“That took longer than I thought it would,” Thomas said. “No one wants to accept responsibility.”
“Soon as they find the jeep they’ll figure I’m on foot and they’ll send helicopters to look for me,” McGarvey said.
“And this’ll be one of the first places they’ll look,” Thomas said, slamming the car in gear.
Headlights off, he followed a footpath that snaked through the woods, the lower branches of the trees scraping against the sides of the car. They came out behind a group of buildings, among them a maintenance shed. A campground was off to the left. A driveway around front led up to Club Road just above a cloverleaf that connected it with Murree Road. Both were major highways during rush hour, which would begin in less than an hour.
Back to the west two helicopters were rising from the ISI compound as Thomas turned south onto the broad road, passing around the cloverleaf, and then speeding up.
“Did anyone spot you this morning?” McGarvey asked.
“A couple of truck drivers, but no one saw us when we picked you up, I made sure of it,” Thomas said.
McGarvey looked out the rear window as one of the helicopters dipped low over the campground and set up what looked like a search pattern. For now they had a little breathing room. But it wouldn’t be long before the search expanded.
“How far to your place?” he asked.
“About ten K from here,” Thomas said. A blinding light from above swept over them. “Down,” he shouted.
McGarvey grabbed Pete’s arm and dragged her with him to the floor, the pain in his hip like a lightning bolt to his system.
Thomas slowed down, stuck his head out the window and waved.
The Aérospatiale Alouette III helicopter swung to the driver’s side of the car, and flying sideways about twenty feet up, kept pace. Someone said something in Punjabi over a loud hailer.
“They want to know who I am,” Thomas said. “Gohir,” he shouted in Punjabi. “But police call me the Fox.”
The crewman said something else.
“They’ve ordered me to pull over and stop,” Thomas said. “They mean to search us.”
“Do it,” Mac said. “But be ready to get us out of here.”
“Right.”
McGarvey switched the Kalashnikov’s fire-selecter lever to full automatic. “Stay down,” he told Pete as he rose and began firing directly at the cockpit canopy.
The pilot swung hard to the left, exposing the tail section and fuel tanks.
Mac let the rounds walk aft, hitting the crewman perched in the open doorway, who’d managed to get off a few rounds of returning fire, and punching holes in the fuselage, finally hitting the fuel tank and turbine.
The chopper spun farther left, its nose dipping when a fireball rose out of the engine and a split instant later a bang shattered the early morning air and the machine disintegrated as it hit the ground.
Thomas accelerated away.
“Is everybody okay?” McGarvey asked.
“Jesus,” Pete said. “I’m fine.”
“Milt?” McGarvey asked, checking the magazine. It was empty.
“As long as they didn’t get a chance to use their radio, we should be okay. But take off the uniform shirt or at least get rid of the epaulets, and Pete, cover your hair. We’re coming up on a residential and business section and there’s bound to be people up and about.”
Mac pulled off the sweat-stained shirt, noticing some blood on his chest, and removed the epaulets, name tag and unit patches from the sleeves.
Without a word Pete wiped the blood away with her scarf before she covered her hair.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” McGarvey said, putting the shirt back on.
The eastern sky was just beginning to lighten as they drove through a rat warren of narrow streets, many of the vendors in the small shops and sidewalk kiosks opening up already. Pedestrian traffic here in the northern section of Rawalpindi was heavy, as was vehicular traffic on the main roads, all of it picking up with a vengeance that wouldn’t let up until well after dark.
Down one lane paved with cobblestones they stopped at a tall metal gate. Thomas passed back his keys to Pete. “Open it for me, please,” he said softly. “This is home.”
Pete jumped out, went around to the gate and undid the heavy padlock. She swung the gate in, and Thomas drove through, parking in the narrow space in front of a three-story hovel. Laundry hung drying outside the open windows on the second and third floors. Several bags of garbage were piled in a corner.
Pete closed and locked the door.
“Be it ever so humble,” Thomas said, and he slumped forward.
McGarvey managed to grab his shoulder and pull him back before he hit the horn. Blood had poured down his side and covered the seat.
Pete immediately returned, and between them, they managed to get the barely conscious Thomas out of the cab and to the front door of the house.
“Wafa,” Thomas said softly.
The door was unlocked, and half carrying, half dragging Thomas into what had been a spotlessly clean front room, they stopped short. This room and what they could see of the living room through a beaded archway had been ransacked. A woman, her dress hiked up to her waist, her underwear torn away, lay dead. Her throat had been slit, blood pooling like a halo around her head.
FIFTY-EIGHT
Haaris could not remember the last time he had slept, and though he was weary, at this moment he wasn’t sleepy. In fact, his mind felt as sharp as it ever had; the feeling was surreal, almost as if he were on a crack high.
Today was the day it would begin. All of his planning over the past five years was coming to fruition. His name and his high position within the CIA, and even more deliciously, his close relationship with the president of the United States, would strike a blow against the West that would be worse than a thousand 9/11’s. The very foundations of American prestige around the world would be diminished, as would those of her closest allies, the British — all the bastards at Eton who had used him so hard and who now were in positions of power in Whitehall.
On top of that Pakistan, the country that had turned its back on him when he was a child, and had so foolishly misspent its energy and resources on a stupid religious war with India, would pay dearly.
Standing at the windows in the president’s office — the same spot from which he had watched the crowds gather in what seemed like an age ago — watching the start of the dawn, he felt for just that moment like Gandhi. The man had started out as the great pacifier, giving up nearly everything to ensure that India’s Muslims and Hindus could learn to live in peace.
He’d been wrong, of course; and as a result Pakistan was born. And now it was the Messiah’s turn. He would reunite the two countries in fire. And when it was finished the world order would have taken a paradigm shift.
Not bad, he thought, for a peasant without parents. He threw his head back and began to laugh, all the way from his gut. It wasn’t a good feeling, just relief that the end was at hand.
His encrypted cell phone buzzed. It was an out-of-breath Rajput.
“We have trouble coming our way.”
“It’s too late for that,” Haaris said. He felt as if he were in a dreamlike state. Nothing could touch him. His will was supreme.
“Listen to me. Parks managed to kill his interrogator and three others and escape.”
“He won’t get far. When you find him, kill him.”
“You don’t understand. He had help. Someone shut down the building’s surveillance system long enough for him to get out of the interview cell, before they turned it back on.”