First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel
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But she hadn’t understood the story about how he’d stopped the jocks from raping the girl in high school.
“It wasn’t your problem,” she’d said.
“I couldn’t just let it happen.”
“Of course not. You should have called the police.”
“By the time they would have got there it would have been a done deal.”
“Perhaps, but it would have been a matter for law enforcement, not some macho kid who thought he was a Sir Galahad.”
He’d dropped it. A long time ago his sister had screeched at him that he would never have a clue about women. He couldn’t remember what they were arguing about, but her accusation stuck with him. She was right.
His pistol was clean, but in his room he unloaded and disassembled it and wiped it down with an oily rag from his kit. He reloaded the six bullets into the magazine and the seventh into the firing chamber, then holstered it at the small of his back.
Chile, he decided, would be the easy part.
THIRTY
McGarvey got to Union Station at three-thirty, rush hour traffic just beginning to build. He hung around outside for twenty minutes, smoking a couple of cigarettes, watching for any signs that Trotter had sent an advance guard.
But there were no unmarked vans or trucks. No one loitering. The roofs, with clear sight lines to the station’s main entrance, were clear.
A police helicopter flew over, but it continued to the south without turning back. A few minutes later a Gray Line bus pulled up and a dozen school-aged kids and two chaperones got off and headed into the station. It made him think of his own daughter, and he hoped that he would remain in her life to see her take field trips like this.
Tossing his cigarette away, he went inside and made a complete circuit of the main hall, sticking mostly to the perimeter, watching for anyone out of the ordinary. Someone other than the tourists and the people coming or going on the trains, the Metro or the Greyhound buses.
At one point he went into the Smithsonian store and pretended to look at a book while he watched out the window to see if he had been followed.
But there was no one whose tradecraft he could pick out, and after a couple of minutes he put the book down and walked to the Thunder Grill restaurant just to the left of the main entrances. The place was fairly full, commuters catching a bite or a drink before their trains left, but the maitre d’ got him a booth at the windows.
“I may have three people joining me,” he told the young woman.
The waiter came over and laid out four menus. McGarvey ordered a Bud draft and lit another cigarette. He had to keep reminding himself that it was a bad habit. Sooner or later he knew it would start to affect his wind. Maybe even kill him, before a bullet did.
Trotter came in fifteen minutes early and did a slow circuit of the main hall much the same as McGarvey had. No one was behind him, and he hadn’t brought the two Chilean DINA officers.
At four-thirty precisely he came back toward the front doors and spotted McGarvey through the window and came in and sat down.
“They refused to come with me and I wasn’t about to bring the minders along.”
“I need to talk to them off campus, before I leave.”
The waiter came over.
“It’ll be just the two of us,” Trotter said and he ordered a Dewar’s and water.
“In the clear, no muscle, no surveillance,” McGarvey said. “Just you and them.”
“What do you want to ask them?”
“I want to know more about the Russian they were supposed to burn.”
“Baranov? He’s an up-and-comer. Due for a promotion if he can establish his network in Chile. I can get you his file.”
“You don’t have what I need,” McGarvey said.
Trotter’s drink came.
“What do you need?” Trotter asked when they were alone.
“Who else besides Janos knows that I’m still alive?”
“Connelly might suspect something. There was the blood and your jacket but nothing else. No body parts, nothing in the river. It was he who ordered the dragging to stop.”
“Anyone on campus that you know of?”
“If you mean your mole, there’s no way of telling for sure. Unless you suspect me.”
McGarvey looked away for a moment. At this point he didn’t know what to think. The mole on campus, if there was one, had to be very good. Others in the past had done serious damage to Clandestine Services looking for Russian spies, so that now in order to survive in the super-suspicious environment any mole would have to be damned near Jesus Christ reincarnated. Trotter just wasn’t that good.
“No,” McGarvey said. “You would have come in guns blazing.”
A light went off in Trotter’s eyes. “Which is why you called me, and why you confided in Plonski. Whoever the spy was would send someone to kill you. Who else have you told?”
“Sergeant Carol.”
“Plonski, Tom Carol and now me, all suspects. But why us? What’s the point? If anyone wanted to stop you from going to Chile, it would have to be the Russians. Baranov’s in Santiago right now trying to gain a foothold for his CESTA network.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple. Assassinating Varga wouldn’t do much to stop the Russians.”
“Not unless you were caught and your body put on display.”
“Then why try to have me killed here? Twice?”
Trotter sat back. “Someone else, then? Someone with another agenda?”
“Maybe they don’t want me to go to Chile—succeed or fail.”
“And the blame for sending you would end up on whose doorstep? Ours?”
“Maybe the White House’s.”
“You do think big,” Trotter said. “The president?”
“No. But someone close to him. Someone who knows about my assignment and believes that I would do more harm than good.”
“Why not simply order your assignment canceled? It’d be a lot easier than killing a CIA officer on his home ground. The repercussions would be over the moon. Administrations have been toppled or at least hamstrung for a lot less than that.”
There it was again in McGarvey’s mind. What would be motivation for killing him before Chile? Who would gain by it? And gain what? Unless it was merely to impress someone. Make points. Strengthen a weak bargaining position.
“Maybe the fuse was defective after all. Maybe you and Kathleen were merely caught up in a random drive-by shooting or perhaps a case of mistaken identity.”
“I don’t think it’ll turn out to be that simple.”
“You don’t think so, or you don’t want it to be so?” Trotter asked. “You’re in the game now, Kirk, and you’re loving it. Just what you volunteered for.”
“No one likes getting shot at,” McGarvey said. But Trotter was right.
“I’ve read your psych reports. ‘Truth, justice and the American way.’ Superman’s motto, and now yours. What would you say if I canceled the assignment right now? Ordered you to stand down?”
“You don’t have the authority. You’re just the pit boss.”
“So who owns the casino?”
“Who ordered the op?”
Totter hesitated for a beat. “I can’t tell you that,” he said, and held up a hand before McGarvey could object. “But I can tell you that I originated the idea. It made sense four months ago and it still makes sense. And trust me, the people—and I am talking plural here—who signed off on the operation are completely above suspicion. I mean they are bulletproof. Which leaves us where?”
“Santiago.”
“The American with the East Coast accent.”
“I want to ask Munoz and Campos about him and Baranov.”
“You think there’s a connection?”
“I’ll call you first thing in the morning,” McGarvey said. He got up, tossed a twenty on the table and walked out.
The station was crowded now as more people streamed in to catch commuter trains. Just outside the
main doors a man in a dark suit, his tie loose, an attaché case in his left hand, stopped to look at something or someone behind him.
McGarvey passed him, alarms suddenly jangling in his head. He reached for his gun as he started to turn around, when what felt like the muzzle of a pistol was jammed into the small of his back.
“Keep walking, Mr. McGarvey, or I will shoot you,” he said. He was an American, his voice East Coast. “And keep your hand away from your gun.”
They took two steps when the soft burp of a silenced pistol sounded, like it was just next to McGarvey’s ear. He instinctively rolled right as the man fell away, crumpling to the pavement, a small hole in the back of his head.
Trotter was right there, holstering his pistol. “Walk away—I’ll take care of this.”
People were starting to react.
“He had an East Coast accent.”
“I know who he is. Now get the hell out of here before the cops come running. Call me in the morning. I’ll have some answers by then.”
THIRTY-ONE
Despite the supposed training accident, operations at the Farm continued as normal. The routine was never broken, not even for the death of one of the officers. Sergeant Major Carol sat at the bar nursing his third beer for the evening as he stared at his image in the mirror. Nothing that had happened in the past twenty-four hours made any sense to him, and he was having trouble coming to grips with the part he was supposed to play.
McGarvey was a good kid, and had the makings of a damned fine field officer, even if he was still a little headstrong. But he hadn’t accepted the possibility that the fuse had been defective. He was convinced it was a conspiracy, just like in the spy movies, where the bad guy was always the one the hero was nearest to.
Dick Adams, a senior instructor who taught recruits how to resist interrogations of all kinds, walked in and Carol watched as he came across to the bar. He was a tall man, thin, his face all angles. He was dressed in jeans and a white button-down dress shirt, tails untucked. The recruits all agreed that he looked like an interrogator: his eyes, they said, saw right through you.
“Hi, Sarge,” he said, taking the next stool.
“Off the reservation tonight?”
“Lockdown’s meant to keep the kids in place, but I’m surprised to see you here.”
“Stupid accident,” Carol said, turning back to his beer and looking at Adams’s reflection in the mirror behind the bar. “Have you heard anything new?”
“The plebes are a little shook up, but Connelly’s take is: Shit happens. How about you? You guys were close, and you were the senior training officer on his op.”
“Shit happens,” Carol said. He finished his beer and got up. “You weren’t here tonight.”
“Ditto,” Adams said.
* * *
The main gate was only a few miles north of downtown Williamsburg and it was a few minutes before ten by the time Carol was waved through. He drove directly back to his quarters, where he sat brooding in the dark by a window that overlooked the rear of the armory one hundred yards away.
He’d been married only briefly when he’d been a young drill instructor at Parris Island, what seemed like a million years ago. Her name was Stephanie. They’d met in February, moved in together in March, got married in April and she moved out and filed for divorce in October.
For a long time, he regretted her. But he was who he was: wedded to the corps and to its people and to its mission.
“Me or the marines,” she’d offered. He’d just shrugged. He had no choice.
Anyway, she’d already packed her bags and put them in the trunk of their big old clunky Olds Delta 88, and she just drove away without looking back. The divorce papers came a few days afterward, dated a month earlier.
A couple of years later he was called to the White House, where the president clasped the Medal of Honor around his neck at a ceremony in the Oval Office. For his heroism during the Tet Offensive, when, despite his serious wounds, he managed to kill at least twenty-five VC regulars, thus saving the lives of twelve of his fellow marines. Everyone had mostly forgotten about the medal, which of course he never wore on his battle dress uniforms. But a couple of days after the televised ceremony at the White House he got a note from his ex-wife, congratulating him. He did himself and his country very proud. Her maiden name had been Bullock, but the note was signed Stephanie Mullen. He kept it and the medal in a box in a drawer. He figured they belonged together.
Someone wearing jeans and a dark jacket came out of the armory, hesitated just a moment then walked away, around the corner toward Admin. The distance was far too great for Carol to make out any details except that he got the impression that it was a man. Tall and thin. And moved like he owned the place.
He put on a camo blouse, grabbed a flashlight, slipped out the door and headed down the dirt road to the armory, only open fields on either side. The evening was silent, no night mission training evolutions until two days from now, when the sounds of automatic weapons fire and small explosions would drift over from the urban-incursion area three-quarters of a mile to the north.
Most doors at the Farm were not equipped with locks. They would be useless for the most part, because among other disciplines, the recruits were taught how to defeat just about any lock in existence.
Besides, these were CIA officers in training. No thieves here, Carol thought. Or murderers. At least not killers of each other.
The armory was housed in a squat, hardened-concrete building about the size of a three-car garage. There were no windows, and the large service door through which bigger weapons systems, like chain guns, could pass was constructed in such a fashion that in the event of an explosion the aluminum would absorb much of the energy, channeling it outside to reduce the damage to people and equipment inside.
Carol hesitated at the door the figure had come out of, wishing that he had thought to bring his 9mm Beretta pistol. But he was being foolish. He was a hand-to-hand-combat instructor, just about the best in any service. If a situation were to arise, he was capable of taking care of himself.
He went in, the door closing softly behind him. He stood in the nearly absolute darkness for a full minute, all of his senses straining to catch any sign that someone was in here with him. But there was nothing. It was too cool for the air conditioner to be running and too warm for the heat to come on. The building was absolutely silent.
Switching on his flashlight he played the beam slowly from right to left. Steel cabinets lined one wall, while along the other side heavy wire shelves held a variety of metal boxes and cases. A worktable fifteen feet long and six feet wide, topped by a thick butcher block and equipped with a variety of vices and clamps, stretched across the room just eight feet or so from the front door. A drill press, metal lathe and a half-dozen different ammunition-loading devices were set up in a ring around the worktable. In front were a dozen lockers that held a broad variety of weapons—from the Russian-made 5.45mm PSM to just about every variety of Glock, SIG Sauer and Beretta pistols, plus Heckler & Koch’s complete line of automatic weapons, along with dozens of other short and long guns, including the .50-caliber Barrett sniper rifle.
Two lockers were packed with bricks of Semtex of various sizes. Another cabinet, across the room, was filled with a variety of detonators, including those that were lit; those that were crushed with needle nose pliers at various timing points; others that were preset, many of them to fire in five seconds or more; and still others that were radio controlled, or pressure controlled, some barometric for use in bringing down aircraft.
Some of the newer recruits called the place the Madhouse, while the older hands, especially those who had come in out of the field to teach here, thought of this place almost as church. A gigantic lifesaver.
“When someone’s shooting at you, it’s a comfort to have a reliable weapon to shoot back,” a drill instructor said. And like General Patton once told his troops: “I don’t want you to die for your country; I want the oth
er bastards to die for theirs.”
Something that had come from here had either been defective or had been meant to kill McGarvey, and Carol suspected that whoever had been here in the middle of the night knew something and perhaps was trying to cover it up. He had switched off the lights inside before he had opened the door.
Not really knowing what he was looking, except maybe something out of the ordinary, something that didn’t fit, he went around the worktable to the cabinet that held the detonators, and opened it.
For the first few moments he saw only marked boxes of fuses, each with a type and military ID number. But all at once he realized that a two-kilo brick of Semtex was sitting to the right on a shelf about chest high. A fuse was attached to the door.
McGarvey had been right.
Carol took a step backward and suddenly there was nothing.
THIRTY-TWO
First thing in the morning Baranov telephoned the Vargas’ compound and got Karina on the phone. “I have to go into Santiago on business, but how about getting together tonight? I’d like to see another film, and I understand that you’ve become quite an artist.”
“Mati’s in Valparaíso and he promised to bring a new batch with him. I know that he’d like to have you come over for an early dinner. In fact, you could come now for a private tour of my studio.”
“I’d love to, but I’m wanted at my embassy,” Baranov said. He wouldn’t have minded accepting her invitation. Her paintings on human skin would be as disgusting as her husband’s home movies, but she had a lovely body and an inventive technique in bed.
“Another day, then?” Karina asked.
“I can hardly wait, but I’ll see you tonight. Six o’clock?”
“Si.”
He had come to think of the Vargas, especially Karina, as a key to his mission, and possibly even to his survival. Pinochet was a man of short temper and long memory. He’d been offended by Baranov’s brashness on the golf course the other day, and people in Chile had a tendency to disappear. Some of them to Valparaíso. Mati was close to el Presidente and Karina was obviously in his eye.