The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

  The straps, especially the one at his left wrist, were loose. He blinked several times. “I’m a journalist.”

  “Yes, I’ve read some of your blogs. And you were quite right about many things. The problem we’re having is that no one ever heard of you until a few days ago. It’s as if you were invented out of whole cloth, I believe is the correct expression. Something the CIA is certainly capable of doing. So let’s start there, shall we? Of course your name isn’t Travis Parks. What is it, please?”

  “Parks,” McGarvey whispered.

  “We can do better than that.”

  McGarvey let his eyes flutter. “Davis,” he said softly.

  “What’s your social security number, Mr. Davis?” the lieutenant asked.

  McGarvey shook his head.

  The lieutenant slapped his face. “The truth.”

  McGarvey opened his eyes. “Fuck you.”

  The lieutenant rolled the battery cart back. He dipped the sponges in the pitcher of water, flipped the power switch and jammed them against McGarvey’s bare chest.

  A massive pain roared through Mac’s body, rebounding from the top of his skull; every muscle, even those controlling the movements of his eyes, went into spasms so tightly he thought for a split instant that his bones would break.

  Suddenly it was over and he slumped back, any lingering effects of waterboarding completely gone.

  “Your real name, please,” the lieutenant said.

  “Fuck you!”

  The lieutenant pushed the sponges onto McGarvey’s chest.

  Mac heaved against the restraining straps and roared in pain. He kept screaming even after the lieutenant pulled the sponges away.

  “Do I have your attention now?”

  McGarvey let his head loll to the left so that he could see the door. The guards had not come despite the noise he’d made. He felt the strap around his right wrist and willed that arm to completely relax.

  “Your real name. Let’s start there, or I’ll be forced to let the current run through your body much longer than one or two seconds.”

  McGarvey shook his head. “Four-seven-nine,” he croaked, barely above a whisper.

  The lieutenant flipped the power switch off and laid the wands on the cart. He bent down closer to McGarvey. “Four-seven-nine,” he said. “What comes next?”

  The man’s breath smelled of onions and curry and something else unpleasant.

  “What comes next?”

  McGarvey slipped his right hand free. “Six,” he whispered.

  The lieutenant bent even closer.

  McGarvey suddenly reached up and clamped his hand around the lieutenant’s throat, compressing the carotid artery on one side.

  The lieutenant tried to pull away, but McGarvey was strapped to the table and his grip was too powerful to break. Blood started to gush from where one of Mac’s fingertips broke through the man’s skin.

  He got his other hand free and rolled halfway onto his side, grabbing the lieutenant’s neck with both hands, crushing the man’s larynx and compressing the other carotid artery. He looked into the man’s eyes.

  “I told you that I would kill you.”

  The light slowly faded from the lieutenant’s eyes, his faced turned a deep purple and finally his legs collapsed and McGarvey let him slump to the floor.

  Torture was a useful tool if it was handled properly. The point was to hurt the prisoner but not damage him permanently, and certainly keep him well enough restrained that he couldn’t hurt his interrogator.

  McGarvey undid the straps around his legs, got off the table and checked the lieutenant’s pulse, but there was none; the man was dead.

  He listened at the door but there was nothing to be heard, so he went back to the lieutenant’s body, undressed it and got into the man’s clothes. The boots were a little tight, but not impossibly so, and the uniform blouse stank of sweat.

  Strapping on the holster, he checked the pistol, which was an old American-issued nine-millimeter Beretta, with a full nine-round magazine and one in the chamber.

  He listened again at the door for a moment, then eased it open. The corridor was empty, and for all intents and purposes the building could have been deserted or asleep. The red lights on the camera at both ends of the short corridor winked off. The system had just shut down, and the only reason why that he could think of, other than a system power failure, was Otto.

  Slipping out he raced to the stairs at the end of the corridor and took them up two at a time, taking great care to make no noise.

  At the top a steel door was closed but when he tested the handle it was not locked. He opened it a crack and looked out. A broad corridor led to the right, blocked by a gate about twenty feet away. A lone guard sat at a table, his back to the gate; beyond him was another steel door.

  To the left about fifteen feet away was yet another door but no guard. No one was expecting trouble.

  Moving on the balls of his feet McGarvey hurried to the left. He glanced over his shoulder, but the guard had not moved. The door was unlocked and Mac opened it and slipped through into an anteroom about ten feet on a side. Stairs led up to the left and another door, this one with a thick glass window, was straight ahead.

  Outside was a covered driveway, a closed garage door to the left and a guard positioned behind glass directly across from it. Two uniformed men sat behind a slightly raised platform inside.

  This was a sally port designed to admit prisoners into the building, where they would be taken directly below to the interrogation center.

  The garage door rumbled open and a truck came in and stopped. Two armed soldiers got out of the back and stood aside as a half-dozen prisoners in ragged clothing, their wrists in manacles, their ankles shackled on short chains, emerged.

  The man from the glass booth met the driver and had him sign something on a clipboard. He said something to the armed guards with the prisoners and the driver came across directly to the steel door.

  McGarvey sprinted for the stairs and stopped halfway up.

  The driver and the two armed guards and the prisoners came into the anteroom and started up the stairs.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Pete walked out of the embassy and hurried down the long drive to Post One, where the two marines on duty had been advised she was on her way. They opened the small service gate, but neither of them said a word to her. She just nodded and headed down the street.

  A military jeep turned the corner a half block away, but nothing else moved anywhere in the Red Zone so far as she could see.

  It was possible that Austin was playing games with her, agreeing just to get her out of his hair, at least temporarily. And if she was to be picked up by the Pakistani police, so be it. Because of her diplomatic passport she would be sent home immediately.

  But when she’d mentioned retaliation from Otto and from Kirk he’d got the message loud and clear. She’d seen it in his eyes. The man had a job to do here, but he was no fool, he had respect.

  A block and a half farther she came to Khayaban-e-Suhrawardy Road, the bridge across the Jinnah Stream, which flowed south into the lake to her left, when a red Mercedes C-class sedan with a taxi light on its roof came out of nowhere and pulled up at the curb.

  The passenger-side front window was open and a familiar figure dressed in a Manchester United sweatshirt and jeans leaned over. “He’s already made his break, get in,” the driver said in a Texas accent.

  “Milt, am I ever glad to see you,” Pete said and climbed into the backseat.

  Milt Thomas was a deep-cover operative working for the CIA and the Islamabad police. His job for the local cops was to report on any passengers of interest he picked up either at the airport or the three hotels that catered mostly to foreigners. His job for the CIA over the past three years he’d been in country was the same. She and McGarvey had met him last year when they’d been on an op here.

  “I talked to Otto three minutes ago. Mac’s on the move.”

  “Where is he e
xactly?”

  “Right at this moment we don’t know. But he was in an interrogation cell in the basement with Lieutenant Nabeel Khosa, who’s the ISI’s chief interrogator—read torturer—and just a few minutes ago he appeared at the doorway in Khosa’s uniform. Otto thinks he got the surveillance system shut down before Mac was spotted. Anyway, there’s been no alarm so far. Otto will warn us if it happens. He also wanted me to call him when I picked you up.”

  “I hope you have a plan,” Pete said.

  Thomas laughed. “Are you kidding? The place is a fortress.” He phoned Otto. “I have her. Anything new yet?”

  “Let me talk to him,” Pete said.

  Thomas handed the phone back, then made a U-turn and headed for the bridge.

  “How are we going to get him out of there?” she asked.

  “I’m working on it,” Otto said. He sounded busy. “I turned the surveillance system back on as soon as he cleared the hallway in the basement. Right now he’s in the service stairwell on his way up to the second floor. He got to the sally port exit, when half a dozen prisoners were brought in and started up the stairs right behind him. He had nowhere else to go.”

  “With the surveillance system on they’ll spot him.”

  “With it off they would lock down the entire compound. And as long as he keeps his face away from the cameras—which he’s done so far—he’s just another ISI officer in a very busy building. The ISI is on emergency footing because of the Messiah thing—the media has started calling it a velvet revolution—but the entire compound is crawling with people.”

  “Someone is bound to spot him as an imposter. He has to get out of there right now.”

  “I have no way of contacting him, but he knows the layout of the place; he’s seen live satellite images and has to figure that the only way out is the rear of the building. To the east, north and south are major roads, already starting to get busy, so his only real option is west.”

  “On foot,” Pete said. “Even in an ISI uniform he’d attract attention and he wouldn’t get very far. He’ll know that.”

  “What do you have in mind?”

  “Which is the least busy of the three roads?”

  “The west service road. It’s where he was brought in. It’s the gate used mostly for incoming prisoners and outgoing bodies.”

  “That’s how he’s getting out. He’s going to steal a car or truck and if he isn’t waved through he’ll crash the gate, and we’re going to be there to pick him up.”

  “Then what?” Otto demanded. He didn’t seem the least bit alarmed. They’d all get worried later.

  “I don’t know, but Milt and I will figure something out,” Pete said. “Anything changes, keep us posted. In the meantime, where’s Haaris?”

  “He’s disappeared again.”

  “Great, great, great.” Pete switched off. “Are you armed?” she asked Thomas.

  “Of course. What’s the story?”

  “The west service road gate,” she said, and she explained what she and Otto had discussed.

  “Are you sure about it?”

  “It’s the only option. Once he’s out, we have to pick him up before they respond in force. But I don’t know what after that. We’ll have to get under cover ASAP.”

  “My house,” Thomas said without hesitation. “It’s down in Rawalpindi, maybe ten klicks from here.”

  “Won’t your place be under surveillance?”

  “I’m a fair-haired boy.”

  “Not after this morning,” Pete said.

  “I’ve been thinking lately that it’s getting time to pull the pin. You guys will have to get out, and I’ll just tag along.”

  “Right,” Pete said. But she had to wonder if Mac would give up so easily. Haaris was still out there.

  Thomas made another U-turn on the deserted road and headed back toward the Red Zone. “In another hour, maybe sooner, traffic is going to pick up and it won’t be long before we’re in a full-blown rush hour. Happens every A.M. and goes on all day.”

  “We need to wait where we can watch the service road and yet not attract any attention,” Pete said.

  “The Rose and Jasmine Garden, it’s just across the Kashmir Highway. But he’s going to have to turn south, toward us.”

  Pete called Otto again and told him their plan. “Any word yet?”

  “He’s in the west stairwell on the third floor. A couple of close calls, but everyone is too busy or too stressed out to see him for anything other than an ISI lieutenant.”

  “It won’t hold.”

  “No. And there’s still no way I can get word to him.”

  “But you can tell us when he gets out and which direction he’s taken,” Pete said.

  “His chances are slim.”

  Pete laughed, and it sounded like false bravado in her ears. “We’re talking about Mac.”

  Thomas got off the highway and worked his way through the park, finding a narrow road that looped back to the southwest and then north, finally connecting with a tree-lined lane that became the west service road across the Kashmir and Kayaban highways, which ran parallel to each other. He doused the lights and parked.

  Pete got out of the car and Milt handed her a pair of Chinese-made binoculars, which she used to scope the walls of the ISI compound and its main building, which rose up into the early morning sky like some squat ziggurat from an ancient time.

  She reached out to feel him, but he wasn’t there, and she was suddenly very cold and very frightened.

  FIFTY-SIX

  McGarvey, the Beretta in hand, opened the door to the fourth floor and peered out. This part of the building seemed to be empty; all the lights in the corridor were on and many of the office doors were open, but no one was here. This was the executive floor, and McGarvey had half expected to see Rajput busy at his desk. But the prime minister’s office was locked, and listening at the door Mac couldn’t hear a thing.

  The lights on the security cameras were back on, indicating they were active, so he kept his face averted as he hurried down the corridor and ducked into an office twenty feet down from Rajput’s, and closed the door.

  A pair of file cabinets stood along one wall, and in the middle of the fairly small room was a plain desk with a computer and a telephone, but nothing else. The drawers were locked and there were no files or anything else that might have indicated who worked here or what their job might have been.

  Two windows looked down at the roof one floor below, and beyond that a driveway that passed an open field and through a thick stand of trees to the rear gate that opened onto a service road, if his memory served. Before he’d headed over on the ambassador’s aircraft, he’d taken the time to study the layout of the Secretariat compound as well as the Aiwan. He’d considered it a possibility that he might have to take the fight either here or to the Presidential Palace and he needed to know his way around. Especially if he was in a hurry.

  Laying the pistol on the desk he ignored the computer, which would almost certainly be password protected, and picked up the phone. Getting a dial tone he entered the international code for France, and then Otto’s personal relay number, which was only ever used if an agent was in trouble and on the run and needed to call home without alerting his pursuers that he was calling the States, and certainly not the CIA.

  If there was a central switchboard or a monitoring system of some sort, it wouldn’t take long for someone to notice that a call was being placed from an office that was supposed to be empty, and either listen in or send a security officer to investigate.

  Otto answered on the first ring. “Yes.”

  “Me,” McGarvey said.

  “West service road gate,” Otto said. “Head south, you’ll be met.”

  The line went dead.

  There was no lock on the door, so McGarvey wedged a chair against the handle, and holstering the pistol went to the windows, which like those at the CIA were double-paned and likely flooded with white noise. But unlike at the CIA the windows
were not sealed; unlatched, they swung open.

  The building was constructed like a ziggurat, each lower floor jutting out from the one above. McGarvey climbed out and hung full length for just a moment before he dropped the fifteen feet or so to the roof below. Looking over his shoulder as he ran, he tried to spot someone watching him from a window, or perhaps from the roof above, which bristled with antennas and satellite dishes. And he half expected to come under fire.

  But he reached the edge of the roof. The drop here was about the same as from the fourth floor. Many of the offices were lit, the glow reaching through the windows.

  Picking a spot between windows, he hung over the edge again and dropped. He landed off balance and fell hard on his side. A stab of pain in his right hip when he got up nearly caused that leg to buckle, but he reached the wall and flattened himself against it.

  He waited there for just a couple of seconds before he took a quick look through the window beside him into a large space broken up into cubicles, most of which were manned. As far as he could tell from the brief snapshot, no one was coming to investigate.

  Favoring his right leg he dropped to the roof of the first floor, and despite the intense pain rolled to the wall, again between windows. He had a much harder time getting to his feet. Some of the windows were lit on the second floor, but the office he looked into was dark, the only light coming from the open door to the corridor.

  Half hobbling, half running, he got to the edge of the roof and without hesitation dropped the last fifteen feet into a line of bushes just as a jeep came up the driveway and suddenly came to a stop.

  McGarvey got to his feet as a slightly built man in uniform, three sergeant stripes on his sleeves, came through the bushes, a Kalashnikov rifle at the ready.

  But he was totally surprised. He said something in Punjabi, but then caught the two pips of a lieutenant on Mac’s shoulder boards and started to stiffen.

  McGarvey lurched forward, grabbed the sergeant in a headlock and before the man could cry out, broke his neck. It took nearly thirty seconds before the sergeant finally lost consciousness.