Allah's Scorpion

by David Hagberg

  The MP hesitated a moment, but then he nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said. He stepped back and motioned for his partner in the guard shack to power open the inner and outer gates.

  They rattled slowly open, and Gloria drove into the prison main yard and headed directly over to the expansive cement block prisoner processing facility. “Weiss is going to get all over those guys for letting us in.”

  “I don’t think so,” McGarvey said. “He’ll be too busy coming after me, because I’m going to break a couple of laws tonight.”

  Gloria gave him a curious look. “You going to kill somebody?”

  “If need be,” he said. Amnesty International and a lot of congressmen, and especially a big segment of the media, had come down hard on our military for prisoner abuses here and at Abu Ghraib. Our people were accused of not being sensitive to the ethnic needs of their Muslim prisoners. But the same watchdogs had very little to say about al-Quaida’s beheading of its prisoners. Or of the endless rounds of car bombs. Those acts were America’s fault for trying to fight back after 9/11.

  Such attitudes had never made any sense to McGarvey, but he’d been battling them ever since Vietnam had blown up in our faces. We had been the bad guys, and when Jane Fonda had gone to Hanoi she had visited antiaircraft guns that were shooting down our planes, but she never went to the Hanoi Hilton where American crewmen were being starved and beaten.

  “Maddox will probably have you shot.”

  “That’s a possibility,” McGarvey said as they pulled up. “Look, you can stick it out in the dayroom, it’s only going to take me a couple of minutes.”

  Gloria laughed. “What, are you kidding?” she asked. “I wouldn’t miss this for all the world. They were the bastards who killed my partner.”

  The OD, a tall, very thin first lieutenant named Albritton, had been alerted by the gate guards that McGarvey and Gloria were incoming from Post One. He got up from behind his desk just inside the front door when they came in.

  “I’ve sent a runner to find Commander Weiss,” he said. “But until he gets here, I will not allow any prisoner to be interrogated. That’s SOP.”

  “That’s fine with me,” McGarvey said. “We need an interpreter in any event. But in the meantime you can get the man out of bed and over here.”

  Gloria handed bin Ramdi’s folder to the OD. “The sooner we can ask our questions, the sooner we’ll be gone,” she said sweetly and she smiled.

  The OD was shaking his head.

  “Son, I don’t want to pull rank on you, but I will,” McGarvey warned. “These are the same bastards who killed three of your guys last week. We’re just trying to find out what’s going to happen next. No one wants to go through another 9/11.”

  “Sir, Commander Weiss will have my ass if I let you talk to one of his prisoners.”

  “I hate to break this to you, Lieutenant, but these are not his prisoners,” Gloria said.

  McGarvey snatched the phone from the OD’s desk, and held it out to the man. “Call General Maddox. He’ll give you the authorization.”

  The lieutenant looked like he’d been hit with a cattle prod. “It’s two in the morning.”

  “Yes, it is,” McGarvey said. “Call him.”

  “Shit,” the OD said. He took the phone and dialed a number. “This is Albritton.” He opened bin Ramdi’s file. “I want you to bring seven-three-nine over on the double.”

  The clock had just started. Whoever got here first, Weiss or bin Ramdi, would determine if their trip had been a waste of time.

  “I sent a runner to look for him, he’s not in his quarters,” Albritton said into the phone. “Just bring the prisoner over here, if you please.” He glanced at McGarvey and nodded. “I’ll sign for him.” He hung up. “Your man will be here shortly. We’ll put him in the same interrogation room you used this afternoon.”

  “Thank you,” McGarvey said. “We’ll just go back and wait for him there.”

  “Be sure to let us know when you’ve found Commander Weiss,” Gloria said.

  She and McGarvey went to the end of the corridor, which opened to the common room that was equipped with tables and chairs, some vending machines, and a TV set, DVD player, and a shelf full of movies. This was where MPs sometimes took their breaks. Four interrogation rooms, their doors open, were along the back concrete block wall. The lights were on but no one was there. Each room was equipped with a one-way glass. When prisoners were being interrogated, lights in the common room were kept off.

  McGarvey turned his back to the closed-circuit surveillance camera mounted near the ceiling in the corner opposite the interrogation rooms and took out his pistol. He removed the magazine, eased the slide back to eject the round in the chamber, and put the magazine back in place. He holstered the gun and pocketed the 9mm bullet.

  Gloria watched, her eyes bright, but she didn’t say a word.

  “It might get a little dicey, but I want you to play along with whatever goes down,” McGarvey told her.

  She nodded.

  “I want you to be absolutely clear on one thing,” he said. “No one gets hurt. No matter what does or does not happen, no one gets hurt. Understood ?”

  Gloria nodded. “What are you trying to get from him?”

  “He knows something about the five prisoners who were sprung.”

  “They all do.”

  “I think he might know why al-Quaida got them out, and killed them rather than let them be recaptured.” McGarvey had been thinking about little else since he’d gotten back from Panama. He thought he knew the answers, but he had to make sure.

  Lieutenant Albritton and an MP came down the corridor with bin Ramdi. The Saudi was fully awake, but he didn’t seem quite as sure of himself as he had earlier.

  “No questions until we can get Commander Weiss over here,” Albritton warned.

  “Right,” McGarvey said, his eyes locked on bin Ramdi’s.

  The MP escorted the prisoner into one of the interrogation rooms, then stepped out. He hadn’t removed the plastic wrist restraint.

  The telephone down the corridor rang. “Stay here,” Albritton told the MP, and he hustled back to his post.

  The MP, whose name tag read LAGERMANN, glanced at the lieutenant, his attention momentarily away from bin Ramdi.

  McGarvey slipped into the interrogation room, pulled out his pistol, and pointed it at bin Ramdi’s head. “Al saheeh,” he said. The truth.

  “Holy shit!” the MP shouted.

  Bin Ramdi’s eyes flicked back and forth from McGarvey to the marine. “Sir, you will stand down!” the MP shouted.

  “I’m going to kill this son of a bitch unless he starts talking,” McGarvey said, his voice low, his tone reasonable.

  “No, sir, I can’t let that happen!” the MP shouted.

  Gloria was right behind him. “This is the same scum bastard who kills our people, Lagermann. So who are you going to protect? Us or them?”

  “Ma’am, I’m just following my orders.”

  “Yeah, well so am I,” Gloria said.

  “The truth, do you understand me?” McGarvey asked.

  Bin Ramdi was still looking for the MP to protect him.

  McGarvey cocked the hammer of his pistol. “Do you understand me?”

  Bin Ramdi suddenly came unglued. He backed up, and nodded vigorously. “Yes,” he said. “I understand you. But do not shoot me.”

  “Lieutenant!” the MP shouted. “We have a situation back here!”

  “The five prisoners who escaped. What did they do in the Iranian navy?”

  Bin Ramdi threw up his bound hands. “I beseech you. I do not know this answer.”

  McGarvey stepped closer. “Tell me or I will kill you. My wife died on 9/11, and it will be so easy for me to pull this trigger that you cannot imagine.”

  “They were in the navy!” bin Ramdi cried.

  “We know that. But what did they do?”

  “Sir, Commander Weiss is coming through the front gate,” Lieutenant Albritton sa
id from the doorway. “He orders you to back off. Right now, or you will be placed under arrest.”

  “Al saheeh,” McGarvey said. He took a step forward.

  “Submarines,” bin Ramdi whispered.

  It was the answer that McGarvey had expected, but the Saudi knew more. It was in his eyes, there was a certain craftiness there, as if he felt that he had succeeded in evading something even more important than what the five escapees had done in the navy.

  “What else?” McGarvey demanded harshly.

  “There is nothing else.”

  McGarvey took another step closer, so that he was only three feet away from the prisoner, and pulled the trigger. The hammer fell on an empty firing chamber with a loud snap.

  Bin Ramdi flinched so badly he almost lost his balance.

  “Shit,” McGarvey muttered. He cycled the ejector slide, charging the pistol, and once again pointed the muzzle directly at the Saudi’s head.

  Bin Ramdi pissed in his jumpsuit.

  “I want the rest of it. Why were those five men broken out of here?”

  “I don’t know, I swear it!” bin Ramdi cried. His eyes were glued on McGarvey’s trigger finger.

  McGarvey started to pull.

  “They were transferred to Camp Echo that night,” bin Ramdi blurted, nearly incoherently. “But I don’t know why, except that Osama wanted them.”

  It was not the answer McGarvey had expected, but it made sense if Gloria’s suspicion that there was a traitor inside Camp Delta was correct.

  There was a sudden commotion in the common room behind McGarvey.

  “Sir, I tried to stop him,” Lieutenant Albritton said.

  “Shoot him,” Weiss ordered.

  “Sir?” the MP asked.

  McGarvey held bin Ramdi’s eyes for just a second longer, but there was no longer any guile, only relief.

  “Shoot him!” Weiss shouted.

  “It won’t be necessary,” McGarvey said. He lowered his pistol, de-cocked it, and holstered it as he turned around. “We’re finished here.”

  The confused MP had unslung his M8 carbine, but the muzzle was pointed at the floor and his finger was alongside the trigger guard.

  Weiss, dressed in blue jeans and a white T-shirt, was directly behind the MP. He shoved the young man aside and fumbled for the Beretta in his shoulder holster. He was muttering something.

  Gloria moved in from his right, batted his hand away from the pistol, and grabbed it out of the holster. She stepped back a pace. “Let’s all calm down here, before this shit gets out of hand,” she said.

  Weiss was beside himself with rage. “You bitch,” he growled. He backhanded Gloria in the face, snapping her head back, and sending her bouncing off the wall, the pistol falling to the floor.

  Before McGarvey could move to interfere, Weiss came after Gloria, shoving her back against the wall again. But this time she was expecting it. She rolled to the side, grabbed Weiss’s right wrist, and slammed his forearm against the door frame, both bones breaking with an audible pop.

  Weiss screamed and staggered away from her, trying to cradle his broken arm against his chest.

  The MP was stunned.

  Gloria stepped forward, slammed the heel of her right hand into Weiss’s nose, breaking it, blood gushing out both nostrils, then hit his left kneecap with her right instep, dislocating the man’s knee.

  Weiss collapsed on the floor and Gloria was about to go after him when McGarvey was at her side.

  “That’s all,” he said softly.

  She looked at him, her nostrils flared, her eyes wild.

  “Come down, Gloria, it’s done. We’re out of here.”

  Slowly she came back, and nodded.

  Weiss was curled up, whimpering in pain.

  “Someone call an ambulance for Mr. Weiss,” McGarvey said.

  Lieutenant Albritton had moved well out of range and he kept looking from Weiss to Gloria and then to McGarvey. But he didn’t say anything.

  McGarvey looked at bin Ramdi, who had shrunk back into a corner of the interrogation room, a mostly unreadable expression on his face. But it was obvious he was impressed by what he’d just witnessed, and extremely wary.

  “You sons of bitches are going to fucking jail!” Weiss shouted.

  McGarvey looked down at him and shook his head. “Didn’t anyone ever teach you not to hit women?”

  “Evidently not,” the MP said, half under his breath. “But he sure got told this time.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  EN ROUTE TO ANDREWS AIR FORCE BASE

  They’d not been interfered with as they left Camp Delta and drove across base down to the ferry landing. Nor were they stopped from reaching their Gulfstream, even though it was very likely that by then General Maddox had been informed about what had happened.

  In this case McGarvey thought that it was probably for the best that it wasn’t a prisoner who’d been roughed up, though by the time they reached Washington he was pretty sure that McCann would try to bring Gloria up on charges.

  It was morning, the sun just rising above the Atlantic horizon as they approached the U.S. East Coast. Gloria had been far too keyed-up to sleep on the fourteen-hundred-mile trip back to D.C., but she hadn’t wanted to talk about what had happened.

  She came forward from the head where she had splashed some water on her face, and straightened out her hair and touched up her makeup. She sat down in the big leather seat facing McGarvey, a resolute expression on her round face; she had screwed up and she was ready now to face her punishment.

  “I jeopardized the mission,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “He had it coming.”

  Gloria smiled tightly, and nodded. “I might have killed him if you hadn’t stopped me.”

  “The paperwork would have been endless,” McGarvey said. “Ask me, I know.”

  Without averting her gaze, Gloria began to cry silently, tears welling in her eyes and rolling down her cheeks.

  McGarvey’s heart suddenly went out to her. She’d had a difficult life, losing her mother and then her husband, so she was seasoned to pain. But she wasn’t much older than his daughter Elizabeth. And she had the same sort of tough exterior that was a cover for a sometimes confused and frightened little girl who wasn’t sure if she was ready to be an adult.

  He reached out and touched her knee. “You did a good job down there. Because of you and your partner we found out what Allah’s Scorpion is, and now we’ve got a good shot at shutting it down.”

  “I got Bob killed.”

  “It wasn’t you who killed him, it was the bad guys,” McGarvey told her. “You’d better understand that, otherwise you’re not going to be much help to me.”

  Her dark eyes widened slightly. “I thought I would be pulled out of the field after this.”

  “Are you kidding?” McGarvey asked. “Why do you think Weiss came after you?”

  Gloria’s jaw tightened. “Because he’s dirty, and he knows that I suspect him.” She shook her head. “But I don’t have any proof, and Howard’ll go ballistic as soon as Weiss starts making noises.”

  “Which might not happen,” McGarvey said. “He’s gotten rid of us, and I think Maddox is going to order him to take his lumps and shut his mouth.”

  “I don’t get it, Mac, why would somebody like Weiss work for al-Quaida? It doesn’t make sense. I mean he’s an asshole, but he’s apparently got a good career going for him. Why would he take the risk?”

  “Money. Ego. Arrogance,” McGarvey said. He’d seen the same sort of thing many times before. Men, and a few women, who’d thought that they were better than everyone else. Superior. Smarter. Quicker. Or, for some of them, it was the same sort of thrill that a bungee jumper gets when he steps off the edge. It was almost a death wish. When some traitors were caught they were relieved that they no longer had to lead a double life. In many respects prison would be easier.

  Weiss, if he was guilty of anything other than being a simple asshole, was not cut of the same dan
gerous cloth as Rupert Graham. Men like Graham, and others McGarvey had come up against, who were as brilliant as they were ruthless, were at war with the world. Whatever brought them to that point, and there was no one reason that McGarvey had ever discovered, did not interfere with their skills on the battlefield.

  Carlos the Jackal had been the first of the specialist killing machines in the modern era, and Graham was just another. He would never be brought to trial, because he would simply take his war into prison. Men like him had to be killed. There was no other solution.

  “Hijo de puta,” Gloria said softly.

  “Yeah.”

  CIA HEADQUARTERS

  Coming back out of the field, as he had done countless times before in his career, brought back a host of memories. A good many of them were very bad: missions in which he had made kills; missions in which he had nearly lost his life; missions in which his family’s lives had been placed in jeopardy. Riding into the city he remembered the face of every person he’d killed. The number wasn’t legion, but over a twenty-five-year career he had a lot of blood on his conscience.

  Adkins had sent a Company limo out to Andrews for them, and on the drive in McGarvey had made a quick phone call to his wife.

  “Touchdown,” he told her.

  “You’re in one piece?” she asked, and he heard the relief in her voice.

  “All my fingers and toes.”

  “ETA?”

  McGarvey glanced at his watch. It was a couple of minutes after ten. When he looked up, his eyes met Gloria’s. There was an odd, hungry set to her mouth. “I should make it by lunchtime or a little later. How’d the move go?”

  “Most of our worldly possessions are on the way south,” Kathleen said. “How about us?”

  “Soon,” McGarvey promised.

  “As in tomorrow or the next day?”

  “Soon,” McGarvey said. He felt bad, because this sort of conversation had interrupted his marriage for a lot of years. These days Katy was more pragmatic about what he did, but the uncertainty and hurt was an ever-constant pressure in her gut. He could hear it in her voice. She was afraid for him.