First Kill--A Kirk McGarvey Novel

by David Hagberg

  Coming through the open gate into Baranov’s compound, he parked in front of the main building. Taking his pistol, he left the car’s engine running as he went into the house. Checking corners, sweeping left to right, moving low and fast, he went room to room through the place.

  No one was at home: not Baranov, not the staff, not any KGB security people left behind in case the American CIA officer showed up.

  It only made sense to him if Baranov had elected to stay in Mexico. Yet everything in his gut told him that the Russian was here.

  Holstering his pistol he went outside and drove the car over to the garage. Parked inside was a gray Fiat Regata station wagon. The keys were in the sun visor. He backed it outside, then pulled the BMW in.

  For a moment he stood at the trunk lid, feeling an almost overwhelming sense of regret for the girl Maria. Collateral damage had almost always been a war term. Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki. The list wasn’t endless but it was long.

  But this now was up close and personal, and he had the almost prescient feeling that shit like this was just the beginning for him.

  Transferring his backpack to the Fiat he drove the car back to the east side of the compound, where the sun wouldn’t be on it until morning, casting a reflection, then went inside to the kitchen.

  Laying his pack on the table, he tried the phone. It had a dial tone. He considered for just a moment calling Trotter, but he decided against it. He didn’t want to know whatever orders had been issued in Washington. He was on a mission. Nothing else mattered now.

  He found a Dos Equis lager in one of the refrigerators, and he sat down at the table with the beer and his gun-cleaning kit and prepped his weapon and the magazines for tonight’s work.

  In his head he studied the map of San Antonio and the region all the way down to Pichilemu and up to Valparaíso, and especially the Maipo River and the Arevalo estuary to the north.

  Because of the mock-up of the dock at the Farm they might expect him to make his escape via the sea. It was only a small edge, but it was better than nothing.

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  Baranov followed the maître d’ to a seat by a window in the restaurant at the newly opened Plaza San Francisco hotel downtown. It was only a few minutes after seven and the dining room was nearly empty, most of the others foreigners, by their appearance, not used to dining much later.

  When the waiter came, he ordered a de Jerez, which immediately made him think of the Vargas, especially Karina with her lovely legs and great ass. His mood darkened. He would be leaving Chile in the morning, a failure.

  His mission here was to open a dialogue with the DINA to pave the way for expansion of CESTA del Sur. But earlier Torres had made it clear that such a proposal, though not totally out of the question, wouldn’t be up for discussion until sometime in the future.

  And General Leonov had refused to take his call.

  His drink came and he opened the menu but didn’t really look at it. He had lost his taste for Chile and things Chilean. Especially arrogant attitudes that were, in his estimation, completely unwarranted.

  “Mr. McGarvey is our problem, not yours,” Torres had told him just an hour ago after they’d talked for the second time today. “But we will take your suggestions under advisement.”

  “General Varga needs to be eliminated—we can agree on at least that much. And if McGarvey is here, let him do the work. It will give you the political advantage over Washington. But it’s afterward that could be more important. A coup if you kill him, but a gold seam if you capture him alive and question him. Maybe even put him on trial.”

  “We’re not even sure that he’s here after all. The descriptions that the passengers and bus driver gave us don’t match McGarvey’s description,” Torres replied.

  “They probably don’t even match each other’s. They’re lying to protect him.”

  “That’s a possibility. But the general has been advised what may be coming his way, and he’s set a trap.”

  “His security detail has been notified as well?” Baranov asked.

  “All but two of his lieutenants are gone.”

  Baranov could scarcely believe what he was hearing. It was madness. “Tell me that you have people standing by.”

  “The two men with him are highly decorated naval officers, with the Rapid Intervention Team. Much the same as your Spetsnaz. And both the general and his wife are excellent marksmen. Four highly trained and well-equipped shooters against one American.”

  “But he’s good.”

  “Not that good,” Torres said.

  Baranov had packed a few things from his quarters in the embassy and had them sent out to the airport. He’d considered driving down to his compound and picking up his uniform and a couple of books he’d been reading, but he’d decided that it wasn’t worth the trip.

  Now he wasn’t so sure.

  “I’m going back to Mexico City first thing in the morning.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “My place in San Antonio has been shut down, but there are a few things I’d like to get.”

  “No,” Torres said. “I want you to confine yourself to Santiago tonight. Whatever happens in Chile is a Chilean problem, not a Russian one. Is that clear?”

  “You’re making a mistake.”

  “We all make them from time to time.”

  The waiter came back. Baranov ordered another de Jerez, and then a small salad, a steak with fried potatoes, and a bottle of local Malbec. “You choose the label and the vintage. I want the steak rare.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  A minute later the waiter brought his second drink and when he was gone, Dick Beckett showed up.

  “Mind if I join you, Captain?”

  Baranov was irritated but he didn’t let it show. He motioned for the CIA’s chief of station to have a seat. “You come as a surprise,” he said, and he looked toward the entrance to see if any minders were there.

  “I’m alone. Just came to say goodbye before you flew out in the morning.”

  Baranov had to smile. “That was good of you, but I’m beginning to wonder if anyone here knows how to keep a secret.”

  “Works both ways, comrade.”

  The waiter returned and Beckett ordered a Budweiser.

  “When in Rome?” Baranov said.

  “The local beer? Tastes like crap if you ask me. But you were right about one thing: some idiot in Langley actually did concoct a scheme to send an assassin down here to take out Varga.”

  “The general’s dead.”

  Beckett dismissed it. “No one believes it. He’ll surface fairly soon and make a statement that rumors of his passing were greatly exaggerated, but necessary for some reason or another of state. The point is that the operation has been scrubbed.”

  “It’s always bad when politics gets in the way of need, because in the end you’ll still have to deal with the issue of the general and his little hobby in Valparaíso.”

  “Can’t say that I’m sorry to see you leave with your tail between your legs, but it has been sporty around here ever since you showed up. Hopefully you’ve learned your lesson.”

  “Which lesson would that be?” Baranov asked. He was armed, and he had the almost overwhelming urge to pull out his pistol and shoot the smug bastard right between the eyes.

  “Chile is on our side of the pond. It belongs to us, not you.”

  “You should take a look at the globe in your office. It’s a rather nice one. You might notice that my country actually spans eleven time zones in all. We own both sides of both ponds.”

  Beckett took his time answering, the expression on his face neutral. “Changes are coming, Captain. You and I both know that’s it’s only a matter of time before your entire stupid system falls apart. Leaving you with what?”

  “Ten thousand nuclear-tipped missiles and the means to deliver them.”

  “We too have an arsenal,” Beckett said, getting up. “And the means of deliverance.”

  The American
walked away, leaving Baranov to wonder exactly what he meant by deliverance.

  * * *

  Baranov took his time with his dinner, even though he was anxious to be off, not leaving the hotel and retrieving his Mercedes until just before nine. Twenty minutes later he was on the highway to San Antonio, the Makarov in his shoulder holster.

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  McGarvey was ready a few minutes before eleven. He’d found one of Baranov’s uniforms, which he put on. The fit was a little snug, and the shoes weren’t even close, but all he needed was an entry.

  He stood at the front door, which was slightly ajar, and watched where the driveway disappeared over the low hill about four hundred yards away. There were no headlights passing on the main gravel road, nor were there any lights visible in any direction.

  The night was soft, the slight breeze redolent of the sea, the moon still below the horizon until around two in the morning.

  Coming here first he’d half hoped to find Baranov in residence. It was a good possibility that the Russian had engineered the attack on him and Katy, and probably ordered the mole to set up the accidents at the Farm.

  The mole wasn’t Trotter, but it made him sick thinking that Trotter knew the person, probably worked with them every day; maybe they even had drinks and dinner from time to time.

  He’d wanted to ask Baranov who it was, and then before he went to the Vargas’ he would kill the man. Payback time for the most part because Katy had been put in harm’s way.

  Settling the uniform cap on his head, the bill pulled down just above his eyes, he went out to the car, laying his pistol within easy reach on the passenger seat, and took off up the hill.

  The fact that he was on his way to kill a man had weighed heavily on him since he’d accepted the assignment from Trotter. But during his training at the Farm, and everything that had happened afterward, right up to this moment, he had been able to put the idea of the thing in a back corner of his head. Every now and then it would come out like a shooting star, but then fade to background noise—always there, but in the distance.

  Within days after he’d volunteered for black ops, he’d had his first serious psych eval, which had lasted for twelve hours straight. The Company shrink was fascinated and he made no bones about admitting it.

  “Guys like you are a rare breed,” Dr. Sachs told him. Morris Sachs could have played as a linebacker for the Packers—he had the size—but he was a mild-spoken man, filled with awe at what he called the ever-fascinating business of the human psyche.

  At first Mac had been hooked up to a lie detector machine, but he’d been taught at the Farm how to defeat it, which only made Sachs even more interested.

  “Neat technique that might fool an ordinary operator. But when I tried to provoke you, talking about your wife, and asking if you’d ever witnessed her having sex with another man, or perhaps a woman, or even an animal, your respiration and pulse actually slowed down. Anything but a normal reaction.”

  “To answer your question, no,” McGarvey had said.

  “Apparently there’s either no rage inside of you, or else you’ve buried it deeply, maybe trained yourself to think around it. And yet you want to become an assassin. You want to kill people.”

  “Not innocent people.”

  “Just the bad guys?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Or the bad girls? Maybe teenagers?”

  That was the only bad moment of that or any of the other evals over the next month or so. “I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Maybe you should. There’re a couple of places in the Middle East where young women are being trained as assassins, some of them even as suicide bombers,” Sachs said. “Think about it, Mr. McGarvey. They’re coming, and the point may arrive where you’ll have to make a decision, kill or be killed.”

  “I’ve thought about it.”

  “And?”

  “It’s a decision I’ll make if and when the time comes.”

  “Are you sure about that?” the doctor had pressed.

  “Yes.”

  Sachs disconnected the lie detector. “There’ll be other psychiatrists who’ll try to prove that you’re nuts.”

  McGarvey had laughed. “Is that the technical term?”

  “Close enough for government work,” Sachs said and they shook hands. “Think long and hard about what you want to do. Because once you’re in, it’ll be very hard to get back out. You’ll develop a lot of enemies, maybe even among your family and friends, because you’ll never be able to explain to them what you are. But you’ll have to be able to explain it to yourself. And accept it, without nightmares destroying you.”

  At the door the doctor turned back. “I don’t think America should be using people like you. Just like I don’t believe in torture or drugs to find out things. But the hell of it is that I can see the need.” He shook his head, a sadness coming into his eyes. “God help you, son.”

  * * *

  Just below the top of the next rise a couple of miles past Baranov’s driveway, McGarvey doused the headlights and stopped.

  Holstering his pistol and taking his binoculars he went the last twenty yards to the top of the rise, where he got on his hands and knees.

  The Vargas’ compound was about three hundred yards down in the valley, the front gate closed. Razor wire topped the tall walls, and even at this distance McGarvey could hear the diesel generator.

  He took off the hat and glassed the walls and what he could see of the inside of the compound, including the front and east side of the main house. No lights showed in any of the windows, nor was there any movement in or around the place. To the right what appeared to be a barracks building was also dark as were a couple of other outbuildings.

  Except for the spotlights on the walls and the noise of the generator, the place could have been deserted as had Baranov’s. Perhaps Varga had been warned, and perhaps a trap had been set below. Like a sap he would drive down there and the fifty soldiers hiding would come out, guns blazing. It would be game over before he even got started.

  McGarvey eased back below the crest of the hill before he got up and went to the car.

  Everything was against him. Baranov was gone—probably in Mexico City, though there were no guarantees. General Varga knew that he was coming. The DINA had set up a trap with no way out for him.

  SIXTY-NINE

  From the outside of his compound nothing looked as if it had been disturbed, except that the front gate had been left open. Probably by cook and the maintenance man. Baranov hadn’t treated them especially badly; nevertheless, he was sure that they resented him because he was a foreigner. They’d left the house open hoping that someone would come up from the city and steal things.

  Baranov parked in front of the house and went inside. He stopped short just inside the entry hall. Someone had tracked dirt in from the gravel driveway. He took out his pistol and thumbed off the safety catch, and held his breath to listen for something, anything.

  McGarvey had come here looking for him, and maybe he hadn’t left yet. But the American would have heard the car.

  “Mr. McGarvey, have you come here to kill me or just to talk before you do the general?” Baranov said.

  He flattened against the wall and eased to the end of the short corridor where it opened to the expansive living room, beyond which was the lanai and big swimming pool. He swept his pistol left to right. Nothing moved.

  “Let’s talk, then, about the mole at Langley.”

  He darted across the room and slowly opened one of the sliding doors to the lanai and stepped outside. He covered the pool area with his pistol, but still nothing moved. The night was silent.

  Gliding on the balls of his feet to the left, he came to the sliding glass door into the kitchen. It was open. Again he held up just out of the line of fire.

  “I promise not to shoot first.”

  He smelled the faint but distinct odor of gun oil.

  Reaching around the corner with his
pistol he took a quick peek inside. A bottle of beer sat on the small table.

  The son of a bitch was gone—Baranov was sure of it. But he had sat there drinking a beer as he cleaned his gun. The clever bastard had come this far, but he had stopped here first. For what? A confrontation?

  Or something else? Something that would gain him easy entry into the Vargas’ compound?

  Baranov went back to his bedroom suite, where the closet door was open. His uniform, including the hat, was missing. But his shoes must not have fit, and McGarvey had left them in the middle of the room.

  Gun in hand he hurried down the corridor and outside to the garage, where he threw open the door. His Fiat was missing, replaced by a white BMW.

  He had to laugh. The bastard had balls. McGarvey came here first, then had dressed in the uniform and had taken the Fiat. But the American had made a mistake, or his intel had been faulty. The Vargas never went to sleep until well after one or two in the morning. It was too early. They’d still be up, and both of them were supposedly good shots. Torres was right; it would be four to one.

  But McGarvey was good. Much better than most of them had thought.

  He turned around when he was illuminated by two strong flashlights.

  “Put down the gun and place your hands together on the back of your neck,” someone shouted in English with a Spanish accent.

  Baranov hesitated. If McGarvey had reached the Vargas, he would either be dead by now, or the Vargas and the two special lieutenants would be. Either way the outcome would essentially be the same. McGarvey was going to end up an embarrassment to the White House.

  “Drop your weapon now, or we will open fire.”

  Baranov thumbed the safety on, dropped the pistol and put his hands on the back of his neck. “Who the hell are you people, and what are you doing at my home?”