Abyss km-15

by David Hagberg

  “But you ordered it.”

  “The house, not the woman,” Anne Marie said. “And now I want to make it up to you.” She stood up and came around the couch, dressed in a nearly sheer negligee, her legs outlined in the dim light coming from outside.

  “How?”

  “I’m worth a great deal of money—”

  “How will you bring Martine back to life?”

  “My dear boy, that is quite impossible,” Anne Marie said, almost laughing but stopped. “There are other women. The world is full of us.”

  DeCamp had learned dispassion from Colonel Frazer and later it had been drummed into his head in the Battalion. The man who kills with precision but without passion is the man who will live to walk from the battlefield. But at this moment the blackest of rages that he’d ever imagined could hit a human being threatened to blot out nearly everything he’d ever learned on and off the battlefield.

  Anne Marie, sensing some of this, raised a hand. “Don’t be a fool. Think of the money you’d be throwing away by killing me. Fabulous money beyond your wildest dreams.”

  “Beware the anger of the legions,” DeCamp mumbled before he raised his pistol and fired one round, catching Anne Marie in the center of her forehead, driving her body backwards onto a glass coffee table that shattered.

  “Well done,” Wolfhardt’s voice came from a speakerphone across the room. “She was telling the truth, it was an accident. And she was telling the truth about the money. May we talk?”

  DeCamp stepped away from the door. “Where are you?”

  “In the bedroom to your left. May we talk?”

  “Yes.”

  “Toss your pistol straight ahead over the back of the couch.”

  DeCamp hesitated for just a second but did as he was told.

  The hall door behind DeCamp opened and Wolfhardt, holding a 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol expertly in his left hand, came in. “Considering your abilities I thought it best to lie about where I was,” he said.

  “An advantage,” DeCamp told him. “Now what?”

  “She was telling the truth about Ms. Renault. We thought she was still in Paris. It wasn’t our intention to kill her.”

  “Now what?” DeCamp asked again.

  “More work, if you’ll cooperate.”

  “For the Saudis? Al-Naimi?”

  “Yes, and they have even more money than her,” Wolfhardt said, nodding toward Anne Marie’s body. “And a longer reach, and collectively a greater intelligence, more connections, more power here in the Middle East and everywhere else.”

  “Including Washington?” DeCamp asked, wanting to keep Wolfhardt engaged.

  The German laughed. “Of course. Why do you ask?”

  “I was thinking about disappearing there.”

  “You are a clever bastard,” Wolfhardt said. “What else are you carrying?”

  DeCamp started to move away, drawing the German half a step forward, and he pulled out his KA-BAR knife with his right hand and turned back, parrying Wolfhardt’s gun hand, the single silenced shot popping into one of the sliding glass doors, and plunged the knife into the man’s chest, between the ribs, hitting the heart center mass.

  He stepped back to avoid the initial gush of blood and looked into Wolfhardt’s eyes as the man sank dead to the floor.

  “As I told your boss, beware the anger of the legions,” DeCamp said.

  He left the penthouse, careful not to step in any of the blood, and took the elevator down to the garage. A few minutes later he was driving away from the building and heading for the highway back to Abu Dhabi, his work finished. Melbourne, he thought. He would go to ground in Australia where he would wait to see what shook out.

  SEVENTY-EIGHT

  McGarvey and Gail, dressed in hazmat suits, took a golf cart up A1A to the north end of the plant where Eve was inside one of the construction trailers poring over blueprints of the transformer yard with Townsend and Strasser. They looked up, startled, when the door opened.

  “Do we have breakout up here?” Townsend demanded, and Eve looked as if she were a deer caught in some headlights.

  McGarvey took off his hood. “You’re clean, I didn’t want to be recognized.”

  “Mac,” Eve said with obvious relief and pleasure. “I was getting worried. Have you seen the crowd?”

  “A hundred thousand people are on their way, and it’s why I’m here.”

  Gail had taken off her hood. “Before anything happens we need to get you back up to Vero. But just for tonight.”

  Townsend was angry. “What the hell are you talking about? Will there be another attack?”

  “Schlagel is supposed to be here around six, and once he gets his people fired up there’s no telling what might happen,” McGarvey explained. “But Eve is one of his main targets, so I want her out of the line of fire. And if I could move the power plant I’d do that too.”

  “Well, I’m sure as hell not leaving,” Townsend said, and Strasser nodded but he didn’t seem to be quite as enthusiastic.

  “I can’t leave like this,” Eve said. “I mean how long is this supposed to go on? Vanessa is under repairs right now and InterOil is promising they should have her up here within a week. Are those crazy people going to keep on attacking? Killing more people?”

  “It stops tonight,” McGarvey said.

  “We’ve lost Lisa and Don already, and all the others. I’m not going to put more of my people in harm’s way,” Eve said, her voice rising.

  “It ends tonight,” McGarvey said again, and it finally penetrated for her and for Townsend and Strasser.

  “The National Guard isn’t going to stop a crowd that big, not unless they mean to block the road with tanks and actually fire into them,” Townsend said. “And getting Dr. Larsen up to Vero is out, because Schlagel’s people are blocking A1A from the north as well.”

  “Actually Colonel Scofield is going to pull back and let them past the barriers.”

  “Gives them access to South Service,” Gail said.

  “And everywhere else,” Strasser said. “Including places that are contaminated. A lot of people will get hurt. We can’t allow that to happen under any circumstance.”

  “I agree,” McGarvey said. “But at the right moment we’re going to have Schlagel dress in a hazmat suit and meet me in the South Service lobby.”

  Townsend was skeptical. “What makes you think he’ll agree to something like that? What’s in it for him?”

  “I’ve been a thorn in his side ever since the first attack here, and the attack on Vanessa Explorer.”

  “Goddamnit, stop right there,” Townsend said. “Because if I’m reading you right, you’re telling us that Schalgel was somehow involved. And I’m just not buying it. The man wants to be president, and the media is all over him. He can’t take a dump without it being reported on.”

  “He’s involved,” McGarvey said. “And I’m going to prove it tonight.”

  “How?” Townsend asked.

  And McGarvey explained it to them, getting the same initially incredulous reaction that Gail had given him.

  “You think he’ll fall for a cheap stunt like that?” Townsend asked. “It makes no sense.”

  “He’ll have no other choice. His ego will demand it.”

  Townsend and Strasser weren’t seeing it, but Eve was.

  “I’m a bigger issue to him than you are,” she said. “All the more reason for me to stick around.”

  But McGarvey disagreed. “He’s getting desperate now that his people failed to stop your project.”

  “And desperate people do desperate things,” Gail said. “Without us, the project goes on. But if something should happen to you, it’s over.”

  Eve wasn’t happy, but she nodded. She’d seen firsthand what people opposed to her project were willing to do. “Still leaves us with the problem of how to get me out of here.”

  “A police helicopter is coming up from Miami with a couple of FBI agents who’ll take you up to Vero and stick around un
til morning. If things go bad down here they’ll make sure that you get back to Washington.”

  “If things go bad here tonight, we’ll have bigger problems than getting Dr. Larsen to safety, because it’ll mean that Schlagel has won and nothing will stop him,” Townsend said. “Everyone loses, including us.”

  Strasser shook his head in wonderment. “One man against a mob of one hundred thousand?”

  McGarvey smiled. “I’ll have Gail with me. Cuts the odds in half.”

  “What about us?”

  “Anywhere but South Service,” McGarvey said. “If he sees anyone else he’ll take it as a trap and won’t play along.”

  SEVENTY-NINE

  Twenty minutes after Eve was safely away with her minders, Mac and Gail were back at the decontamination tent preparing the hazmat suit Schlagel would wear if he took the bait, when Colonel Scofield radioed.

  “You’re going to have company in about three minutes.”

  McGarvey keyed the National Guard walkie-talkie. “Schalgel already?”

  It was nearly five thirty, a half hour early, but already the crowd outside was huge at both the north and south barriers, and was growing exponentially by the minute, already stretching for miles in both directions. Widescreen hi-def video monitors and loudspeakers had been set up along the side of A1A at intervals of a couple hundred feet so the faithful would be able to see and hear the reverend’s sermon, as Fox called it: “Not from the Mount but from Ground Zero.” The media had shown up several hours ago, positioning their vans, bristling with microwave antennas and satellite dishes, at the south barrier, which apparently was where Schlagel would speak.

  “Negative, it’s one of our birds from Miami transporting some of your people. Where do you want them?”

  “I didn’t ask for any help,” McGarvey said, but he knew who it was and why he and his team were coming here. The problem was who had ordered it. “Have them set down on the road in front of the gate. But I want the chopper to stand by, I’m sending them back.”

  “They said that they had orders.”

  “I don’t care. Just make sure the pilot holds here.”

  “Roger that,” Colonel Scofield replied.

  And then they could hear the noise of the incoming helicopter over the growing sounds of the mob. “Is that who I think it is?” Gail asked.

  “Unless I miss my guess it’s Carlos coming up from Miami, the question is who sent him here and why, because he sure as hell didn’t make that kind of a decision on his own.”

  “It wasn’t Admiral French.”

  “Someone higher up,” McGarvey said. “Probably Caldwell at DOE. Guy’s a grandstander.”

  The helicopter was settling in for a landing, the rotor wash buffeting the decontamination tent, and McGarvey had to shout for Gail to hear him.

  “Put on your hazmat suit, and go get him. Tell his team to stand by, and I don’t give a shit what objections he gives you. Tell him that someone from Washington wants to have a word before he sets up shop.”

  Gail was almost laughing now, but she quickly donned the suit, and went outside. And less than three minutes later she was back with a fuming Carlos Gruen, who pulled up short when he saw McGarvey.

  “I was told A1A was clean!” he shouted. “And what the fuck are you doing here in my situation site?”

  “What situation is that, Carlos?” McGarvey asked.

  Gruen looked nervously to Gail who’d taken off her hood. “Is this place clean or not?”

  “It’s clean for now,” McGarvey said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Preventing another attack.”

  “On whose orders?”

  Gruen puffed up self-importantly. “Deputy Secretary Caldwell asked that I personally take charge.”

  McGarvey nodded. “Glad to have you,” he said. “But would you mind telling us how you plan to stop one hundred thousand people from marching into the plant and causing a lot of damage, but mostly to themselves when they start taking radiation?”

  “Not my concern,” Gruen said. “All I’m interested in is the presence of radiological devices.”

  “Do you actually think that Schlagel’s followers will try to smuggle a nuclear device into a wrecked nuclear power station?” Gail asked.

  Gruen looked smug. “You could hide an entire platoon of saboteurs in plain sight inside a crowd that big, and the only way to tell who’s who and neutralize the threat is with our equipment. You of all people should know the drill, Ms. Newby,” the last said with sarcasm.

  And Gail reacted, but McGarvey held her back. “What happens afterwards, when the rest of the crowd decides to tear you and your team apart?”

  “Won’t happen.”

  They were running out of time. Schlagel was due soon, and there was no telling how he might react, seeing a National Guard helicopter parked in the middle of the road. “Go back to Miami,” McGarvey told him. “Or at least go out to the perimeter of the crowd and stand by in case the situation gets out of hand.”

  “Not a chance in hell. You two bungled the first attack on this facility, and I’m here to see that there isn’t a repeat.”

  “You pompous ass,” Gail said angrily, and McGarvey waved her back, but she wouldn’t be silenced. “All you’re trying to do here is make a name for yourself.” She gestured toward the tent flap. “Have the media take notice, get your picture in the Times or the Post, maybe a sound bite on ABC. Thank God none of the other Rapid Response team leaders aren’t guys like you with their heads firmly planted up their rectums.”

  “Screw you, Newby, you’re fired,” Gruen said and he pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, but before he could press the speed dial button McGarvey snatched it out of his hand.

  “You can fire both of us later. But right now I want you to get the hell out of here.”

  “This is my incident site, goddamnit!”

  “I don’t have time,” McGarvey said and he pulled out his pistol.

  Gruen’s eyes went wide and he stepped back a pace. “You’re a fucking maniac.”

  “Absolutely unhinged.”

  “No way in hell you’ll shoot me.”

  “Are you sure?” McGarvey said, advancing but keeping his aim down and away.

  “Kill me and you’ll go to jail for the rest of your life.”

  “Makes you wonder what I’d get for a kneecap.”

  Gruen looked to Gail but she shrugged, and he stepped back another pace.

  McGarvey handed back the cell phone. “I want you to get the hell out of here right now. I just need one hour.”

  “It could be all over by then,” Gruen said, almost plaintively.

  And McGarvey almost laughed, because the man might be a jerk, but he was a jerk who was sincere in his desire to do good deeds and to get the recognition he figured he so richly deserved; he saw himself as the dedicated public servant. “I hope it is,” McGarvey said. “But if things go south here, you can come back and straighten out my mess. And I’ll even apologize, in public.”

  “Me, too,” Gail said.

  “We’ll see about that,” Gruen said and he left the tent and walked back to the helicopter and climbed aboard. Moments later the chopper lifted off and headed north along A1A, finally turning west over the Intracoastal Waterway to the mainland.

  “He’ll probably have my job,” Gail said.

  “Not if we pull this off,” McGarvey told her, but she grinned.

  “And I meant to say, he’s welcome to it.”

  McGarvey called Otto on the encrypted Nokia. “Where’s Schlagel?”

  “In the back of a pickup truck about a hundred yards south of you on A1A,” Otto said. “I have a Keyhole bird on him. Louise is giving me the feed. Looks like Moses parting the Red Sea. Who was in the chopper that just left?”

  “Gruen.”

  “Surprise, surprise. What did you have to do to make him leave? Threaten to shoot him?”

  “Something like that. How’s my feed?”

  “Up and ready to
roll. If you can get Schlagel to take the bait, everything he does and says inside the South Service lobby will connect not only to his public address system and hi-def screens, but to the satellite uplinks of every major television and radio network. The good reverend wants an audience, we’ll give him one.”

  “Will he know what’s happening?”

  “Depends on the volume of his speaker system. But if you can get him inside and keep him there it’s not likely he’ll hear that what he’s saying to you is being broadcast to his faithful. Knowing about last night in Orlando and having the video to prove it is gonna blow him away big-time.”

  “No chance he suspected the setup?”

  “Nada,” Otto said.

  “That’s all I need to know,” McGarvey said. “We’re wiring his suit and mine right now.”

  “One other thing. I just found out that Anne Marie Marinaccio and two of her people were assassinated in Dubai. No suspects. Thought you’d want to know.”

  “DeCamp?”

  “We’ll probably never know.”

  EIGHTY

  Schlagel’s magnified voice had started to roll over the crowd from the south a few minutes before McGarvey, dressed in a hazmat suit, the hood covering his head, darted across the street to the main gate, where he paused for just a moment.

  According to Otto the mass exodus from all across the country was still flowing across Florida’s borders to this very spot with no end in sight even though Schlagel was on the verge of what was being hailed as his most important sermon ever. Hundreds, perhaps as many as one thousand boats stood offshore from the nuclear power station, some within shouting distance of the beach. A pair of Coast Guard cutters from Miami were standing by with orders not to interfere except in an emergency. Helicopters from the local affiliates of all the major television networks hovered overhead like paparazzi around royalty. The collective murmur of the crowd was that of an eager audience waiting for the show to begin.

  A circus, McGarvey thought as he turned and went across the parking lot and inside the South Service Building’s lobby where he held up at the open door. He took off his hood and laid it on the bare concrete floor.