The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

  It was a trip that he and his wife, Katy, had taken several times since moving down here from the Washington, DC, area. But she was gone now, assassinated with an IED meant for him. They’d been attending the funeral at Arlington for their son-in-law, Todd, a CIA officer killed in the line of duty. Mac was riding in a separate limousine from Katy and their daughter, Elizabeth, when theirs in front ran over the powerful explosive before his eyes. There’d been little or nothing left of the car, and almost nothing of Katy, Liz and their driver.

  Since then he’d taken a few freelance assignments for the Company, but his heart had never really been in them, let alone the day-to-day business of enjoying life as he had before their deaths.

  Nor did he think now that he was ready to solo his boat to places where people—couples—would be enjoying themselves. Laughing, playing, making love.

  He would head back to his house just across the road from the beach, take a shower, have a little breakfast and then head up to his office in the philosophy department at the University of South Florida’s New College campus in Sarasota. He taught Voltaire during the fall and spring semesters to a bunch of gifted kids, who were so liberal in their views that sometimes it was all he could do to stop himself from smiling indulgently at them. But most of them were seriously bright, and they had the habit of asking some seriously difficult questions. He loved the challenge.

  But before September rolled around he needed to put some work into the book he was in the middle of writing, about Voltaire’s influence not only on Western thought since the eighteenth century, but especially on the United States’ fledgling democracy. It would be a hard sell to the kids, but he’d had a personal connection with the Frenchman’s philosophy and its direct effect on the U.S., starting with the Civil War.

  He was about to start back toward the beach when he glanced again at the southbound sailboat in time to spot a speedboat heading from the north almost directly toward him. It wasn’t uncommon to see boats like that coming so close to shore, especially along Casey Key, where a lot of millionaires maintained seasonal homes. Tourists who wanted to get a glimpse of someone famous sometimes came up on the beach and walked around.

  McGarvey angled back toward the shore and put real effort into his swimming, his progress aided by an incoming tide and a light westerly breeze. A woman standing on the beach began waving at him. She looked vaguely familiar, but the distance was too great for him to make out more than the fact that she was a woman and that she was gesturing.

  Two minutes later he could feel the buzz of the outboard motors as well as hear their high-pitched drone—two of them, he thought, maybe two-fifty or three-hundred horsepower each—capable of pushing a boat with the right hull shape to speeds in excess of fifty miles per hour.

  He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the center-console boat just a dozen yards away and heading directly for him.

  The water here was less than ten feet deep, and he immediately dove for the bottom, jackknifing with a powerful kick.

  A couple of seconds later the boat passed over him, its propellers roiling the water and setting up a double-helix current that sent him tumbling up and then downward again, totally out of control, his shoulder slamming into the soft sand of the bottom.

  Kicking off he reached the surface in time to see the speedboat making a tight turn back toward him, one man at the helm, another hanging on to a side rail on the console. But making such a tight turn was a mistake. It had cost them almost all of their speed for the sake of the distance the wide turn had taken.

  He maintained his position low in the water, bobbing up and down with the residual wake.

  The second man aboard pointed toward him, and the guy at the wheel gunned the engines. But they were too close for the boat to come back up on plane and gain any real speed.

  As the boat reached McGarvey, its bow was high, impairing the helmsman’s sight line straight ahead.

  At the last possible moment, McGarvey kicked to the right like a matador stepping aside to let the charging bull pass, allowing the bow of the boat to just brush his shoulder.

  He hooked his left arm over the gunwale of the boat, just ahead of its stern, and allowed the building momentum to yank him out of the water and deposit him just aft of the transom.

  Both men were dark-skinned, and Mac got the immediate impression that they were Middle Easterners—Afghanis, Iranians, Iraqis, Pakistanis—before the lookout twisted around, a big Glock 17 in his hand.

  McGarvey lurched forward and to the left, slamming his bulk into the back of the helmsman just as the lookout fired a shot that went wild.

  The helmsman, shoved off balance, held on to the wheel so he wouldn’t fall. The boat turned sharply to the left and headed back toward the shore.

  It was what McGarvey had expected would happen and he’d braced himself against the rail.

  The lookout fired again, the second shot going wide, and in an instant McGarvey was on him, snatching the pistol out of his hand and tossing it overboard. He butted the man in the face with his forehead, then pulled him forward and down, smashing a knee in the guy’s jaw.

  Shoving the man aside, Mac turned to the helmsman, who was trying to turn the boat away from the beach, which was getting alarmingly close.

  With one hand on the wheel the man looked back, a Glock 17 in his left hand. Just before Mac could reach him he jogged the wheel sharply to the left and then to the right.

  Mac was thrown off balance back against the rail.

  The boat steadied, and the helmsman aimed at McGarvey’s chest, center mass.

  At that moment a bright red spot materialized just above the bridge of the man’s nose and he fell backward against the console, blood spurting out of the bullet wound in his forehead.

  Mac regained his balance at the same moment the boat’s keel lurched against the bottom, less than ten feet from the beach, the engines wide open.

  He managed to leap off the boat and stay clear of the props as it reached the beach, hurtled up over the first dunes and smashed into a large palm tree, the force of the impact ripping both engines free of the transom, the dual fuel tanks going up with a bright flash and an impressive boom that echoed off the fronts of the houses just across the beach highway.

  THIRTEEN

  McGarvey picked himself up from the surf as the woman who had been gesturing came toward him at a run. He was a little dazed from the second impact against the ocean floor, and it took him just a moment to realize that the woman was Pete Boylan. She was dressed in jeans and a white polo shirt.

  “Jesus, Mac, are you okay?” she demanded breathlessly. She was an attractive woman in her late thirties, with dark red hair, blue eyes and movie-star looks. She had started her career in the CIA as an interrogator, but by happenstance over the past couple of years she had worked on a number of assignments with McGarvey. She was holding a Wilson nine-millimeter compact tactical pistol in her left hand.

  “I’ll live,” he told her, brushing the sand off his chest and shoulders. “That was a hell of a shot at a moving target at that distance. I don’t think more than a handful of people in the Company could have pulled it off. Thanks.”

  She laughed more in relief than in humor. She was in love with McGarvey and she made no bones about showing it. “It was my fifth try, and I thought there was just as good a chance that I’d hit you instead. But the advantage was his. I had to try.” She looked critically at him. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” he said. He gave her a smile. “The right time at the right place, but what are you doing here?”

  “Walt Page sent me down to talk to you. But who were those guys?”

  McGarvey always expected that someone out of his past—someone who’d either been partners with or the control officer of one of the people he’d taken down—would come looking for him to settle the score. It had happened a couple of times, but this one was about the closest he’d come to being taken out.

  “I don’t know. Might h
ave been Middle Easterners.”

  “Pakistanis?”

  McGarvey shrugged. “It’s a possibility. But with the trouble going on over there I think I’d be low on their list.” But then he had another thought and he glanced at the furiously burning wreckage of the boat. In the distance they could hear sirens.

  “You wouldn’t know more unless you’d talked to Otto overnight,” Pete said. “Miller sent in our NEST people, and it was a disaster. We managed to shut down less than ninety of their nukes before all hell broke loose.”

  “Casualties?”

  “Out of ninety-four operators, thirteen are either KIA or wounded, but our SEALS got everybody out. The Pakis knew we were coming.”

  “Miller waited too long,” McGarvey said. The woman had been a competent president to this point, dealing decisively, for the most part, with immigration, health care and employment issues. But ordering the U.S. military into harm’s way was completely different.

  Pete nodded. “She did.” The look on her oval face was a combination of resignation, that what was done was done; of shame, that perhaps the CIA could have provided better, even more timely intelligence; and of something else, maybe fear.

  McGarvey had learned to read her emotions, which were almost always clear in her eyes and in her body language—unless she was conducting a debriefing or an interrogation, during which times she was nothing short of efficient and even ruthless. He knew that she was in love with him, and had been for at least a year, probably longer, and he had held her off as best he could.

  He’d never had any luck with the women in his life. In the beginning of his CIA career, after he had returned from an assignment in Chile, where he’d assassinated a powerful general and the man’s wife, Katy had given him an ultimatum: it was either her or the CIA.

  She was sick to death of his frequent absences, not knowing where he’d gotten himself to or if he’d ever come back. She knew about the stars on the granite wall in the lobby of the Original Headquarters Building at Langley. They represented fallen field officers whose names and assignments could never be made public. They’d died in the line of duty; it was the only thing that their wives or husbands and families could ever be told. Katy didn’t want to end up as one of those widows.

  That day, confused, angry and hurt, McGarvey had run away to Switzerland, where he’d hid himself in plain sight for a few years until the FBI came calling for his particular talents.

  In the meantime the Swiss Federal Police had sent a woman to get close to McGarvey, which she did. But she’d also fallen in love with him.

  He’d walked away from her too, but she’d followed him to Paris, where she’d been killed.

  Something similar had happened not long after that, when another woman had fallen in love with him and she had been killed in a bomb blast that destroyed a restaurant in Georgetown.

  Then Katy and their daughter and son-in-law had lost their lives because of him.

  He couldn’t allow something like that to happen again—which in his heart of hearts he knew would. So he kept his distance. It hurt Pete, because she could sense that he had feelings for her. But it was better than identifying her body on a slab in a morgue somewhere.

  “I haven’t turned on my computer, or watched much television in the past ten days.”

  “And you’ve shut off your landline and cell phone. It’s why I’m here. We need your help.”

  The sirens were closer now. McGarvey led Pete across the road to his house. Here the island was less than a hundred yards wide, and they were inside by the time the fire trucks and rescue squad had arrived.

  They sat at a table on the lanai overlooking the pool, beyond which was the gazebo where Katy had loved to sit at dawn with her first cup of tea to watch the birds. The Island Packet was tied to the dock, behind which a small runabout sat out of the water on its lift.

  “It’s pretty,” Pete said.

  McGarvey felt a little odd having her here but not terribly guilty. He brought them Coronas with pieces of lime. She’d once told him that she wasn’t always a lady; sometimes she liked to drink a cold beer straight out of the bottle.

  “Yes, it is,” McGarvey said. “Help with what?”

  “It’s complicated,” Pete said. She quickly sketched everything that had gone on over the past twenty-four hours, including Haaris’s trip to Islamabad, his kidnapping and his escape a few hours later. “Barazani is dead—beheaded by this guy who the crowd in front of the presidential palace called ‘Messiah.’ He told them that the Taliban were no longer the enemy. That they needed to work together for a new Pakistan.”

  “How about Sharif?”

  “No one can reach him, and the ISI is keeping off of the radar for now. Their headquarters along with the Army’s General Headquarters have been surrounded, as have most of the government buildings in Islamabad and Rawalpindi.”

  “What about the air force and navy bases?”

  “No troop or ship movements,” Pete said. “For all practical purposes Pakistan’s government, military and intel services have been shut down. And for now India is biding its time. But if Pakistan so much as twitches, they promise to protect the sanctity of their borders using any and all means at their disposal.”

  “That sounds like a quote.”

  “A spokesman for India’s prime minister,” Pete said. “But there’s more. We’re pretty sure that at least one nuclear weapon was stolen from the air force base at Quetta last night. It was detonated about fifty miles south in an unpopulated area close to the Afghani border. Page thinks it was a demonstration by the Taliban that they not only have nukes, but that they know how to use them.”

  “What else?” McGarvey asked, though he had a good idea where this was leading and why she had been sent to ask for his help.

  “The hell of it is that life is going on as usual. Kids are in school, the shops are open and, from Ross’s accounts, doing a brisk business. There’ve been no further incidents of rioting or explosions or gunfire.”

  “What about the Messiah?”

  “The television stations keep rebroadcasting his speech and promising that he will be talking to the people again very soon, and that he has the reins of government firmly in control.”

  “It was a coup, and less than twenty-four hours later the country has calmed down,” McGarvey said. “So other than the nuclear demonstration the only real problem is the Taliban and what they’ll do next.”

  “Directed by the Messiah, and no one thinks it’ll develop into a ‘let’s all lie down with the lambs.’ At least not for long.”

  “What about our embassy?”

  “Ready for business, soon as the ambassador and his staff return.”

  “Ross and his shop?”

  “Hunkered down in place. He sent a field officer to Quetta to confirm the bomb, but he hasn’t been heard from so far. Other than him and Dave Haaris’s kidnapping there’ve been no aggressive acts toward Americans other than the NEST casualties.”

  “So what does Page want from me this time?”

  “It’s the White House. The president wants to see you right now. None of us know for sure what she’s going to ask you to do, but we think it’s a safe bet she’s going to ask you to assassinate this Messiah.”

  “Otto thinks that too?”

  Pete nodded. “He’s already working on something. The voice the Messiah used to speak to the people was artificial. Altered electronically. Otto’s trying to clean it up. But the question up in the air is, why would he need to change his voice? To fool whom?”

  “Us,” McGarvey said. “Because we know who he is. And the guys in the boat were no coincidence.”

  FOURTEEN

  Haaris sat reclined in a dentist’s chair at All Saints in Georgetown. The hospital was the place where wounded intelligence agents were brought when their identities needed to remain secret. The facility, discreetly located in a three-story brownstone, was equipped with the latest medical technology and the best doctors, surgeons, dent
ists and nurses in the business.

  Dr. Rupert Marks straightened up and lifted his clear goggles to his forehead. “Nothing terrible in there,” he said, patting Haaris on the shoulder. “Two teeth damaged, which I’ve temporarily capped for you, but that’s the worst of it, except for the bruising. You’re not going to be so terribly handsome for the next few weeks, but as soon as the procaine wears off your speech will get back to more or less normal.”

  “Nothing permanent?” Haaris asked. He’d come back to DC, his CIA mission definitely not accomplished; but he had come back, nevertheless, and as a wounded hero—even better.

  “No. We’ll have the permanent caps back from the lab tomorrow. Any time after that stop by and we’ll finish up. Won’t take more than twenty minutes.”

  “Thank you, appreciate your expertise.”

  Rupert smiled. “I’ll send you my bill in the morning.”

  Rupert’s assistant took off Haaris’s bib and raised the chair. “You’ll sound a little lispy for a half hour or so.”

  Haaris grinned. “That a real word, luv?”

  “It’s my word,” she said. “Before you go, Dr. Franklin would like to see you, he’s just around the corner in his office. It’s next to the lab.”

  “I’ll find my way, thanks.”

  Dr. Allan Franklin, the chief surgeon and administrator of All Saints, was seated behind his desk in his tiny, book-lined office on the ground floor, just across from the security station in the lobby. The door was open.

  Haaris knocked on the door frame. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

  “Come in and have a seat,” Franklin said. “And close the door.” He was a slender man, his hairline receding, his fingers long and delicate.

  “Bad news about my ribs?” Haaris asked, sitting down.

  “How are you feeling?”

  Haaris started to shrug, but then thought better of it. “What is it?”

  “We took some pictures, routine for chest injuries. We found something else. A tumor on your pericardial sac that has probably been there for some time—maybe a year or longer. Operable in itself, but the cancer appears to have spread to your spine and three of your ribs. One of the reasons they didn’t fracture. They’re too soft.”