The Kill Zone

by David Hagberg

  “Do you want us to get out of here?” Grassinger asked.

  “No,” McGarvey said. He took the phone and touched the mute button. “This is McGarvey.”

  “Please hold for the President, sir,” Haynes’s secretary said.

  The President came on. “Good morning, Kirk. How are you doing?”

  “Good morning, Mr. President. We’re hanging on. But I’m going to be gone from Washington for a few days. I’m taking my family to a safe house.”

  “After last night, that’s a good idea,” the President said. “I want you to consider something while you’re gone. I want you to think about withdrawing your nomination. Linda and I know what you and Kathleen are going through, and we would not blame you if you stepped away. Hell, having Hammond and Madden on the warpath is bad enough, but this now, attacks not only on you but on your family, is beyond the bounds.”

  “Thanks for the offer, Mr. President. But when I quit it won’t be like this.”

  “I understand. What can I do to help?”

  “Keep Senator Hammond off my back until we get this settled,” McGarvey said. He’d given the problem some thought. “He’s still got a pipeline into the CIA. He’s coming up with information that’s only discussed between me and my directorate chiefs and their immediate staff. We’re trying to plug the leak now. But if you could invite him over to the Oval Office and have a chat with him about the facts of life, it might help. I don’t want him to know where I’ve taken my family. If he inadvertently lets something slip, it could get to the wrong people.”

  “Consider it done, Kirk,” the President said. “How long do you think that you’ll be out of action?”

  “Not long.”

  The President was silent for a moment. “I’m not going to ask how you know that. So I’m just going to wish you good luck. If there’s anything else, anything at all, that I can do for you, let me know. It’ll be done.”

  “Thank you, Mr. President. I appreciate that.” This was one president who was as good as his word, McGarvey thought.

  David Whittaker was in his limo on the way to CIA headquarters when the locator caught up with him. When he answered the car phone he sounded cranky. Like the rest of them he had been up all night dealing with the aftermath of the latest attack.

  “How’s traffic on the Parkway this morning?” McGarvey asked.

  “Shitty as usual,” the acting DDCI replied. “How’s it going out there?”

  “We’re getting set to head out to Cropley,” McGarvey said. The green light was on, indicating their call was encrypted. “Have you heard from Adkins?”

  “He’s back home with the girls,” Whittaker said wearily. “Ruth passed away last night.”

  McGarvey lowered his head and closed his eyes. “I’m sorry, David. I didn’t know that she was that bad. How’s he holding up?”

  “He’s taking it hard, Mac. And he’s going to want to come back fairly soon. Work’s the best antidote for some people.”

  Life was sometimes not very fair. And just now there were a lot of problems piling up all around them. “One thing at a time,” McGarvey said. What he did not need was a grieving Deputy DCI on the seventh floor. Especially not one who might be a suspect himself.

  “What do I tell him?”

  “I’ll take care of it,” McGarvey said.

  “He’s a friend—”

  “He’s my friend, too,” McGarvey flared. “But we have a job to do. All of us, especially you. The world hasn’t been put on hold just because somebody is gunning for me. And neither is the Agency going to be put on hold.” McGarvey glanced at Grassinger and the others, who were studiously poring over the maps. “Have I made myself clear?”

  “Perfectly, Mr. Director,” Whittaker replied. His tone was frosty.

  “Good,” McGarvey said. “I want you to talk to Otto this morning. He was shook up, but he said that he had an idea for a trap.”

  “He took the Gulfstream back to France last night. Lynch said he’s already in-country.”

  McGarvey wasn’t surprised. “I think that he’s trying to make contact with Nikolayev. Have Paris station keep an eye on him, but tell Lynch not to interfere.”

  “All right.”

  “Let me know as soon as he gets back to Washington. And in the meantime I’ll want regular staff reports. We can teleconference over the secure TV link. I’ll let you set up the times. Anything above the line occurs, I want to hear about it immediately. I’m going to Cropley, not Mars.”

  “Yes, sir,” Whittaker said. He hesitated. “Mac, I understand about Dick. It’s a tough call, but you’re the one in the hot seat. We’re all with you. One hundred percent. And not just until this situation is resolved. I mean for the long haul.”

  “Thanks, David. It’s good to hear that.”

  CROPLEY, MARYLAND

  Kathleen refused to be bundled up in a blanket, or in any other way pampered. “I’m worn-out, I’m not a cripple,” she said crossly.

  She and McGarvey sat in the backseat of the limo. Stenzel and Gloria Sanchez sat in the facing seats, and Grassinger drove with Chris Bartholomew riding shotgun.

  Media trucks and vans were parked along the side of the street almost all the way back to Connecticut Avenue. Chevy Chase police and Montgomery County sheriffs units held the reporters at bay and kept them from taking up the chase. The limo’s windows were tinted so that no one could see inside, anyway. And fifteen minutes earlier, one of Grassinger’s people had delivered a one-page news release promising that the DCI would hold a news conference at Langley sometime later today.

  “It’s a feeding frenzy,” Stenzel observed, as they were passed through the checkpoint. They headed north on Connecticut Avenue toward the Beltway and sped up.

  The news media had finally gotten onto the story that at least two attempts had been made on the life of the director of the CIA, the latest attack in front of his house.

  “It’s been a slow season,” Gloria said.

  “One good thing with all this attention, no one in their right mind would try to do anything,” Stenzel said.

  Gloria shook her head. “I hate to disagree, Doc, but this sort of confusion can work as a very good cover.”

  It had begun to snow again. When they reached the Capital Beltway and turned west, Kathleen turned and watched out the window. The trees and the hills were being covered with a fresh blanket of snow that made the world look clean and pretty, like a Currier and Ives Christmas lithograph. She was smiling, but she said nothing, and McGarvey was content just to look at her.

  One other time in their marriage he had been as frightened of her fragility as he was now. It was a couple of days after Elizabeth was born, when they brought her home to their small apartment in the city. Kathleen’s pregnancy had been a normal one, no emergencies, no terrible cravings or debilitating morning sickness. But it had been long, and they were both glad the night her labor pains began and her water broke.

  McGarvey had done her breathing exercises with her so earnestly that night, that he had hyperventilated and almost passed out waiting for her to get ready to go to the hospital.

  In those days, in a lot of hospitals, prospective fathers were not allowed into the delivery rooms. They had to remain in the waiting rooms, pacing the floor, having no idea what was happening until a nurse came out to tell them.

  When they got home with Elizabeth, MacGarvey and Kathleen were determined to be the perfect parents, despite McGarvey’s job with the CIA that was starting to take him away from home for long periods. Kathleen did not breast-feed, so McGarvey was able to help with the bottles and formulas. He had also practiced changing diapers on a doll that Kathleen had bought for him.

  The first time that it was his turn, Kathleen was in the kitchen doing the formula. He went into the baby’s room and stopped in the doorway. The shades were drawn and the room was in semidarkness. Liz was awake and mewling softly, but not really crying yet.

  He could clearly remember her baby smell, how tiny
beads of perspiration formed on her rosebud lips. She scrunched up her face and looked at him as if she knew who he was and exactly why he had come to her crib.

  She was bundled up in a pink blanket. He laid out the tiny diaper and baby powder, undid the blanket and started to undo the bottom of her nightshirt when he felt something on her stomach. He reared back in a sudden, absolute panic.

  His and Katy’s biggest concern throughout her pregnancy was that she would lose the baby, miscarry. But another concern for McGarvey, one that he never shared with Katy, and one that kept him awake nights during the nine months, was that the baby would be born malformed. With a club foot, or a harelip, or blind, or with too many fingers or toes or arms.

  He gently felt the front of Liz’s nightshirt, and it was still there. A tiny lump in the middle of her belly. Sticking straight up. His worst fears were true. Somehow Katy hadn’t seen it, and the doctor and nurses hadn’t said anything. Or maybe they all knew and were afraid to tell him.

  Liz had something growing out of her belly. It was a third arm. He was convinced of it. Some tiny, but horribly grotesque growth out of her body.

  He looked over his shoulder at the open door. Katy was just down the hall. How in God’s name could he tell her about this? He was the father. This was his fault. He was one hundred percent convinced of it. The shame was almost more than he could bear.

  His heart hammered as he carefully untied Liz’s nightshirt and pulled it back. He had to see. He had to know so that he could figure out how to break it to Katy.

  For several seconds he stared at his daughter’s rounded belly. A small bandage had been placed on the end of the tied-off umbilical cord. He looked at it, and he knew exactly what he had felt, and the mistake he had stupidly made, and yet he had a very hard time coming down. His heart pounded all the way through the diapering.

  When Katy came back with the bottle she stopped in the doorway, a smile on her face, just like her smile right now looking out at the fresh snow.

  McGarvey looked up at her. “She’s perfect,” he said.

  “So are you,” Kathleen had told him.

  He had never told her about that incident. And, he figured that if he searched his memory he could probably come up with other things that he hadn’t told her. When this situation was resolved, he promised himself that he and Katy would start over. Really start over this time.

  Grassinger took the Beltway Bridge across the river back into Virginia and immediately turned south on the George Washington Memorial Parkway to the CIA. Chris Bartholomew was in constant encrypted radio contact with Operations, who kept up a running report on the traffic behind and in front of them.

  There were a number of news media vans and trucks at the front gate as the DCI’s limo was passed through. Grassinger drove directly across the Agency’s grounds to the south exit, on Pike Road, which led back to the Beltway. They recrossed the river, still clear according to their chase units.

  Grassinger drove north to River Road, which was Highway 190, and turned west toward the town of Potomac. He was making a big circle around Cropley. He was taking no chances with the DCI’s safety.

  Chris Bartholomew turned around. She was from Wisconsin and tiny, just making the Agency’s minimums for height and weight. Her husband argued that good things came in the smallest of packages. Everyone in the Office of Security agreed.

  “Mr. Van Buren and your daughter are at the safe house, Mr. Director,” she said. “They had no trouble.”

  “Good,” McGarvey replied. “What’s our ETA?”

  “We’ll be there in about twenty minutes,” Grassinger told him.

  “I’ll let Mr. Van Buren know—”

  “No,” McGarvey said. “You may tell security on the grounds. But no one else.”

  Grassinger gave him an odd look in the rearview mirror. Chris Bartholomew didn’t miss a beat. “Yes, sir,” she said. She turned back to the radio.

  Kathleen ignored the exchange. It was the Librium that Stenzel had given her. The drug made her docile.

  “Is there something we should know about, Mr. Director?” Gloria Sanchez asked.

  “There might be bugs in the house,” McGarvey said lamely. “Besides, there’s staff out there.”

  “The house was swept about an hour ago, and we sent the staff away four days ago, sir,” she said. “The only people with Todd and your daughter now are John Blatnik’s team. Four inside and six outside. They’re rotated by pairs every two hours.”

  “It’ll be a moot point in twenty minutes,” McGarvey said, closing the conversation. Gloria nodded, and Stenzel’s attention remained fixed on Kathleen.

  McGarvey turned back to his thoughts. He’d made an automatic decision that he refused to examine. The problem he’d faced all of his life was when you don’t trust your friends and the people nearest to you, who can you trust? Who should you trust when you have to place your personal safety into the hands of relative strangers?

  This was an odd and troubling time. For the first time in his life he was coming face-to-face with himself, with what made him tick. He hadn’t come up with any of the answers to the dozens of questions he was asking himself, or at least he wasn’t coming up with any answers that made much sense. He could not reconcile his first instinct to run with his extremely strong sense of responsibility for the people he loved and for the weaker people around him.

  Had Senator Madden pressed him on the incident in high school with the football bullies, he would not have been able to tell her the real reason he’d stepped in. It had been something automatic. Despite the opinion of the people in the Agency and in several White House administrations he’d served under, he was not a hero. He was a pragmatist, a realist, probably an egoist—someone who was self-centered, arrogant, conceited, even selfish. Maybe all that, but he could not think of himself as a hero to anyone, for the simple reason he had no earthly idea what heroism was.

  Voltaire, among others, had hinted that egoism, which McGarvey figured was his driving trait, was the idea that morality, in the end, always rested on self-interest.

  McGarvey wasn’t a hero; he was simply a man who did not know how to follow orders, a man who valued his opinion above the opinions of almost everyone else, but a man who did not know how to give up. When he ran, it was always to find a new ground on which to fight his battles.

  Not much of a prize for Katy and Liz, he thought. But it was all he had to give them, and he did love them with everything in his soul.

  Grassinger came to the snow-covered gravel road that led away from the federal parkland along the river, one mile to the house around 9:00 A.M. The forest was thick with tangled underbrush that even in winter provided a lot of cover.

  The house looked as if it had been plucked from a Kentucky horse farm and transported here. It was complete with expansive lawns, white wooden fences, paddocks, horse barns and an indoor riding arena, as well as other outbuildings. A couple of years after the Aldrich Ames case had broken, another criminal in the CIA had been discovered. This one didn’t make the news because he hadn’t sold out to the Russians. Instead, he had ripped off the Agency for something over four million dollars by tapping into several of the CIA’s offshore operating funds accounts.

  The Cropley house nestled on one hundred acres of forested hills, had been his. Now it belonged to the CIA. Anonymous and therefore safe.

  There were fresh tire tracks in the still-falling snow, and some footprints leading from the house back into the woods, but no activity that they could see driving up. It wasn’t until McGarvey got out of the car that he smelled the woodsmoke coming from a fire on the living room hearth. Smoke began to come out of the broad chimney. Somebody had just laid the fire.

  John Blatnik, the chief of on-site security, came around the east corner of the house, speaking into his lapel mic. He had a Colt Commando slung over his shoulder. He looked very serious in his white parka and snow boots.

  “Welcome to Cropley, Mr. Director,” Blatnik said. Like a lot of
men in the Office of Security, he looked like a linebacker. “Mr. Van Buren and your daughter are inside.”

  Stenzel and Gloria Sanchez helped Kathleen out of the limo. She was almost asleep on her feet. “I’m putting her to bed right now,” Stenzel said.

  “Put her in the master bedroom,” McGarvey told them. “Upstairs, in the back.”

  Kathleen gave him a flaccid smile, and Stenzel and Gloria took her inside.

  Todd came out of the house. “Hello, Mac. Any trouble on the way out?”

  “No. How’s Liz?”

  “She didn’t get any rest last night. But she promised to get some sleep as soon as she saw her mother and talked to you.”

  Grassinger stepped away to speak to Blatnik, but Chris Bartholomew remained a few feet away from McGarvey. She’d unbuttoned her jacket.

  “What’s the situation here?” McGarvey asked. He wasn’t ready to go into the house yet.

  “Tony’s got some good people working for him. The house is secure. They have the infrared and motion detectors up and running around the perimeter, as well as the built-in stop sticks and explosive charges on the driveway. And they’re adding two lines of claymores on either side of the driveway to give us another layer of defense. We’ve mounted infrared sensors on the roof as well as a remotely operated portable radar unit behind the barn. It’s not very big, but I’m told it’ll give us a good warning of anything incoming.”

  “That depends on how badly they want to hit us,” McGarvey countered.

  Van Buren nodded. “But they have to find us first.” He looked toward the tree line. “Short of stationing the National Guard out here, we’re about as safe here as we’d be anywhere else.”

  They went into the house, where McGarvey was introduced to four of Blatnik’s security people. They were all young, and were friends of Todd and Liz, so they were taking this situation personally. Someone brought the bags in from the car and took them upstairs.

  Elizabeth came down before McGarvey could go upstairs to see how Kathleen was doing. His daughter looked battered. Her face was puffy and terribly bruised. She walked hunched over and stiff because of the pain. But when she saw her father she managed to smile.