The Expediter (42 page)

Minoru stood over the body in the study. It wasn’t McGarvey so he had to assume it was Daniel. The man was dead, at least that part of the assignment had gone as planned. But McGarvey had evidently retreated to the second floor.

The AK fire from the back had ceased, and he thought he’d heard the small pops of perhaps two handguns before there was silence.

He bent down and retrieved the SUV’s keys from Daniel’s coat pocket. “Valeri,” he spoke softly into his lapel mike.

“Here.”

“What’s your position?”

“I’m in front.”

“Standby, I’m coming out,” Minoru said. He stepped over the body, left the study through the French doors, and hurried around front to where Lavrov was flattened against the wall beside the open door.

The man was jumpy and when Minoru came around the corner he spun around and raised his pistol.

“Get a hold of yourself,” Minoru told him sternly. “Have you any contact with Oleg or the others?”

“No, and I say we get out of here right now,” Lavrov blurted and it was obvious he was spooked.

“Daniel’s down in the study and we have only two targets remaining. We can get this taken care of and be away in the next ten minutes if your keep your wits.”

“How do you want to play this?”

“They’re all upstairs. We’ll go in, lay down a line of fire, and rush them.”

Lavrov was skeptical, but he nodded. “You’ll be right there with me, I’m not doing this alone.”

“At your side,” Minoru assured him.

Lavrov rolled left through the door, and moved fast across the stair hall, Minoru right behind him.

What sounded like breaking glass came from the rear of the house. “Clear in back,” a man’s voice called.

“Clear in front,” another man called from just behind them on the porch. It was McGarvey. Minoru recognized the voice.

“Upstairs right now,” he whispered urgently to Lavrov. “No matter what happens, keep firing, I’ll take care of the two down here.”

Lavrov hesitated only an instant before he opened fire and charged up the stairs.

Minoru turned and sprinted down the corridor back to the study, ducking through the door and hiding himself around the corner as the shooting upstairs intensified. Someone was firing back at Lavrov, and a woman cried out in Korean.

A tall, husky man, holding what appeared to be a boxy SIG-Sauer, hurried from the back, passing the study door with only a glance inside, and then was gone.

“Upstairs,” McGarvey said urgently.

“Me first,” the other man replied. “It’s my wife up there.”

“Watch yourself, for Christ’s sake.”

Minoru knew that the odds had changed against him, but this time
it was because of faulty intel from Turov. Daniel was dead and Lavrov might be getting unlucky upstairs with the woman.

Time to go.

He crossed the study, slipped outside, and cautiously walked around front and got behind the wheel of the Lexus. The firing inside the house had stopped for the moment, but it was unlikely that anyone would be paying any attention to the front.

Starting the car, he slammed it into gear and headed back up to the highway. Help was on its way, and if the authorities were looking for any vehicle it would be this one. But no one knew about the van parked up in the woods.

Rencke was down in the corridor but conscious, blood coming from a bad wound in his side, and Todd reached him as they heard the SUV start up and drive off. “Rats deserting the sinking ship,” Otto quipped.

A few feet beyond him, Kim lay on her back, her eyes open, McCann’s PSM pistol still gripped in her right hand. She had been shot in the forehead

“Where is he?” Todd asked, keeping his voice low.

“Somewhere back there,” Rencke said. He looked up at McGarvey. “Sorry, Mac. I don’t think I did such a hot job.”

“Liz?” Todd said.

“Go, but be careful.”

Todd jumped up and cautiously moved down the corridor toward the bedroom where Liz had been keeping a lookout, as McGarvey knelt
down beside his old friend and looked at the wound. It was leaking a pale fluid as well as blood.

“Hurts like hell, kemo sabe.”

“I bet it does,” McGarvey said. “I think he got a piece of one of your kidneys.”

“Not my liver?”

“Wrong place,” McGarvey told him. He moved Otto’s left hand to the wound. “Press down, and keep pressing. We’ll get you an ambulance.”

“I don’t want to die, Mac. Honest injun.”

A deep black rage threatened to block McGarvey’s sanity, but he managed to keep himself under control and he smiled. “Not a chance. Louise would never forgive me. Neither would Katy.”

Todd had disappeared around the corner, and McGarvey heard Liz’s voice from the bedroom. “Sorry, sweetheart, I sorta got distracted when Otto got hit.”

“Put your weapon on the floor or I’ll kill her,” a man with a Russian accent said.

“You’ll shoot her no matter what,” Todd replied.

“I don’t give a shit about her or you. We came for McGarvey. Where is he?”

McGarvey came around the corner. “Here,” he said. A large man dressed all in black stood next to Elizabeth, the muzzle of his pistol inches from her temple.

“Put your gun down.”

“The four out back are all down, and your pal who was outside the study is gone. It’s just you.”

A little wildness came into the man’s face. “I said put your gun down.” His attention was on McGarvey.

Elizabeth moved sharply backward a half step. “Now!”

McGarvey fired one shot, catching the man in his left eye, his head snapping back. His pistol discharged, the bullet plowing into the wall across the room, and he fell back. McGarvey fired a second round,
hitting the man in the neck and a third and fourth hitting him in the chest.

“Daddy!” Elizabeth cried.

He looked up out of a daze, on the verge of firing again at a man who had died after the first bullet entered his brain.

“It’s okay,” Todd was saying at his side. “They’re all down or gone. We need to help our people now.”

Somewhere in the far distance McGarvey thought he could hear the sounds of a lot of sirens coming down the driveway, but he couldn’t take his eyes off his daughter. She was hurt, but she was alive and for now that’s all that mattered to him.

Washington/Tokyo

Rencke was nearly unconscious by the time the cleanup crew arrived from Langley in four unmarked vans and got to work. With them was Lance Karp, a Company medical doctor who quickly checked his vital signs.

“Is he going to make it?” McGarvey asked. He still hadn’t completely come down from the action, something that took longer and longer for him to do the older he got.

“He’s serious but not critical for the moment,” the doctor said. “A chopper is on its way. We’ll take him to All Saints and I’ll put him on the table right away. I’ll know better then.” All Saints in Georgetown was a private hospital used exclusively by the CIA and the other thirteen U.S. intelligence organizations. All the staff held secret clearances. Nothing was ever leaked about the patients who were brought there.

Two technicians strapped Otto on a gurney and brought him downstairs to the front hall. The doctor took a quick look at Elizabeth’s arm and applied a temporary bandage to stop the bleeding.

“You’re lucky, the bullet missed anything serious, but you’re going to be out of action for a bit. You’re going aboard the helicopter.”

“I’m coming with them,” McGarvey said.

“No room, and there’s nothing you could do to help,” Karp said briskly. “Let me do my job, Mr. Director. I’d say you have your hands full here for the moment.”

He had Todd take off his jacket and lift his shirt. An angry red welt oozed a little blood, but it was nothing serious.

“Have one of the medics put a bandage on that,” the doctor said. “You’ll be sore for a couple of days, but you’re even luckier than your wife.”

One of the techs, wearing white coveralls with booties over his shoes and a hair net, appeared at the door. “Chopper is five minutes out, Doc.”

“Anyone else here needs tending?”

“We’re taking care of them.”

“I see,” the doctor said. “Downstairs in five minutes,” he told Elizabeth and he left.

The technician came in. “Dick Johnson, Mr. Director,” he said. “What do you want done out here?”

“I want the place sanitized within twenty-four hours,” McGarvey said.

Johnson glanced around at the destruction that had been wrought by the AK-47s. But he nodded. “We can take care of this stuff, but we’ve got two bodies in back, two on the east side, plus the two up here, and it’s Mr. McCann down in the study.”

“Take McCann and the woman to All Saints and put them on ice. Get rid of the other five.”

The four shooters outside, plus the Russian lying in a pool of his own blood, would be taken to a crematorium used by the Company’s housekeeping section and the ashes and bones, which would be ground to a fine powder, would be flushed down a floor drain.

“What about fingerprints, dental, and DNA for IDs?”

McGarvey glanced at the Russian who’d shot Otto, killed Huk Kim, and would have killed Liz, and shook his head. “No need. I know why they were here tonight and who sent them. I want them gone without a trace.”

“Yes, sir,” Johnson said. “By this time tomorrow they’ll have disappeared and we’ll have this place right as rain.”

“We’re taking the Hummer, but there’s a Mercedes in the garage,” Todd said.

“Mr. Rencke’s. We’ll have it driven back to the campus tonight.”

“One of the bad guys got out of here with McCann’s Lexus,” McGarvey said. “He’ll have abandoned it by now, but find it and get it out to Langley.”

“Any chance of us bagging him?”

“No. He’ll be on his way back to Tokyo and I want him to get there.”

Downstairs, McGarvey, Todd, and Elizabeth held up as McCann’s body was being removed from the study. “Turov had him eliminated to keep him from telling us where the money was coming from.”

“Which means that Turov knows?” Todd asked.

“I’m not sure,” McGarvey said, his heart already hardening again for the job ahead. “But I’m going to ask him just that before I kill him.”

The helicopter was landing in the clearing twenty yards from the house, and they hustled Liz out to it as Rencke was being loaded aboard.

“We’ll see you at the hospital,” Todd told her and gave her a kiss.

“What about Mother?” she asked her father.

“I’ll call her in the morning. She can fly up to be with you.”

Elizabeth managed a slight smile. “She’s already here. She checked into the Hay-Adams three days ago. Couldn’t stand to languish in Florida while you were out on the firing line. Call her tonight. She’ll want to know about Otto too.”

“I’m not going to have much time for her or you, sweetheart.”

“I know. But if you’re going back to Tokyo, take Todd along. You might need the backup.”

McGarvey used his cell phone on the way in to call his wife at the Hay-Adams. She was just leaving to have dinner alone in the hotel’s Lafayette Room, and she was over the moon to hear from him. “Where are you?”