He pulled up behind one of the trees, and laid his head against the trunk. His hearing was still bad, but he thought there were sirens somewhere in the distance.
Easing around from behind the tree, he took a quick look up the hill, then ducked back. He counted three bodies on the road, and perhaps two other terrorists crouched behind the van.
He released the slide. The Company’s chief armorer had been after him for years to carry a SIG Sauer or Glock, something with more stopping power than the Walther, and one that held at least fifteen rounds. But the PPK was an old friend that had saved his life on more than one occasion.
He was light-headed from his wounds and the loss of blood, and he had done all that he could. The police would be here soon, and they could finish the job.
From here he couldn’t see up to the gravesite, nor could he hear any shooting.
He looked out from behind the tree as two of the terrorists were dragging the bodies off the road. A third had gotten behind the wheel of the van and was gesturing at the others to hurry.
Dropping low, and keeping behind the trees as much as possible, McGarvey headed up the hill toward the van as fast as his legs would carry him.
Fifteen feet out, one of the terrorists looked up and spotted McGarvey charging up the hill, pistol in hand, blood streaming from a dozen wounds, and he fell back against the van, a look of abject terror on his long, narrow face.
“Kifaya baa!” McGarvey shouted. That’s enough!
The second terrorist had already climbed inside the van with the driver, and he was trying to bring his M8 carbine to bear.
McGarvey reached the man by the hood, grabbed a handful of his shirt, and pulled him around to cover the open door, when the terrorist inside fired the M8, three rounds slamming into the back of his fellow mujahideen’s head.
The driver slammed the van into gear and stomped on the gas pedal.
McGarvey shoved the dead terrorist aside and as the van started to pull away, its tires squealing, he reached inside, grabbed the man’s arm, and pulled him out, both of them tumbling backwards off the road.
The terrorist had lost his rifle, but he pulled out a Beretta auto-loader from his belt. McGarvey snatched it out of his hand and smashed the butt of the pistol into the bridge of the man’s nose, knocking him senseless.
Scrambling to his feet, McGarvey hobbled back up to the road and fired three shots at the retreating van until it finally got well out of range.
Someone was shouting his name as if from a very great distance. It sounded like a woman’s voice to McGarvey.
He turned in time to see the second sheriff ’s van barreling up the road, practically on top of him.
McGarvey caught a glimpse of Gloria, racing on foot down the hill from the gravesite shouting his name, as he leaped backwards. The van swerved to hit him, but its front wheel dropped off the side of the road, and the driver frantically brought the van back onto the pavement.
Gloria started to fire at the retreating van, but she ran out of ammunition by the time she reached McGarvey, who had landed in a bloody heap next to the still unconscious terrorist he’d pulled from the first van.
Gloria bent over at the waist, clutching her sides as she tried to catch her breath. She had taken some shrapnel or marble chips in her head, and the wounds were oozing blood.
“You don’t look so hot,” McGarvey said, sitting up. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Ambulances are on the way,” she said, her voice far away. “You have any serious wounds?”
“I don’t think so. How about Toni and the kids?”
“They’re okay, thanks to you. But we lost six people, plus Max Schneider, one of Adkins’s people.” She glanced over at the terrorist. “How about him?”
“He’ll live,” McGarvey said.
“Well, he’s the only one we have, unless the Bureau or someone catches up with the others,” she said, looking down the road in the direction the two vans had disappeared. She turned back to McGarvey. “They were after you.”
“Yeah, I know.”
She managed a slight smile. “You’re not a very popular guy.”
He smiled back. “Do you suppose it’s my personality?”
PART THREE
FORTY
There was virtually no traffic at four in the morning, though the nine ships in port were ablaze in lights, from aboard as well as from along the north quay where most of the cargo vessels were unloaded. The night shift had left one hour ago, and the port would not be open for business again until seven. A man dressed in dark slacks and a pullover, carrying an ordinary seaman’s duffel bag, walked along the quay, stopping at the gangway of a tramp steamer.
Rupert Graham looked up at the bridge windows, but only a dim red light was showing, and there didn’t seem to been anyone aboard, though he could hear the distant sound of machinery running inside the hull. He knew this ship and her master almost as well as the men and pirate ships he’d commanded. Neither were much to look at, but both man and vessel were trustworthy.
She was the MV Distal Volente, owned by a small Greek shipping company, and registered in Liberia. Built in 1959 in the United Kingdom by Sunderland Shipbuilders, she had seen better days. Now she was considered a scrapper, which was a boat so battered, so eaten with rust that she was fit for little else other than a breaking yard where she would be cut up and sold for scrap.
At 150 meters on deck, her superstructure was amidships, leaving cargo spaces in her holds as well as on deck forward and aft. Four cargo containers were lashed to the afterdeck, and two others were secured forward. She rode low in the water, ready to leave as soon as the Tunisian pilot arrived sometime this morning.
A short, slightly built man, wearing an open-collar white shirt, stepped out of the shadows and came to the rail. “It is good to see you again, my old friend,” he called down softly, his singsong Indonesian accent distinctive.
“I thought that you would be dead or in jail by now,” Graham said.
“Dead someday, jail never,” Captain Halim Subandrio said, chuckling. “Did anybody spot you coming here?”
“I don’t think so,” Graham said. He’d taken a great deal of care with his movements. Finally he was going to hit the bastards hard, and he didn’t want to screw up his chances.
“Come aboard then, we need to talk before we put you in hiding.”
Graham started up the gangway, aware that Subandrio was looking down the quay back toward the road. He was a tough old bastard who’d been working the South China Sea pirate trade for years before Graham had shown up. He’d survived that long because he was a cautious man.
“Never forget to always look over your shoulder, my friend,” he’d told Graham early on. “In that way you will minimize nasty surprises, and live another day to share the bed of a good woman.”
Graham had almost killed the man on the spot; his grief over Jillian’s death was still fresh in his mind, and his hate was a bright pool of molten metal in his gut.
Subandrio had picked up a little of that from Graham’s eyes. He smiled gently and laid a hand on Graham’s shoulder as a father might with a son. “Also remember that the past can never be lived again. No matter how terrible or joyous, we must go on.”
Graham and his crew had learned to time their hijackings to coincide with the Distal Volente’s sailing schedules. Within hours of boarding a hapless vessel, killing its crew and stealing its cargo, they would meet Subandrio and transfer the stolen goods. Graham’s ships had been boarded three times, but always after they’d gotten rid of their cargo, so no charges had ever been brought against him.