Actually his leavetaking from Katy hadn’t been as difficult as he had feared it would be. In a large measure, he supposed, because he had told her the truth about his mission; the entire truth without hiding any of the details or the risks.
He’d always avoided such full disclosures with her, partly because what he was doing was usually classified top secret, and partly because he wanted to protect her from worry.
Although Katy hadn’t demanded to know the details this time, he felt that she deserved to be told what her husband was going up against.
She had finished packing for him, and they had a few minutes for coffee in the kitchen before his cab came to take him to the airport.
“I could have driven you,” she said.
McGarvey had shaken his head. “They probably know or suspect that I’m coming, and I don’t want to take the chance that someone might spot you.”
“They?” she said quietly, her left eyebrow rising. But then she held up her hand. “I understand.”
“I’m going to assassinate Osama bin Laden.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she brought a hand to her mouth, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide as if she were a wild animal caught in a hunter’s crosshairs.
“We think he’s hiding somewhere in Karachi, so first I’ll fly to Paris, and from there to Riyadh and finally Pakistan.”
“If they know you’re coming, won’t they set a trap for you?” Katy asked.
“I’m hoping they’ll do just that,” he said, his eyes never leaving his wife’s. “It’s the only way I’ll know for sure if he’s there.”
She suddenly turned away. “Christ,” she said softly. “And then what?” she asked. “When you find him?”
“I’ll put a bullet in his brain and then get out. Depending on the circumstances I’ll either run for the Indian border a hundred miles down the coast, or somehow get aboard a ship leaving the port of Karachi, or in a worst-case scenario head toward Afghanistan.”
She looked back at him. “Just like that?”
He shook his head. “No, Katy, it’s never just like that.”
“Why not just put on a disguise or something and fly back home?”
“Security will be too tight,” he told her. “Nor can I go to our consulate in Karachi or our embassy in Islamabad, I have to get out of the country on my own.”
“Why?”
And that was the crux of the entire mission, he had thought then, talking to his wife, and now as he came in for a landing in Saudi Arabia. Plausible deniability. His mission wasn’t officially sanctioned, which meant that though everyone might know the Americans had killed bin Laden, there would be no proof. Or at least none that the mission had been directed by the White House.
If he was caught by Pakistani intelligence trying to escape, he could make a convincing argument that he no longer worked for the CIA, and that he’d done this thing on his own because of the grief that bin Laden had caused him and his family over the past several years.
It was one of the reasons that he had chosen to fly commercial, out in the open, something no spook going into badland would ever do, especially one on a black mission.
“I’m on my own again,” he told her.
This time she didn’t look away. Her eyes filled with tears. “How much more, Kirk?” she asked. “You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days, you know.”
“That’s always a possibility.”
“Why, goddammit?”
And that was the one question that he didn’t think he could answer, for the simple reason he’d never really known. Or at least he’d never been able to put it into any words that made sense, why he’d killed people for the United States over a twenty-five-year-plus career. The argument that he was a soldier simply doing his duty, striking back at his country’s enemies, wouldn’t wash, because on several occasions, including this one, he had no direct orders. In fact, there had been times where he’d gone directly against his orders, operating not only on his own, but illegally. There were times when he didn’t give a damn about the civil rights of the men he’d gone after. He’d inflicted pain. He’d caused grief and heartache. He’d even killed a number of women.
There was seldom a night that went by when he was free of the faces of every person he’d assassinated.
A Company shrink had once glibly suggested that McGarvey had a death wish: A Hemingway complex, with the constant need to prove yourself. A constant need to gain the admiration and therefore acceptance of the people around you. And, perhaps, a latent homosexuality.
Howard Ryan had been deputy director of operations at the time, and although he and McGarvey had never gotten along, even he had sat up and taken notice, expecting that at any moment McGarvey was going to take the guy apart. Ryan’s take had always been that McGarvey had become an anachronism in a world that had become too sophisticated for the blunt instrument of assassination. But of course that had been long before 9/11.
McGarvey had laughed. “I never thought of myself quite that way, but you might be right, Doc.” Voltaire had written that he’d “ … never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: ‘O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.’ And God granted it.”
But the man had simply been doing his job of watching out for the mental health of his flock the best he knew how. Because it was what he did.
And Katy had asked why.
“It’s what I do,” he’d answered, and they’d left it at that.
McGarvey had flown first class, so he was one of the first passengers to get off the airplane. His single B4 bag would be transferred to the Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Karachi that departed in one hour, so he had no need to leave the international terminal, and therefore go through customs or passport control.
By law, alcohol could not be served in the kingdom, so there were only a few restaurants and cafeterias in the airport. McGarvey crossed the busy arrivals and departures hall to a crowded cafeteria where he ordered a tea and took it to one of the high tables. The Arab specialty had been tea for more than a millennium, so they had gotten very good at it, even better than the Brits.
Very few passengers on this side of the airport wore the traditional Muslim robes, just about everybody was in Western business suits. Saudi Arabia was where the money was, so this is where the international businessmen flocked. When the last barrel of oil was finally gone, the crowds would leave with it.
A young earnest-looking man in a dark suit with a priest’s white collar came over with a glass of tea in hand. “Mind if I share your table, sir?” he asked.
“Not at all, Father,” McGarvey said. “I didn’t know there were any Catholics here.”
“Mr. Rencke thought it was a good idea,” the young man said, taking a seat. “Actually I think there might be a church in one of the burbs.”
McGarvey glanced up at the television set tuned to CNN behind the bar, and let his eyes sweep the concourse without making it obvious that he was looking for someone. But it didn’t seem as if anyone was taking an interest in them.
“I have a message for you, sir,” the kid said. “The cock remains in its roost.” He waited for a reaction. “Would you like me to repeat it?”
McGarvey shook his head. “It’s not necessary.” His sat phone was only good for tracking the GPS signals at short range, within fifteen or twenty miles, and wasn’t encrypted, so Rencke had done the next best to get the message to him.
Before he’d left Langley they’d made sure that the position of the chip implanted in al-Turabi had not made a move toward the northern mountains that bordered Afghanistan. Rencke’s message meant that al-Turabi was still in place. If he’d come to report to bin Laden, it meant the al-Quaida leader was somewhere in the city.
A lot of ifs, McGarvey thought. A lot of assumptions.
The kid looked to be in his mid-twenties at the oldest. He’d probably been trained by Liz and her husband, Todd, at the Farm. For just a moment it made McGarvey feel old. Too old?
&nbs
p; “You’re Mr. McGarvey, right sir?”
McGarvey smiled. He drank his tea, and when he was finished, he shook his head. “Nope,” he said. “And I was never here.”
It took a moment for the young CIA field officer to react, but then he laughed. “Yes sir, I understand,” he said. He finished his tea, then slid off his stool, and started to leave. But he hesitated. “I’ve always wanted to use that line myself.”
FIFTY-TWO
FFG 56 SIMPSON, GULF OF SIDRA
Bruce Simonetti had gone down to the Combat Information Center six hours ago when sonar had first detected what might have been air slowly leaking from a newly submerged shipwreck and he hadn’t been back up to the bridge since. The noise was intermittent and very faint, almost impossible to detect even with their gas turbines spinning at dead idle, but whatever was down there was right where Sixth Fleet ops said they’d find a wreck.
“Cap’n, I’ve lost it again,” Senior Sonar Operator CPO Donald Deutsch said.
Simonetti pulled his headset over his ears and listened to the various bottom noises, mostly biologics, that they’d been monitoring ever since they’d stumbled across what might have been a recent wreck. He pressed the expensive earphones closer, but whatever had been shedding the last of its air had gone silent.
The problem was that the Libyans had taken an interest in them the moment they’d arrived on station and started their search grid, so they’d not been able to linger over the position where they thought they’d struck gold. For most of the past six hours they had concentrated their search over a spot nearly four miles to the north, only occasionally coming back to their original find. They were on their outward track, away from the site.
His orders had been specific. Find and identify the wreck, but if possible don’t let the Libyans know you’ve done so. Which made absolutely no sense to him, because the Libyan navy wasn’t about to go up against a U.S. warship. The last time they’d done that, we’d bloodied their noses.
Simonetti took off his headset. “Okay, Donnie, secure your bottom search for now. I think we’ve got enough data to get us back when the coast is clear.”
“Yes, sir,” Deutsch said. He sat back and looked up.
“Good job,” Simonetti said. He went over to Herb McCormick, his nav officer who was hunched over the electronic chart plotter. Rather than showing their position on the surface along with their course and speed, as well as other surface or subsea targets within the range of their radar and sonar, the display was now showing bottom features—those that were charted plus what their side-scan sonar was picking up.
McCormick had plotted all the contacts they’d picked up over the previous six hours. Trouble was they weren’t all bunched in a neat pile as if they were coming from a specific target.
“Not much to go on,” Simonetti said.
McCormick looked up from the chart. “Be my guess that we could be looking at variations in current strength, which is spreading our readings all over the place.”
“Depends on what the Libyans end up doing, but we’re not going to have much time on target to make a positive ID.” It chapped Simonetti’s ass that he couldn’t just muscle his way back, and the hell with how the Libyans reacted. These were international waters. And even if they weren’t, it wouldn’t make much difference to him.
“We can send down a probe on the next pass.”
The ship’s com buzzed. “CIC, bridge.” It was Daniel Lamb, his XO. “Is the captain there?”
Simonetti picked it up. “What is it?”
“Cap’n, the Libyans are starting to get cute. You might want to come up and take a look.”
Simonetti glanced over at the plotting board, which showed surface targets, and he could see exactly what Lamb was talking about. “I’m on my way,” he said, and he replaced the handset in its overhead cradle. “You’ll have to wing it, Herb. I want you to stand by to launch the ROV we loaded at Gaeta, and I’ll need your best guess at what’s down there. I expect we’ll only get one pass. But I want pictures.”
“Give me five minutes, Skipper.”
“You’ve got it,” Simonetti said, and he went through the forward hatch and up the half-flight of stairs to the bridge, steaming. He didn’t give a damn what his orders specified, because he wasn’t about to roll over and play dead, or run away with his tail between his legs.
He came from an Italian neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, where if you didn’t stand up for yourself you would get slammed. He’d earned a lot of respect as a kid, because not only was he street-tough, he was smart.
The late-afternoon sun, sparkling on the nearly flat calm sea, streamed through the bridge windows on the port side. They had been bracketed on both sides by a pair of fast-attack missile boats, the Russian-built Nanuchka Class that were normally used for coastal operations. Both boats had come in very close, to less than fifty yards off, and although they were small, under two hundred feet, they carried SSM and SAM antiship missiles that could inflict severe damage on the Simpson, even sink her.
“Have they tried to make contact with us?” Simonetti asked.
Lamb was studying the bridge of the Libyan warship to starboard. “Not yet, Cap’n. But if they get much closer we’ll be able to talk to them over the rail.”
“Okay, I want them out of here now,” Simonetti said.
Lamb lowered his binoculars. “We’re in international waters, Bruce. They’ve got just as much a right to be out here as we do.”
“Sound Battle Stations,” Simonetti said calmly. His XO was right, but he was damned if he was going to let anyone crowd him. He grabbed a handset from the overhead as the Battle Stations Klaxon sounded throughout the ship.
“Weps, this is the captain. Spin up torpedoes one and three. I want firing point procedures as quickly as you can manage it. Targets Romeo one and two.”
“This a drill, Skipper?”
“Negative, this is not a drill,” Simonetti shot back. “And I want the bastard to starboard illuminated with our Phalanx radar right now.”
“That’ll get their attention,” Lamb observed. He raised his binoculars again to study the Libyan warship to starboard.
The Simpson carried one Mark-15 Phalanx Close-in Weapons System (CIWS) gun-mounted amidships well aft. The 20mm weapon, controlled by its own targeting radar system, could fire three thousand rounds per minute. It was normally used as a last line of defense against incoming aircraft or missiles, but against smaller ships, such as the Libyan missile corvettes, it would be nothing short of devastating.
Simonetti waited a full ten seconds to make certain that the captains of both missile boats understood what was happening before he pulled the VHF mike from its bracket. “Libyan warships off my beams, turn away now, or you will be fired upon.”
“Skipper,” Lamb warned urgently.
Simonetti ignored his XO. “Fire one cannon shot across their bow,” he ordered. He glared at his executive officer. “Now.”
Lamb gave the order, and seconds later the Melara 76mm dual-purpose gun, high amidships just forward of the squat funnel, swiveled into position, and one shot was fired, splashing into the water twenty yards in front of the Libyan warship.
The effect was immediate. Both ships suddenly peeled off and accelerated as if they were scalded cats.
Simonetti grabbed the ship’s phone, and called his nav officer in the CIC. “Herb, this is the captain. What’s your best guess for a course and distance to the wreck?”
“One-eight-six degrees, let’s say two miles to the middle of the plotted positions,” McCormick replied.
“Soon as we make the turn, launch the ROV.”
“Cap’n, if we make anything over five knots, the cable will break. It wasn’t meant for that kind of a strain.”
“Understood,” Simonetti said. “Look sharp.”
“Shall we stand down from battle stations?” Lamb asked when Simonetti hung up the phone.
“Negative,” the captain said. “Helm, come right to n
ew course one-eight-six, make your speed All Ahead Slow.”
“Aye, sir. New course one-eight-six, All Ahead Slow.”
The Simpson came hard right, and immediately began to slow down as her turbines were spooled back. The Perry Class ships, which were introduced to the fleet in ’75, were capable of making around thirty knots, but what was impressive was the acceleration her twin gas turbines provided. If need be, she could get to where she wanted to go in a big hurry.
While they headed slowly back to the south, Simonetti took his XO aside so that the others on the bridge could not hear. “Our orders came directly from Nelson, who wants answers, not bullshit. If that means going head-to-head with the Libyans then so be it.”
“Jesus, Bruce, would you have shot at them if they hadn’t backed off?” Lamb asked.
“Damn straight,” Simonetti said. “I want to keep a close eye on those bastards. I don’t want them within ten miles of us.”
“Aye, Captain,” Lamb said, and he went over to the radar set to take a look at what the Libyan missile boats, already hull down on the horizon, were doing.
It took more than twenty minutes for the ROV to approach the bottom, and for the Simpson to reach the outermost plots for the wreck. Within three minutes McCormick was on the coms.
“Cap’n, we have a positive ID,” he said.
“Go ahead.”
“She’s a freighter, looks fairly well intact. Name on the stern is the Distal Volente, Monrovia, Liberia.”
“Bingo,” Simonetti said. “Take some pictures and then retrieve the ROV. When she’s aboard let me know and we’ll get out of here.”
“Will do, Skipper.”
“Good job, Herb.”
U.S. EMBASSY, TUNIS
Sterling walked across the corridor to Tony Ransom’s office. The CIA chief of station was getting set to leave for the day, and it didn’t look as if he were in a very good mood. His number two, Walt Hopper, had been drinking a lot lately, and three nights ago he had made an ass of himself with a local cop who’d stopped him for DUI. Word had got back to Langley, and Ransom had been told point-blank to control his field personnel.
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