McGarvey looked up. “Should I know them?”
“The man on the left is Hiroshi Kabayashi, who controls the Bank of Kobe. The other man is Shin Hironaka, the former director general of defense. They were part of the group that, along with Sokichi Kamiya, nearly brought down the government two years ago, and damned near got us in an all-out shooting war with Japan.”
“I thought they were in jail.”
“These pictures were taken ten days ago in Nagasaki,” Doyle said. “About thirty miles south of the Japanese navy base at Sasebo where we think the disabled submarine came from.”
McGarvey studied the photographs, a flood of memories coming back to him. The old men looked happy, even confident. Conspirators again, or just two old friends having tea?
“They call themselves superpatriots,” Doyle said. “Unfortunately that’s about all we’ve found out about them so far.”
“Who’s running operations these days?”
“Dick Adkins,” Murphy said. “He’s a good man, but he doesn’t have your operational experience. Something he himself admits. Dick recommended that you be offered the job, and I agreed with him. We all did.”
McGarvey handed the photographs back to Doyle.
“Well?” Murphy asked.
“Convince the President to get Seventh Fleet out of Tokyo Bay, then have Tokyo station find these guys, kidnap them if need be, and find out what’s going on. But don’t screw around. It looks as if you don’t have much time.”
“I meant the job offer.”
“I’ll think about it,” McGarvey said.
“Goddammit,” Doyle said.
“I said I’ll think about it, Tommy.”
Murphy nodded after a moment. “Very well. But as you say, we don’t have much time, so don’t take too long.”
“I won’t,” McGarvey said.
Doyle got to his feet. “I’ll take you downstairs.”
Murphy stopped McGarvey at the door. “The DO is in shambles, Kirk. It’s gotten beyond Dick’s control. We need someone like you to put it back together.” The general ran a hand across his eyes. “It was Ryan.”
There were a dozen things McGarvey could have said, but he held his reply in check. Howard Ryan had hurt a lot of good people because of Murphy’s blind devotion to expediency. The former DDO had been a wizard on the Hill. The CIA had been run into the ground under his leadership, but relations with Congress had risen to an all-time high.
Elizabeth McGarvey crossed the creek fifty yards behind the operational exercise area and, keeping a narrow strip of woods between her and the edge of the confidence course, raced to the rear of a complex of concrete bunkers. She held up against the bole of a large tree to catch her breath and tuck her medium blond hair in her fatigue cap. The noon sun was behind her so that anyone looking her way would be partially blinded.
She was a pretty woman of twenty-three with intelligent green eyes, an oval face with high, round cheekbones and a slender figure hidden by a black jumpsuit. She exuded self-confidence. Her mother, who came from old West Virginia money, and her father, who had been a field officer with the Central Intelligence Agency before she was born, were divorced. Because of the separation, her parents had overcompensated with love and permissiveness so that she was spoiled. She was used to making decisions for herself.
By now the instructors would be wondering where she had gotten herself to. The object of this exercise was for her to approach the bunkers, take out the two guards, get inside, kill the commandant, steal his briefcase and get back out to the ops center in the safe zone.
But it was a trap. They knew which direction she was supposed to be coming from. She’d found that out last night by breaking into the operation officer’s computer.
Stepping out from behind the tree, she ran the last twenty-five yards down a gently sloping grassy field to the featureless back wall of the west building.
In the distance she could hear the rattle of small arms fire on the range and the crump of an explosion, then another. She loved this, every minute of it. Her mother warned that if she wanted to attract a man she would have to exchange her war paint for makeup. But unless she found a man like her father, she didn’t care.
At the end of the bunker she took a quick look around the corner. Two guards were hunched down behind a sandbag barrier. Impossible to take both of them out before an alarm was sounded.
Change the rules. She’d read her father’s record; he’d never played by any rules except his own. It was one of the reasons he’d survived in the field for so long.
She laid her head against the rough wall for a few moments, going over everything she’d learned from the CIA field officer trainers for the past three months since Moscow. A wicked smile finally curled her lips. When all else failed, try the unexpected. She could almost hear her father saying something like that.
Checking her paintball pistol to make sure that it was ready to fire, she stuffed it in the web belt at the small of her back, then unzippered the top of her jumpsuit and pulled it down around her waist, making sure that she could still reach her gun.
She pulled off her sports bra, stuffed it in a pocket, took a deep breath, then let out a shriek and leaped around the corner.
The two guards, caught completely by surprise, turned toward her, their mouths dropping open as she leaped around like a crazy woman, frantically slapping her arms and shoulders and back.
“Ants!” she screamed desperately. “Ants! Help me, I’m on fire!”
Both men leaped over the sandbag barrier and came running, their paintball rifles slung over their shoulders. They were not much older than she was, both of them ex-Green Berets.
When they got within five feet, Elizabeth pulled out her pistol and shot both of them in the chest, bright orange paint covering their fatigue shirts, stopping them in their tracks.
“Shit,” said the guard whose name tag read Jones, falling back.
“Sorry, gentlemen, but you’re dead,” she told them sweetly, as she holstered her pistol. “Now, if you’ll be so good as to lie down, with your heads turned, I’ll get dressed.”
Jones laughed. “I may be dead, ma’am, but I’ll be damned if I’ll turn around.”
The other instructor, named Gomez, was laughing too. He shook his head. “They warned us that you might try something cute.”
Elizabeth put her bra on and pulled up her jumpsuit top and rezippered it. “Macho pigs,” she said brightly, pulling out her pistol again.
“Yes, ma’am,” Jones happily agreed.
The flag of Iraq flapped gently in the light breeze above the entryway as Elizabeth ducked inside. She waited a full minute for her eyes to adjust to the relative darkness before sprinting down the narrow corridor. She flattened herself against the wall next to the commandant’s door, then rolled left, kicked it open and burst into the small office, sweeping her gun left to right.
The briefcase sat in plain sight on top of the unoccupied desk and even before Don Billings, the instructor playing the role of the commandant, stepped out from behind the door and wrapped his arms around her, she realized her mistake.
For an instant she tried to struggle free, but then willed her body to go limp in his arms. “Dammit,” she said softly.
“Nice try, McGarvey, but I was watching from up front,” Billings drawled. He was from Memphis, and the first time she sat in on one of his classes she’d pegged him as a smarmy, oily bastard. His hands were on her breasts. “Nice,” he said in her ear.
She slowly turned in his arms and raised her face to his, her lips parted in a seductive smile. “I’m glad you approve,” she told him, her voice husky.