Next he took out a 150-foot coil of nylon rope from the bag, and quickly tied a double loop around the massive desk, which would serve as an anchor, and then swept the credenza clear of a stack of files, a half-dozen books held in place by heavy stone bookends, and a water carafe and several glasses on a silver tray.
He attached two suction cup window glass handholds onto the window, and then using a battery-powered glass cutter, removed a four-foot-round section from the window, careful to make sure that the lower edge was below the top of the credenza so that the sharp glass would not cut the rope.
He set the heavy piece of windowpane aside, the warm, humid night air wafting in on a light breeze, the sound of a siren in the distance. He slung the M8 carbine over his shoulder, then threaded the rope through the snap rings attached to his harness, paid the long end out the window, climbed up on the credenza, and slipped backwards through the hole in the glass.
Balancing 250 feet above the city, his feet on the window ledge at the floor level, McGarvey paused for just a moment to take stock. The two guards from the basement were on their way up to the twenty-fifth floor because Rencke’s GPS tracker had been found. They knew someone was coming, and they would be getting ready to spring their trap.
But they couldn’t know yet from what direction the attack would come.
McGarvey gingerly rappelled down a few feet to a point where he could lean over and look into the window below. The room was mostly in darkness except for a dim light spilling through a partially open door. From what little he could make out there were bare mattresses scattered on the floor, and perhaps knapsacks and other things piled here and there. The room was being used as a dormitory for bin Laden’s mujahideen. For the moment, however, it was empty, which was a bit of luck.
He lowered himself the rest of the way down, and then holding that position, took out a small block of Semtex, which he plastered to the center of the window. He inserted one of the pencil fuses, set it for ten seconds, then scrambled twenty feet to the left, beyond the edge of the glass.
The plastique blew with a small, sharp bang, spraying shards of glass inside the room as well as outward into the night air like a million diamonds suspended for just a second until they began to rain down onto the backstreet below.
The countdown had just begun.
McGarvey unslung the M8, switched the safety catch to the off position, and kicked away from the side of the building, swinging in a short arc to fly through the shattered window into the dormitory.
As he landed inside, a dark figure flung open the door and raised a Kalashnikov rifle. McGarvey fired a short burst from the hip with one hand, stitching two shots into the mujahideen’s chest, slamming the man off his feet back into the corridor.
He disengaged himself from the rope, then threw off the rappelling harness, and crossed the room to the door. Someone was shouting something in Arabic, and at least two people were coming up the hall.
McGarvey pulled out a flash-bang grenade, pulled the pin, waited for just a couple seconds, and then tossed it around the door frame out into the corridor.
Someone shouted a warning just as the grenade went off with an eye-searing flash of intense light and a tremendous bang.
McGarvey stuck the carbine around the corner and sprayed the corridor. Pulling back, he ejected the spent magazine, popped in another one, and rolled left through the door.
Three mujahideen were down, blood splattered on the walls and ceiling, and pooling up beneath two of the bodies. The third man, blood pumping from a neck wound, had grappled a pistol out of his tunic and was raising it.
“Don’t,” McGarvey warned, but the man managed to pull the hammer back. McGarvey shot him in the head, killing him instantly, then sprinted down the corridor.
There was no way to know how many of bin Laden’s freedom fighters had been holed up with him, but the dormitory room had mattresses for at least ten. By now they knew that they were under assault, and if bin Laden were actually here right now, they would have called for help, and would be barricading themselves somewhere. Or they would be trying to make a run for it. Either way there were probably other well-armed, well-motivated men up here perfectly willing to give their lives for the cause.
But there’d been gunfire, so there’d already been some sort of trouble here tonight.
The end of the corridor opened to a large room decorated only with prayer rugs facing a raised platform on which lounging pillows were piled. McGarvey held up around the corner, waiting for someone else to show up. But the building had fallen deathly silent.
He glanced over his shoulder to make sure that no one was coming up behind him, then, girding himself, stepped around the corner and zigzagged his way across the big prayer room to a pair of doors, one of them partially ajar.
He looked through in time to see a mujahideen just a few feet away down a short corridor, a Kalashnikov pointed at the door. A second armed man was waiting farther down the corridor at an open door, he too held a Kalashnikov in the ready-fire position.
McGarvey fell back, away from the doors, an instant before the nearest freedom fighter opened fire, the 7.62mm rounds slamming through the door, fragments hitting McGarvey in his right hip, and left arm, causing him to lose his grip on the carbine, and two striking him in the chest, shoving him backwards off his feet.
The Kevlar vest had saved his life, but the wind had been knocked out of him, and a wave of dizziness and nausea washed over him. For just a moment he saw spots and jagged bolts of black lightning in front of his face.
He managed to pull out his pistol and push the safety catch to the off position, as the half-destroyed door slowly opened and the mujahideen extended the Kalashnikov around the corner. A moment later the freedom fighter ducked his head through the opening and McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of the forehead.
The man’s head snapped back and his legs collapsed under him.
McGarvey scrambled away from the doorway as the second mujahideen opened fire from the end of the corridor, bullet fragments and pieces from the door flying all around him.
At six hundred rounds per minute, it took only a few seconds for the rifle to run out of ammunition.
Despite his injuries, McGarvey scrambled to the open door in time to see the mujahideen at the end of the corridor slam a fresh magazine into the weapon. The man looked up as McGarvey fired three shots, two catching him in the chest, and the third in the throat, shoving him backwards into the room.
The building fell silent again. McGarvey braced himself against the door frame as he cocked his head to listen. But there was nothing. No sounds to indicate that anyone else was alive up here.
Rencke and Gloria were not to initiate radio contact, lest it be a distraction at a critical time. And for a few seconds McGarvey felt a tremendous wave of loneliness and depression wash over him. Everything, every person and place he knew and loved seemed to be a million miles away, completely inaccessible. He had been in situations like these countless times in his career, so this was nothing new—coming out of the night, an assassin stalking his prey—but there’d never been anything glamorous or exciting about what he did.
He lowered his head and closed his eyes for just a moment. He wanted to think about Katy, bring a picture of her face into his mind’s eye, but he shoved that thought away. He could not afford the distraction, not until this business was over.
Pushing away from the door frame, McGarvey hobbled slowly down the corridor, stepping over the body of the first mujahideen, careful to keep out of the blood that was soaking into the carpeting.
All of his senses were alert for the slightest sign that he was walking into a trap. He stopped a few feet from the open door. The second mujahideen was lying on his back beneath a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. His rifle was on the floor within reach beside him, but he posed no further threat. He was obviously dead.
McGarvey went the rest of the way, holding up just at the threshold before he lea
ned forward to see inside, and he almost fired his pistol on instinct alone.
A clean-shaven Osama bin Laden, dressed in white robes, sitting cross-legged on a large prayer rug, an open Qur’an lying on his lap, his Kalashnikov propped against the wall behind him, looked up, and smiled sadly. “Good morning, Mr. McGarvey,” he said softly. “It seems as if Allah has intertwined our destinies against all odds.”
McGarvey peered around the corner to make sure no one else was in the room before he stepped through the doorway, over the mujahideen’s body.
“Congratulations for a job well done. You have been a formidable opponent.”
McGarvey glanced over his shoulder. It wouldn’t take the two men from the parking garage much longer to get up here. It was something bin Laden probably knew, so he was stalling for time.
“I presume that you mean to take me away so that I can stand trial,” bin Laden said. He seemed to be amused. “So that a mockery will be made of me before the entire world.”
“No,” McGarvey said softly, not sure if bin Laden had heard him. By now the Pakistani authorities had probably been alerted to the explosion and the gunfire up here, and were likely on their way.
“In any event I would welcome a public trial,” bin Laden said, a smug expression on his long face. “Your lawyers will not be able to prove a thing against me, because in Allah’s eyes, I am innocent.”
McGarvey keyed his communications unit. “Otto, unlock the main elevators, and get ready to move. I think we’ll be having company any minute.”
“Will do,” Rencke radioed back.
“As an innocent man I have nothing to fear from your American justice,” bin Laden said.
McGarvey shook his head. He didn’t know if there was any clear definition of what evil was. Soldiers opposing each other on a battlefield couldn’t be included. But if any man fit the notion of evil, bin Laden was one. “Wrong answer,” McGarvey said, with great difficulty. “Just before 9/11 you told me that no one was innocent in this war. That includes you.” He raised his pistol.
The smile faded from bin Laden’s lips. “The money to fund the jihad comes from Saudi Arabia.”
“I know.”
“I can give you the names, and—”
“I don’t care,” McGarvey said. He squeezed off a shot, striking the terrorist leader in the middle of the forehead, driving him backwards, the Qur’an sliding off his lap.
Bin Laden was dead and the war was over. Or at least it was for him.
McGarvey went the rest of the way into the room, and unloaded his pistol, one careful shot after the other, into bin Laden’s face, his neck, and his chest.
For several long seconds he stood over the terrorist leader’s body, a tremendous sense of sadness coming over him. It had been the same after every kill. He could remember all the faces of his victims. Now bin Laden’s would be added to his nightmares.
He ejected the spent magazine from his pistol, pocketed it, and loaded a fresh one into the handle, cycling a round into the firing chamber.
Next he took a cotton swab and small plastic Baggie from one of his pockets, dabbed some blood from bin Laden’s head wound, and sealed the cotton swab in the Baggie.
They would want proof.
He took one last long look at bin Laden’s lifeless body, then turned and sprinted down the corridor toward the main elevators at the front of the building, the wound in his hip getting steadily worse with each step.
He keyed his radio. “I’m heading to the elevators.”
“Hustle, kimo sabe,” Rencke replied. “I’m picking up chatter on the local ISI channel. They’re on their way here. And Graham showed up in the parking garage five minutes ago. He and his driver are gone.”
“I’ll be with you in two minutes,” McGarvey radioed. “What about Gloria?”
“I can’t raise her,” Otto said. “The main elevators are unlocked.”
“How about Joe?”
“Nothing from him either.”
“Christ,” McGarvey muttered. He went through the large prayer room and took the corridor in the opposite direction from the dormitory. At the far end, a plain steel door opened to a small lobby across which were two elevators, one of the cars standing open.
He was in a quandary if he should go back and take out the two mujahideen coming up the stairs, which would delay the authorities finding bin Laden’s body, or just leave now. But they were not worth the risk or the extra time.
He stepped aboard the elevator and punched the button for the ground floor. Something was wrong on the street out front, and the hairs stood up on the nape of his neck as the doors closed and the car started down.
But Otto would have warned Bernstein and Gloria that trouble was coming their way. They would have been prepared.
It was an express elevator and it took less than one minute to reach the ground floor. McGarvey stepped to one side and raised his pistol as the doors opened. But except for Rencke and the two trussed-up guards behind the security console, the atrium lobby was empty.
“Shut down all the elevators!” McGarvey shouted, hobbling across the lobby. “We’re getting out of here right now.”
Before McGarvey reached the main doors, Rencke had locked down the elevators and was right behind him, his pistol in hand.
Outside, the night air was warm, and extremely humid. In the not too far distance they could hear a lot of sirens, but there was no traffic here for the moment. The blue and white Toyota van that Bernstein was driving was still parked across the street, and Gloria’s Fiat hadn’t moved from the end of the block across from the entrance to the building’s underground garage. There was no sign of Graham’s Mercedes, or that there’d been any trouble. But if he’d emerged from the garage he would have driven directly past Gloria.
McGarvey hurried across the broad plaza and then across the street where he approached the driver’s side door of the van from the rear, and looked inside. The window was down and Bernstein was slumped over, blood all over the seat from a gunshot wound in the back of his head. There was no doubt he was dead.
“What do we do?” Rencke asked, his voice still steady despite the fact that he was not a trained field officer.
“We have to leave him,” McGarvey said tersely, and he headed as fast as his legs would carry him back to Gloria’s Fiat, sick at heart by what he thought he would find. Somehow Graham had managed to get past her and take Bernstein unawares. Christ, he had warned them both about the bastard.
Gloria was also slumped over the seat, blood matting the hair on the left side of her head, but she was starting to come around and trying to sit up. “What happened?” she stammered.
The sirens were very close now.
McGarvey pocketed his pistol, tore open the door, and helped Gloria to sit up and slide over the gearshift lever to the passenger side. He got behind the wheel and as soon as Rencke was in the backseat, started the engine and took off. Just as they were turning the corner at the end of the block, McGarvey looked in the rearview mirror in time to see three pickup trucks filled with armed men pulling up in front of the building. They were bin Laden’s security forces, responding to a call for help.
How it would play out between them and the Pakistani intelligence officers who were closing in was anyone’s guess, but McGarvey was certain that the ISI had been cooperating with bin Laden and al-Quaida all along.
“Call your people at the airport and tell them that we’re on our way,” McGarvey told Rencke.
“Already did. The jet will be ready and cleared for takeoff when we get there,” Rencke said. He gave his handkerchief to Gloria to stanch the blood seeping from a gash in the side of her head.
“What happened?” McGarvey asked her.
Her eyes were slightly crossed, the pupils dilated. She had probably suffered a concussion. She shook her head. “I don’t know,” she mumbled. She seemed to pull herself together a little. “What’s going on? Did you get him?”
Something niggled at the back of Mc
Garvey’s head, but he nodded. “He’s dead, and we’re on our way out.”
Gloria closed her eyes. “Thank God, darling,” she said. “I was desperately worried about you getting away alive.” She opened her eyes again, and managed a smile. “Let’s go home now, okay?”
EPILOGUE
HONG KONG
Ten days later, on an early Friday evening, Rupert Graham was finishing dressing for dinner in the palatial bathroom in his suite at the super-luxurious Conrad Hotel on Queensway Road with its magnificent views of the harbor and the city. He had thought that after the Panama Canal, the York River, and finally Karachi, being beaten three times by McGarvey, that he would be filled with the overwhelming need to go after the bastard and destroy him. But it hadn’t happened. He was at peace with himself for the moment, though he knew that mood wouldn’t last forever.
He evened out his bow tie, and walked back into the bedroom to put on his Armani white dinner jacket. Four nights ago he had begun seeing Jillian’s face in his dreams again, and for the first time in possibly more than a year he had actually enjoyed a day of sightseeing as an ordinary tourist.
Ignoring the television that was tuned to CNN, he poured a glass of Krug champagne that the room service waiter had opened and put on ice, and went to the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the harbor. He raised the glass. “To Kirk McGarvey,” he spoke softly. “We will meet again in due time and when you least expect it.”
He smiled broadly, but then something intruded on his pleasant reverie. He turned back in time to see a photograph of a bearded bin Laden on the television screen. Three days ago a pair of U.S. Predator drones had fired two missiles into a compound in the Fish Harbor section of Karachi on a tip from unnamed sources that bin Laden had been attending a meeting there. It was presumed that he had been killed in the attack, but the Al Jazeera network had received an audiotape this morning that was identified as the voice of bin Laden, who claimed to be very much alive and planning the next major strike against America.
Graham raised his glass again, and drank. “But you are dead, old boy. There isn’t a chance that McGarvey could have missed.” He chuckled. “The king is dead, long live the king.”
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