“That might not happen,” Isaacson said, once again taking charge. “But if it does we want to be ready for it. And this is the ideal place, because we’ve had the property long enough to know every possible approach. We’ve even run exercises out here.”
“Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.” McGarvey hunched over the topo map which showed the highway, the entire hillside to a mile on either side of the driveway and a mile to a hiking path behind the house. A creek ran from a gathering pond, crossed beneath the highway and emptied eventually into the Potomac. In the summer Isaacson and some of the other instructors from the Farm came out from time to time to fish for trout. Last year they’d taken a class of eight students along the trail all the way up to the Watts Canal on the northwest side of Highway 189, which led to Rockville. They’d not seen another living soul in the woods the entire weekend.
“It wasn’t just a camp out for the boys and girls, Kirk,” Isaacson said. “We spent most of the weekend installing sound and motion detectors along the path and around the entire perimeter of the property. Since then we’ve run a couple of penetration exercises. We learned that trick from the Mossad, and not even the students who were given a map pinpointing the detectors got through. They’re equipped with fail-safe alarms. If any one of them fails for any reason — malfunction or tampering — an alarm goes off here. So we know someone is coming.”
McGarvey studied the map. “What about the driveway? They could fight their way up to the house with an armored car.”
Isaacson pointed out several asterisks spaced at twenty-five-yard intervals up the road. “Explosive charges. We can set them off in sequence, or set them to explode by pressure switches.” He looked up. “We can kill anything coming from the highway.”
“How about the house itself?” McGarvey asked.
“Bullet-proof windows, steel shutters on the doors and windows, and as a last resort a bomb-proof shelter in the basement.”
“Providing someone inside the house knew that they were under attack.”
Isaacson conceded the point. “But it’s hard to imagine them not knowing with all the alarms and detectors.”
“Power lines?”
“Buried, along with the phone lines. In addition there is a generator in the basement and nonjammable cell phones throughout the house.”
McGarvey went to the large bowed windows that looked out across the lawn past the fountain toward the woods. Isaacson was the best. Everything had been covered. This place was like Fort Knox, and yet a lot of dark thoughts nagged at the back of his head. The best brains in the country, the finest scientists and engineers, had designed and built the space shuttle. Yet in the end it was just a man-made machine, and even Challenger had not been immune to glitches. If a man designed and built it, no matter how cleverly, it was possible that another man could find a way to defeat it. Nothing was immune, nothing or nobody was one hundred percent safe. Yet he had to admit that Katy and Liz were probably much safer from attack here than they had been from a car accident on the drive out from the city. And it wouldn’t be forever, just until the bad guys were caught.
“You can stay if you want to, Kirk, but you’ll be more effective at Langley running the show,” Isaacson said from behind him, and McGarvey turned back. “We’re running triple shifts at the Farm. One for the program, one for sleep and the third out here. We’ve got the manpower willing and able to cover this operation twenty-four hours a day. No one is going to sleep on their posts.”
“Students.”
“Instructors, augmented by motivated students.” Isaacson smiled. “Elizabeth made quite an impression oh everyone. She has a lot of friends. Just like you do.”
McGarvey had been a loner most of his life, so it was hard for him now to accept help. Maybe this was part of what Tommy Doyle had tried to tell him. He nodded. “I owe you one.”
“Yes, you do,” Isaacson said quietly. “Why don’t you say hi to your wife and daughter, and then get the hell out of here so we can button the place up for the night.”
“Keep me in the loop.”
“Just get the bad guys. I don’t want to retire out here.”
Todd Van Buren, wearing a 10mm Colt automatic in a shoulder holster over a military-style short-sleeve khaki shirt, was just coming out of the sitting room when McGarvey got upstairs. He looked irritated.
“Afternoon, Mr. McGarvey,” he grumbled.
“Trouble?”
Van Buren shook his head. “If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, your daughter is one frustrating woman.”
“That she is. What’d she do this time?”
“The docs told her to take it easy. But she’s not doing it. Even her mother can’t talk sense into her.” Van Buren glanced back at the door. “She found a gun somewhere. She’s in there now standing lookout at the window, and she kicked me out ’cause I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut.”
“I brought some work for her, maybe that’ll take her mind off things.”
“I wouldn’t count on it, sir. But it would make my job easier. Paul wants me to stick with her, but it’s going to be tough.”
McGarvey knew what the problem was. Liz wanted to appear independent and capable to a man she found attractive, and Van Buren wanted to play the role of big bad bodyguard. If the situation weren’t so dangerous he would have found their dilemma amusing. Once the operation was resolved it was going to be interesting to watch them work out their differences. The CIA encouraged husband-and-wife teams. They could be posted to a relatively safe station like London or Paris or Bonn. Wishful thinking at this stage, but it was comforting.
Liz was perched on the window seat, a Walther PPK, spare magazine, ashtray and cigarettes next to her, and Kathleen was in the adjoining bedroom, the connecting door open, unpacking a suitcase.
“You make a good target sitting there,” McGarvey said.
Liz lit up in a bright smile. “I told them you’d show up.” Most of the bandages had been removed from her head, but her face was a mass of cuts and bruises. She was dressed in blue jeans, a Snoopy T-shirt and low-top sneakers. She still looked a little weak, but definitely much better than she had in the hospital.
“See if you can talk some sense into her,” Kathleen said from the bedroom. “I certainly cannot.”
McGarvey laid the laptop on a table. “An RKG would take out the entire room, you with it.”
“They’d have to get pretty close to fire a rifle-launched grenade, and in the meantime we’d have plenty of warning.” She glanced at the pistol beside her. “But if someone makes it this far, I want to be ready for them when they come through the door.”
“Where’d you get the gun?”
“I’ve been carrying it ever since Paris,” she said defensively. “And, no, I don’t have a permit yet. The Company hasn’t seen fit to give me one. Maybe you can say something to someone.”
“I want you to get away from the window and stay away from it. I brought some work for you to do, unless you’re ready to quit.”
“Baiting me isn’t going to work, Daddy,” Liz flared.
“I’ve brought you a laptop with a built-in modem and cell phone. I want you to connect with your old boss Toivich in the DI.”
Elizabeth’s brow furrowed. “That’s the Russians. I thought we were dealing with the Japanese.”
“We’re not a hundred percent sure. Could be someone from Moscow, maybe Tarankov’s old crowd. They might figure that they have a score to settle.”
“It’s a dead-end job, a waste of effort.”
“I’m not willing to bet your life, or mine, on it,” McGarvey said harshly. “Either you’ll do this for me, or I’ll have to take someone with more training and experience than you off something vital to run it down. But if you truly want to work in the DO you’re going to have to learn to take orders sooner or later.”