Retribution (9781429922593) (39 page)

The kids turned around, and one of them shut off the music.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” McGarvey said. He stopped about ten feet out. “Got a question for you. Fact is, I need your help.”

For several long beats the kids—who ranged in age from their midteens to maybe nineteen or twenty—were silent. One of them pulled out a knife and another a pistol, which looked to McGarvey like an old .38 Saturday Night Special.

“We're going to help you into the ground, you dumb sucka,” the older one said.

The kid with the pistol took a step forward.

“You know the guy lives in the house at the end of the block?” McGarvey said. “The one you think is nuts? He needs your help.”

All of them laughed.

“You've heard of bin Laden,” McGarvey said, addressing the older kid. “The guy down the block was on the team that went over to Pakistan to take care of him.”

“So?”

“Their government has sent people over to kill him—name's Greg.”

“Just get your honky ass out of here before we waste you.”

“The people are coming here tonight. If you get in the way they'll kill you. Thing is, I'm pretty sure they know that I came over to set a trap for them, so I'm number one on their hit list. And they're carrying more than a couple of knives and one shit-hole pistol that'll probably blow up soon as the trigger's pulled. It's why I need your help—so that I'll have a chance to stop them from pulling it off.”

“What's it to us?” the one kid said. A couple of the others looked over their shoulders down the street.

“Thing is, these people have already killed two of the SEALs who took out bin Laden. That, and they murdered the families. Like I said, I'm here to stop them.”

“You a cop?”

“I used to work for the CIA.”

The older kid—their spokesman—was impressed. “No shit?”

“No shit,” McGarvey said. “So this is what I want you guys to do for me.”

The kid with the gun came forward all of a sudden, the pistol pointed straight out.

Before the kid could react McGarvey snatched the pistol out of his hand. The one with the knife started forward, but the older kid put out an arm and stopped him.

“He didn't come here talking all his honky bullshit for nothing,” their spokesman said.

“That's what it is, nigger, honky bullshit,” the kid who'd had the pistol slammed back.

“Maybe, but this time's different.”

McGarvey held out the gun, handle first. “I'd get rid of this before you get hurt.”

Slowly the younger kid took the gun. He turned and walked back to the fire, but he didn't put the pistol back in his belt.

The entire city seemed to fall silent, except for the crackling of the small fire, which gave off black smoke and the acrid odor of burning rubber. McGarvey had been in a lot of foreign places in a career of a couple of decades, but here and now it almost seemed as if he were on another planet—yet still in his own country.

“So what do you want?” the older kid asked.

McGarvey told him. None of them were happy.

 

SEVENTY-ONE

Ayesha hid in the shadows twenty feet from where McGarvey stood with the black kids on the corner. She could hear them talking, but she couldn't quite make out the words, except when one of them called the other a nigger. She knew enough, though, to keep out of sight: the tension was palpable. And when McGarvey handed the gun back to the kid, she'd almost turned around and walked away.

The scene was way beyond her understanding. Everything she'd ever read about the situation between blacks and whites in the United States, everything she'd seen on the television and heard on the radio, had led to the belief common in Pakistan and most other places around the world: that America was on the verge of a race riot.

It didn't seem to her to be anything like that. McGarvey was outnumbered, but except for the kid with the gun, nothing had happened. It looked to her like they were having an ordinary conversation.

It came to her all of a sudden that the conversation McGarvey was having with the black kids was anything but ordinary, and again she had the sudden urge to turn around and get out of there.

Her cell phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. She stepped farther back into the shadows next to the apartment building's entrance and answered it. “Yes.”

It was Pam and she sounded stressed. “What's the situation?”

“McGarvey's here. I'm about twenty feet away from him and some black kids. I think he's enlisted them.”

“Enlisted them? What are you talking about?”

“They're going to help him. Probably act as lookouts. You were right that he'd be here waiting for you, but wrong that if the blacks caught him there would be trouble.”

“Where are you exactly?”

“I'm at the front entrance to the building nearest the houses. Rautanen's is four doors away—about fifty meters from here.”

Pam had dropped her off about a block away, and she'd made it this far on foot. The other four operators on the team had parked even closer and were standing by to strike, with enough firepower to take out McGarvey and the black kids ten times over.

It was retribution for the strike on bin Laden, the violation of Pakistan's borders, but more than that for Ayesha; this evening it was supposed to be retribution for her husband's death. But now that she was this close she found that her feelings were flat. Retribution would not bring Ali back to her—nothing on this earth would. All that was left was for her to someday join her husband under Allah's pure light in paradise.

Trouble was, she didn't really believe in all that nonsense. If there was a paradise, it was here on earth, among the living.

“Have you been spotted?”

“No.”

“How many blacks are with McGarvey?”

“Seven. But most of them are kids.”

“Are any of them armed?” Pam demanded.

“McGarvey took a pistol away from one of them, but then he gave it back.”

“What?”

“He gave it back to the kid,” Ayesha said. “Look, I'm getting out of here.”

“Stay there. We're on our way. Just keep your head down.”

Ayesha cut the connection.

One of the black kids had grabbed the boom box and headed around the corner with a couple of the others. McGarvey had disappeared around the corner of the building, but the rest of them headed directly toward the front entrance where Ayesha was standing.

She turned and headed as fast as she could run down the length of the building, staying as much as possible in the deeper shadows. Thankfully all the streetlights were out and she nearly made it to the corner, when one of the kids behind her shouted something she couldn't make out.

Ducking around the corner she tripped on some trash and fell on her face, scraping her elbows and smashing her chin into the broken blacktop, blood in her mouth.

She scrambled to her feet and ran headlong to the rear of the building and around the corner, where she pulled up short, gasping for breath. Twenty meters across the rear parking area was another apartment building; there were others to the left. To the right, was a narrow strip of what once might have been grass but was now mostly bare dirt and some weeds and trash. This was where the coordinated attack on Rautanen would take place once Pam's team had taken care of McGarvey.

No direction was safe. She wanted to get out, find a street where she could get a cab back to the motel for her things and then to the airport where she could rent a car and get clear of the city. Anywhere. She had the credit cards, the passport and other documents, and plenty of money to get out of the country. Anywhere. Perhaps back to Canada, or even Mexico, and from there she could make her way home.

“Who the fuck are you?” someone said to her left.

Ayesha turned. A tall black man, young, maybe twenty, with the menacing look of a Taliban fighter, was two feet from her. Her heart stopped and her legs suddenly went so weak she thought she wouldn't be able to keep on her feet for another second.

“McGarvey,” was all she managed to say.

 

SEVENTY-TWO

McGarvey had just come around the rear corner of the building when he heard a woman cry his name. The blacks he'd talked with had dispersed—some of them inside the buildings where they would take up positions on the balconies as lookouts, others on the west side of the apartment complex.

The nearest one to him was the kid with the gun, still out front watching to the east, toward Rautanen's house.

Everyone was pretty much within hailing distance to warn him their company had arrived.

He pulled out his pistol. Trailing his left hand against the side of the building he hurried in the direction of the woman's voice. It was dark back here and he was within thirty feet of the east side of the building before he could make out the figure of a slightly built woman, two black kids towering over her, holding her against the wall.

They didn't spot him until he was ten feet away. One of them turned, a machete in his hand. “Who the fuck are you?” the kid demanded. He had a Caribbean accent, maybe Haitian.

“The woman's with me,” McGarvey said. He held his pistol more or less out of sight at his right side. “Back away and nothing bad will happen here tonight.”

The other kid, whose left hand was on Ayesha's chest, holding her against the wall, raised a knife to her throat. “Motherfucker, I'll slice the bitch.”

“I don't think so,” McGarvey said, raising his pistol.

The kid with the machete laughed. “So she dies,” he said. “In the meantime I'll have half the hood down here covering your honky ass.”

“Right now a world of shit is about to rain down on this place. At least four German Special Forces guys armed with automatic weapons are coming this way to kill me, and they won't give a shit who they have to take down to do it.”

“Bullshit.”

All of a sudden McGarvey recognized the woman. “Didn't expect to see you here,” he said. “Though I can guess why you came.”

“I came looking for you,” she said.

“You found me.”

“I told Pam that you were talking with some kids out front. They're less than a block away.”

“Voodoo bullshit,” the kid with the machete said. He was high on something.

“Why do you suppose she's really here?” McGarvey asked. “Why do you think someone like me is here? To shake up dumb sons of bitches like you and your pal who're only big enough to shove a woman around?”

The kid with the machete suddenly lunged forward, raising the blade as he came.

McGarvey side-stepped him at the last moment. Just as the machete was coming toward his head, he slapped the kid's hand aside and grabbed him under his arm, just above the elbow, and then shoved him against the building.

The kid was like a wild man, bouncing all over the place, kicking, screaming incoherently.

“I'll slice the bitch,” the kid holding Ayesha said.

McGarvey brought his gun around and shot the kid with the machete in the left kneecap. He grabbed the blade and twisted away as the kid howled and dropped to the ground, holding his destroyed knee with both hands.

McGarvey tossed the machete away and strode to Ayesha's side, pointing his pistol at the kid's head. “You're dead in three seconds.”

The kid froze.

“Three, two, one—”

The kid suddenly released Ayesha and stepped back.

“Drop the knife and help your buddy get the fuck out of here before the shit hits the fan.”

The kid did as he was told. Warily eying McGarvey, he hustled to help his friend up, and the two of them limped across the parking lot to one of the buildings in the back.

“Mac,” Pete called from behind him

He turned as Pete came around the corner, her pistol drawn. “Otto monitored a call from her cell phone to Pam. They're on their way.”

Two of the black kids came around the corner right behind her.

“She's with me,” McGarvey told them, and they pulled up.

“They know you're here,” Pete said.

“That's what I wanted to happen,” McGarvey said. “I want you to take her back to Rautanen's and keep your head down.”

Pete suddenly reared back. “Mac,” she shouted.

McGarvey turned on his heel in time to see Ayesha just about on top of him, the kid's knife in her right hand, coming in for the kill. He feinted to the left as she lunged.

Pete fired one shot, catching the woman in the chest just below her left breast.

Ayesha's momentum carried her into McGarvey and her legs gave out from under her, the knife slipping from her hands.

He helped her to the ground. Her eyes fluttered and she said something indistinct.

He lowered his head so that his ear was at her mouth. “What is it?”

She said something in Punjabi, her voice barely audible.

“In English,” McGarvey said.

“For Ali,” she whispered. “It was for my husband. Always for him.”

She stopped breathing at the same moment automatic weapons fire, what sounded to McGarvey like a suppressed MAC 10, raked the side of the building inches from where he was down on one knee.

 

SEVENTY-THREE

Pam heard the barely audible gunfire from the east of her position in the middle of the apartment complex. It was either Volker or Woedding. She'd sent the two of them between the buildings in the direction of Rautanen's house, while Bruns and Heiser had split off to the rear of the second row of buildings, hoping to catch McGarvey in a flanking position.

They'd left the cars at the edge of the complex and had come the rest of the way on foot—the four operators forward while she hung back in case McGarvey tried to make an end run.

She'd set up a common number on their encrypted cell phones. She keyed it. “Report,” she said softly.