Ten minutes ago, a pair of guards dressed in camos had appeared at the top of the wall, only their heads and shoulders visible as they headed away from each other to the opposite sides of the compound. When they reached the corners they turned and came back to meet at the gate. One of them said something, and the other one laughed.
McGarvey raised his pistol and steadied his hand against the corner of the brick warehouse to lead the guard to the left. “Bang,” he said softly in the darkness. He switched aim to the other roof guard. “Bang.”
The shots were at the extreme range for his pistol, but not impossible.
The guards turned and marched away, but this time they disappeared around the corners, apparently to check the rear of the compound.
A few minutes later they were back above the main gate, where they exchanged a few words, though McGarvey couldn’t make out what they were saying, and headed away again.
After they were gone the main gate opened and a guard, also dressed in camos, a Kalashnikov slung muzzle-down over his shoulder, stepped out into the street and lit a cigarette.
McGarvey had found a way inside, but only if the man at the gate didn’t go back inside before the two wall guards returned. If he could take out all three of them, he could get inside and find al-Turabi.
After that it was anyone’s guess what might go down. But if bin Laden’s people didn’t know that the enemy had penetrated the wall and was inside the compound — even if it was for only a few minutes — the advantage would be McGarvey’s. He could do a lot of damage in that span of time.
Almost as if on cue the two wall guards appeared at the corners and started toward the gate.
McGarvey switched the safety catch to the off position and, steadying his arm against the corner of the building, took aim on the man to the east who would get to the gate first. But suddenly it all felt wrong. Some inner instinct of his was sending an insistent, nagging alarm bell at the back of his head.
He looked up from his gun sight, and studied the situation at the end of the block — the entire situation, his attention lingering on the three men who would be in firing range in a few seconds.
In a near perfect firing situation for one man coming to breach the walls.
Too perfect.
McGarvey held perfectly still, not moving a muscle as the wall guards approached the gate. Then he had it. The closed-circuit television cameras had all turned toward the street in front of the gate. Someone inside the compound was watching, waiting to send an army pouring out to spring the trap. A lone attacker wouldn’t have a chance of survival. It would be over in a matter of seconds.
He eased back behind the building. Bin Laden’s people had known that he’d come to Karachi. And they must have guessed why he’d come. But they had no way of knowing that he would be here this evening, unless they’d discovered the GPS tracker in al-Turabi’s body.
Rencke had warned that it was possible, though extremely unlikely, that bin Laden’s people would have a receiver sensitive enough to pick up the signal, or even have a suspicion that such a thing was possible.
But it was even less likely in McGarvey’s estimation that there was a leak inside the CIA; a direct link somehow to bin Laden. There just weren’t that many people in the Building who knew that McGarvey had taken the nanotechnology to Camp Delta, and no reason for any of them to become traitors.
There was no one with a grudge against the United States.
Except for one possibility that McGarvey wanted to reject the instant it came into his head.
He peered around the corner of the warehouse again. The wall guards had reached the gate, and they were evidently talking to the man on the street, because he was looking up at them.
They should have turned by now and started their round along the wall. Unless they were waiting for the attack to come. Unless they’d been telephoned from the hotel that someone was coming.
For a crazy instant in time Gloria Ibenez’s face flashed into his mind’s eye. He did not want to think that she had betrayed him, yet he found it next to impossible to believe that she could have fallen in love with him so soon and so completely unless it was a setup. She was from a completely different world, and he was old enough to be her father. It made no sense to him.
He thought of Marta and Liese and Jacqueline, three women who had no business falling in love with him. Yet they had. Two of them had lost their lives because of their involvement with him, and the third — Liese Fuelm — had very nearly been killed in Switzerland just last year.
All of them had been traitors to their countries, in one way or another, but none of them had betrayed him.
Headlights flashed in the darkness at the end of the block. The guards on the wall and at the gate turned around, bringing their weapons up.
Seconds later a dark van came around the corner and raced directly toward where McGarvey was crouched against the warehouse wall. He moved farther back into the shadows, and brought his pistol to bear on the rapidly approaching van.
If bin Laden’s people had already spotted him, they might just as well have sent an attack to his rear, hoping to catch him in a cross fire. He had no place to go. His only option at this point was to take the van out of play and make it back to his car.
He would go for the driver first, and then the engine.
The van’s headlights briefly illuminated the corner where McGarvey was hiding. He slipped the Walther’s safety catch to the off position and started to pull the trigger, when the headlights suddenly went out, plunging the street back into darkness.
For just a second McGarvey couldn’t make out who was behind the wheel, even though the van was less than ten meters away. But then the interior light came on for just a second, long enough for him to recognize that it was Gloria.
She locked up the brakes and with squealing tires the van slid at an angle down the street.
McGarvey stepped around the corner as the wall guards and the man on the street were taking aim at the van.
“Kirk, it’s me!” Gloria shouted at him.
Once again steadying his arm against the building, McGarvey began firing, first toward the wall guards, knocking one of them down with his second shot, and sending the second ducking out of sight.
The guard on the street opened fire with his AK-47, the bullets ricocheting off the pavement as he walked his aim toward McGarvey’s position.
Switching targets, McGarvey methodically fired three shots, the second and third catching the guard in the torso and sending him staggering back against the wall.
He raised his sights in time to spot the second wall guard appear behind the razor wire, and he fired three more shots, sending the guard diving for safety again.
The van was sideways in the street where it had screeched to a halt. He ran across to it and Gloria handed the Kalashnikov out the window to him. “I have to turn around,” she told him.
McGarvey stuffed his pistol in his belt, stepped clear of the van, and sprayed the open gate and the wall above it, as Gloria did a rapid U-turn, smoke pouring off the tires.
“Come on, Kirk!” Gloria shouted. “It’s a trap! They knew you were coming!”
For a moment McGarvey didn’t want to believe it. If Gloria hadn’t betrayed him, who else in the Building had? Unless it was that pissant Weiss in Gitmo. But the ONI officer had no way of knowing about the nano-GPS tracker.