High Flight

by David Hagberg

  He rang the bell. There was so much that he wanted to explain to her, but he wasn’t quite sure that she would understand any of it. His first wife, Audrey, hadn’t, and she’d drunk herself to death. Nor had his second wife, Kathleen, understood, but she’d been smart enough to walk away before she was destroyed. He wondered now if he was in fact doing Dominique any favor by coming here.

  He rang the bell again, and then listened at the door. But he could hear nothing inside the apartment. It was possible that she’d gone back to her brother’s house in Detroit. She’d felt safe there. But there were other, darker possibilities.

  McGarvey pulled out his gun, his stomach in a knot, and using the key Dominique had given him, unlocked the door. Standing to the side, he pushed the door open with his toe. The apartment was in darkness.

  He slipped inside and, keeping low, made his way down the hall to the living room. It was night, but enough light came through the big windows for him to see that she wasn’t at home.

  “Dominique?” he called softly. There was no answer. He checked the kitchen and bathroom, then held up at the bedroom door which was slightly ajar. The apartment was utterly still.

  “Dominique,” he called. He closed his eyes for a moment, steeling himself against whatever he might find. In his mind’s eye he could see a legion of bodies in great piles and in trenches. It was like seeing a film made of the Nazi death camps after the war. Only these bodies were his responsibility.

  He pushed the door open. Dominique sat cross-legged in the middle of the bed. She wore jeans and a sweatshirt, and she held a gun in her lap.

  Relief washed over him. He holstered his Walther, then went to her and took the pistol out of her hands and put it aside.

  She looked at him, her eyes sparkling. “I wanted to kill him.”

  “It’s over,” McGarvey said. “No more killing.”

  Her lip curled. “He called me his ‘dear little girl.’ He asked if you’d told me that the killing never stops. He said it was in our nature.”

  “Stop it.”

  “You believe that, don’t you?” she said. “Because now I do. And if I would have gotten the chance I would have killed him without even thinking about it. And I would have enjoyed it.” Her mouth twisted into a hard, ugly grimace.

  McGarvey wanted to take her in his arms, but she was so fragile he was afraid she would break. He touched her face, and she shivered. “You don’t believe that.”

  “Oh, but I do. You were right.”

  “No.”

  “Then have the decency to explain what happened on Sunday before you leave me again.” She looked into his eyes earnestly. “Because either you’re an incredible cheat and liar, or what you’ve done with your life—what you’re still doing—is some kind of horribly macho bullshit game.” She shook her head, as if she were trying to pull herself out of a daze. “Talk to me, Kirk. Tell me things. Mueller did. Make me see where I’m wrong, before you go.”

  “I’m not going to leave you,” McGarvey said, hating the lie.

  “Yes, you are. And the reason you’re going to leave is because you love me.”

  “No.”

  “As long as I’m with you, I’ll never feel safe. But when you’re gone, it’s much worse.”

  “Everything will be okay now,” McGarvey said. He started to leave, but she took his hand and held him back.

  “Not yet,” she said softly. “I want you to stay, for just a while.”

  McGarvey felt as if he were falling into her eyes.

  “I love you,” she said. “Just for a little while.”

  “It won’t work.”

  “We’ll make it work,” Dominique said. “I’ll try, you’ll try. Maybe it’ll be different this time. Maybe you can stop running, and maybe I can stop being afraid. That’s worth trying, isn’t it?”

  He took her into his arms, finally, and she was careful not to hold him where he was wounded.

  “You love me,” she said. “That’s enough for now. The rest will come.”

  Sokichi Kamiya sat on his haunches in front of a low table on the broad teak deck overlooking the peaceful garden. A slight breeze caused the chimes in the gnarled tree to tinkle gently. He contemplated the rock, “future” and “hope,” as he thought about his long life in the service of the Yamato Damashi—the soul of Japan.

  Chi, jin, yu. Wisdom, benevolence, and courage.

  He opened his spotlessly white kimono, pulled his arms out of the sleeves, and tucked the sleeves beneath his knees so that he would not fall backward in death.

  WHEN HONOR IS LOST, ’TIS A RELIEF TO DIE.

  DEATH’S BUT A SURE RETREAT FROM INFAMY.

  He sat at peace with himself for a long time. With a heightened sense of awareness, he could hear the wind in the trees farther down in the valley. He could hear the water gurgling in the pond. And when the morning sun began to rim the horizon, he smiled.

  He took the wakizashi, which was a nine-and-a-half-inch razor-sharp knife, from its sheath, wrapped a white cloth around its handle, and placed its point against the left side of his abdomen.

  IT IS TRUE COURAGE TO LIVE WHEN IT

  IS RIGHT TO LIVE,

  AND TO DIE ONLY WHEN IT

  IS RIGHT TO DIE.

  He plunged the knife to the hilt into his body and, mindless of the horrible pain, drew it slowly to the right while turning it over, so that in the end he cut straight up.

  David Kennedy sat across the dinner table from his wife, Chance. The doors were locked, the telephone shut off, the lights turned low.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Neither of us did very well. But we’ll get past this.”

  “Will we, David?”

  “If we want it badly enough.”

  “That easy?”

  He shook his head. “It won’t be easy, but I don’t want to toss away what we had.”

  “Now that Al is gone, you’ve got a struggle ahead of you.”

  “I’m resigning. I think I can go back to work for NASA.”

  “No,” Chance said sharply. “If you give up now they will have won. Everything.” She looked away for a moment. “It’d all be for nothing.”

  “My marriage is more important.”

  “Our marriage,” Chance corrected, looking into his eyes. “Don’t ever forget it. I won’t.”

  The Guerin P/C2622 majestically touched down for a landing at Portland International Airport, six weeks to the day after the air disasters that had brought the United States, Russia, and Japan to the brink of war. A huge crowd waited in the grandstands in front of the terminal to watch the boarding ceremonies for her maiden flight to Honolulu.

  Incredibly, in that short time, the country had gotten back on its feet, and many of the 2622’s systems had been redesigned and rebuilt to include Kilbourne’s redundant cross-check system. She was the most sophisticated, and now the safest, airplane that ever flew.

  “Al should have been here for this,” David Kennedy said.

  “He knew you wouldn’t quit,” McGarvey replied. He shaded his eyes against the bright sun as he watched the magnificent machine turn onto the taxiway. Even on the ground she looked like she was flying at the edge of space.

  “We would have, except for you.”

  “It doesn’t stop here.”

  “I know,” Kennedy said, a dark look momentarily passing over his features. “But the next time we’ll be ready.”

  McGarvey looked at Dominique, and she smiled radiantly, only the slightest hint of fear and uncertainty at the corners of her eyes. He couldn’t help himself from thinking that they were still so terribly naive that they actually hoped their troubles were behind them.

  Kilbourne and Socrates came over as the big hypersonic airliner turned onto the ramp and came to a halt in front of the grandstands, America painted in bold blue letters across her fuselage.

  “That was Al’s idea, naming her America,” Kilbourne said. “He told me that it would mean hope, promise for the future, fa
ir play, and honesty.”

  Kennedy smiled. “We don’t always get it right.”

  “But we do most of the time,” Kilbourne said.

  Dominique squeezed McGarvey’s arm. Then again, McGarvey thought, maybe it was he who was naive. Maybe they were right after all.

  My apologies to the city of Portland,

  Oregon, and vicinity. Fact is I placed an

  imaginary aircraft company in a real

  locale. No disrespect was intended.

  Portland just seemed like the right place.

  Read on for a preview of

  Retribution

  David Hagberg

  Available in January 2015 by Tom Doherty Associates

  A Forge Hardcover ISBN 978-0-7653-3155-7

  Copyright © 2015 by David Hagberg

  PROLOGUE

  Abbottabad, Pakistan

  An hour and a half from their staging area at the airbase outside of Jalalabad, just across the Afghan border, Chalk One with eleven SEAL team assaulters crashed on the outer wall of Usama bin Laden’s compound.

  It was late, after midnight, and pitch dark under a moonless sky.

  Barnes and Tabeek were first off the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter, dropping eight feet to the ground, just avoiding the still spinning main rotors. No one had been hurt but it had been close.

  This was the big deal that all twenty-two SEAL assaulters, their CIA translator, one explosive ordinance tech, and a combat dog had been waiting for ever since 9/11. The president had finally given the green light to take out UBL and the mission barely underway was going south.

  The team aboard Chalk Two, the second Black Hawk, was tasked for fire support inside the compound as well as security along the outer wall. The Pakistani military academy and police barracks were less than a mile away. And those guys could be showing up at any moment.

  Tony Tabeek, called “Tank” because of his solid build, raced across the inner courtyard and set the first breaching charge on the iron gate to the inner courtyard. “I’m going explosive,” he shouted.

  The downed chopper no longer mattered, all that counted in Peter Barnes’s head was staying on mission, something he’d trained for his entire career. All of them were senior operators, in their thirties, well experienced in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other hot spots over the past ten years or so, and they’d all worked the mission plan over and over again, until no one had to give orders, everyone knew his job.

  The other assaulters stacked up behind Barnes, all of them turning away and lowering their heads as Tony hit the detonator. The charge went off with a very loud bang, blowing a large hole in the gate.

  Tony was first through and within ninety seconds of the crash the team was back on mission. Anderson peeled off to race up the outside stairs to clear the roof of possible snipers.

  It was believed that bin Laden and perhaps two or more of his wives had an apartment on the third deck of the main house. The problem was no one knew how heavily armed they might be, how many soldiers or relatives might also be in the building, and who of them—especially the women—would be decked out with suicide vests ready to pull the pin as soon as the house was breached.

  Don, Bob, and Greg the Ratman raced across the courtyard to the north door while four other operators went to the south door.

  Barnes, who at five eight with a slender build, a scruffy beard and long hair, was the smallest member of the two teams on the crashed bird, glanced over his right shoulder in time to see Chalk Two disappear behind the north wall. They were supposed to hover over the main building to let at least one team fast-rope to the roof. But they knew that Chalk One had crashed and made the right decision to put the operators on the ground outside the perimeter.

  In their final briefing the admiral had stressed the absolute importance of placing boots on the ground ASAP. The team was at its most vulnerable point in the air, and especially fast-roping into the compound.

  The troop net lit up with radio calls as the team aboard Chalk Two piled out of the chopper and headed toward a gate on the north side of the compound.

  Tony raced across the inner courtyard to the guesthouse, where it was believed that Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, who was one of bin Laden’s important couriers, lived with a wife and two or three kids.

  A pair of sturdy metal doors with barred windows above and on either side were locked solid.

  Barnes stepped aside as Tony pulled a sledgehammer from the back of his vest, extended the handle and hit the lock with three sharp blows, doing nothing but denting the metal.

  He broke out one of the windows, but the bars wouldn’t budge when he tried to pry them apart.

  By now anyone anywhere inside the compound or in the fairly upscale neighborhood who wasn’t dead or totally deaf knew that something was going on.

  “I’m going explosive,” Barnes said softly, thinking that whispering at this point was the dumbest thing he’d ever done. He pulled the breaching charge from his kit.

  There was an explosion from the north side of the compound, and a second later Chalk Two’s team leader radioed that the breach had failed.

  “We’re moving to the Delta compound gate at this time.”

  Barnes dropped to one knee, peeled the adhesive strip off the back of the breaching charge, and stuck it in place on the door.

  Don, their translator, the last man out of the chopper, raced across the compound toward them when someone inside the guesthouse opened fire with the unmistakable rattle of an unsuppressed AK-47.

  Tony returned fire from the left side of the door as Barnes moved to the window on the right, smashed out the glass with the barrel of his Heckler & Koch 416, and fired several short bursts inside, walking the rounds left to right.

  Don was right behind Barnes. “Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, come out now!” he shouted in Arabic.

  No one responded.

  Barnes was on autopilot now—in the zone—no stray thoughts, not even curiosity about how all of this was going to turn out. He was on mission, following the plan.

  He went back to the door, made sure the explosive charge was in place, and pulled a detonator out of his kit. He was about to attach it to the charge when someone inside opened the lock and cracked the door.

  Barnes stepped back. There was nowhere for the three of them to take cover. If al-Kuwaiti tossed out a grenade it would be game over.

  A woman appeared at the open door, a bundle of something in her arms. She was crying.

  Barnes raised his rifle. The laser pointer on her forehead lit up like day in his four-tube night vision goggles. For just a moment his finger tightened on the trigger, until he realized that the bundle in the woman’s arms was a baby. Three other children stood behind her.

  “Come here,” Don told her.

  “He is dead,” she said in Arabic as she stepped out of the house. “You shot him. You killed him.”

  Don translated.

  Barnes patted the woman down, and he and Tony entered the house, which smelled of heating oil. Al-Kuwaiti lay on the floor in a pool of blood, and Barnes fired several shots into his body to make sure he was dead.

  It took less than one minute to clear both rooms, and when they were finished Barnes activated an IR chemical light stick at the front door. It could only be seen by someone wearing NVGs and it indicated that the place was clear.

  “C One is secure,” Barnes radioed on the troop net.

  The team from Chalk Two had breached the gate to Delta compound and had already reached the main house in A One where it was believed that UBL and his brother Abrar al-Kuwaiti lived. Another breaching charge blew and moments later one shot was fired, followed by several more.

  By the time Barnes, Tabeek, and Don reached the west side of the building and stacked up behind the other assaulters waiting to enter through the north door, Stew reported that a metal gate blocked access to the second floor and he was going explosive.

  Barnes and the others could only wait and pull security, laser points dancing just about everywhere in t
he A One courtyard, especially along the second- and third-floor windows and rooflines.

  The mission commander from Chalk Two, realizing that the Chalk One chopper was never going to fly, got on the satellite radio and called for one of the Quick Reaction Force CH-47 Chinooks standing by for refueling and help if needed.

  Stew had set the breaching charge on the gate, and since the blast was going to be inside a structure and would create a very intense pressure wave, most of the assaulters took cover. The charge blew with an impressive bang, and the chickens in the wire coop next to where Barnes and the others were waiting started raising hell. It was like a three-ring circus inside the compound. All they needed now were klieg lights and a ringmaster with a bullhorn.

  Everyone in the stack hustled inside and started up the spiral staircase, all of them trying to be as quiet as possible.

  When Barnes reached the second deck, just about everyone ahead of him was already clearing four doorways down a long corridor.

  An assaulter was halfway up the stairs to the third floor when a man stuck his head around the corner. He was clean-shaven. The intel briefings they’d been given made it likely that he was one of UBL’s sons.

  “Khalid,” the assaulter called softly.

  The man appeared around the corner again. The assaulter shot him in the head and he fell down the stairs all the way to the second deck.

  Barnes and the others stepped over the body and headed up the stairs where they found Khalid’s AK-47 propped against the wall. If the guy had held his position and fired down the stairs they would have been bottled up and it would have been an entirely different game.