The Cabal km-14

by David Hagberg

  Weiss licked his lips but said nothing.

  “If you do drive over to the hotel, I’d advise that you keep your head down, because I’ll kill anyone who gets in my way. My only interest this evening is Sandberger. Clear?”

  Weiss nodded, but held his silence.

  McGarvey opened the door and started to get out of the car when he felt Weiss make a sudden lunge. Dumb, but not unexpected. Sandberger’s orders would be for his people to take whatever opportunity came along.

  “Bastard,” Weiss grunted.

  McGarvey slipped out of the car and slid half a step to the right as he turned and brought his pistol to bear. Weiss had grabbed a spare pistol, another Beretta 9mm, from probably under the seat, and was raising it when McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in the middle of his forehead and slamming him back against the driver-side door.

  The noise, partially contained inside the car and muffled by the sounds of traffic, went unnoticed. None of the cars or trucks passing slowed down.

  Slipping his pistol into the holster beneath his jacket McGarvey closed the car door, and headed down the street to the Ritz. Other people were on foot, some of them in western dress so he figured he wasn’t terribly obvious.

  About fifty yards from the hotel’s sweeping driveway that led up to the entrance portico he pulled up and slipped into the shadows of a line of small shops, shuttered now, in the lee of what was probably a building containing some Iraqi government function. Such places were scattered all across the Green Zone.

  He watched for a full five minutes as cars and cabs came and went, spotting a pair of men stationed in the driveway leading to the hotel’s entrance, and another pair on the opposite side for vehicles leaving. Dressed in the near standard contractor’s uniform of jeans, dark shirts, and Kevlar vests with a lot of pockets, they were waiting for Weiss to show up, presumably with his passenger, and their orders were to take out both of them.

  It was a little risky to stage a shoot-out these days, but before the cops showed up they would probably plant some explosives in the car. They were simply doing their jobs, protecting the hotel from suicide bombers.

  McGarvey moved back until he was clear, then ran down the street, keeping to the shadows as much as possible, until he found a service driveway that led to the rear of the hotel.

  When he was out of sight of anyone on the road, he took out his pistol and screwed the silencer onto the end of the barrel.

  Sandberger eased the door open and looked out into the corridor. Alphonse leaned against the wall a few feet from the elevator, which meant that Hanson was just around the corner from the east stairway door.

  “Keep on your toes,” he told his bodyguards. “If McGarvey’s going to show tonight, it’ll be within the next half hour, or less.”

  Alphonse nodded, and Sandberger closed his door, keeping it slightly ajar with a book of paper matches. He went across to the sliding door that led onto the small balcony and opened it. The cool evening air with the sounds of traffic and the smells unique to Baghdad — rotting garbage, diesel fumes, and a hint of cordite — were immediately there.

  Before he switched off the lights he removed the silenced Sterling submachine gun’s thirty-four-round box magazine, checked one last time that it was full, and slammed it back home. The unique weapon, which used nonsubsonic 9×19 mm Parabellum ammunition, had been used by British special forces, including the SAS. It had been one of Remington’s suggestions that Admin’s people might find the weapon handy in special circumstances.

  Like now, Sandberger thought as he waited half inside and half outside the slider.

  McGarvey was good, if even half of what he’d heard was true. He had gotten past Kangas and Mustapha, and had somehow gotten the drop on Weiss. However unlikely it might be, it was possible he would get past the four men watching the driveway, and perhaps even Alphonse and Hanson up here.

  But anyone coming through the door would take the full thirty-four rounds. Survival this up close and personal would be impossible.

  A delivery van was backed up to the loading dock and an older man in Arab dress was pulling out plastic flats filled with bundles of cut flowers and carrying them inside through the open roll-up door.

  McGarvey waited until the florist went inside, then ran around to the end of the loading dock and ducked down in the shadows in the corner. Five minutes later the man came out, closed the delivery van’s doors, and left.

  As soon as the van was out of sight, McGarvey jumped up on the delivery dock and peered around the corner into the receiving area, where all the supplies for the hotel were received and processed. Two men were directly across a fairly large space where they were loading the flats onto a pair of hand trucks. When they were finished they pushed the carts off to the left where they boarded a service elevator.

  When the doors had closed McGarvey hurried after them, and waited, until the car stopped at the lobby level. Sandberger’s suite was on the eighth floor. He would have people watching the stairwell doors and the guest elevators. But he might have overlooked the service elevators, which the maids, room service people, and maintenance crew used.

  McGarvey brought the elevator down then hit the button for the eighth floor. He suspected that the doors would open not onto the main corridor but onto a service corridor, and when the car reached the eighth floor he was proven right. This corridor, which ran the length of the hotel along the rear walls of the rooms, was unpainted concrete walls and floors, with minimal lighting from basic ceiling fixtures.

  Several doors opened onto the main guest corridor, one at each end opposite the emergency exits, and one at the vending machine alcove.

  McGarvey went to the west emergency door and examined the hinges. It was wired, a small grey mass of Semtex molded into the jamb about chest high. It came to him that only the two bodyguards from Frankfurt would be up here, one on the elevators and the other on the stairwell door.

  He turned and hurried back the way he’d come, past the service elevator, which had been recalled to the kitchen level, to the door opposite the east emergency exit.

  Opening the door just a crack he saw a man in a contractor’s uniform leaning against the wall less than ten feet away. The man spotted the open door immediately and he reached for his pistol holstered high on his right hip.

  McGarvey pulled the door all the way open and raised his pistol. “I’ll kill you right now,” he said in a low voice.

  The contractor’s hand stopped just above the butt of his pistol. He was weighing his options, and it was obvious in his eyes.

  “Who else is up here with you?”

  “I’m alone,” Hanson said.

  “You had a partner when I saw you in Frankfurt,” McGarvey said. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “As you wish,” McGarvey said, and slipped out of the service corridor to where the contractor stood, batted the man’s hand away from his gun, and pulled it out of its holster. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer. McGarvey dropped it to the carpeted floor and kicked it away.

  “Now what?” Hanson asked, tensing his muscles, getting ready to spring.

  “We’re going for a walk,” McGarvey said, roughly hauling the man around, and shoving him from behind.

  “Bloody hell,” Hanson said, but McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the big silencer hard against the base of the man’s head, and they headed slowly to where the corridor turned right.

  At the corner, McGarvey suddenly shoved Hanson away and stepped to one side as Sandberger’s other bodyguard stationed at the elevator realized that something unexpected was happening, and he grabbed for his pistol.

  McGarvey fired two shots, both hitting Alphonse in the head, knocking him backward against the wall where he collapsed to the floor, leaving a bloody streak as he fell.

  Hanson spun on his heel and started to charge, when McGarvey turned and pointed the gun at the man’s head, and the contractor pulled up short.

  “Lie to me again and you’re dead.”


  “You’re going to kill me anyway,” Hanson said.

  “No need for it, unless you were personally involved in the murders of my son-in-law, wife, and daughter.”

  “No,” Hanson said, and McGarvey believed him.

  “Your boss has the answers. So what we’re going to do, is knock on his door and you’ll tell him whatever you need to say to get him to open up. Then you can go.”

  “Right.”

  “I have no beef with you. Unless you do something stupid you can walk away from this thing. But time is short, so make your decision.”

  “No choice, do I?”

  “No,” McGarvey said.

  “You can’t be lucky every time, you bastard,” Hanson said, but he headed down the corridor, past Alphonse’s body lying in a heap, to Sandberger’s suite. He started to knock on the door, but then backed off.

  McGarvey saw that the door was open and he pulled Hanson back. “Tell him I’m down.”

  Hanson was clearly nervous now. But he turned back to the door. “Mr. Sandberger, it’s me, Brody. We got him.”

  No one answered. Hanson started to turn back but McGarvey bodily shoved the contractor into the suite, and stepped aside out of what he expected would be the line of fire. And he was right.

  Something that sounded like a silenced, heavy-caliber automatic weapon opened up, the bullets slamming into Hanson’s bulletproof vest, but at least one hitting the contractor in the leg and another in the face just above and to the right of the bridge of his nose.

  The firing stopped, and McGarvey stepped over Hanson’s body and entered the room. Sandberger at the open slider was trying to reload, but McGarvey, still moving forward, fired one shot, hitting the man in the right thigh, dropping him to the floor.

  “There’ll be people all over the place up here, because someone must have heard something,” McGarvey said. “So I don’t have much time. Does Admin have a contract with the Friday Club.”

  “Fuck you,” Sandberger said.

  McGarvey fired a second shot, this one destroying the man’s kneecap, and Sandberger cried out.

  “Who killed my family?”

  “You’re a dead man.”

  McGarvey stepped closer and placed the muzzle of the silencer on Sandberger’s forehead. “Your people did it to cover up whatever the Washington Post reporter found out about Foster and his group. Is that worth dying for?”

  “You’ll never take me back to Washington, and even if you did it wouldn’t do you any good. I have friends—”

  “You’re right,” McGarvey said, and he fired one shot.

  Sirens were approaching from the north by the time McGarvey made it down to the service floor and out onto the street. Before the police arrived at the hotel Hadid pulled up with the Range Rover, and McGarvey jumped in.

  “Time to leave?” Hadid asked.

  McGarvey nodded. “Time to leave.”

  FORTY-NINE

  It was one in the afternoon in Washington when Remington and his wife, Colleen, met for lunch at the George Hotel just down from Union Station. She’d remarked that it was an odd choice, but he hadn’t explained that he wanted to come here to satisfy a perverse curiosity to see where the Washington Post reporter had met with McGarvey’s son-in-law. The dining room/bar area was faintly art deco and nice, though not grand. Not up to Colleen’s usual standards.

  But she hadn’t complained, and in fact had stopped all her complaining after the dinner party at Foster’s home. She’d been impressed with her husband, and he’d even cut back on his drinking — because of the crisis mode Admin was in — which impressed her all the more.

  “What made you think of this place?” she asked when their martinis came.

  The dining room was nearly full, but the service was good.

  Remington shrugged. “Someone mentioned the place. Thought we should give it a try.”

  She looked around, and smiled. “I approve. Anyway, Gordo, I’m famished.”

  Remington’s sat phone vibrated in his pocket and he hesitated whether to ignore the call, but with everything happening here in Washington and in Baghdad, he answered it. “Remington.”

  Colleen shot him a disapproving look.

  “We’re in deep shit over here, sir.” It was Peter Townsend, Sandberger’s administrative assistant, who’d done all of the nuts-and-bolts negotiations with the State Department reps in Baghdad. A lawyer by training, he’d served one term as a junior congressman from the Russian River area of California. He sounded shook up.

  “What is it?”

  “Mr. Sandberger was shot to death in his suite about an hour ago.”

  Remington was struck dumb for just a moment, and it must have showed on his face because Colleen put down her drink and gave him a concerned, questioning look. “What about Hanson and Alphonse?”

  “They were taken out, too, but it looks as if Mr. Sandberger killed Brody. It’s not making any sense to me, because Harry Weiss was found shot to death in his car a block from the hotel. What the hell is going on? I wasn’t told that we were facing any sort of a threat of this magnitude.”

  It was McGarvey, of course. Couldn’t be anyone else, but for now they needed to do some serious damage control. “Okay, listen up. I’ll come there as quickly as possible, but it probably won’t be until tomorrow. In the meantime you’re the on-site supervisor as of this moment. I want the mess cleaned up before I get there. Get in touch with Captain Kabbani, he’s been of some help in the past.”

  “His body was found in an alley a block from the hotel. He’d been shot to death at close range. You have to tell me what the hell is going on if you expect me to take care of this shit, because I have no idea what’s coming next. And what do I tell our guys that’ll make any sense?”

  Remington didn’t have a clue, but Townsend was waiting. All of Admin was waiting because he’d just become president of the company. The easy way, he couldn’t help but think, and he smiled for just a moment, and his wife’s right eyebrow shot up.

  “Goddamnit, I’m in the hot seat. I’m not a contractor, I’m a negotiator, a lawyer.”

  “Do you know Stuart Marston?” Remington asked.

  “Yes, of course I do. He’s been our point man at State. Helped put the deal through for us.”

  “Call him, set up a meeting and tell him what you know—”

  “I don’t know shit,” Townsend shouted.

  “Calm down, and let me finish,” Remington said. Colleen was watching him, hanging on every word. “Tell Stu that we think it was Kirk McGarvey. The man’s gone over the edge, and he had some sort of a personal vendetta with Roland.”

  “Holy shit,” Townsend said.

  “Get a hold of yourself, Pete. Until I get there you’re Admin in Baghdad. Work with Marston. Work the problem, don’t let it work you.”

  Townsend was silent for several beats, and when he came back he sounded as if he was coming down. “Do I mention McGarvey’s name? I mean the guy was the DCI at one time.”

  “The FBI is looking for him, and Justice is considering bringing him up for treason,” Remington said. “So definitely mention his name. It’s something that guys like Marston understand.”

  “It’s late here, I’ll call him in the morning.”

  “Call him now. He needs to hear about this from us, not the Iraqi police.”

  “You’re right.”

  “I’ll get there as soon as I can. But keep in touch.”

  “Will do,” Townsend said and he rang off.

  Remington broke the connection and lowered the phone.

  “Talk to me, Gordo,” Colleen said, keeping her voice low.

  “Bit of a muckup over in B-town,” Remington said. “Roland and a couple of his people have been shot to death.”

  “Good Lord,” Colleen said, but then he could see in her eyes that she understood the consequences as well as he did. “Do you actually have to go over there?”

  “We’ll see,” Remington said, and he dialed Robert Fost
er’s private number, which would be rolled over to wherever the man was. Anywhere in the world.

  On the third ring it was answered by a voice mail message. “Leave your name and number after the tone.” But before Remington could leave a message, Foster came on.

  “Good afternoon, Gordon. Is something bothering you that you called this number?”

  The waiter came over to take their order, but Remington waved him off and waited until he was out of earshot.

  “I just received word that Roland was assassinated in Baghdad about an hour ago. His bodyguards were taken out, as was Baghdad’s chief of police.”

  “That’s certainly a stunning development. Do you know who was behind this and why?”

  “It was McGarvey,” Remington said. “Our operations over there are facing a potential meltdown. I’m flying over tonight to straighten it out.”

  Foster’s reply was immediate. “No. I want you to remain here in Washington. Business as usual. Do you have any idea where Mr. McGarvey is at this moment? Certainly not still in Baghdad?”

  “I’m not sure, but I believe he’ll try to get out of the country, probably either through Kuwait, the way he got in, or perhaps across the border into Turkey.”

  “Is he receiving help from the CIA?”

  “Unknown, but I’d say it’s fairly unlikely considering the charges Justice is preparing to file against him.”

  “I was under the impression that you had arranged for some of your people to take him out.”

  “Apparently they failed.”

  “Are they dead?”

  “I don’t know, they haven’t surfaced yet. Last I heard they had reached Baghdad.”

  Foster was silent for a moment. “This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to arrange for your contract over there to go to Decision Infinity. They can use the money. I need all of your attention devoted to the McGarvey problem.”