Face Off--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  “Oh, wow. You okay?”

  “For now. But I’m talking on one of their phones; can they listen in?”

  “No. Mac is close, but something else has come up.”

  “First, can you let him know that I’m holed up in a freight elevator equipment room?”

  “Yes, I have you pinpointed. Are you secure?”

  “I don’t think for long.”

  “I’ll let him know. But in the meantime it looks as if Marty has got a hand in the situation. Don’t know what, yet, but he may be calling some of the shots.”

  Pete was incredulous. “Was he involved in the Paris thing?”

  “I don’t know, but something else is going on that I haven’t got a handle on either. Except that the number two guy at our station there in Istanbul has apparently been piping Marty with intel—above and beyond the station’s normal output.”

  A man dressed in all black, the same as the two Russian operators she’d killed, appeared on the right for just a moment, before he ducked down and disappeared in the shadows.

  “I’ve got company. Gotta go,” Pete said, breaking the connection.

  THIRTY-THREE

  McGarvey flattened himself against the wall next to the driveway that led through an open iron gate into the factory complex. Since the gunshots and flashbang grenade a couple of minutes ago, there’d been no sounds from inside.

  He took a quick look through the gate and pulled back. One man, with what looked like a Heckler & Koch MP5 room broom at port arms, stood just inside the overhang of a doorway. A dark blue Mercedes sedan was parked off to the left, beyond which were three windowless vans with some markings in Turkish but a Latin-based alphabet.

  The sounds of traffic in the distance, a siren somewhere, and the mournful blast of a ship’s whistle, out in the Bosphorus but close, could have been New York or San Francisco. But they sounded foreign, ancient, a thousand or more years of history even before Columbus sailed to the New World.

  He checked again, but the guard hadn’t moved from his position. He cleared his six before he phoned Otto.

  “I’m at the front gate. Do any of them have cell phones you can access?”

  “Yes. But the situation has changed. Pete is barricaded on the roof. I talked to her.”

  “I heard automatic weapons fire and a flashbang grenade. Is she okay?”

  “For now. She took down four of their people, and she’s armed with one of their rifles and a Russian-made cell phone. But they know where she is, and there are at least two other operators on the roof with her, plus someone on the stairs, so she’s cut off.”

  “Connect me with Najjir.”

  “Goddamnit, Mac. If you let yourself be taken, they won’t need her. You know that.”

  “Link her with the call.”

  “They know you’re coming,” Otto said. He sounded desperate. ‘It’s not too late to call for help. Gibson will go along with just about anything we want, at this point.”

  “Do you think he’s suspicious of Marty?”

  “That’s fringe, but no, I don’t think so.”

  “Good, then we’ll leave it at that for the moment. Make the call.”

  “You’re not thinking straight.”

  “If Marty is somehow involved with these people, an attack in France was nothing more than a diversion. Something else is going on that we need to know about.”

  “Okay, but what?”

  “Could Marty have known that Pete and I would be at the Jules Verne at that moment in time?”

  “I don’t know, but I doubt it.”

  “Unless he has some other intel sources you don’t know about?”

  “If it’s non-electronic, and is off campus—face-to-face—then sure.”

  “I’m going to find out. But in the meantime I need to get Pete away from here and on a flight out of the country.”

  Otto was silent for a longish moment. When he returned he sounded forlorn, as if he’d just lost a good friend or he’d learned that just about everything he’d come out of the cold for had been false.

  “If you’re going to do what I think you’re going to do, I’m going to link the call with every cell phone in the building,” he said. “I don’t want some twitchy son of a bitch getting nervous and taking a potshot when you show yourself. Stand by.”

  * * *

  Najjir and Miriam were holding, just two steps down from the open door, when Viktor Lipasov, one of the two remaining operators on the roof, made contact.

  “She’s inside the elevator machinery room. What do you want me to do?”

  “Can you get her out with a grenade?”

  “No. The door’s closed.”

  “Stand by,” Najjir said. At the same moment his phone buzzed, and he switched to speaker mode.

  “Mr. Najjir,” McGarvey said.

  Pete was also receiving his call. “Don’t mean to be a pest, sweetheart, but what the hell has taken you so long?” she said.

  “I’m here,” McGarvey told her. “You okay?”

  “Peachy. What’s the plan?”

  “Yes, Mr. McGarvey, what is the plan?” Najjir asked.

  “You want a trade? Here I am.”

  “Might be that you’re a little late. There’s already been a considerable amount of collateral damage done.”

  “Your call. But that’s just Ms. Boylan’s doing. Maybe you should think about what I’m capable of.”

  “You didn’t come into this country armed.”

  McGarvey didn’t respond.

  “Where are you at this moment?”

  “At the front gate.”

  “Show yourself.”

  “Your operator will shoot me.”

  “He will not, you have my word on it. We want you alive,” Najjir said. “Give me a moment and I’ll call him.”

  “No need. Every one of your people who has a phone is hearing us,” McGarvey said. He cleared his six again and, holding the Walther in plain sight, stepped around the corner.

  The man in the doorway came to attention, his assault weapon pointed at McGarvey.

  “Step forward,” Najjir said.

  McGarvey started toward the operator, who raised a phone to his lips.

  “He is carrying a pistol.”

  “I know, but do not shoot him,” Najjir said.

  It was a mistake. The bastard knew about the Walther with a missing firing pin.

  “Send my friend down now,” McGarvey said. The Walther was in his right hand, the phone in his left.

  “Stop where you are, Mr. McGarvey,” Najjir said. “Someone is coming to take you into custody.”

  “My friend,” McGarvey said, less than ten feet from the operator.

  “He is not stopping,” the man in the doorway said. He was getting nervous.

  “Shoot him in the legs,” Najjir radioed.

  McGarvey made a show of laying the pistol on the cobblestones.

  “He put his gun down.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Najjir shouted.

  The confused operator started to raise his weapon, when McGarvey drew Rowe’s Glock and fired one shot into the man’s forehead from a range of less than three feet.

  He left the phone on but jammed it into his jacket pocket and snatched the H&K from the dead man’s hands.

  Armed now with the pistol in his left hand and the assault weapon in his right, Mac rolled through the doorway into what had been a marble-tiled lobby fronting the business section of the concern, swinging the H&K to the right as a pair of black-clad operators came down a corridor in a dead run.

  Firing two short bursts, center mass into each of the men, Mac swiveled on his heel toward a broad stairway from above as a third man descended, firing the same make of weapon as the man in front and the two in the corridor had been armed with.

  But his aim was off because of his footing on the stairs, the bullets pinging off the marble floor, giving McGarvey the chance to fire another short burst, catching the man in the left shoulder and then the
right side of his head.

  Two more men came down the stairs and Mac turned toward them.

  A third man came through the front door. “Put it down, or I will fire.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Pete heard everything that was going on in the lobby through Mac’s phone, though it was muffled. Someone had evidently come up from behind him.

  “I will shoot you, Mr. McGarvey,” the man said. His accent was definitely German, which made almost no sense to her, except that Mac was in trouble.

  She raised the cell phone. “I’m coming out.”

  “About time, my dear,” Najjir said.

  “What about this bastard?” the German demanded.

  “Shoot, but only in self-defense. I want the man alive and transportable.”

  “Ja. I’m at the front door. Vlad and Paul are on the stairs. We’ll disarm him, but if he moves so much as a millimeter I will put a round in the base of his spine. He’ll never be able to walk, but he will be able to talk.”

  “Good enough,” Najjir said.

  “The deal is off,” Pete screamed. “You’ll have to dig me out of here, and it’ll cost you.”

  “I’ve always loved old American movies,” Miriam interjected. “Frankly, my dear, we don’t give a damn. You can stay up there until hell freezes over, because we have what we want.”

  The black-clad operator who’d briefly appeared through the louvers came into sight again, and Pete emptied the H&K’s magazine on him, and he flipped over on his back.

  Without hesitation she dropped the weapon, slammed open the rusty steel door, and moving low and fast reached the downed man, snatched the assault rifle from his dead hands, and hit the deck, flattening herself behind the man’s body.

  So far as she could tell, she was now alone on the roof.

  She raised the phone. “One more down,” she said. “Najjir and the broad are in the stairwell, but I have the door covered.”

  * * *

  McGarvey lowered the room broom by its strap to the floor, then held the pistol away from his body. “I’m going to put it on the floor too.”

  “With care,” the German said.

  Moving slowly, McGarvey bent down and laid the pistol on the floor, then straightened up.

  “Tell him to kick them away, Hans,” Najjir said.

  “Do as he says.”

  McGarvey kicked the pistol away, then the submachine gun.

  “Is it the Walther?”

  “It’s a Glock,” Hans said.

  “Where the hell did he get it?” Miriam demanded in the background.

  “He may be armed with other weapons,” Hans said. “We’ll search him to make sure.”

  “Send Ms. Boylan down, unharmed, and give her the keys to the Mercedes,” McGarvey said. “When she’s gone, you’ll have my full cooperation, and no one else needs to get hurt here.”

  “I’m not leaving without you,” Pete said.

  “Yes, you are.”

  “No, goddamn it.”

  “Pete, listen to me. I’m going to need yours and Otto’s help once I’m taken. And right now the only guarantee for your safety is for me to cooperate with them. Do you understand?”

  Pete did not reply.

  “Good advice, sweetheart,” Miriam said.

  “Fuck you, dyke,” Pete shot back.

  “It’s the easiest choice,” McGarvey prompted. “Trust me.”

  Again Pete held her silence for a long moment or two. “Okay,” she said, resigned, her voice soft.

  McGarvey spread his arms. “Get it over with. I want her out of here right now.”

  “Turn around and face me,” Hans said.

  McGarvey did as he was told. “KSK?” It was the German Army’s elite special forces group—the Kommando Spezialkräfte.

  Hans didn’t bother to reply. “Paul, search him, but first give your weapon to Vlad.”

  McGarvey smiled, but the German remained expressionless.

  A man about the same height and build as Mac came from behind. “Nice and easy now, okay, mate?” he said. His accent was British.

  He turned Mac around so that they faced each other, and began to frisk him, starting at the shoulders and chest.

  The man had been armed with a room broom, which he had turned over to the other man on the stairs. But like all special operators in every military organization in the world, he also carried a sidearm in a holster strapped to his chest. In this case, a SIG Sauer P226—one of the most common pistols in the British Secret Air Service’s arsenal. Old habits died hard.

  “Verdammte Scheisse,” Hans shouted.

  McGarvey snatched the man’s SIG at the same time he bulled him around so that his back faced the German, who fired at the same time Mac fired one shot at the man on the stairs. As the Brit’s legs gave out, Mac followed him down to the floor, using his body as a shield, and fired two shots.

  The German, light on his feet and incredibly fast, sidestepped to the right. Mac’s first shot went wide, but his second hit the man high in the throat and at an angle, the 9mm round plowing into the man’s brain, killing him almost instantly.

  McGarvey went to the operator who had pitched face-forward down the steps, snatched both room brooms, plus two spare magazines of ammunition, and started up the stairs, slinging one of the compact submachine guns over his shoulder and stuffing the mags in his pockets.

  “Soon as I clear the ground floor I’ll meet you topsides,” he said as he reached the second-floor landing, which opened into a wide space that had once been one of the manufacturing floors in the factory.

  He pulled up short, sweeping his weapon left to right. The room was littered with old wooden crates, pieces of dirty cardboard, broken bricks, and trash of all sorts. Straight across, about forty meters away, half the wall and windows were gone, that side of the building open to the night. But nothing moved, nor were there any sirens in the distance.

  With all the gunfire and the grenade on the roof, McGarvey figured that by now someone must have alerted the police. Unless Gibson’s call had put a hold on raids down here. Actually it was one less complication to the situation. With the cops or military crawling all over the place it would be to Najjir’s advantage to simply kill both of them and slip away.

  But there were still too many holes in the operation. Something was going on that he couldn’t get a handle on. Something or someone was pulling or causing strings to be pulled. Downing the Eiffel Tower had been an insane objective, especially because the apparent chief architect of the attack had been right there on-site.

  And unless they had somehow known in advance that he would be there at the Jules Verne, at that exact hour, snatching him and Pete made even less sense. But they had set up the church as a fallback, the flight here to Istanbul, and this place, with a fair amount of firepower—apparently pulled from the ranks of former special military forces from at least four countries: Russia, Germany, Britain, and France.

  All of that took a lot of advance planning and money. And for what objective? For the life of him he couldn’t fathom what it might be.

  And on top of all of that, Marty Bambridge apparently had some hand in the mess. He’d never liked the man—and the feeling had been mutual—but he’d never in his wildest imagination taken the man for a traitor.

  He raised the phone. “Can you get your hands on a flashbang?”

  “Right in front of me,” Pete replied immediately.

  “Give me thirty seconds, then toss it into the stairwell.”

  “Will do.”

  McGarvey turned and started up the next flight, this time making enough noise that Pete and everyone else in the complex was certain to hear him.

  The hounds to the hare, but with a decoy.

  * * *

  Ten seconds later, Pete heard the sounds of someone tromping up the stairs, which she took to be Mac’s signal that the thirty seconds had been a ruse.

  She started to pull the pin on the flashbang grenade she’d taken from the downed man’s u
tility belt, when the muzzle of a rifle was placed on the back of her head.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Otto hesitated for just a moment outside Bambridge’s office on the seventh floor.

  He had reprogrammed the entire electronics suite in the deputy director’s Lincoln Navigator so that the GPS would report the vehicle’s every movement and real-time position, the phone system would report every call made, and the stereo system would relay anything said inside the car—engine and systems running or not.

  And with a flesh-colored earbud, all but invisible to anyone unless they were standing a foot or two from his left side and pushing his long hair aside, he continued to monitor the phone conversations at the warehouse complex. As Najjir and the rest of them had to be realizing about now, it was a very bad idea to underestimate Mac. Or Pete.

  It was Marty’s turn to learn the same lesson.

  The inner door to the deputy director’s office was open, and before his secretary could intervene, Bambridge looked up, resigned, and motioned Otto in.

  “You’ve come to tell me that McGarvey and Ms. Boylan have been shot to death—something I warned you and the general would happen—or your hat is in hand and you want my help after all.”

  “Neither,” Otto said, not bothering to sit down.

  The last transmission he’d heard from the factory was Najjir’s voice speaking only two words in English: “Come now.” There’d been nothing further from Mac or Pete since, and it was more than bothersome.

  “Well?”

  “Mac has made his way into the factory complex, he’s there now, and he’s apparently taken down several of the bad guys.”

  “How do you know this?” Bambridge demanded, a little too sharply.

  Otto suppressed a smile. “I’ve managed to monitor some of the cell phone conversations.”

  “And?”

  “He told me that before he went inside he had a chat with Mark Rowe—he’s our guy from the consulate station who gave Mac papers, money, and a weapon. Evidently there was something wrong with the gun. Maybe a manufacturing defect. But Mark brought him a replacement just in the nick of time.”

  “Where did this take place?”

  “Within sight of the factory.”

  “I thought they were holed up in an apartment building.”