Rencke didn’t answer at first.
“Otto?” she prompted. She was becoming alarmed.
“He shoulda taken the phone with him,” Rencke said distantly, as if he were doing something else while thinking out loud. “But I shoulda seen it before. Bad dog, bad dog.”
“For God’s sake, tell me what’s wrong.”
“He’s running into a trap,” Rencke told her breathlessly. “The GPS chip hasn’t moved in thirty-six hours. Not one meter. Al-Turabi is probably dead, and they might know about the chip somehow.”
“Where is he?” Gloria demanded.
“Fish Harbor. I’ll send the map to your sat phone display. But you gotta stop him.”
Gloria was putting on her sneakers, the phone cradled under her chin. “We’ll have to get out of Karachi,” she told Rencke. “If they’ve set a trap for him, it means they know why he’s here. Even if I can get to him before he tries to make the hit there’s no place he’d be safe in Pakistan.”
“I’m working on it,” Rencke said. “But keep this phone with you.” He had another thought. “Are you armed? Do you have a weapon?”
“No,” Gloria said tightly.
“Just get him outta there,” Rencke said.
The map came up on the sat phone’s display. She saved it, broke the connection, then picked up the hotel phone and called the front desk.
“Good evening, Mrs. McGarvey,” the clerk answered pleasantly.
“I need a car out front right now,” Gloria said.
“Madam, at this hour that will be difficult—”
“Now!” Gloria shrilled, and she slammed the phone down.
She hurriedly went through McGarvey’s luggage, finding his kit of money and passports, but no weapons, or anything else that couldn’t be left behind. If she could get to him in time, and pull him out of Fish Harbor, they would not be returning to the hotel, and she didn’t want to leave anything incriminating behind.
The lobby was practically deserted at this hour. Two women in maid’s uniforms were emptying ashtrays, cleaning tables, and polishing furniture and accessories, while an old man vacuumed the large Persian carpets. There were no hotel guests except for Gloria, who went directly across to the registration counter, where a young man in a smart blue blazer was just getting off the phone.
“Did you get me a car?” Gloria demanded.
“Yes, of course, Mrs. McGarvey. It will be delivered in front very soon. It is coming from the airport.”
“Fine,” Gloria said. She turned on her heel and stormed across the lobby to the broad automatic doors. There was no bellman on duty this late, and very little traffic on the street. The night air was warm and humid with a mix of unusual odors. Maybe frying fish, she thought, but rancid.
She had been stupid to let him go on his own without backup. It was one of the lessons they’d drummed into her head at the Farm. In these types of operations rely on your partner, and make sure that he can rely on you. Be there.
At the very least she should have arranged for another car and followed him. She’d lost a husband, and then a partner because she hadn’t kept her eye on the ball. She had failed both of them. She wasn’t about to fail again.
A dark blue battered Toyota van came up the street at a high rate of speed and at the last minute swerved into the hotel’s driveway. For an insane second Gloria thought that it was what the stupid hotel clerk had rented for her, but then she realized that she was probably in trouble and she stepped back.
The driver screeched to a halt, the side door crashed open, and three men, balaclavas covering their faces, leaped out and rushed her.
She had a split instant to see that only one of the three was armed, a Kalashnikov held tightly against his chest, and make a decision. They were here to kidnap her, not kill her, which gave her the momentary advantage.
She moved away from the man on her right, and stepped directly toward the armed kidnapper, who’d expected her to try to run away, not attack.
He started to bring his rifle around, but Gloria stiff-armed him to the throat with her fist, driving him backwards, nearly off his feet, and crushing his windpipe.
The man on her left spun around and grabbed her by the neck, pulling her back. But she snatched the rifle and swung the butt stock under her arm, connecting solidly with the kidnapper’s ribs. He released his hold and fell to his knees.
The third man had pulled up short and was reaching in his jacket, when Gloria brought the rifle around, switched the safety catch off, and brought her finger to the trigger.
“Don’t,” she warned.
He yanked what might have been a boxy Glock pistol out of his jacket and started to aim it at Gloria, when she pulled off a single round, hitting him in the middle of the chest, the rifle bucking strongly in her arms, the noise shockingly loud under the hotel driveway canopy.
The kidnapper was slammed backwards off his feet, and even before he hit the pavement Gloria turned toward the van. She reached the open door in a couple of steps at the same time the driver realized that the kidnapping had failed, and he turned back to the wheel to drive away.
“Get out of the van!” Gloria screeched.
The driver looked over his shoulder, directly into the muzzle of the AK-47 Gloria was pointing at him.
“Get out of the van!” Gloria shouted again. “Now!”
The driver shoved open his door, leaped out of the van, and headed down the long driveway in a dead run.
Before he reached the street, Gloria had climbed inside the van, scrambled up to the driver’s seat, and laid the Kalashnikov on the hump between the seats. She slammed the Toyota in gear and burned rubber down the driveway and out to the street, passing the frightened driver who looked over his shoulder as she raced by.
I’m on my way, darling, Gloria thought, as she turned the corner at the end of the block and headed toward Fish Harbor.
FIFTY-SEVEN
It was after two in the afternoon in Washington when Dick Adkins arrived at the White House. After he signed in, and his attaché case was scanned, he was escorted back to the Oval Office by the president’s chief of staff, Cal Beckett.
“Has Joe Puckett gotten here yet?” Adkins asked. Four-star Admiral Joseph Puckett, Jr., was the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“Five minutes ago, and he wants to know what in damnation — his words — the CIA is playing at now, or something to that effect,” Beckett said. He was a serious no-nonsense businessman who, before President Haynes had tapped him for White House duty, had been the CEO of IBM.
“Puckett’s always damning something, but he’s going to be even less happy when he and the president hear what I have to say.”
“Have you guys found the submarine?”
“Yes,” Adkins said. “And it gets worse.”
“Bad timing,” Beckett remarked sourly. “Looks like his energy bill is going down in flames.”
“Not a good day to be president,” Adkins said.
The president, his suit coat off, was perched against his desk talking to his national security adviser, Dennis Berndt, and the admiral, who was a narrow-faced pale man with thinning white hair whose chest was practically covered with ribbons, including the Medal of Honor. None of the three men seemed happy or comfortable.
“Here he is, Mr. President,” Beckett said.
“Leave us,” Haynes told his chief of staff, who withdrew and closed the door.
The topic on the table had nothing to do with White House staffing or politics, which were Beckett’s purview. Adkins had argued from the start to keep the need-to-know list at the absolute minimum, which had been McGarvey’s suggestion, to guard against the media stumbling across the story. What Americans didn’t need right now was something else to panic them. But he was surprised that the president had excluded his chief of staff, who was a friend and trusted adviser.