“I’m getting out of here with you,” she said. “His people will kill me if I stay. Anyway, I think my chances are better on the outside.”
“Probably a good call,” he said. “I’ve taken out the two on the other side of the pool. But no one’s reacted.”
“As long as you’re in the house they won’t risk hitting Liu. They’re pretty good.”
“Ex-GAFE?”
She nodded. “They’ll be waiting for you to try for the front gate or go over the wall on the same side you came in.”
“What about the back gate?”
“They’ve got claymores back there, tied to motion sensors,” she said. “But I don’t think they’ll be expecting you to go over the wall behind the cabanas. It’s probably why they put only two of their guys back here.”
“Okay, cover me,” McGarvey said.
“No, you’re a better shot,” Gloria said. “And I don’t think they’ll open fire on me, not at first.”
Before McGarvey could object, she stepped out onto the pool deck, the pistol at her side, and headed toward the cabanas.
She got halfway around before someone in the darkness to the left called out something to her. McGarvey couldn’t make out what it was, but Gloria suddenly ducked down and sprinted for the cabanas, firing over her shoulder as fast as she could pull the trigger.
McGarvey was out the door, laying down a line of fire in the same direction in which Gloria was shooting, as he followed her in a broken-field run.
The guards hiding in the shadows of the east wing of the compound began returning fire, first at Gloria and then at McGarvey when they could see that he hadn’t brought Liu along as a hostage.
Gloria just made it to the end of the last cabana when she was hit and went down, scrambling the last couple of feet on her hands and knees around the corner.
McGarvey emptied the magazine toward the east wing just as he reached the last cabana and ducked around the corner.
The side of Gloria’s T-shirt was covered in blood, but she’d managed to swap out magazines in the Walther.
“Are you hit bad?” he asked as he dug a spare magazine out of his backpack and reloaded the Steyr.
“I’ll live,” she said tersely.
“Can you make it over the wall?”
“I think so.”
The compound had fallen silent. McGarvey stuck his head around the corner for just an instant, and drew immediate fire from the house. He ducked back, held the Steyr around the corner, and fired off a quick burst in the direction of the shooter.
When he looked down, Gloria was grinning up at him. “You’re damned good,” she said.
McGarvey laid his rifle aside, pulled the grapnel out of his pack, and tossed it up over the wall. Like before it caught on the first try.
“On three, go,” he told her, snatching the rifle.
She got painfully to her feet, stuffed the pistol into the waistband of her jeans, and grabbed the rope. She nodded. “One … two … three,” she said, and she started up.
McGarvey held the rifle around the corner and fired a continuous burst as Gloria scrambled up the rope and disappeared over the top.
The return fire came immediately, most of it over the top of the cabana or into the lintel. Their angle from the east wing was all wrong, making it impossible to hit anyone on the wall. It was a weakness in the compound’s security, and Gloria had known enough about the place to understand what it meant for them.
But by now Liu’s men would understand they had made a mistake, and would be changing their tactics.
McGarvey switched out his last magazine, and peered around the corner just long enough to see two men sprinting across the pool deck in front of the open sliders to the living room. He took them down with two short bursts, then emptied the magazine on the east wing.
Slinging the weapon over his shoulder, he reached the wall in three steps, grabbed the rope, and started up, more fire coming from the east wing. But then he was over the top and on the ground on the other side.
Gloria was trying to struggle to her feet, the left side of her T-shirt soaked with blood, and some black fluid.
McGarvey helped her up, but she tried to push him away.
“I’ll cover you,” she said, her voice weak.
“We’re getting out of here together.”
“I’m not going back to stand trial.”
“I’m pretty good at coming up with cover stories,” McGarvey said. “Been doing it all my life. I’m taking you home.”
She winced in pain when he gathered her up in his arms, but she didn’t cry out.
“Watch my back,” he told her as he started down a shallow slope to the edge of the road, trying his best to jar her as little as possible.
At the bottom he searched the top of the wall, but nothing moved, nor had anyone come out of the main gate.
“Anything moves, shoot it,” he said.
Holding her as gently as possible, he sprinted across the road to the thick willows at the water’s edge.
Halfway across, Gloria started shooting, squeezing off one methodical shot after the other, emptying the magazine by the time they reached the lake and the cover of the willows.
But they’d taken no return fire, which bothered him.
Gloria’s body went slack and she almost slipped out of his arms. He went down on one knee and laid her on the damp ground. Her eyelids were fluttering, and when he checked her pulse at the side of her neck, it was weak and rapid. He pulled up her T-shirt to check the wound, which was leaking a thick, dark fluid. She’d been hit in the liver. The pain must have been brutal, and she had to know she was already as good as dead. Even if she had been on an operating table her chances would have been slim.
She stopped breathing with a little sigh, and her body went totally slack.
“Goddamn it,” McGarvey said softly.
He put much of the blame on her father’s shoulders. There’d never been any love between them, and he’d never bothered being there for her when she’d needed him the most after her mother’s death. The only question left in his mind was who had ordered him taken out and why. Either it was Liu, to stop him from saying anything more about Gloria, or it was Cuban intelligence that had finally gotten to him. Either way didn’t really matter, because even at the end he hadn’t stepped up to the plate for his daughter. He hadn’t defended her, as most fathers would have done for their daughters, when McGarvey had come calling. All he could say was that he didn’t trust her.
McGarvey took his pistol from Gloria’s dead fingers and checked the load. It was empty, and there were no more magazines for it or for the Steyr.
At that moment someone shouted something from the road in front of the compound, and a car came out of the gate, its headlights flashing on the road above.
EIGHTY-SIX
XOCHIMILCO
No doubt they had found his car by now and the route he had taken approaching the compound. And they would realize that he and Gloria were trapped in the willows.
What they couldn’t know was that Gloria was dead, and McGarvey was totally out of ammunition. They would be cautious, which gave him a slight advantage.
He speed-dialed Rencke, who picked up on the first ring. “I lost your signal for a while. Were you inside?”
“Yes,” McGarvey said, keeping his voice low. Someone had entered the willows and was heading his way. “Liu is dead, but I got his laptop. If I can get it to you, we should be able to find out what the hell he’s been up to down here. In the meantime I’m in a corner. I’m going to even the odds, but I’ll be needing an extraction real soon.” He explained the situation on the ground.
“A DEA chopper is standing by. I’ll have it to you in under ten minutes,” Rencke said. “It’s a gunship, but this’ll be a real quiet drug bust.”
“I don’t know how many of Liu’s people are closing in on my position, but it sounds like five or six of them,” McGarvey said. Gloria had lied to him about the number of armed men
in the house.
“Soon as you hear the helicopter, call them in on your position through this connection. I’ll patch it through,” Rencke said. “Are the girls with you?”
“They’re both dead. Liu killed Shahrzad, and Gloria took a hit helping me out of the compound. I have her body with me now.”
“Oh, wow, she was clean after all?” Rencke asked.
“Yeah, just a little confused,” McGarvey said. Something moved in the brush less than ten feet away. “Gotta go,” McGarvey whispered. He shut off the sat phone, laid it and his backpack beside Gloria’s body, and slithered the few feet into the lake’s ice-cold water.
He swam twenty feet along the shoreline in the direction of the compound before he came ashore. He quietly made his way into the thick willows and headed back toward where he’d left Gloria.
Someone called out from the general direction where he’d hidden his car, but there was no answer.
It took only a couple of minutes to get back to where he’d started. Two of Liu’s men were there. One of them was bent over Gloria’s body. He’d found the sat phone and backpack and was examining them while the other one watched. Both of them were armed with AKMs.
McGarvey stepped into the narrow clearing. “That’s my property. I’d like to have it back.”
Both men spun around, bringing their weapons to bear.
“You should have kept running,” the one farther from Gloria’s body said. “You’re not going to enjoy what’s going to happen next.”
“Liu is dead. Who’s giving the orders now?”
“You’ll see,” the ex-GAFE operator said.
The other one held up the cell phone. “Nobody’s coming to help a CIA gringo. Mexico belongs to us.”
“It that why you two were drummed out of the army, because you’re patriots?”
“Hijo de puta,” the nearest man swore. His finger tightened on the trigger at the same moment that McGarvey snatched the end of the gun barrel and twisted it out of his hands.
“Roberto,” the man by Gloria’s body shouted.
The weapon fired one short burst into the trees just as McGarvey shoved the man’s body backward off balance toward his partner, who’d also opened fire. Three rounds slammed into the ex-GAFE operator’s back.
McGarvey stepped to the left as he flipped the AKM end over end, catching it by the pistol grip. He squeezed off one round and hit the operator in the middle of the face, destroying his nose, blowing off the back of his head, dropping him backward on top of Gloria’s body.
The night fell ominously silent.
McGarvey pulled the man’s body off Gloria’s and found two spare thirty-round magazines between the two of them, plus the bullets left in each weapon. He figured he was going to have company homing in on this position any minute now, and he would need all the firepower he could gather.
He transferred the remaining bullets from one of the weapons to the other, stuffed the spare magazines in his pockets along with the sat phone, and slung his pack over his shoulder.
Gloria’s body was covered in her own blood plus the blood from the ex-GAFE operator who’d died on top of her. He lifted her body in his arms, awkwardly picked up the AKM, and headed up toward the road, and at that moment he thought he heard a cyclic noise in the distance to the northeast.
He pulled up short and held his breath to listen, but the sound was gone. It came back almost immediately, and this time knew it was the DEA helicopter Rencke had sent for him. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency had maintained a presence here in Mexico for the past several years, working alongside the local authorities in drug-interdiction raids. This flight would supposedly be logged as a routine drug bust. When Liu’s body was found in the compound along with the bodies of the ex-GAFE muscle, the incident would be reported as a shoot-out between rival drug lords.
Whatever names were on the arrest report, McGarvey’s would not appear. Nor would Gloria’s name show up on the list of KIA.
But first he had to get out of here in one piece with Liu’s laptop.
He gently laid Gloria’s body on the ground, took out the sat phone, and speed-dialed Rencke’s number.
“Gotcha,” Rencke answered. “What’s your situation?”
“Two bad guys are down, and the chopper’s inbound.”
“I’m patching you over now,” Rencke said. “Just keep your head down. They’re going to take out anything that moves.”
“Do it,” McGarvey said.
He left the sat phone on and dropped down beside Gloria’s body to wait.
Within twenty seconds the pitch of the helicopter’s blades changed, and suddenly it was screaming at treetop level just above the road, firing its 7.62 mm machine guns.
It was past in seconds, making its turn just above the compound. McGarvey could see it above the trees, its side hatch open, as it fired at someone inside the compound’s walls, then came back over the road.
In under a minute the one-sided fight was over and the Seahawk 60F settled down for a landing on the road, the willows bent over to the ground in a large circular swath.
Rencke was on the phone. “Mac, it’s clear now. They’re waiting for you.”
“We need to get out of the country asap.”
“The Gulfstream is warming up at the airport,” Rencke promised. “But you gotta hustle—Seguridad is taking an interest.”
“On my way,” McGarvey replied tersely.
He lifted Gloria’s body in his arms and made his way up to the waiting helicopter, leaving the AKM behind.
“It’s McGarvey!” he shouted. “Coming out.”
Gloria’s head was lolling back as he hurried up the shallow slope through the trees, her eyes half open, her slack-jawed mouth moving as if she were trying to tell him something. Tell him that everything would turn out for the best now, because in the end she had done something good for the only man she had ever loved.
“Goddamn it,” McGarvey said again. “Goddamn it to hell.”
EIGHTY-SEVEN
CIA HEADQUARTERS
Twelve hours later when McGarvey entered the DCI’s office on the seventh floor of the Building, Adkins, Whittaker, McCann, and the CIA’s general counsel, Carleton Patterson, were seated around the large coffee table at one side of the room, having afternoon coffee.
“Here he is finally,” McCann said.
“We’re glad to see you, Kirk,” Adkins said, and it was obvious he was relieved.
“Where’s Otto?” McGarvey asked. “Is he having trouble with Liu’s computer?”
“He called just a minute ago, said he’s on his way up,” McCann said. “Have you heard about Gil Perry?”
“Did you find him?”
“I should say. With his head blown off. Self-inflicted.” McCann glanced at Adkins and Whittaker. “Couldn’t take the pressure.”
“He was dirty,” McGarvey said. “And so was Updegraf. They were shaking down Liu for a lot of money, threatening to go public with proof that he’d raped and killed some young women in New York and here in Washington.”
“But there never was any proof,” Patterson said. “At least none that the FBI could find. And wouldn’t it be likely that Liu knew this?”
“Almost certainly,” McGarvey said. He was sitting across from McCann, who was giving him a speculative look. Perry had been one of his rising stars, and it was clear by his expression that he put some of the blame on McGarvey.
“Then why pay the blackmail if that was the case?” McCann demanded. “It makes no sense.”
“Because Liu was up to something else, something big that was apparently earning him some serious money. Whatever it was, Otto started picking up the signs six months ago, and his programs started going lavender.”
“Which is why we called you,” Adkins said.
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” McCann said. “What was the man up to that had Rencke all in a twitter? Beyond his usual eccentricities, that is.”
“I don’t know,” McGarvey admitted.
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“Good heavens, you assassinated a Chinese citizen without knowing if he was guilty of anything other than sexual indiscretion?”
“That’s right,” McGarvey said. He was starting to get tired of the DDO, who in his estimation was an idiot, very much like another man who’d sat in that same chair a number of years ago. They were wannabe spies who hadn’t a clue what they were doing, or how to run what on a good day was the best clandestine service on earth.
McCann turned to Adkins. “What the hell are we going to say when the Chinese government starts asking questions?” he demanded.
“It’s us who should be asking Beijing to explain why they didn’t put Liu away years ago,” Rencke said coming through the door. He looked like hell, his long hair flying everywhere, the shoelaces on his dirty sneakers undone, his eyes bloodshot. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in a week.
“Did you crack Liu’s laptop?” McGarvey asked.
“Piece of cake,” Rencke said. “And I’m telling you guys right now that we’re in some serious shit. There’s trouble right here in River City.”
“You’re putting credence in what you got off some laptop computer that McGarvey stole, without any corroborating evidence?” McCann asked.
“Shut up, Howard,” Adkins told his DDO. He turned back to Rencke. “What have you come up with?”
“Liu got himself into a financial bind, big-time,” Rencke said. “So big, in fact, that his own government was trying to figure out what the hell to do with him. His family and his connections are solid gold, and the intel he was gathering for Beijing was nothing short of stellar.”
“We know all of that,” Whittaker interjected. “Which is why he was connected with the drug people. He was helping launder a lot of money for a percentage, wasn’t he?”
“Exactly. But it wasn’t enough money by a long shot, and he was heading toward enough trouble on that score alone that he was starting to back out of the business. But he had developed another operation that was even better for him.”
“Is that what he started to work on ten years ago in Mexico City?” McGarvey asked.
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