The Cabal

by David Hagberg

  “Pete’s on her way back to you,” he said. “Anything from Dick?”

  “He got out with Security right on his tail,” Otto said. “But he’s clear and I’m talking him in.”

  “I’m going to talk to Foster now and try to see what’s going on. But I won’t have a lot of time, because as soon as the Bureau and Marshals get out here they’re going to arrest me, and I’m not going to run or resist. We need the situation to come to a head.”

  “It is, Mac,” Otto said. “Dick talked to Ron Loring who’s the Watch commander tonight. They’re monitoring a situation between Mainland China and Taiwan. All the missiles out there are being spun up, and everybody’s at Defcon two. Could get real hot any minute.”

  “We knew it was going to involve China again, but there’d have to be a trigger before anyone would actually launch. Beijing’s not going to risk attacking Taiwan unless it had a good reason to do so. They’d end up the pariahs of the world. Probably slam their economy back fifty years. We’d certainly stop trading with them.”

  “Maybe it’s just that simple. Maybe that’s exactly what Foster wants to happen.”

  “Still wants for a trigger,” McGarvey said. “Go back to Remington’s list, and whatever you downloaded from David’s computer, and run all the names from the State Department and especially the Pentagon, see what those guys have been up to.”

  “I’m on it,” Otto said, and McGarvey could hear the strain in his friend’s voice.

  “We’ve come this far, we’re not backing down now.”

  “Watch your back, kemo sabe, I shit you not.”

  “Keep me posted,” McGarvey said and he called Whittaker’s cell phone.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Boberg is down, and my partner has left. It’s just me now.”

  “Turn around and walk away, Mac, and you just might live to see the morning,” Whittaker said. “There’s nothing here for you now.”

  “I know that the Chinese and Taiwan militaries have gone to Defcon two. Their missiles are being warmed up right now.”

  Whittaker didn’t reply.

  McGarvey stepped around the corner and walked to the steps leading to the veranda, his pistol in plain sight. “I’m coming to the front door. If someone is watching from inside, you’ll see that I’m tossing my pistol onto the ground.”

  “Do it,” Whittaker said.

  McGarvey ejected the magazine, tossed it off the porch, then ejected the single shell and tossed it and the gun away. “If you shoot an unarmed man you’ll have a tough time explaining it, no matter how many friends you think you have in high places. I just want to talk to Foster before I’m arrested.” He turned away as he pocketed the still connected cell phone.

  The night was very quiet, no wind, no traffic noises, no boat horns in the river. Katy had always liked this time of the evening, just before bed. She said she’d never been afraid of the dark; in fact, she’d always felt cocooned, protected, safe, ready to dream.

  It would take everything within his power not to kill them all, starting with Foster. Vengeance never solved anything, Louise had told him, but he didn’t know if he could believe it, or if he had ever believed it.

  The door opened inward to a dark stair hall. “Keep your hands in plain sight and come in,” Whittaker said.

  “First turn on the lights.”

  “No.”

  “Then you’ll just have to shoot me,” McGarvey said. “You’re a good shot, and I’m sure Sergeant Schilling is an expert marksman. The advantage is yours. And you’ll even get credit for stopping me. I just want to talk.”

  A moment later the lights in the living room came on and spilled into the stair hall. Whittaker stood back from the open door, a standard military-issue 9mm Beretta in his hand, no silencer to degrade its accuracy.

  There was no sign of Foster or of Sergeant Schilling.

  “You wanted to talk to Mr. Foster, and he agreed,” Whittaker said. “Come in, Mac.”

  “Only my friends call me that,” McGarvey said, and he walked into the stair hall and stopped just a couple of feet from Whittaker, whose gun hand was rock solid.

  Foster stood just within the living room to the right, a disdainful but curious expression on his round, almost bulldog face. He had no intention of talking, and it was obvious by the way he held himself: tense, his eyes narrowed.

  Sergeant Schilling stood just beyond the living room entry, in the lee of the grand staircase. He was pointing the Italian-made Franchi SPAS-12 shotgun in McGarvey’s direction. Even in the hands of an amateur the weapon was lethal out to a range of more than forty yards, and Schilling looked like anything but.

  McGarvey took a step forward and to his right putting Whittaker between him and Schilling.

  “You should have left when you had the chance,” Whittaker said.

  “You knew I couldn’t leave it.”

  “The hell of it is that I always liked you. All of us did when you were the DCI.”

  “But why Arlington, David? Can you just tell me that much?”

  “We never meant to hurt Kathleen or Elizabeth. The IED was meant for you.”

  McGarvey nodded, because he knew that Whittaker was telling the truth. “What about China?”

  “Enough,” Foster said.

  Whittaker raised his pistol so that it was pointed directly at McGarvey’s face.

  “I’m wearing a wire,” McGarvey said softly. “Otto’s recorded everything including our telephone conversations, and the two calls made from the house phone to the Bureau and the Marshals. Maybe you want to make a deal before it’s too late.”

  “He’s lying,” Foster said.

  Whittaker shook his head, a sick look on his face. “No, he’s not.”

  “Anything new?” McGarvey said.

  “One of our B-525 made an emergency landing at Hsinchu Air Base about six hours ago,” Otto came back.

  “Who’s he talking to?” Foster demanded.

  “Hsinchu Air Base, Taiwan,” McGarvey said. “Ring a bell?”

  Whittaker went visibly pale. “Christ.”

  “The crew off-loaded something into one of the 499th Tactical Fighter wing’s hangars,” Otto said. “Could have been missiles.”

  “Is it possible that Chinese intelligence saw what was going on?” McGarvey asked.

  “That’d be as close to a hundred percent as you could get.”

  “Otto has found out about the B-525 emergency landing out there. Whatever the crew off-loaded could have been nuclear missiles, or at least that’s what Beijing probably believes.”

  “Enough,” Foster roared. “Get that thing from him!”

  Whittaker stepped forward and Schilling shouted something, but McGarvey moved left, away from the Beretta’s muzzle and snatched the pistol from the acting DCI’s hand.

  Schilling fired three shots, the lead pellets shredding Whittaker’s back, destroying most of his spine, and violently shoving him forward.

  McGarvey fell back, using Whittaker’s body as a shield, as Schilling fired at least six more times; a few of the pellets hit McGarvey’s left shoulder and arm before he managed to fire two snap shots, one going wide, the other hitting the sergeant in center mass.

  SEVENTY-FOUR

  Pete had just about reached the highway where she’d parked Louise’s SUV when she heard the gunshots, including what sounded like an automatic shotgun, and she pulled up short and looked back.

  The night was suddenly very silent, and she swayed on her feet trying to come to a decision. Mac could be down; in an unknown situation inside the house the odds stacked against him. And leaving him like this wasn’t an option. She’d lost one partner she didn’t want to lose this one.

  She took two steps back the way she had come, but stopped.

  “Goddamnit,” she muttered. This was bad, had been from the get-go. The man had lost his entire family; saw them murdered right in front of his eyes. And now she was supposed to turn her back on him?

  She turned a
round again and ran the rest of the way through the woods to the Toyota, where she got her cell phone from her purse and called Otto.

  “He made me leave, but there was gunfire,” she blurted.

  “Mac’s okay for now,” Otto said. “He took out Foster’s bodyguard, and Whittaker is down. No one else is at the house.”

  “Does he need help?”

  “No. But the Bureau and Marshals are on their way, so you’ve got to beat feet right now. Please tell me that you’re in the car, or close to it, and not still up at the house. We don’t know where you are. Louise had to switch the satellite back to the ship, someone was getting snoopy.”

  “I’m in the car,” Pete said.

  “Then get back here as fast as you can.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah,” Otto said. “Some really bad shit is just about ready to happen. Maybe a shooting war between China and Taiwan.”

  SEVENTY-FIVE

  McGarvey disentangled himself from Whittaker’s ravaged body, got to his feet, and, throwing Foster a quick glance to make sure the man wasn’t armed, cautiously approached Schilling’s inert form, and kicked the shotgun away.

  “He’s dead,” Foster said. “Both of them are.”

  McGarvey safetied the Beretta and laid it on the hall table. “You must have expected casualties, otherwise why did you hire Administrative Solutions?”

  “I underestimated you, Mr. McGarvey. We all did, except for poor David. But he was in over his head, and I think he was probably getting cold feet at the last minute.”

  The front door was still half open and in the far distance McGarvey heard sirens, and perhaps the rhythmic thump of helicopter rotors.

  “China,” McGarvey said.

  “It’s too late to be stopped, you know,” Foster said. “Has been since before Mexico City.” He was dressed in a natty blue blazer, khaki slacks, and an open-neck white silk shirt. He’d been drinking, his square-jawed face flushed. “In any event, what’s about to happen has been inevitable, actually, for a number of years. When the Soviet Union disintegrated under the weight of historical pressure, China was next. Always had been next.”

  “Why? To what point do you risk innocent people, perhaps millions, or tens of millions?”

  “There are no innocents.”

  McGarvey had to wonder about Foster and his type, because Osama bin Laden had told him the very same thing shortly before 9/11. What did they believe in? Certainly not religion, leastways not in bin Laden’s case. Was Foster’s god, money?

  “You’ve come this far and you still don’t understand, do you?” Foster said. “I can see it written all over your face. You’re confused. You of all people . . . you’ve spent just about all of your adult life fighting for the same things I’m fighting for. And you’ve sacrificed more than any man should be able to bear. You’ve defied your superiors time and again because you knew you were right and they were wrong. You felt it in your gut because you have an extremely strong sense of fair play. You’ve even gone against the direct orders of the president. Why? Just answer that.”

  The sirens were much closer now, and the helicopters—he could make out two of them—were coming in for a landing.

  “If China actually attacks Taiwan this evening, what advantage will it bring you?”

  “Not me, Mr. McGarvey. The United States.”

  “China is no military threat to us.”

  “No, but they are on the verge of buying us. Purchasing the resources of a nation teetering on bankruptcy. They’ve already started. And for pennies on the dollar, a fact that most Americans are not aware of. How many people in Iowa or New Mexico or New York, for that matter, can name China’s top ten cities and where they’re located? How many of our citizens are totally ignorant of China’s long, rich history? How many know the threat they pose to our oil supplies? Or to a host of other natural resources we cannot do without?”

  “You don’t want to work it out in the marketplace,” McGarvey said. The helicopters were on the ground now, and he could hear people just outside. “You never did. Mexico City, Pyongyang, and now this incident with the B-525 unloading something in Taiwan for the benefit of Mainland China’s intelligence apparatus was meant to shove Beijing so hard it had no other choice but to react. Stupidly, blindly, but it had to do something.”

  “And it’s working,” Foster said, triumph in his eyes.

  “But we know about it.” he said.

  “You’re the only man who could have stopped us, and now it’s too late for you. Far too late.”

  McGarvey turned toward the front door as FBI agents in SWAT team dark camos, automatic weapons at the ready, poured inside.

  Steve Ansel and Doug Mellinger, the two U.S. Marshals he’d taken down at Arlington after the explosion, came in, their pistols drawn. Mellinger was wearing a knee brace and he walked with a heavy limp. They both wore dark blue Windbreakers with U.S. Marshals Service in yellow on the back.

  Mellinger came right up to McGarvey. “Innocent until proved guilty, that was your line after we picked you up at Andrews.”

  McGarvey just looked him in the eye, but said nothing.

  “Turns out we didn’t have to prove anything,” Mellinger said, nearly shaking with anger. “You did it for us.” He smashed the butt of his pistol into McGarvey’s jaw.

  “Doug, for Christ’s sake,” Ansel said, and he grabbed Mellinger’s arm and pulled him away.

  McGarvey had expected the blow, and he had rolled with it as best he could, but he saw stars in his eyes, and tasted blood in his mouth.

  “No need for any of that,” Foster told them. “Who’s in charge here?”

  “We are,” Ansel said. “Are you all right, sir?”

  “A little shaken, but as you can see my bodyguard has been shot to death, along with Mr. Whittaker, and you’ll find another body outside somewhere, Calvin Boberg who was employed by Administrative Solutions to provide me with security.”

  “The Bureau’s forensics people are en route, and we’re going to keep this as a federal crime scene. No locals.”

  “Very well. They will have my complete cooperation.”

  “Ask him why I’m here,” McGarvey said.

  “The man is wearing a wire, though I’m not quite sure who is monitoring it,” Foster said.

  “In my left ear,” McGarvey said, and Mellinger yanked it out, pulling the wires from the control pack behind his ear.

  “He came here to assassinate me, because for some reason he got the notion that the unfortunate terrorist attack at Arlington Cemetery in which his wife and daughter were killed was ordered by me personally.” Foster shook his head. “The man is obviously deranged.”

  “Yeah,” Mellinger said. He holstered his weapon and cuffed McGarvey. “I told you before that I didn’t like traitors,” he said. “I like them even less now. Especially guys like you who had it all.”

  “And you might search the grounds for a second gunman. I think he indicated that he had help.”

  “Who came with you?” Mellinger asked.

  “Aren’t you going to read me my rights?” McGarvey said. “You’re just doing your job. And if it’s any consolation, I’m sorry about your leg, but I wasn’t thinking very straight just then.” He turned and looked at Foster. “It’s almost over for you and your Friday Club. We have most of the names and we know what you’re trying to do.” He smiled. “It won’t work.”

  “I don’t like traitors who hate their country either,” Foster said. “Kindly remove this piece of garbage from my house.”

  Ansel took him from beneath the elbow and they walked out of the house, and across the lawn to the helicopter pad where two machines—one the FBI’s the other the U.S. Marshals’—were idling. He only hoped that Pete was able to get clear and that she and Adkins would make it to Otto’s. Everything was riding on them now.

  SEVENTY-SIX

  It was late when Pete finally showed up at the brownstone, and Otto buzzed her in after she parked the Toyota in th
e back, out of sight from the street. Adkins had already arrived and was hunched over Otto’s shoulder studying something on the monitor, and Louise was seated at one of the other monitors.

  They all looked up when she walked in.

  “Is he okay?” she asked. She was dead tired, and her hip and leg were on fire.

  “The Marshals took him, presumably to a holding cell somewhere in D.C., but he’s not showing up on any of my search engines,” Otto said. “He sounded good before they took his comms unit and found the cell phone in his pocket.”

  “Did he actually get to talk to Foster?”

  Otto nodded. “Yeah, and the guy comes across as a wacko, but he has so many friends that no one has been willing to challenge him.”

  “He’s sending the message that people want to hear,” Adkins said. “No one trusts their government any longer, and that’s not just the president’s approval rating, it especially includes Congress. Most people think they’re a bunch of crooks.”

  “And in a lot of instances, that’s true,” Louise said. “You read about it in the newspapers and see it on television practically every day.”

  Pete was havng trouble keeping on track. “So he’s got the message. What are we doing to find Mac?”

  “He’s okay for now,” Otto said. “He’s in federal custody, no one is going to hurt him.”

  “Come on, you said yourself you can’t find him. If Foster is as crazy as you say he is, why wouldn’t he order his people to shoot Mac in the back of the head while trying to escape? Problem solved.”

  “Too many witnesses who are not in the Friday Club,” Otto said. “There’s only about three dozen of them and they’re spread out. So take it easy.”

  “Who were the arresting officers?”

  “As far as I can tell Douglas Mellinger and Steven Ansel. Mellinger’s on the list we got from David’s computer and Remington’s flash drive.”

  “They’ll kill him,” Pete said.

  “No,” Otto said. “Ansel’s clean, and he’s just doing his job because so far as he knows Mac will be indicted for treason, and there was a warrant for his arrest. Same with the FBI guys who made the bust.”