

“If they come back, don't let them in until I get there,” McGarvey said. “But for Christ's sake don't open fire unless they shoot first.”

“Best you boogey—they just pulled into my driveway.”

“On my way,” McGarvey said. “I'll call you right back.”

“Is Rautanen in trouble?” Pete asked

“Probably not, but I want to make sure. Drive.”

As Pete headed out of the park toward I-64, McGarvey got on the phone to Otto and explained the situation.

“Did you get a number on the plates?”

“Stand by.” Mac put Otto on hold and redialed Rautanen. “I need the number on the car's tag.”

Rautanen gave it to him. “They're just sitting in their car. Looks as if one of them is talking on a cell phone.”

“You don't want to shoot these guys.”

“Incoming rounds have the right of way.”

McGarvey got back to Otto and gave him the tag number. “One of them is apparently on a cell phone.”

“ONI,” Otto came back moments later. “Lieutenant Kevin Hardesty and Chief Petty Officer Caroline Cyr.”

“Can you hack into their phone call?”

“Just a mo,” Otto said. He was back. “They just hung up, but they were talking to someone in Cole's office.”

“Cole himself?”

“Unknown,” Otto said. “But the two in the car are not your bad guys, so there better not be any shootout.”

“We're on the way over there right now,” McGarvey said. “Anything new on Schlueter or anyone else associated with her?”

“No. But if she and the guys she hired are as good as you say they are, they could have gotten across our border without raising any flags. I have to assume they're carrying first-class papers.”

“The problem will be weapons. They'll have to come up with the hardware somewhere. And if it were up to me, I'd wait until I was close. Reduce the chance of some cop stopping me for speeding and decide to look in the trunk.”

“I'll get back to you,” Otto said, and he hung up.

They reached the busy interstate and Pete kept up with the fastest cars, about ten miles over the speed limit.

“Looks like they're ONI,” McGarvey told her.

“Cole's off the hook.”

“I don't know,” McGarvey said.

“What are you thinking, Kirk? Is he playing with you?”

“Anything's possible. He knows I've been in contact with Rautanen, and he has to figure that I would expect him to send someone over to pick the guy up, just in case I was right.”

“Which he's done.”

McGarvey nodded. But nothing was adding up for him. Something was missing. Something just beyond his ken. It was just a hunch, but he'd learned a long time ago to listen to his instincts.

He phoned Rautanen again, but this time no one picked up.

 

SIXTY-FIVE

Fredrick slid into view out of a door adjacent to Ludlow's warehouse when Pam pulled up with the car and got out. A trolleybus half filled with tourists rattled by and chugged up a short hill at the end of the block.

“You ladies made a deal; that's a good thing,” the kid said.

“What's it to you?” Pam demanded. She didn't give a damn about the money that wasn't hers in the first place, but she hadn't heard from Gloria, and this close to Norfolk she didn't want to walk into an unknown situation.

“Ludlow says come help the ladies load the goods. Tonight we celebrate.”

Ludlow had unloaded all the weapons from the safes and had laid them out on the felt-topped table, along with three padded ripstop nylon bags with shoulder straps and locks on the heavy-duty zippers

Ayesha stood at the other end of the table, a laptop in front of her. “Do I transfer the funds now?” she asked.

“Not yet,” Pam said. She picked up one of the Glock 26s, ejected the magazine, and ejected the round in the chamber. Holding the slide with her right hand, she pushed the release button just forward of the trigger guard; the slide came backward and up, off the pistol's frame. She took out the spring and then the barrel and closely inspected each part.

“Are you satisfied?” Ludlow asked.

Fredrick had closed and relocked the service door and stood to one side.

“With this weapon, yes,” Pam said. “May I trust you that the rest of the equipment is in order?”

“Of course. It would be bad for my business otherwise.”

“Bad for your life if you were lying.”

Pam ejected the rounds from the magazine, counting out the full fifteen. The spring seemed tight. No dust or old gun oil clogged the mechanisms. The weapon was new or nearly new and had been expertly cared for.

Pam reloaded the magazine and reassembled the pistol. “Pay him.”

Ayesha and Ludlow hunched over the laptop as Pam inserted the magazine into the handle and jacked a round into the firing chamber.

“Ludlow,” Fredrick cried.

Pam turned as the boy pulled a SIG Sauer from beneath his jacket. She shot him once, hitting him in the middle of the forehead. He went back hard against the door and fell to the wood planks.

Ayesha shouted something.

Ludlow, his arm around her chest, using her as a shield, a SIG's muzzle pressed against her temple, seem unfazed. “He was a good boy,” he said. “No need for him to die.”

“I didn't trust him.”

“How shall I explain this to Gloria?”

“Tell her the truth.”

“And what now?”

Pam lowered the pistol, so that the barrel was pointed toward the floor away from her. “You have your money, and as soon as we load the weapons into our car we will leave. If there is to be a second time, do not send an assistant. I deal only with the principals.”

“But then I could shoot you, and this woman. In the end I would have the money and the merchandise.”

“How would you explain it to Gloria?”

“I would tell her the truth,” Ludlow said.

Pam nodded. “It's not necessary, Herr Ludlow,” she said. She transferred the pistol to her left hand, and holding out her right she stepped closer. “Let's shake hands on the deal, and the woman and I will be on our way.”

Ludlow's eyes were narrow, but he started to lower his pistol, when Pam fired one shot catching him in his left eye. His pistol went off, the shot ricocheting off the front of a safe, and he fell back, dragging Ayesha to the floor with him.

Ayesha struggled desperately to disentangle herself from the man's body. Pam kicked the pistol away, sending it skittering across the floor.

Ayesha got to her feet, deeply frightened and boiling mad. “These people were helping us,” she screeched. “We made a deal in good faith.”

“This isn't the rug business,” Pam said. “I wanted no witnesses.”

“What about me?”

“You're my paymaster. I want this operation to be completed and for you to go back to Pakistan and report to the ISI that the contract is finished. I don't want to look over my shoulder for the rest of my life expecting one of them to come gunning for me.”

“Fine,” Ayesha said. “You can load the weapons in the car while I get my money back.”

*   *   *

Thirty minutes later they had connected with I-64 east of downtown, and Ayesha sitting low in the passenger side, stared at the traffic, the buildings, and the power lines, her shoulders slumped, her head down.

“Are you okay?” Pam asked.

“I've been to Moscow and Beijing and London and Paris, but this is different.”

“It is different.”

Ayesha turned to her. “No, I mean
different.
Moscow is fast, Beijing is frantic, and London and Paris are European. But this place is angry, indifferent. No one cares.”

Pam was anxious, not hearing from Gloria yet, but her mood softened a little. “It just looks that way to an outsider.”

“You're a German—an outsider.”

“I was married to an American naval officer. I lived in Washington.”

“But you didn't love him. You got a divorce.”

“He was a pig, I agree, but some of the others were kind to me. They understood.”

“Other women?” Ayesha asked. “We understand what it's like to be alone in a crowded room.”

“Men too. Grocery clerks, a kid at the Wendy's, the guy and his wife who delivered our newspapers, the guy who came to fix our air conditioner, even a cop who stopped me once for speeding on the Beltway.”

“Sounds like you were brainwashed. Why did you leave?”

It was easier to remember the bad parts, the things that had nurtured and fed her hate. But sometimes she remembered some of the good stuff. Little League baseball had almost made her want to have a child of her own. The mother and daughter selling Girl Scout cookies almost made her want to climb out of her shell and volunteer—Dick had told her once that America was the land of volunteers. It was a concept that most Europeans didn't get.

But the television was bad, especially the sports matches—baseball and football, which really wasn't football at all—that Dick had loved beyond everything but porn.

The food was mostly bland.

The beer was like ice water.

Even the German country bread from the deli was little more than ground-up cardboard. The cheese bland, the butter pale and tasteless. And everything was laced with tons of salt and even more sugar.

And every once in a while, Pam wanted to say: So what? Who gave a damn? Friends told her that if she wanted authentic German food she could order it online, she could watch movies or television programs on her laptop, and she could get
Stern
magazine and the
Berliner Zeitung
newspaper delivered to her door, so quit griping.

But she'd never been able to get over her hate.

Her encrypted cell phone chirped. It was Gloria.

“His name is Greg Rautanen. McGarvey and the woman operative he's with are making their stand there”

“What about the navy?” Pam asked. She was having a hard time concentrating on her driving. They were so damned close.

“The ONI is making a move to take him in for protective custody.”

Something gripped Pam's chest. “They know it's me coming?”

“They've known it all along,” Gloria said. “Or at least some of them have. They want you to fail, but they're willing to let you go at it in order to make a point in Washington.”

“Which is?”

“Doesn't matter. What does matter are your plans. Did you make the merchandise connection in Richmond?”

“Yes. I need the details on Rautanen's location and his background.”

“I'm sending it to your cell phone. But take care with McGarvey. He may be a has-been, but he's still very dangerous.”

“I mean to kill him.”

“Good,” Gloria said. “Tell me, how did Ludlow look to you?”

“When I left him?”

“Yes.”

“Dead.”

 

SIXTY-SIX

At Rautanen's place a government-issue gray Ford Taurus was parked in the driveway. Pete pulled up and parked on the street. The crowd of blacks at the corner by the apartments had grown, but it didn't look as if they were getting set to make a move.

“Stay here,” McGarvey said.

He jumped out of the Hummer and pulled his pistol as he hurried up the driveway and looked inside the ONI car. There were no signs of violence in the car or on the gravel driveway leading from it up to the house.

Pete came up behind him. “Last time I stayed back it nearly didn't work out in your favor,” she said. She'd drawn her weapon.

“Greg knows we're coming, and I don't think he'd get into a shootout with a couple of ONI guys trying to bring him in.”

“Depends on how screwed up he is.”

Mac went up to the front door and knocked with the butt of his pistol. “It's me,” he said.

“Door's unlocked,” Rautanen said from inside.

“Everything okay?”

“Five-by-five.”

“We're coming in,” McGarvey said. He holstered his pistol and motioned for Pete to do the same.

The two ONI officers, in civilian clothes, were seated next to each other on the dilapidated old couch. Rautanen was perched on the arm of a matching easy chair, the Ithaca cradled loosely in the crook of his right arm. He was dressed this time in his desert-tan battle uniform, a navy-issue SIG Sauer P226 holstered on his chest.