Breamer got to his feet. “Sorry to bother you, sir, but the Orion found something at the position we were given,” he said. He’d played football for three years at the Academy, and he towered over Nelson.
“Did they manage to find out exactly what’s there?”
“No, sir. We’ll have to wait for the Simpson, but whatever’s on the bottom is approximately the same size as the tramp steamer or a Foxtrot.”
“What about the Libyans?”
“We got lucky,” Breamer said. “They spotted us, of course, but before they could send anyone to check us out, our guys found what they were looking for and managed to bug out.”
“They’re going to take a real interest when Simonetti shows up.” Captain Bruce Simonetti was skipper of the Simpson.
Breamer risked a slight smile. “Not much they’ll do about it, Admiral.” Nelson’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t be so sure of yourself,” he warned. “It’s a bad habit. Especially when you’re dealing with the CIA.”
“Yes, sir,” Breamer said, his mood sagging. He knew what was coming next, and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. This was one admiral who could not be argued with, even under the best of circumstances.
“I suppose you want to deploy assets to screen the strait,” Nelson said.
“I think it’s wise, sir,” Breamer said.
“I expect you do,” Nelson replied. He was like a cobra ready to strike.
Breamer silently cursed himself for mentioning his intel for the mission had come from the CIA, but the damage had been done, and he’d be damned if he was going to roll over and play dead. “Admiral, I get paid to be your operations officer. Means I give you my best recommendations.”
Nelson’s mood was suddenly unreadable, but he nodded. “And they pay me to make decisions, Charlie,” he said mildly. “Give me a positive ID on the wreck, and if it’s not a Foxtrot, we’ll seal off the strait tighter than a gnat’s ass.”
If it’s not already too late, Breamer thought. “Yes, sir.”
The admiral stepped a little closer so that no one else could hear. “You’re doing a good job, I have no complaints. But you want to guard against unreliable intelligence.”
FIFTY-ONE
As the Air France Airbus from Paris turned on final for landing at Riyadh’s King Khalid International Airport, McGarvey was finally able to put the last of his personal life into a safe compartment of his mind.
Actually his leavetaking from Katy hadn’t been as difficult as he had feared it would be. In a large measure, he supposed, because he had told her the truth about his mission; the entire truth without hiding any of the details or the risks.
He’d always avoided such full disclosures with her, partly because what he was doing was usually classified top secret, and partly because he wanted to protect her from worry.
Although Katy hadn’t demanded to know the details this time, he felt that she deserved to be told what her husband was going up against.
She had finished packing for him, and they had a few minutes for coffee in the kitchen before his cab came to take him to the airport.
“I could have driven you,” she said.
McGarvey had shaken his head. “They probably know or suspect that I’m coming, and I don’t want to take the chance that someone might spot you.”
“They?” she said quietly, her left eyebrow rising. But then she held up her hand. “I understand.”
“I’m going to assassinate Osama bin Laden.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she brought a hand to her mouth, her nostrils flared, her eyes wide as if she were a wild animal caught in a hunter’s crosshairs.
“We think he’s hiding somewhere in Karachi, so first I’ll fly to Paris, and from there to Riyadh and finally Pakistan.”
“If they know you’re coming, won’t they set a trap for you?” Katy asked.
“I’m hoping they’ll do just that,” he said, his eyes never leaving his wife’s. “It’s the only way I’ll know for sure if he’s there.”
She suddenly turned away. “Christ,” she said softly. “And then what?” she asked. “When you find him?”
“I’ll put a bullet in his brain and then get out. Depending on the circumstances I’ll either run for the Indian border a hundred miles down the coast, or somehow get aboard a ship leaving the port of Karachi, or in a worst-case scenario head toward Afghanistan.”
She looked back at him. “Just like that?”
He shook his head. “No, Katy, it’s never just like that.”
“Why not just put on a disguise or something and fly back home?”
“Security will be too tight,” he told her. “Nor can I go to our consulate in Karachi or our embassy in Islamabad, I have to get out of the country on my own.”
“Why?”
And that was the crux of the entire mission, he had thought then, talking to his wife, and now as he came in for a landing in Saudi Arabia. Plausible deniability. His mission wasn’t officially sanctioned, which meant that though everyone might know the Americans had killed bin Laden, there would be no proof. Or at least none that the mission had been directed by the White House.
If he was caught by Pakistani intelligence trying to escape, he could make a convincing argument that he no longer worked for the CIA, and that he’d done this thing on his own because of the grief that bin Laden had caused him and his family over the past several years.
It was one of the reasons that he had chosen to fly commercial, out in the open, something no spook going into badland would ever do, especially one on a black mission.
“I’m on my own again,” he told her.
This time she didn’t look away. Her eyes filled with tears. “How much more, Kirk?” she asked. “You’re going to get yourself killed one of these days, you know.”
“That’s always a possibility.”
“Why, goddammit?”
And that was the one question that he didn’t think he could answer, for the simple reason he’d never really known. Or at least he’d never been able to put it into any words that made sense, why he’d killed people for the United States over a twenty-five-year-plus career. The argument that he was a soldier simply doing his duty, striking back at his country’s enemies, wouldn’t wash, because on several occasions, including this one, he had no direct orders. In fact, there had been times where he’d gone directly against his orders, operating not only on his own, but illegally. There were times when he didn’t give a damn about the civil rights of the men he’d gone after. He’d inflicted pain. He’d caused grief and heartache. He’d even killed a number of women.
There was seldom a night that went by when he was free of the faces of every person he’d assassinated.
A Company shrink had once glibly suggested that McGarvey had a death wish: A Hemingway complex, with the constant need to prove yourself. A constant need to gain the admiration and therefore acceptance of the people around you. And, perhaps, a latent homosexuality.
Howard Ryan had been deputy director of operations at the time, and although he and McGarvey had never gotten along, even he had sat up and taken notice, expecting that at any moment McGarvey was going to take the guy apart. Ryan’s take had always been that McGarvey had become an anachronism in a world that had become too sophisticated for the blunt instrument of assassination. But of course that had been long before 9/11.