“I haven’t forgotten.”
“What about me?” she demanded. “What about us? When is it our turn?”
“I’m going to kill him,” McGarvey said softly. “It’s the only way we can think of to put an end to the attacks.”
“You don’t know where he is,” Katy pleaded. “Please don’t do this, my darling. Please walk away from it. Let’s drive down to Florida right now. You stopped them at the canal. It’s enough!”
“I’m sorry—” McGarvey said, and Kathleen pulled away from him. She gave him a bleak look, then turned and stormed out of the kitchen. He heard her stomp up the stairs and then slam the bedroom door.
His cell phone rang. It was his daughter Elizabeth. “Hi, Daddy, are you at the safe house?” she asked.
“I just got here,” McGarvey said. “And yes, your mother saw the canal story on TV, and no, she’s not taking it very well.”
“I have someone on the way, should be there within the next few minutes,” Elizabeth promised. “I assume you’re not finished.”
“Something like that, sweetheart. I want you and Todd to keep a close watch on her. I don’t want the same thing happening as last year.”
“Not a chance,” Elizabeth said. Her mother had been kidnapped, held, and beaten badly before McGarvey could get to her. “Todd’s mother is taking care of Audrey until this business is finished.”
McGarvey’s heart warmed. “How is she?” Audrey had just turned seven months last week.
“Noisy,” Elizabeth said. “And fat, and happy, and wonderful.”
McGarvey closed his eyes for a moment. It was for Audrey and untold millions of others just like her, the innocents of the world, that he was doing what had to be done.
“Daddy?” Elizabeth prompted.
“We’ll get him this time,” McGarvey said.
“Mom will be fine,” Elizabeth said softly. “Promise.”
“Okay.”
“Will we see you before you leave again?” she asked.
“That depends on what we come up with over the next day or two,” McGarvey said. “But I expect I’ll be in town until then.”
“Dinner tonight?”
McGarvey glanced up the stairs at the closed bedroom door. “Give it a couple hours, then call your mother.”
“Will do.”
McGarvey knocked the drink back, then girded himself to go upstairs and face Katy again. He had to change into a dark suit, and pick up Gloria. He wanted to get to Arlington at least a half hour before the service to personally check security. But Katy had been right about one thing; just about every bad guy on the planet knew that the former DCI had not stayed retired.
McGarvey took Highway 355, which in D.C. was Wisconsin Avenue, up to Bethesda. It was a pretty afternoon and traffic was fairly light. He got on his cell phone and called Rencke.
“NRO’s about halfway through the fleet with no hits yet. At least nothing missing. Louise figures we should bag all but a half-dozen by tonight.”
“What about those?” McGarvey asked.
“That’s anybody’s guess, Mac. But they’ll be Graham’s most likely targets. I’ve got some Jupiter satellite time reserved, and an Aurora is standing by at Andrews.” The Aurora was the supersecret high-flying stealth spy plane that replaced the U2 and the SR-71 Blackbird. “We’ll have to take them one at a time. But it would be my guess we’ll need some on-ground resources at some point.”
“How about weapons?” McGarvey asked. At one time the countryside out here between the city and the Beltway was mostly open rolling hills, woods, fields, even a couple of farms. But now there were houses, businesses, and even strip malls. In Bethesda itself were a few high-rises and a Hilton Hotel. Americans were devouring their green spaces.
“If you’re talking nukes, it’s gotta be Russia, or some of the breakaway republics. Tajikistan comes to mind right off the top of my head. Hold on a sec.”
McGarvey could hear Otto’s fingers on a computer keyboard. He came back a few moments later.
“We might have something. Pavlosk Bay, east of Vladivostok. Used to be headquarters for the Pacific Fleet’s Twenty-sixth Submarine Division. But it was disbanded six or seven years ago. Since then it’s been a dumping ground for decommissioned subs as well as the fleet’s service ships, and weapons stores. It’s near the city of Dunay, right on the Sea of Japan. Unless we were looking, they could grab a sub and a weapon and break out of there before we could do a thing about it.”
“Are there any Kilo boats there?”
“Unknown, but I’ll check it out.”
“Good,” McGarvey said. If anyone could crack a database to find something, it was Otto. “But we need the last leg of the triangle. The target.”
“The big ditch?” Rencke offered. “They might not figure we’d expect them back so soon. Anyway it would give us a better idea of their timetable.”
“How do you see that?” McGarvey asked, puzzled.
“Graham is a sub driver, right? So why was he sent to hit the canal with an oil tanker? It was partly because all Venezuelan oil ships are run on a contract from Vensport to the transport firm GAC. Care to guess where GAC’s headquarters are located?”
“I don’t know.”
“Dubai. The United Arab Emirates.”
“How about that,” McGarvey said, not really all that surprised. It had become a small world.
“But they sent a sub driver ’cause they were being pressured to hit us, but they didn’t have a sub.”
“Yet,” McGarvey finished the thought.
“Yet,” Rencke said. “Are you coming in?”
Something was tickling the back of McGarvey’s consciousness. Something that he was forgetting. Something important. “No. I’m going with Gloria to Bob Talarico’s funeral. It’s at four.”
“Oh, gosh,” Rencke said, subdued. “I spaced it. Should I come over?”
“Did you know him?”
“Not very well,” Rencke admitted.
“Stay there and find that sub for me,” McGarvey said. “Quickly.”
“Will do,” Rencke said. “Oh, I almost forgot. Gloria’s buddy down at Gitmo is almost certainly dirty, unless he’s got a rich uncle we don’t know about. He lives in a two-million-dollar house out in Kettering, he drives a new Jag, and his uniforms are all custom-tailored. Two years ago he started spending more money than he was earning. Last year alone, three-quarters of a mil.”
“I thought so,” McGarvey said. He decided that it was going to give him a great deal of pleasure to bust the man. “Run the money trail, and inform someone over at the ONI. I want this guy isolated, without making it obvious to him. He could be a source back to bin Laden. Or at least lead us in the right direction.”
THIRTY-SIX
A few minutes after 2:00 P.M. an older model E300 black Mercedes sedan in decent condition turned off Eastern Boulevard in Baltimore’s south side and headed into an industrial park area that had long since seen better days. Al-Turabi was behind the wheel, and he was impatient to get started, but he had forced himself to remain well within the speed limit, for fear of attracting any attention.
The Mercedes was one of three, which whoever survived of him and his seventeen men would use for their escape from Arlington once the massacre was completed and McGarvey was dead.
Most of his men would probably die. Insh’allah. Security at the funeral might not be tight, but by all accounts McGarvey was a man to be respected. He would almost certainly be armed and he would fight back.