McGarvey pulled out his pistol and turned around. The man, dressed in baggy pants and shirtsleeves, held a cell phone to one ear and a Kalashnikov in his right hand, the barrel pointed toward the floor.
McGarvey gestured with the Glock for the guy to go back inside.
For a longish moment the Pakistani stopped talking. But then he shouted something into the phone and the barrel of the rifle started to come up.
McGarvey fired one shot, and the man’s legs collapsed under him, the assault rifle spraying a quick burst into the wall about knee height before it clattered to the floor.
Immediately a woman inside the apartment began screeching, and what sounded like two young children started to wail.
“Goddamnit,” Mac said, half under his breath. He slammed open the stairwell door and raced up to the roof level in time to hear the incoming chopper.
Its lights were out, so it was invisible until it flared directly overhead, about fifteen feet off the roof. Two ropes dropped from the open hatch and two SEALS in full combat gear descended in a rush.
“We’re about to get company, sir,” one of them said. He tied a loop around McGarvey’s waist, and a winch pulled him up.
The other operator went to the edge of the roof. “We’ve got about five mikes.”
“Let’s go,” the first SEAL shouted.
McGarvey came aboard at the same moment the chopper dropped down its wheels just inches from the roof.
Both SEALS clambered aboard.
“Go! Go! Go!” one of them shouted, and the stealthy UH-60 Blackhawk leaped into the air, peeling sharply to the north.
Both operators had their weapons at the ready position but the pilot shouted back to hold fire.
Within a minute they were already northwest of the city, heading low and fast directly for the foothills, no sign that the Pakistani air force had put anything up yet to knock them out of the sky.
“Are you all right, sir?” the medic asked, undoing the rope from McGarvey’s waist and sitting him down in an aft corner seat just across the cabin from where Pete was strapped in.
“No holes so far,” McGarvey told the kid.
“That’s a good sign.” The medic quickly took his pulse and blood pressure, then shined a small penlight into one eye at a time. “You’ll live, sir.”
“Glad to hear it.”
“But strap in, could be a rough ride.”
McGarvey did as he was told. One of the operators looked back, and Mac gave him the thumbs-up. The SEAL nodded.
Pete came out of the shadows, took a headset from a hook on the bulkhead behind her and motioned for McGarvey to do the same.
“They have a Gulfstream standing by for us,” she said. “Are you okay?” She was shivering.
“Medic says I’ll live, how about you?”
“Austin’s not happy.”
“Can’t blame him.”
“Haaris has disappeared. So whatever was supposed to happen never did, unless it’s the Taliban riots across the city or the situation with India. Could be war. Powers left earlier this evening, along with some key embassy staffers.”
“Any word from Rajput or anyone else in the government or military?”
“Not that I was told, but everyone at the embassy was keeping a lid on things.”
It couldn’t be over like this; McGarvey could feel something lurking around the corner. Haaris had not gone through all the trouble of setting himself up as the Messiah, and beheading the president and the head of the TTP, simply to foment a possible nuclear exchange with India. It wouldn’t do him any good.
Pete stared at him. “I’m glad you’re back.”
So what would Haaris do? What did Haaris want? Another 9/11 against the U.S.? Maybe England too? The man had terminal cancer with not many months to live, so whatever he had in mind wasn’t about his personal safety.
What can you possibly do to a man who had absolutely nothing left to lose?
“Hang on,” the copilot shouted back to them. “We have company.”
They were well northwest of the city, up in the foothills, and the copilot was on the radio while the pilot dove for the deck, setting down hard in a steep-walled valley lined with big boulders and scrub brush.
Even before the chopper was settled one of the SEAL operators jumped out, ran about ten meters past the nose and shouldered what looked to McGarvey like an American-made Stinger missile. Over the past fifteen or twenty years it had been the most common weapon in Afghanistan other than the Russian AK-47.
There were estimated to be five hundred Stingers still operational in the field, carried by al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the Mujahideen.
An F-16 jet fighter passed low overhead and the operator fired the missile.
The moment it was airborne the SEAL dropped the launch system and raced back to the helicopter.
The fighter jogged left then right and seconds later the missile struck its tailpipe and the jet exploded.
As soon as the operator was aboard they took off again, flying low and fast.
Pete was smiling. “You sure know how to show a girl a good time,” she said to McGarvey.
SIXTY-FOUR
The taxi dropped Dave Haaris off in front of the Connaught’s entrance at four-thirty in the afternoon. He’d flown directly to Paris from Istanbul and from there had taken the Chunnel Eurostar to London. He was tired — in part because of the strenuous happenings of the past several days, but also in large measure due to his illness — and he wanted nothing more than to take a hot bath, order up room service and turn in early.
But not yet. There would time enough later to rest. All the time in the world.
He tipped the cabby well and allowed the bellman to carry his single light bag inside, where he handed his passport and Platinum Amex card to the startled clerk.
“Mr. Haaris, we didn’t expect you back so soon, sir. Not after the bit of difficulty.”
“What difficulty would that be?”
The day manager came out, smiling. “No difficulty at all, Mr. Haaris. Your suite is still available.”
“That’s fine. I’ll be expecting a friend for an early dinner this evening, Say at seven. In the meantime have a bottle of Krug sent to my room. Very cold, if you please.”
“Of course, sir.”
Upstairs he also tipped the bellman well, and when the man was gone, he stripped and got into the shower, letting the water beat on the back of his neck for a long time. He was bruised on his legs, his right side and on both arms. Dr. Franklin had warned it would happen because of his low blood count, but Haaris had refused treatment to bring it up.
The champagne had already been delivered. He opened it, drank down a glass, then poured another.
In a hotel bathrobe, he checked the street out the window, but if the CIA had picked him up at St. Pancras International, the Eurostar’s terminus, they had apparently not followed him here to the hotel. Anyone who thought he was the Messiah was expecting him to be in Islamabad. In the thick of things. Wandering among his people, as he had supposedly done before. Preparing the nation for war with India, while containing the Taliban.
He turned on the television to CNN, which was in the middle of rebroadcasting his latest speech as he held up the severed head of the mufti. The riots and bombings across Pakistan and especially in Rawalpindi and Islamabad, plus the rapidly rising tensions with India, were also the lead stories on the BCC, Al Jazeera and many of the other channels.
Turning the sound down, he poured a third glass of champagne then got an outside line and dialed Tommy Boyle’s private number at the embassy.
The chief of station’s secretary answered on the first ring. “Who is calling, please?”
Boyle’s number was classified, and only a few people in London knew it; almost all of them were government officials who were aware of exactly what he was and would rather talk freely with him than be spied upon.