Flash Points: A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  At twenty after the hour he entered the Yasanevsky Cemetery, where he mingled with a few people visiting the graves of loved ones, finally coming out from the west gate and across to the arched entrance to the park.

  A hundred meters inside the park, GRU-Spetsnaz Lieutenant Colonel Mikhail Mazayev, dressed in civilian clothes, sat on a park bench feeding pigeons corn from a small paper bag. Like Rankov he could have passed for an American, and in fact he had taken his degree in international studies at Stanford, where he’d perfected his accent and idiomatic English.

  He didn’t look like a spy, and especially not a spymaster in charge of agents serving in the military attaché departments at the Russian embassy in Washington and the UN in New York.

  To Rankov, who’d known him since the Academy of Foreign Intelligence, where they were students just one year apart, Mazayev looked more like a Wall Street banker than anything else, with his two-thousand-dollar Western tailored suits.

  “Did you have any trouble getting away?” Mazayev asked in English.

  “No. You?”

  Mazayev shook his head. “But I think the situation is coming to a head. It would mean that our positions could be in jeopardy.”

  “We’ve always known that was a possibility. But what makes you think so this time?”

  Mazayev didn’t answer for a minute or two, concentrating on feeding the birds that were flocked at his feet. The day was cool, the sky overcast, and a sharp breeze came from the east. All the way from Siberia, the unbidden thought came into his head.

  “I’ve been getting glimmerings of something else going on, and it’s got my people running around in circles.”

  “What glimmerings?” Rankov asked.

  “One of your Political Intelligence people thinks that there may have been some sort of a secret meeting in Beijing sometime in the past year.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I can’t tell you yet, we need to keep this thing compartmentalized if we’re to have any chance of keeping our heads intact. But there may have been at least three people, possibly intel reps supposedly from Washington.”

  Rankov was confused. “What do you mean, supposedly?”

  “I’ve talked to people I know and trust, and to a man they deny that any such meeting could ever have taken place. They were certain of it.”

  “But?”

  “My SVR contact says that the meeting did in fact take place at a small hotel just off Tiananmen Square. But the point is, a foreigner, possibly French, possibly English or even American, showed up, stayed less than ten minutes and left.”

  “Who was it?”

  “Unknown, but he was probably a professional. He lost his tail within one block of the hotel, and afterwards disappeared without a trace.”

  “Not one of ours.”

  “No one from the Consortium,” Mazayev said. “Which makes me think that something is going on we know nothing about.”

  Rankov was worried now. “When you say something, are you implying that this meeting could have concerned us?”

  “Yes. It’s likely that someone else may be trying to accomplish the same thing we are.”

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Our people never left New York,” Mazayev said. “They’re still there.”

  Something terribly cold clutched at Rankov’s chest. “They did make it to Florida but they failed. McGarvey may have survived.”

  “I’ve heard the same thing. But that’s the point, Vasha, our people didn’t do it. Someone else tried to assassinate the man, but may not know they failed.”

  “I was warned that we had to shut down at least for now. No more exchanges of information,” Rankov said.

  “I should fucking hope so. Until now this has just been an exercise in sharing on the old-boys network.”

  “With one goal.”

  “Yes. To discredit Weaver. The man’s a buffoon. If he isn’t reined in, he could get us into a shooting war that’d make al-Qaeda and ISIS minor pinpricks.”

  Rankov looked away.

  The Consortium, as just about everyone involved was calling the movement, had started with an American general by the name of Echo in the Pentagon who’d called his counterpart on the German chief of staff’s G2 section to chat about the upcoming election. It was before Weaver was thought to have any reasonable chance of winning the presidency.

  The discussion group—completely off the record—spread to the DGSE, France’s foreign intelligence service, then to Greece and Italy, and from there the Russian Federation in the person of Mazayev.

  To this point nearly three dozen mid-level intelligence personnel—mostly military officers—had become involved.

  They had discussed but soundly rejected the notion of assassinating the U.S. president, and therefore making a martyr of him.

  Finally they had agreed that the best approach would be to share information that when made public could make Weaver look like a complete idiot in the geopolitical arena.

  Like his calling Merkel the most weak-in-the-knees leader in Germany’s history. Or cutting off aid to Israel—let the Jews take care of themselves for a change! Or claiming that Putin was a homosexual. Or cutting off all business with Mexico and freezing their U.S. accounts until a wall was built on the southern border paid for with confiscated funds.

  And a dozen other real and manufactured gaffes.

  Individually any of it would have made little or no difference in the international arena or especially in the States. But over the long haul, Weaver would come across as a president who had no idea what he was doing, and never had.

  It was political sabotage at the crudest level.

  But the one sticking point from the beginning had been Kirk McGarvey, the former director of the CIA, and for several years the chief troubleshooter for the White House. If he came down on the side of the president—which the common consensus said was likely—he could bring down the entire plot starting with one name at a time.

  He had his own old-boys network—none of whom was in the Consortium. If he started contacting them with questions, everything could fall apart.

  The opinion was unanimous that job one was to eliminate McGarvey.

  “If not us, then who tried to kill him?” Rankov said.

  “I don’t know, but we’d better find out soon,” Mazayev said.

  “Why?”

  Mazayev started to reply, but then held off.

  “Let whoever it is try again.”

  “We don’t know their agenda.”

  “Who cares, as long as they’re doing what we want done? We’ll put out some feelers. Find out who this Englishman or Frenchman is.”

  “And?”

  “Help him, of course,” Rankov said. “Send one of our people from New York.”

  “We don’t need them this time,” Mazayev said. “We have someone at the CIA’s training facility.”

  “Why there?”

  “We’re told that if McGarvey actually did survive, he’d probably show up down there. He could end up as the victim of a training accident. Happens from time to time.”

  “Is our asset any good?”

  “One of the best, I’m told.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  McGarvey was strapping on his peg leg just before ten in the evening when the on-duty nurse came in.

  “Going somewhere?” she asked. Her name was Meade. She was a navy medic who’d been assigned to the Farm three years ago. She was short and thin, and looked as if a light breeze would knock her over. But she was tough, and everyone here—instructors and students alike—had a great deal of respect for her.

  “I’m going for a run.”

  “I’ll make a deal with you. Get back in bed and I’ll bring you a beer. I might even bring two and have one with you.”

  McGarvey pulled down his pants leg, stuck the Walther in the holster at the small of his back and pulled on his BDU blouse.

  Meade blocked the doorway. “Doc wants you here for another twenty-four hour
s.”

  “I haven’t tried the Ball Buster yet,” McGarvey said. He gave her a peck on the cheek and pushed past her.

  “Goddamnit,” Meade said. “If I have to call the CO, I will.”

  “Do it.”

  McGarvey went out the front way and headed in an easy lope toward the start of the A course—the Ball Buster—on the crest of a wooded hill about a quarter mile away.

  He’d told Salem what he was going to do tonight, and asked that word got out. But quietly. “We don’t want to make this a full-page ad.”

  “If you think someone is going to come after you, we can put up a surveillance drone. Infrareds will be easy to sort out, as cold as it it’ll be. Give you the heads-up.”

  “Someone would find out,” McGarvey said. “That’s what we train them to do. Think outside of the box. I’m doing this alone.”

  “Good luck,” Salem had said.

  “Thanks.”

  “No, I meant for the other guy. Try not to kill him.”

  “I’m the one with the peg leg. Anyway, I just want to ask a couple of questions.”

  “Yeah.”

  * * *

  The A course which ran just under five miles, twisted and turned its way through the Farm. A lot of it was uphill, on narrow paths covered in deep sand or loose gravel or even layers of slate, each piece about the size of a paperback book, and slippery even when it wasn’t raining.

  Some of it pushed through dense undergrowth with sharp brambles; the only way through was on the belly, the same as for the swamps and other water hazards on the path, which were covered with thick logs or rusty metal culverts with sharp edges and coated with slick slime.

  Two sections overlooking the river had to be fast-roped down fifty-foot drops, while in another place the trainee had to climb one hundred feet into a tree with only irregular handholds and drop, almost like a flying squirrel, to the branches of an adjacent tree and make it to the ground without breaking any important bones.

  One quarter-mile section was to be run in under two minutes—usually with a full pack. An automatic timer lit up when the trainee crossed the starting point, and flashed the time at the finish line.

  By that point most trainees had trouble even walking it in under five minutes.

  At the top of the first cliff down to the river, McGarvey knew that he wasn’t alone on the course, and he pulled up short and doubled over on his hands on his knees as if he were trying to catch his breath. His stump burned as if hot coals had been poured into the socket, and he thought that he was bleeding again.

  He listened for several long seconds, but there was nothing, though he was sure that he’d heard the sound of footfalls on loose gravel, and perhaps the swish of a branch.

  It had stopped raining and the breeze had died down so that sounds were not dampened.

  Mac stepped to the cliff’s edge, his back toward the way he’d just come, and to where whoever was following him could see a tempting target. Two ropes were rigged for the descent.

  Someone was watching from the darkness. He could almost feel their presence.

  He held his position as a chance breeze kicked up behind him for just a moment and then died. But he’d smelled something.

  Sweet. Almost cloying. Familiar.

  Gun oil.

  McGarvey pushed off the edge of the cliff, swiveling one-eighty as he fell, grabbing one of the fast ropes with his right hand before he got five feet.

  For just an instant the rope held but then it came loose or parted above and he started to fall again.

  His left foot snagged on a small outcropping of rock, the sudden pain slamming up through his stump to his hip, but then he pushed to the left with every ounce of his strength and managed to grab the second rope, nearly dislocating his shoulder before he pulled up short.

  Mindless of the pain he scrambled up to the top of the cliff, where he immediately rolled over and jumped to his feet.

  Grace Metal, the former marine lieutenant, stood at the edge of the cliff, half in a crouch, her eyes wide as if she were a deer caught in headlights.

  “You goddamned near bought it,” she said, her voice just above a whisper.

  “It was you behind me,” McGarvey said, pulling out his pistol.

  He was on her in two steps and she backed off, her hands outstretched.

  “Wait,” she said, still whispering.

  “Who are you working for?”

  “You don’t understand. There was someone else about fifty feet behind you. I don’t know who it is, but I saw him follow you from the clinic.”

  “I asked, who are you working for?”

  She batted the pistol away, and shouldered into Mac’s chest, knocking him off balance long enough for her to try to kick his bad leg out from under him.

  Mac stepped out of the way, and smashed the handle of his pistol onto the bridge of her nose; blood gushed almost immediately.

  She stepped back a pace, just out of his reach. “I’m telling you, Mr. Director, it’s not me who wants you dead.”

  “Who wants me dead and why?”

  “Whoever it was came down from New York. Or at least, we think that’s where he came from. But we don’t know who it is, only that he was sent here to kill you.”

  “Who’s the we?”

  “At this point that’s something you don’t need to know,” the marine lieutenant said. Her mouth and chin were covered in blood but she didn’t seem to notice. “Just that it’s probably not the same people who tried to kill you down in Sarasota.”

  “I’m not going to fuck around with you much longer, unless you start making sense.”

  “Both ropes were cut almost all the way through. I tried to get here before you went over, but you were too goddamned fast for me. Someone knew you were coming out here tonight, and you might want to think about it. Narrow the list down.”

  “Who do you work for, let’s start there?” McGarvey said.

  “I can’t tell you,” the woman said, when a hole appeared in her temple, her head snapped to the left, and she went over the edge of the cliff.

  McGarvey dropped to his good knee and swept his pistol left to right. The shooter had been somewhere down the path, and it had sounded to Mac like a pistol. Possibly 10mm.”

  Kyung-won appeared out of the darkness. “Jesus H. Christ, are you okay, Mac?” he asked.

  “She warned me that someone was behind us on the trail.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  McGarvey remained crouched where he was, his pistol trained on Kyung-won, who stood stock still, his 10mm Glock pointed down and to the left.

  “I thought I was too late,” Kyung-won said.

  “What the hell are you doing here?” McGarvey demanded. He didn’t lower his gun.

  “Following you, and it’s a goddamned good thing I was here or she would have killed you.”

  “She said that someone was on the trail behind us,” McGarvey repeated.

  “I’ll bet she did.”

  “She told me that someone had cut the ropes.”

  “I’m not going to drop this on the ground,” Kyung-won said. He bent down and carefully placed the pistol on a rock, his eyes never leaving McGarvey’s. When he straightened up, he spread his hands. “Ball’s in your court, Mac.”

  “How’d you know I was going to be here?”

  “Bob gave me the heads-up.”

  “And you suspected someone might be coming after me?”

  “It’s what he told me.”

  “Did he also tell you that I wanted someone to pop out of the woodwork so that I could find out who they worked for?”

  Kyung-won shrugged. “Didn’t seem to me like there was a whole hell of a lot of time. Either you were going down the rope or she was going to shoot you.”

  “She wasn’t pointing a gun at me,” McGarvey said. Nothing was adding up. But he was tired and his leg hurt all the way down to his phantom foot. He straightened up and holstered his pistol. “The Bureau will have to be called, and we’ll ne
ed to get our stories straight.”

  Kyung-won picked up his gun and holstered it after a brief hesitation. He was wary, but every NOC was jumpy after they’d come in from the cold. And his badland had been one of the worst, his crossing messy.

  McGarvey went to the edge of the cliff and looked down. It was dark, but he could see the marine lieutenant’s body on the rocks, just at the water’s edge.

  He looked over his shoulder. Kyung-won was right behind him.

  “That’s twice now someone’s tried to off you.”

  “There’ll probably be a third time.”

  “Then I’ll just have to keep watching your six.”

  * * *

  The camp commandant’s quarters were right behind the Admin building, connected by a gravel walkway. McGarvey knocked lightly on the door. It was after midnight, and no night ops were on the schedule so the Farm was quiet.

  “Come,” Salem said.

  “It’s me.” McGarvey eased the door open.

  The room was in darkness, the only light spilling from the stanchion overheads in front.

  “Who’s with you?”

  “Larry, and we have a problem.”

  “I expect you do,” Salem said.

  McGarvey had a twitchy feeling between his shoulder blades with Kyung-won at his back. But then, every NOC he’d ever dealt with gave him the same feeling. These people weren’t operators in the normal sense of the word. They were cheats and liars and con men who wormed their way into people’s lives with the sole purpose of turning their marks—their johns—into traitors.

  It usually started easy. The mark—possibly a computer operator—was having financial troubles. The NOC was a low-level rep for an American or European company doing business in badland. He and the mark were neighbors in an apartment complex. They’d exchanged hellos, eventually had a beer or two—imported beer that the NOC supplied—swapped dirty jokes. At some point the NOC was invited over to dinner to meet the wife and children.

  It was always a delicate operation at that stage. The NOC needed to get the john to accept something. A couple of steaks from the commissary, a bike for one of the kids, maybe even a video or magazine or newspaper or access to a Western website, something that was illegal.