The Kill Zone km-9

by David Hagberg

  M.,” Yemm said. Kathleen dismissed him with a gesture. “You know that we have to be careful. Because of the hearings. Everybody in Washington is watching us.” “Not where we’re going,” McGarvey said.

  “And even if they are, it doesn’t matter.” Kathleen shook her head.

  “It might not matter to you, Kirk. But appearances matter to just about everyone else in Washington.” She smiled at Ensign Dietrich, who stood in the galley separating the main cabin from the cockpit. “Women know more about these things than men do.” She was verging on the edge of hysteria. “Bill Clinton and his two-hundred-dollar haircut.” She laughed. “Jimmy Carter and the killer rabbit, or his ridiculous Playboy interview. Lust in his heart, indeed.” She laughed again and turned to her husband. “Do you remember Darby Yarnell, darling?” It was a name out of the clear blue sky, and there was a clutch at his heart. He nodded. “That was the old days.” Yarnell, who had worked for the CIA in the fifties and sixties, had been a two-term senator from New York. He had been one of the people responsible for getting McGarvey burned after Santiago. He had been brought down during the Donald Powers investigation, and had been shot to death in front of the DCIs residence a million years ago. McGarvey could feel the pistol in his hands. Feel the recoil as he fired three shots at the man he thought was a traitor. Killing him. He closed his eyes for a moment, and he could see the image in the surveillance camera trained on Yarnell’s Georgetown house. The third-story bedroom window. Kathleen was there in YarneU’s arms. It was an image that was etched in his brain. Of course the final blow came when they realized that Yarnell wasn’t a traitor after all. But the man had caused a lot of damage.

  Ruined a lot of people because of his arrogance, his cocksure attitude that his was the only vision. “It was before you came back from Switzerland the first time,” she said. “Darby was part of the in crowd, and I was trying to storm the gates, as my father would say.”

  “He hurt a lot of people,” McGarvey said. “That’s my point,” Kathleen countered, and McGarvey had no earthly idea where she was going with the story, or why she had brought YarnelTs name up. “I don’t understand.” “He was the one man at the time in Washington for whom appearances meant everything. And yet he was the only man I ever met who apparently didn’t need to care. Everything he did was perfect. His house was perfectly decorated. The clothes he wore were perfect; his shoes were always shined, his cologne wasn’t overpowering and his parties were the best in the city. He spoke a half-dozen languages, he could quote Shakespeare, and there wasn’t a restaurant or private collection in Washington that had a better wine cellar than his.” “I still don’t understand.” “Why, appearances mean everything,” she said, as if she were telling him a universal truth that everyone instinctively knew. “He was a spy, after all. And a bastard. Yet everyone in Washington, including me, thought that he was perfect. We were drawn to him like moths to a flame.” She gave her husband a wistful smile. “That’s what’s important in Washington, don’t you see, my darling? It doesn’t matter if you’re the best DCI ever to sit on the seventh floor if Washington doesn’t accept your appearance. It doesn’t matter if you’re good; the only thing that matters is if you look like you’re right for the job.” McGarvey forced a smile. “I don’t really care ”

  “You should.” Kathleen held out her glass for more champagne. “Hammond and his bunch do.” She was brittle. “It doesn’t matter if they confirm me or not. They’ll get somebody else.” “Don’t be silly, Kirk. You’re the best DCI there ever was. It’s only the idiots who don’t know it yet.” A dark cloud passed over her. “But once you’re there, even your friends will try to cut you down.” Then she smiled. “Isn’t that so, Dick?” “It’s part of the job, Mrs. M.,”

  Yemm answered. He was glum. “Do you think someone will shoot him?”

  Kathleen asked. The question startled everyone. Ensign Dietrich almost dropped the champagne bottle, and the pilot looked over his shoulder through the open cockpit door.

  “Come on, Katy, we’re supposed to be on vacation.” McGarvey tried to stop her, but she held up a hand.

  “No, wait. Let him answer my question. I have a right to know if someone out there wants to make me a widow.”

  “There’s a lot of them want it,” Yemm said. He glanced at McGarvey, who shrugged.

  “But will they go for it?”

  After a moment Yemm nodded. “I think so.”

  “Well,” Kathleen said. She looked at the others. “Isn’t that peachy.”

  U.S. VIRGIN ISLANDS

  They landed on St. Thomas when the sun was low on the horizon. By six it would be dark and after the stress of Washington, Kathleen admitted that she was too tired to eat out. She wanted to get directly over to the house on St. John, sit on a veranda with a cup of tea and look at the tropical stars. Captain White taxied over to the private aviation terminal. When the engines spooled down, Ensign Dietrich opened the hatch. A pleasant, soft-spoken immigration official in short sleeves came aboard and checked their papers and aircraft registration. Even though these islands were a U.S. Territory, the formalities were still observed. When the man found out who he was dealing with he practically fell all over himself with hospitality. Drug trafficking throughout the Caribbean was a big problem; that, along with money laundering and gun running had corrupted officials all the way up to the USVTs governor’s office. It made the people here very nervous.

  Yemm took the man aside. They would be here only for the weekend. They did not want to read about the director’s visit in the newspaper or hear about it on the radio. There would be no meetings with territorial officials. The CIA would take it unkindly if the news were to leak. “Do you think that he’ll tell anybody?” McGarvey asked.

  Kathleen was in the Gulfstream’s head, touching up her makeup. “The first man he sees,” Yemm said. “But he’ll pass along my warning, too.

  We’ll be okay.” The crew would stay at a nearby hotel for the weekend.

  They were busy securing the aircraft’s systems. Even here at the airport, security was a problem. Yemm made a brief call with his cell phone. “Island Tours is sending over a helicopter,” he told McGarvey when he was done. “It’ll be faster than the boat.”

  “Good idea,” McGarvey said. He, too, was tired after the busy week.

  The Island Tours Bell Ranger helicopter came over and settled down on the tarmac twenty yards from the Gulfstream. McGarvey glanced out the door. It was just the pilot in the blue-and-white machine. He wondered how fast news traveled in the islands, if the pilot knew who his passengers were. He and Yemm gathered up their bags, and when Kathleen was finished in the head they walked across to the chopper. He wondered if two days was going to be anywhere near enough time for them to come down. McGarvey and Kathleen rode in the back while Yemm rode shotgun next to the pilot. They headed immediately over Lindbergh Bay, then Water Island, skirting the south coast of St. Thomas. The sun had just dropped below the horizon, but already it was dark, and the hills rising up behind the city of Charlotte Amalie were studded with lights. Three cruise ships, lit up like store windows at Christmas, were getting under way from the main docks east of downtown. The entire harbor was filled with more than one hundred boats of every size and description; most of them cruising sailboats escaping the northern winter. Traffic along the waterfront and commercial docks in town was heavy. This was a weekend at the height of the season; everyone in the islands played. Pillsbury Sound, which separated St. Thomas from St.

  John, was only three miles wide. As they rounded Long Point, the smaller island came into view, as did the British Virgin Islands of Tortola and Jost Van Dyke to the north. All of the islands, including dozens of smaller ones, many of them uninhabited, rose out of the sea like something out of a James Michener South Seas adventure. McGarvey had been here before, but he never got tired of the scenery. He could feel his tension beginning to subside. Kathleen was looking out the window, her shoulders hunched forward as if she were carrying a hug
e weight on her back. She was strangely silent. McGarvey touched her arm. “Are you okay, Katy?” “They don’t have a clue,” she said. “Most of them. This is where they come when they want to climb off the real world. Tune out.” She sounded tired and bitter. He studied her profile. An unaccountable sadness rose up inside of him for all the years that they had lost together. But it was getting better, and he would make sure that they stayed on track. His premonitions of disaster were nothing more than the result of a guilty conscience. For years he had gone to sleep every night dreaming about the people he’d killed in the line of duty. Those dreams were coming back to haunt his waking hours now.

  Yemm motioned for McGarvey to put on a headset. “The pilot wants to know if you’d like to do a little sight-seeing tonight.”

  “No. We want to get settled in.”

  “There’s no staff, so we’re on our own for dinner.”

  “Just what the doctor ordered, so long as the kitchen is stocked.”

  “It is.”

  “How about tomorrow, sir?” the pilot came on. “Would you be needing our services? Perhaps an air tour of the islands. The Baths are a little crowded, but still nice. Or perhaps a picnic on Hans Lollick.

  No one lives over there, and I can guarantee you a deserted beach.”

  “The picnic sounds good,” McGarvey replied. “Let’s make it for lunch. Eleven o’clock.”

  “Very good, sir. And we will even provide the picnic lunch.”

  McGarvey heated a can of tomato soup and made BLTs. He brought their supper along with a pot of tea for Kathleen and a beer for himself on a tray out to the long veranda, which stretched the length of the main house. Kathleen sat in a tall wicker chair, her bare feet up on the rail, her eyes half-closed. “Penny,” McGarvey said, setting the tray on the low wicker table next to her. “I never want to go back,” she replied dreamily. “It’s a thought. But I think we’d get tired of the isolation after a while.” “Do you want to bet?” She sat up and looked at the tray, her eyes bright. “He can run the CIA and cook.” “The bacon is burned on one side and raw on the other. But if you don’t mind, I don’t mind.” She poured a cup of tea, and McGarvey opened the can of Bud. The house was perched on top of a steep hill that looked southeast across Coral Bay toward the open sea. The sky was filled with stars, but the horizon where the sky met the sea was impossible to make out. The trade wind breeze had died to a whisper, bringing with it smells of the lush jungles on the islands. The air was as soft as lotion, in the mid to high seventies. The television and phones in the house were shut off. They would remain that way. Yemm had retired discreetly to his wing of the house. Liz and Todd had arrived safely at Vail. And Washington and Langley were an entire universe away.

  McGarvey had changed into a pair of swimming trunks and nothing else.

  He sat back, put his feet up on the railing and sighed. “That’s a pleasant sound,” Kathleen said. Several small boats were anchored in the bay. Their tiny masthead lights were white pinpoints on the water, swaying slowly in the gentle swells. “Presidents run the country from Camp David,” she observed. “Why couldn’t you run the Agency from here?” “I’d miss the traffic.” She looked at him and grinned. “Yeah, right.” “I’d never get anything done,” he said after a while. She shrugged. McGarvey could feel himself drifting. A rooster crowed somewhere in the distance. Here they crowed all hours of the day and night, not just at dawn. It was island time, Murphy had explained it to him the first time he came here. Inappropriate and yet appropriate.

  Something about that thought percolated at the back of his head, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it might mean. “Soup’s getting cold,”

  Kathleen said languidly. “Yeah,” McGarvey agreed. He put down his beer, got up and held out his hand. “Let’s go to bed, Katy.” She smiled up at him. “Best offer I’ve had all day.”

  SATURDAY

  SIXTEEN

  “IT’S LIKE BEING STRANDED ON A DESERT ISLAND … ALMOST OVERWHELMING, IF YOU THINK ABOUT IT.”

  VIRGIN ISLANDS

  They were up with the rising sun a few minutes after 6:00 A.M. Yemm had already started breakfast. While Kathleen was taking a shower, McGarvey got a cup of coffee and went out to the swimming pool. The morning was gorgeous. The pool, held against the side of the hill by a concrete retaining wall, was filled to the brim. Swimming in it seemed as if you were flying over the hills and the sea below. “What would you and Mrs. M. like to do this morning?” Yemm asked from the open patio doors. “Let’s see if we can round up some horses. I’d like to go riding on the beach.” “No problem. The chopper won’t be here until eleven.” “In the meantime, I’m coming in for a swim,” Kathleen said from the open bedroom doors at the other end of the house. McGarvey looked up. She stood, one knee cocked, one hand on the doorjamb, completely naked, a big grin on her pretty face.

  “I think that it’s a good time to get back to the kitchen, I smell something burning,” Yemm said, and he disappeared back into the house.

  Kathleen came around to the deep end of the pool, walking on the balls of her feet, her narrow back arched, her movements like those of a runway model’s.

  She gave her husband a lascivious look, then dived cleanly into the water, surfacing a few seconds later right in front of him. “Last night was nice,” she said in his ear as she pressed her body against his. “How about an encore before breakfast?”

  “If you’re going to act this way when we’re on vacation, we’re going to leave town a lot more often,” McGarvey said.

  “Making up for lost time,” she murmured.

  Their ride took them almost as far as East End, about six miles from the compound. Their horses were dove gray Arabians, gentle and very well trained, with a good turn of speed if they were left to it. Yemm had never sat on a horse in his life, but within fifteen minutes he could at least keep up with McGarvey, though not with Kathleen, who’d competed in equestrian events as a young girl and well into her college years at Vassar. She was a superb horsewoman, and McGarvey was content to let her run circles around him without rising to the challenge. She was a pleasure to watch. He admired competence above almost everything else. With the sun on his bare shoulders, his face shaded by a straw hat, the powder white sand, the aqua blue sea framed by the dense, intensely green jungle growth that rose into the hills, this was paradise. McGarvey pulled up to let Kathleen ride on ahead. She was in her own world, just then, oblivious to the fact he had stopped.

  “Mrs. M. knows how to ride,” Yemm said at his side. “Yes, she does.

  But I don’t think she’s been on a horse for twenty years.” “Some things you don’t forget how to do,” Yemm commented. “How are we doing on time?” McGarvey asked. He refused to wear a watch today. Yemm glanced at his. “We should start back.” “What about the horses?”

  “I’ll call the stable to come pick them up.” Kathleen looked around, realizing that she was alone, and pulled up short, wheeling her horse around.

  McGarvey gave her a wave, turned his horse sharply back the way they had come, and jammed his heels into the animal’s flanks. He took off down the beach as if he’d been shot from a cannon. He’d been raised on a ranch, and learned to ride about the same time he’d learned to walk.

  The horse was an extension of his own body; instead of two legs, he had four.

  He leaned forward, giving the horse its head, and he flew along the hard-packed sand at the water’s edge. It had been a long time since he had ridden like this, but Yemm was right; there were some skills that you never forgot.

  Yemm shouted something from down the beach. McGarvey looked over his shoulder as Kathleen came up next to him.

  He was leaned forward, riding flat-out, but Kathleen sat very high, her back straight, one hand on the reins as if she were on a leisurely trail ride.

  She smiled sweetly, blew him a kiss with her free hand, and barely nudged her horse’s flanks with her bare knees. The animal took off as if it had switched gears. The sound of her la
ughter drifted back to Mac, and he shook his head.

  He reined his horse back to a slow canter, allowing Yemm to catch up with him. Kathleen looked back, then slowed her horse to a walk.

  “Nice race, boss,” Yemm said.

  The Island Tours Bell Ranger helicopter touched down in the compound precisely at eleven. It was the same pilot as last night. His name was Thomas Afraans, and he was a native West Indian of Dutch ancestry.

  His English was British of the last century; but he seemed very knowledgeable and competent about flying. The picnic lunch was caviar with toast points and lemon wedges, a good champagne, fried chicken and cold lobster, potato salad, French baguettes, an assortment of sliced cheeses and pickles, and, for dessert, strong black coffee in a large thermos, Napoleon brandy and petits fours. They flew northwest across the jungle interior of St. John, coming out at Cinnamon Bay, where they crossed the Windward Passage between the islands. Afraans kept up a running commentary about the fantastic scenery passing beneath them.

  There were dozens of islands between the north coasts of St. John and St. Thomas. Almost all of them were uninhabited. Lovango and Congo Cays, Mingo and Grass Cays, then Middle Passage across to Thatch Cay.

  All of the islands were within sight of each other, many of them seemingly within swimming distance. Boats of all sizes and descriptions were everywhere; everything from tiny outboard motor boats to husky inter island cargo ships. “The U.S. Navy comes here, too,”

  Afraans told them. “To St. Croix. Mostly nuclear submarines. Now, my Lord, that is a sight to behold.” Hans Lollick Island, less than three miles off the north coast of St. Thomas, was the largest of the smaller unihabited islands. There were only a couple of places to land along its oblong shoreline. For the most part the island quickly rose from the water in a series of cliffs and densely overgrown hills to the interior summit almost seven hundred feet above sea level. But the beach that Afraans touched down on was broad and white, and was protected by headlands northeast and southwest that formed a perfect cove about eight hundred yards across. Yemm jumped out first and helped Kathleen down. She immediately walked down to the water’s edge.