First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  A uniformed soldier, his sidearm holstered on his chest, came into the light and turned Baranov around, then frisked him.

  He stepped back and said something in Spanish.

  “The question is what are you doing here, Señor Baranov?” someone else asked. “I believe that you were warned to remain in Santiago.”

  “May I turn around?”

  “Yes.”

  Baranov turned to face the lights. “I’m leaving Chile in the morning. I had some personal belongings I wanted to get.”

  “Have you had contact with General Varga this evening?”

  For just an instant the question made no sense to Baranov, but all at once he understood everything. As el Presidente and Torres had both explained to him, Chile belonged to Chileans, not to Americans and not to Russians. “No,” he said.

  However it happened, tonight both General Varga and McGarvey would be dead, Varga to end Pinochet’s embarrassment to the White House and McGarvey to shift the embarrassment north.

  The beauty of it was that the entire scenario had been worked out in advance, probably even before McGarvey had been given the assignment. It was too bad, because Baranov had come to admire the man. The only question left was who had tried to kill him in Washington and again at the Farm? And why? Unless it was merely to test the man’s abilities and his resolve. It was something Russians would do, but not Americans—they were too soft. And if Henry were involved, it would mean that he had lied from the beginning.

  “What’s next, gentlemen? Have you come to arrest me?”

  “Go back to Santiago and leave in the morning as you have planned.”

  “Will I be allowed to return to Chile?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Will I be driven back?”

  “No.”

  “What about my cars?”

  “Take whichever one you want.”

  “I’ll take the Mercedes. It belongs to the embassy,” Baranov said. “May I take my pistol?”

  “No. Leave now, señor.”

  “As you wish,” Baranov said. He had a good idea what was in the trunk of the BMW. And sooner or later someone would figure it out and come looking.

  On the way out, he almost regretted McGarvey’s death. He wanted to come up against the man, one on one. Be that as it may, his work here was done.

  SEVENTY

  McGarvey waited a full five minutes to see if he’d been spotted by one of the security people and someone was coming up to investigate. But the night remained quiet, and the only lights were the glow from the valley.

  He screwed the suppressor on the Walther’s muzzle, then put the cap back on, the bill low, and with the headlights on drove up the hill and turned at the Vargas’ driveway.

  The uniform would get him through the gate, and possibly as far as the house. With any luck there wouldn’t be a trap, and he could get inside. Baranov had partied here, so he was well known to the staff. The ruse only had to work long enough to kill the general and then get back to the car. Two minutes, maybe three, tops.

  Varga’s wife was the only problem. So far as he knew she’d done nothing wrong other than marrying the Butcher of Valparaíso. If she screamed before he could subdue her, it would be game over.

  “Pay attention to details,” they’d been taught at the Farm. “And never forget it could be the smallest thing you overlook that could jump up and bite you on the ass. A dog. A child, or worse yet a baby crying. Do your homework.”

  But there’d been no time at the Farm or in town. He’d been too busy protecting Katy, getting the Plonskis safely away and defending his own life.

  Next time, he told himself. If there was a next time.

  Thirty feet from the gate a spotlight atop the wall suddenly came on, illuminating the inside of the car. Momentarily blinded, he stopped but did not avert his face.

  Moments later the light went out, the gate powered open and he drove inside.

  The compound seemed deserted. Nothing moved in any direction. No lights shined from any window in the house or from any of the outbuildings.

  He parked directly in front of the house and got out of the car. Holding the pistol out of sight, low and to the right, he walked up to the door, which opened.

  A man in jeans and a black T-shirt was there in the dark entry hall. He was bulky but obviously fit, and Mac got the instant impression that he was an athlete. He had a pistol in a shoulder holster and a small walkie-talkie clipped to his belt.

  “Captain Baranov, we weren’t expecting you, sir,” the bodyguard said, but he suddenly realized his mistake and reached for his gun.

  McGarvey shot him once in the heart, and he fell back without a sound on the terrazzo floor.

  Inside, McGarvey closed the door and stepped over the body.

  He breathed through his mouth. At this point he felt no anticipation or fear, only a sort of detachment. He was on mission, and the only direction was forward.

  According to the sketch of the house that Munoz had drawn, the master bedroom suite was straight back past the kitchen and to the right of the living room, the layout almost exactly the same as Baranov’s place.

  Taking off the hat and laying it on the hall table, McGarvey made his way through the house and pulled up just around the corner from the short corridor that led off the living room to the master suite.

  The house was deathly still until a woman cried out from the bedroom.

  “Mati, Madre de Dios!”

  A man said something indistinct.

  The door to the bedroom was open and as McGarvey reached it he understood that the general and his wife were in the middle of making love. Or at least it sounded like it.

  For a longish moment he hesitated. If he killed the general, he would have to also kill the wife. At this point there was no other way around it. Varga had earned the title of Butcher. Mac had read the reports. The man was a monster and he wouldn’t stop.

  McGarvey stepped around the corner, and in the dim light coming from outside he could make out the figures of the general and his wife, both naked. She was on her knees, her legs spread, her back to her husband, who was having intercourse with her, his hands on her hips.

  “Dios!” she cried out again.

  McGarvey stepped closer to the bed and hesitated for just an instant longer. His stomach settled. He raised the Walther and fired one shot at a range of less than ten feet into the back of the general’s head.

  Varga was dead almost instantly and his body went slack, slumping to the left.

  Karina looked over her shoulder. “Vasha?” she whispered. She was stunned.

  McGarvey stared at her.

  She shoved her husband’s body aside and reached for something on the nightstand.

  McGarvey shot her once, hitting her in the right shoulder.

  She started to cry out, when he fired a second shot, this one catching her in the side of her head just above her right ear. She convulsed once then fell forward, her head on the pillow, still on her knees, her legs spread.

  “Goddamnit,” McGarvey said.

  He walked closer and put another bullet into the general’s head, and another in Karina’s.

  “Never forget the insurance shot,” he had been taught. “It might seem cruel, but it’s necessary.”

  At that moment, in Mac’s mind, cruel didn’t come close.

  He turned and went back to the front hall as he changed out magazines. He stepped over the body and opened the door a crack just as someone in jeans and a black T-shirt came around the Fiat in a dead run, a pistol in his right hand, a walkie-talkie in his left.

  McGarvey fired three shots in rapid succession at center mass. The bodyguard stumbled, tried to raise his pistol, but then fell forward on his face.

  For several long beats McGarvey remained inside the house, waiting for more bodyguards to come on the run, for an alarm to sound. But the night remained quiet, the front gate still open.

  He turned back, fired one shot into the bodyguard’s head
, and outside fired a shot into the back of the second bodyguard’s head.

  He’d forgotten Baranov’s uniform hat in the hall, but maybe it would slow the investigators down if they suspected the Russian had done the assassinations.

  He’d done his first official kill, and now it was time to get the hell out of Chile before escape became impossible.

  The only real issue now was the probability that this had been an elaborate setup. But not Baranov’s doing, or even at the orders of someone in the DINA. Which left Langley, though he could not guess at the purpose.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  A driver from the embassy took Baranov out to the airport, dropping him off at the VIP terminal without a word just before five in the morning. He carried only a small briefcase with a few papers. Inside, a customs and immigration officer checked his diplomatic passport.

  “Do you have anything to declare, Captain Baranov?”

  “It’s a diplomatic passport.”

  “Yes, sir, but I am obliged to ask nevertheless.”

  “Nothing,” Baranov said. He would be glad once they’d cleared Chilean airspace. Mexico wasn’t home but in his mind it was a hell of a lot more interesting than here.

  “Thank you, sir. There is a gentleman waiting for you in the facility manager’s office.”

  No one else was in the place, which had struck Baranov as odd when he walked in, but now he understood why no one was here. It was Torres, making sure he got off without a hitch. The DINA was on a heightened alert status since the disturbances yesterday during the funeral.

  The deputy director, in civilian clothes, was perched on the edge of the facility manager’s desk. Outside the big windows, the Yak-40D was parked, its forward hatch open, its boarding stairs down. Major Dyukov was doing his walk-around.

  “I assume that you are happy to be going,” Torres said.

  “I don’t like leaving unfinished business behind, but yes.”

  “The Moscow delegation has been rescheduled for next month, and as for your network, we’ll just have to see. Perhaps you could send me a précis of the type of material you would be willing to exchange if such an office could be set up here. Of course it would be under the aegis of the DINA.”

  “I’ll be happy to send something for you to look at,” Baranov said. “But I was thinking about Mati and his wife.”

  “They’re dead.”

  Baranov wasn’t really surprised after the events of last night, but he nodded. “McGarvey?”

  “Yes.”

  “May I assume that he’s either dead or in custody?”

  “He will be soon,” Torres said with a straight face. “A BMW was reported stolen at the airport yesterday, but it’s disappeared. We think that he’s trying for the border the same way he came in.”

  “In the BMW?”

  “Yes. Every police officer has been given the description. Trust me, he will not escape. This is Chile. He has no friends here.”

  “Too bad about Karina. She was a lovely girl.”

  Torres smirked. “Did she show you her paintings?”

  Baranov shrugged. “A lovely girl, but with the one fault. And who among us is without sin?”

  “One interesting point. Your uniform hat was found on the hall table at the general’s house.”

  “I must have left it by mistake when I visited last.”

  Torres pushed away from the desk and shook hands with Baranov. “Do not return until you are sent word.”

  Baranov went outside to the jet just as Dyukov was finishing his inspection.

  “Are we ready to depart?” the major said.

  “Looking forward to it,” Baranov said, and he meant it. He was very much wanting to get back to a couple of projects in Mexico. His only disappointment was the likelihood that he would never come face-to-face with McGarvey.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  It was a few minutes after 5:00 A.M. when McGarvey pulled over to the side of the road and doused the headlights. He’d seen the lights at the border crossing five miles ago, and he figured at this point he was half that distance away, but around a curve and out of sight from anyone watching.

  Outside of Santiago he’d had a bad moment when a pair of army jeeps, their blue lights flashing, came up from behind him at a high rate of speed. All four soldiers in each vehicle glanced at him as they passed, but the officer in the lead car just nodded.

  They’d spotted the Russian uniform and assumed he wasn’t the man they were looking for, if in fact the Vargas’ bodies had already been discovered.

  Traffic was very light, mostly trucks out on the highway, delivery vans and other service vehicles.

  When he’d reached the foothills, he looked back at the city, but if any massive search was under way there were no signs of it that he could spot.

  Leaving the car running, McGarvey got out and changed out of the uniform and back into his own clothes. He tossed the uniform inside, and pulled out his rucksack, which he set down on the side of the road.

  There were no guardrails here, and just a few feet off the gravel breakdown lane, the ground fell away into a deep chasm at least five hundred feet to boulders and scrub brush, and farther down to a mountain stream.

  The early morning was cold, the moon full, and no traffic moved in either direction.

  Back behind the wheel, McGarvey drove the car directly to the edge of the breakdown lane, and put it in park.

  He rolled down the window, got out, reached inside and put the car in drive, then stepped back out of the way.

  Baranov’s Fiat slowly moved forward in idle, until the edge, when it seemed to hesitate, then went over.

  Hefting the pack, he headed up the highway toward the border crossing, looking for a spot from where he could make a wide detour around the customs officers and the armed soldiers.

  At this altitude the sun came up much earlier than below in the valleys and already the sky to the east was brightening. Twice in forty-five minutes oncoming trucks forced him to slip out of sight over the edge. The first time he’d hung on to a boulder, the side of the mountain dropping almost as far and as steeply as it had when he’d sent the car over.

  Near the top, however, a broad section of the mountain had been carved away, leaving a level area, some of which had been paved, a couple hundred yards on a side, for the border-crossing facility.

  The entire area was lit as brightly as day. Two buses were inside the customs sheds, the passengers standing around outside under the watchful eyes of the soldiers.

  Keeping low at the side of the road McGarvey took out his binoculars and scanned the place. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Nothing looked any different than it had when he’d come across from the Argentine side less than twenty-four hours ago. If the Vargas’ bodies had been discovered and the alarm raised, it apparently had not spread this far.

  And that made absolutely no sense to him. They’d known he was coming. They’d known his target, and yet there’d only been the two bodyguards. By now the DINA had to know something was wrong.

  He glassed the perimeter facing him. Rubble had been bulldozed over the paved area, leaving a debris field two hundred feet down into the ravine. No lights illuminated the ravine. No one expected someone to try to make it into Argentina on foot from here.

  McGarvey gingerly picked his way down the steep slope into the foot of the valley, then worked his way back up to the bottom of the field of rubble just below the border-crossing post, but far enough away from the highway that it was unlikely anyone would spot him from above.

  Farther down the valley, the way he had come, an army helicopter suddenly rose above the horizon. The noise of the rotors slapped against the sides of the cut, echoing and re-echoing.

  It disappeared as suddenly as it had appeared, just about where Baranov’s car had gone over the edge. He’d been traced this far after all.

  Keeping low, and moving as fast as he possibly could over the broken terrain, he made his way to the edge of the rubble field and rounded the
corner, the highway and customs facility now to his right. The border itself was in the direct middle of the paved area above. Chile and Argentina had apparently agreed that bulldozing and paving two separate areas was impractical up here.

  The helicopter rose up directly to McGarvey’s left, less than one hundred feet above and close enough that the rotor wash kicked up dust and sand into his face.

  “Stop now!” a voice speaking English said from the chopper.

  McGarvey redoubled his efforts. He was less than one hundred yards from the border.

  “Stop immediately or we will open fire!”

  Someone from above at the facility opened fire with an automatic weapon that sounded like a Kalashnikov. The rounds struck well below him, but the shooter began walking up the slope.

  The helicopter made a swooping turn to the left and came back, low and hard into a hover, firing a door gun ten yards ahead of McGarvey and then ten behind.

  “Stop now!”

  McGarvey ducked under an overhanging boulder and began firing at the chopper’s windshield on the left side, one measured shot after the other.

  On the fourth shot the chopper veered sharply left again, and McGarvey sprinted toward the east side of the rubble field below the facility, firing shots upward as he ran. No civilians would be there, only Chilean soldiers with orders to kill him.

  The helicopter came around again, and McGarvey had nowhere to take cover. He changed to his last magazine, turned and raised his pistol ready to fire, but the chopper hovered where it was, about fifty yards to the west.

  He had made it to Argentina.

  * * *

  The sun was fully up two hours later when a bus pulled off the side of the road and stopped next to McGarvey. He didn’t think the Argentines would be helping the Chilean army or the DINA, but he had no way of knowing that for sure.

  He reached inside his jacket for his pistol, when the bus’s door opened.

  “Señor, I am driving to B.A. Would you like to take a ride?” the driver asked. It was the same man from yesterday, making the return trip. He was smiling.

  McGarvey nodded. “Don’t mind if I do.”