The Fourth Horseman

by David Hagberg

  A machine gun opened fire from the highway behind him, several rounds slamming into the trunk of the Mercedes, before he came to a winding drive through the park and turned north.

  The busted fender was rubbing against the tire, which within fifty yards shredded, sending him into a sharp skid to the left, off the road, through more trees and finally crashing through some thick brush and deep grass onto a golf course fairway.

  Suddenly he knew exactly where he was. The first main highway was the National Park Road, and he’d managed to make his way through Ayub National Park and onto the Rawalpindi Golf Club course. Otto had given him satellite views of the entire twin-cities area of Islamabad and Rawalpindi. He’d not had the time to learn much more than the layout of the main roads and their features, but this place stuck out in his mind because it seemed out of place. An upscale park and golf course in what was mostly a slum city didn’t fit.

  The course was empty, and slipping and sliding, tearing up the turf, the Mercedes barely under control, he made his way to the maintenance sheds, where he drove directly into one of the garages, slamming into the back wall before he could stop.

  A uniformed cop, drawing his pistol, a radio in his free hand, came around the corner in a dead run as McGarvey jumped out of the car.

  The cop shouted something in Punjabi that almost certainly meant stop.

  McGarvey jogged to the left, his leg nearly collapsing under him as the frightened cop fired three shots as fast as he could pull the trigger, all of the rounds slamming into the side of the car.

  The sirens remained off to the east and north now, but they were getting closer, and back in the woods someone was firing a machine gun. His pursuers were all on hair triggers. They knew about him, and their orders were simple: shoot to kill.

  Drawing the Glock, McGarvey fired two snap shots, both of them hitting the cop center mass, dropping the man.

  The shed was filled with lawn mowers and other equipment to maintain the course, but just outside around the corner, a ratty blue Toyota pickup was parked, a key in the ignition. A pair of tools for taking plugs out of greens for hole placements were in the bed, along with a couple of bags of what were probably weed killer, and a large tub of green sand.

  More firing came from the woods to the south now.

  McGarvey closed the shed’s door, then laying the pistol on the seat next to him, started the pickup and headed up an access road that eventually led past the clubhouse and onto another broad thoroughfare, this one the GT Road.

  There was some traffic here, most of it commercial, and he stayed with the flow, constantly checking his rearview mirrors.

  Another jeep, followed by a troop truck, came from the north at a high rate of speed, and traffic parted to let them pass.

  For now the search was concentrated on the golf course. But in the confusion, with all the shooting at shadows, it would take them some time before they calmed down enough to find the Mercedes and the dead cop in the shed, and perhaps even longer to realize that the Toyota was missing and start looking for it.

  * * *

  The massive crowds were already beginning to disperse by the time McGarvey made it up to Islamabad’s Red Section, but they were still heavy enough on Constitution Avenue that he had to take Bank Road across to Ispana, behind the Supreme Court, before he could get anywhere near the Aiwan.

  He pulled over across from the National Library and called Otto. The battery on Pete’s phone was low and he had trouble getting through.

  “It’s over, Mac,” Otto said. “He made his speech and he left.”

  “I can’t hear you.”

  “Wait,” Otto said, and a moment later the connection cleared. “Your battery is about flat, I gave you a temporary fix. Haaris is gone. He told the people that the Taliban was the tool and India was the real enemy. He held up the mufti’s head, just like he did with Barazani’s.”

  “Goddamnit, where is he?” McGarvey demanded, his frustration nearly overwhelming.

  “I don’t know. He left the balcony, and within ten minutes a convoy of nine cars and four panel vans took off from the Aiwan’s rear gate and headed in different directions. My darlings are tracking most of them, but he has the ephemeris of our spy bird, so he knows where to hide. He could be anywhere.”

  “Still at the Aiwan?”

  “I don’t think so,” Otto said. “But you’re going to have to get out of Dodge ASAP. The cops, the ISI, the army, everybody’s gunning for you.”

  “What about Pete?”

  “She’s safe at the embassy. A SEAL Team Six squad is coming by chopper around midnight to pick her up. The thing is, you’re not going to get anywhere near the embassy. They have the place completely surrounded. What’s your situation now? Pete said you screwed up your leg or something.”

  “I’ll live,” McGarvey said, and he told him what had happened from the time he’d left Thomas’s place. “I’ll try to make it up to Peshawar.”

  “You won’t get that far. They’ll figure out that’s where you’ll run. You need to ditch the truck and go to ground someplace safe until the ST Six guys can get to you.”

  McGarvey looked up toward the rear of the parliament building, just beyond which was the Aiwan. He had failed. Haaris had been one step ahead of him—of them all—from the beginning. Now the deadline was here. It was bitter. But Pete was safe.

  “Mac?”

  “I’m going to the ISI apartment Judith Anderson took me to. It has to be clear by now. They’ll never expect me to go back.”

  “Don’t leave the truck anywhere within a mile of the place,” Otto said. “And keep the phone with you; especially if you have to move, the guys can home in on it. But switch it off. I gave you a boost but the battery is still low.”

  McGarvey didn’t bother asking how the phone could be located even when it was off; if Otto said it could be done, it was a fact.

  “The important thing is, we’re getting you out,” Otto said.

  Not important at all, McGarvey thought.

  PART

  FOUR

  The Countdown

  SIXTY-TWO

  Walt Page’s limo showed up at the White House East Gate a few minutes after six in the morning and was waved directly through. The DCI was met at the door by one of Miller’s aides, who without a word took him directly across to the Situation Room in the West Wing.

  The president was sitting at one end of the long conference table, some of the Security Council members gathered around her. They were watching images of Islamabad’s Red Section on a large flat-panel screen on the opposite wall.

  It was just after three in the afternoon there, and crowds were rioting. Cars and trucks had been set on fire, tall iron fences around the Interior Ministry and adjacent Secretariat had been torn down in some places, and army troops were dispersed in defensive rings.

  The crowd had been fired on, many bodies were strewn about the streets, and as Page walked in, a pair of Chinese-made Al-Khalid main battle tanks rolled up Constitution Avenue.

  The president looked over. “Is this what McGarvey warned us would happen?” Her tone was brittle.

  “I don’t know,” Page said, taking his place across the table from her. “The Messiah’s turnabout came as a complete surprise to all of us.”

  “Are you up to date on the present situation?”

  “As of twenty minutes ago, about the same time the army opened fire.”

  “I meant with India,” the president said. “Their military has gone on full alert. Air force bases at Ayni, Farkhor and Charbatia are on total lockdown, all leaves and passes have been cancelled and all personnel ordered to return to duty.”

  Admiral Altman, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, had been on the phone. He hung up. “I’ve just received confirmation that the Vikramaditya is moving from its base at Karwar at a high rate of speed up the Arabian Sea directly toward Karachi.” The ship was the Indian navy’s newest aircraft carrier. She was capable of launching a full-scale nuclear attack
on her own. “A pair of their Kolkata destroyers are accompanying her and we have to assume at least three of her Kilo-class subs are acting as screening vessels.”

  “It’s a goddamned act of war,” Susan Kalley said.

  “It’s a move toward self-defense, according to Gauas Kar,” the president said. Mammohn Singh was Indian’s prime minister. “And I can’t say that if I were in his shoes I wouldn’t do the same thing.”

  “How about Rajput?” Page asked.

  “He won’t return my calls.”

  “Don Powers is still over there, and he can’t get through either,” Secretary of State John Fay said.

  “We don’t know what it means, but since the Messiah’s beheading of the TTP’s mufti and declaring India as Pakistan’s primary enemy, the Pakistan military has only raised its threat level to DEFCON Three,” the admiral said.

  “It could mean they’re sending India—and us—a message,” Page said. He actually wished that Dave Haaris was here to help them sort through the situation.

  “What’s that?” Miller asked.

  “The Messiah does not speak for Pakistan.”

  “You’re talking about a break in their relationship?” Kalley asked.

  “My people think it could be a partial explanation for the rioting. Our embassy has been surrounded, but Austin said it looked to him like the military wasn’t trying to keep them bottled up. Instead it looked as if they had thrown up a protective barrier,” Page replied.

  “Two nuclear powers on the brink and your people have zeroed in on the Pakistani army’s effort to protect our embassy?” Kalley exclaimed.

  Her question didn’t deserve an answer. Page said nothing.

  “Have you been in touch with Mr. McGarvey since the Messiah’s speech?” the president asked.

  “Not directly, but he’s evidently in a safe place somewhere in the city, until we can get a SEAL Team Six squad to pick him up, along with another of our agents who managed to get to the embassy.”

  One of the tanks on the flat screen pulled up in front of the Aiwan, its main gun pointed toward the rioters on Jinnah Avenue.

  “If they don’t calm down soon this could turn out worse than Cairo,” Fay said.

  “You said they arrested McGarvey, and yet he’s someplace safe in Islamabad?” Kalley asked. “It means that somehow he managed to escape.”

  “That’s what I understand.”

  “I’ve read his file, Walt. I know what this guy has done in the past. It’s why the president hired him to do the job over there.”

  “Which he warned against.”

  “Yes, unintended consequences,” Kalley said. “How many people has he killed this time?”

  “I don’t have that number,” Page said. “He’ll be debriefed when he gets back.”

  “More than one?” the president’s national security adviser pressed.

  “I don’t know,” Page repeated. “The point is, we’re not going to leave him there. We sent him to do a job and he took it on to the best of his abilities, no matter how disagreeable he thought it was. Well, it didn’t work.”

  “The man was facing the entire ISI,” the admiral said. “The fact that he managed to sidestep the bastards has to count for something.”

  “Get him out of there, priority one,” Miller said.

  “Thank you,” Page replied.

  “But he stays out of politics,” Miller said with a slight smile. “It’s not his game.”

  Saul Santarelli’s tall, lean frame appeared in the doorway. “Sorry I’m late, Madam President.” He was chief of National Intelligence. The agency had been created after 9/11 to do what the CIA had been designed to do—and had been doing—since after World War II. He was dark-skinned, with short-cropped steel-gray hair and the nearly constant look on his face as if he had the weight of America’s security on his shoulders, and his shoulders alone. He was a politician, not an intelligence officer.

  Page and he did not get along.

  “Are you up to date?” Miller asked.

  Santarelli took his place and handed a leather-bound briefing book across the table. “My people put it together and I looked through it on the way over.” He glanced at Page. “Good stuff from your Watch, but I was surprised to see that McGarvey was in the game over there. I’d not been briefed on his mission.”

  “No,” Page said. “Unless I’m needed here, Madam President, I’ll see to retrieving my people.”

  “I want to talk to him the moment he gets back,” Miller said. “I want to personally thank him for what he tried to do for me, despite the overwhelming odds.”

  Page glanced at the flat-screen monitor. The second tank had taken up position a half a block south of the first, its main gun pointed straight down Constitution Avenue. No one except McGarvey had seen anything like this coming their way.

  “Be careful of what you wish for, you might just get it,” he sometimes warned. Unintended consequences. Blowback.

  Page got to his feet. “Thank you, Madam President.”

  SIXTY-THREE

  Assistant Secretary of Defense Robert Fishbine was at the end of an unannounced visit to the U.S. training base at Jalalabad, and the moment he was appraised of the situation with McGarvey and Pete he ordered his Gulfstream held until they showed up. He and his two assistants had been ordered back to DC. That was shortly before midnight.

  “What time can we expect the team to get them up here?” he asked the navy lieutenant commander in charge of the SEAL Team Six presence, which had been reduced to almost nothing after the nuclear-neutralizing incursion into Pakistan.

  “They’re making the pickups now. Should be an hour out, unless they run into trouble, sir.”

  “We’ll wait.”

  “We were told that your orders said now, sir. Your aircraft and crew are standing by.”

  “We’ve developed an unexplained problem with one of the engines,” Fishbine said. He’d worked as a military liaison to the CIA during the brief period when McGarvey was the DCI. He didn’t know the man well, but what he did know was all positive.

  “Yes, sir,” the Lieutenant Commander said, grinning.

  The assistant sec def had served in the marines as an enlisted man, until he’d retired and completed his law degree at Northwestern. The president had appointed him to the Department of Defense two years earlier, and it was broadly accepted that he would take over the top spot soon because he was a decisive man who wasn’t afraid of making decisions.

  “Have they been hurt?”

  “Unknown at this point, but there is a medic aboard the chopper.”

  * * *

  The battery on McGarvey’s cell phone was almost completely dead. For the last couple of hours he’d stood at the fifth-floor window of Judith Anderson’s apartment looking down Luqman Hakeem Road toward the Al Habib Market.

  Here the neighborhood was quiet, but elsewhere across the city, especially to the northwest toward the Red Section, there had been a lot of gunfire, several explosions and a couple of what sounded like tank rounds.

  Television service across all the channels had been shut down. And since around eight traffic had dried up, and even the building had quieted down.

  The cell phone switched on and rang once. It was Otto.

  “They have Pete, and the chopper is less than five minutes from you. But the ISI apparently got a tip where you were. At least three troop trucks are about the same distance away. It’ll be close. They’re going to have to fast-rope down and pick you up on the roof. Go!”

  McGarvey pocketed the phone, left the apartment and hurried to the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

  An older man came out of one of the other apartments and immediately started to shout something.

  McGarvey pulled out his pistol and turned around. The man, dressed in baggy pants and shirtsleeves, held a cell phone to one ear and a Kalashnikov in his right hand, the barrel pointed toward the floor.

  McGarvey gestured with the Glock for the guy to go back in
side.

  For a longish moment the Pakistani stopped talking. But then he shouted something into the phone and the barrel of the rifle started to come up.

  McGarvey fired one shot, and the man’s legs collapsed under him, the assault rifle spraying a quick burst into the wall about knee height before it clattered to the floor.

  Immediately a woman inside the apartment began screeching, and what sounded like two young children started to wail.

  “Goddamnit,” Mac said, half under his breath. He slammed open the stairwell door and raced up to the roof level in time to hear the incoming chopper.

  Its lights were out, so it was invisible until it flared directly overhead, about fifteen feet off the roof. Two ropes dropped from the open hatch and two SEALS in full combat gear descended in a rush.

  “We’re about to get company, sir,” one of them said. He tied a loop around McGarvey’s waist, and a winch pulled him up.

  The other operator went to the edge of the roof. “We’ve got about five mikes.”

  “Let’s go,” the first SEAL shouted.

  McGarvey came aboard at the same moment the chopper dropped down its wheels just inches from the roof.

  Both SEALS clambered aboard.

  “Go! Go! Go!” one of them shouted, and the stealthy UH-60 Blackhawk leaped into the air, peeling sharply to the north.

  Both operators had their weapons at the ready position but the pilot shouted back to hold fire.

  Within a minute they were already northwest of the city, heading low and fast directly for the foothills, no sign that the Pakistani air force had put anything up yet to knock them out of the sky.

  “Are you all right, sir?” the medic asked, undoing the rope from McGarvey’s waist and sitting him down in an aft corner seat just across the cabin from where Pete was strapped in.

  “No holes so far,” McGarvey told the kid.

  “That’s a good sign.” The medic quickly took his pulse and blood pressure, then shined a small penlight into one eye at a time. “You’ll live, sir.”