get his sergeant. “All right, listen to me now” McGarvey said. “We’re going to drive right through the loading area, all the way to the back of the building if we can get that far”
“They’ll open fire..”
“Not at an ambulance. Besides, my gun is a hell of a lot closer to you than theirs. Do you understand me” The young driver was torn between two choices, both of which frightened him half out of his mind. But what McGarvey said was true. He nodded. When the door was three-quarters open the soldier beckoned for them to drive through. “Now” McGarvey said.
The driver jammed his foot to the floor and the ambulance shot forward past the startled soldier into the cavernous building. Big lights hung from the ceiling illuminating the front third of the interior which was obviously used as a storage area. Tall crates were stacked, in some cases nearly up to the rafters, on long pallets that formed rows and lanes. To the left they passed four jeeps and two canvas-covered trucks, backed up against the wall, and then the lane swung sharply right, deeper into the bowels of the building, darkness closing around them.
McGarvey reached over and shut off the ambulance’s siren, and suddenly he could hear a loud Klaxon blaring. Within the building. The alarm had definitely been raised. They sped past what appeared to McGarvey to be electrical distribution cabinets, something Lorraine had said he might see, and then the lane suddenly turned left again, the driver nearly missing his turn. The ambulance skidded, slamming sideways into one of the cabinets with a huge shower of sparks, before the driver regained control. The lane immediately opened into a broad, dimly lit area where what appeared to be a series of wide air vents jutted from the concrete floor. “Bingo” McGarvey said. Two soldiers in battle fatigues came out of the shadows in a dead run, their Uzi submachine guns unslung. The driver slammed on the brakes, hauling the ambulance around to the right, sending it into another skid at the same moment the soldiers opened fire.
“Down” McGarvey shouted, pulling the terrified young driver below the level of the windshield that erupted in a shower of glass. The ambulance shuddered to a complete stop against one of the air vents, knocking it askew. McGarvey shoved open his door and leapt out, keeping low as he raced around the half-crumpled vent into the darkness. “Don’t shoot!
Don’t shoot” he shouted as he ran. A burst of automatic weapons fire ricocheted off the concrete floor ten feet behind him. McGarvey pulled up behind another of the air vents, yanked open the screen that covered the intake, and stuck his head inside. The darkness was unfathomable.
But he could hear machinery running, and he could definitely feel that the vent was drawing air down into the shaft, not the other way around.
The warehouse was suddenly in silence as the Klaxon was cut off. To the left he heard someone running, and then he stopped. Someone shouted something in Hebrew, and another man farther away answered. More soldiers were pounding in from the front of the building. McGarvey figured he had less than a half a minute remaining. He had found most of what he had come looking for. But not all of it. If the weapons are stockpiled underground, they will be very deep. Perhaps two hundred feet or more, Lorraine Abbott had told him. He ejected a round from his Walther, and then stuffing the gun back in his pocket, he dropped the bullet down into the air shaft, cocking an ear to listen for when it hit bottom, counting the seconds silently. Five seconds later he heard the faint clatter as the bullet hit bottom. Three hundred feet, give or take, he calculated. Deep. Deep enough for a weapons stockpile. Now was the time to save his own life. He turned away in time to see the stock of an Uzi swinging in a tight arc toward him but not in time to protect his head as it connected with a sickening crunch and he went down.
It was just six in the evening when trotter decided there was little else he could accomplish from his office. So far they’d heard nothing from McGarvey, but then he hadn’t expected much of anything this soon. Turning off the light in his third-floor office he got his briefcase and stepped outside. His secretary had left a half hour earlier and the corridors were already settling down for the night shift. Three doors down, he punched in a five-digit access code which admitted him into the Operations Center. There the OD monitored all incoming calls and messages for operations that were currently on the critical list. It was his job to make a preliminary evaluation and then contact the proper section if an immediate follow-up was needed.
Trotter had cut his teeth in this section in the early days and still maintained an interest in the case officers who were assigned OD duty.
He made it a point to stop in on a regular basis to talk with them, get to know them on a personal basis. Besides, he was worried about McGarvey. Not so much for the man’s physical safety, he’d shown that he was capable of taking care of himself, but because of the kinds of hell McGarvey always seemed to leave in his wake. This time they were dealing with a sensitive ally. Tom Dunbar, the early shift OD, looked up from his console when Trotter came in. He was a no-nonsense Harvard graduate who at the age of thirty had already shown his mettle and finesse in two important foreign postings. He would be rotated to the Russian Desk within the next few months preparatory to an assignment in Moscow. The big one. “Slumming tonight, John” he asked. “I’m on my way home. Maybe put on a steak, have a couple of beers” Trotter said. He’d lived alone in a big house across the river since his wife had died several years ago. In actuality he intended to have a glass of wine and perhaps a sandwich and then go to bed. Sure, rub it in. I’m stuck here until midnight, and I’ve got to be back first thing in the morning for a physical”
“No rest for the wicked” Trotter quipped. “Anything yet on Standhope”
STANDHOPE was the computer-generated operational name for McGarvey’s assignment to Israel. But it was in the blind. Only a very few people within the Agency actually knew the details. This number did not extend to the OD, who merely worked from a short list. If anything at all came in he had a list of four people to call: the general, the Agency’s general counsel, the DDO, and of course Trotter. “Nothing in the last half hour” Dunbar said. “Was there anything from last night that I should know about” Trotter shook his head. “Probably not. It’s just getting started”
“Your baby”
“In a manner of speaking. Anyway, I’ll be home if any thing does come up. I’d appreciate a call no matter what”
“Sure thing” Dunbar said. “Enjoy your steak”
“Thanks, I will” Trotter said, and he left, taking the elevator down to the ground floor, turning in his security badge with the guards at the door and heading across the parking lot to his car. It was always like this, he thought, during the first critical hours of an operation. This time, however, it was worse because not only were they spying on a friendly nation, they were using a free lance to do it. The general had never really answered his direct question of what the Agency’s position would be if the operation were to fall apart. “We’ll see” was the best he’d been able to get. He had just reached his car when someone came running across the parking lot from the main entrance. “Mr. Trotter.
Hold up, sir” the man called out. He was one of the security people from the front desk. Trotter automatically reached up to his lapel to see if he had forgotten to turn in his badge, but he remembered that he had.
“It’s the general, sir” the guard puffed. “He wants you upstairs on the double” something clutched at Trotter’s gut, and he hurried back across the parking lot.
“I just received a call from Lorraine Abbott” the DCI said when Trotter walked in. Howard Ryan, the Agency’s general counsel, was seated across the desk from Murphy. “Has McGarvey made contact with her” Trotter asked. The DCI motioned him to a seat next to Ryan. “Yes, and she sounded plenty upset”
“It’s just two in the morning over there, what’s happened”
“Possible big trouble for us” Ryan answered. “Evidently he’s on his way out to En Gedi” the general said. “Dr. Abbott told me that he arranged a little show for their Mossad tails and managed to break free.
It sounded like Kirk. “And she hasn’t heard from him since”
“That’s right” the general said. “He left several hours ago, and she thinks there is a very good possibility that he was arrested or even shot”
“Surely she wasn’t calling from a hotel phone”
“No. A public phone on the street. They might come up with the number, but they won’t get any further than that”
“Well, we gave him the assignment” Trotter said. “It’s going to be up to us to get him out of there if he is in trouble” The general’s eyes narrowed. He was in one of his dangerous moods. “You explain it to him, Howard”
“We’re going to have to deny him if he was actually arrested while on military property” the counsel said.
