half hour, or less.”
Alphonse nodded, and Sandberger closed his door, keeping it slightly ajar with a book of paper matches. He went across to the sliding door that led onto the small balcony and opened it. The cool evening air with the sounds of traffic and the smells unique to Baghdad — rotting garbage, diesel fumes, and a hint of cordite — were immediately there.
Before he switched off the lights he removed the silenced Sterling submachine gun’s thirty-four-round box magazine, checked one last time that it was full, and slammed it back home. The unique weapon, which used nonsubsonic 9?19 mm Parabellum ammunition, had been used by British special forces, including the SAS. It had been one of Remington’s suggestions that Admin’s people might find the weapon handy in special circumstances.
Like now, Sandberger thought as he waited half inside and half outside the slider.
McGarvey was good, if even half of what he’d heard was true. He had gotten past Kangas and Mustapha, and had somehow gotten the drop on Weiss. However unlikely it might be, it was possible he would get past the four men watching the driveway, and perhaps even Alphonse and Hanson up here.
But anyone coming through the door would take the full thirty-four rounds. Survival this up close and personal would be impossible.
A delivery van was backed up to the loading dock and an older man in Arab dress was pulling out plastic flats filled with bundles of cut flowers and carrying them inside through the open roll-up door.
McGarvey waited until the florist went inside, then ran around to the end of the loading dock and ducked down in the shadows in the corner. Five minutes later the man came out, closed the delivery van’s doors, and left.
As soon as the van was out of sight, McGarvey jumped up on the delivery dock and peered around the corner into the receiving area, where all the supplies for the hotel were received and processed. Two men were directly across a fairly large space where they were loading the flats onto a pair of hand trucks. When they were finished they pushed the carts off to the left where they boarded a service elevator.
When the doors had closed McGarvey hurried after them, and waited, until the car stopped at the lobby level. Sandberger’s suite was on the eighth floor. He would have people watching the stairwell doors and the guest elevators. But he might have overlooked the service elevators, which the maids, room service people, and maintenance crew used.
McGarvey brought the elevator down then hit the button for the eighth floor. He suspected that the doors would open not onto the main corridor but onto a service corridor, and when the car reached the eighth floor he was proven right. This corridor, which ran the length of the hotel along the rear walls of the rooms, was unpainted concrete walls and floors, with minimal lighting from basic ceiling fixtures.
Several doors opened onto the main guest corridor, one at each end opposite the emergency exits, and one at the vending machine alcove.
McGarvey went to the west emergency door and examined the hinges. It was wired, a small grey mass of Semtex molded into the jamb about chest high. It came to him that only the two bodyguards from Frankfurt would be up here, one on the elevators and the other on the stairwell door.
He turned and hurried back the way he’d come, past the service elevator, which had been recalled to the kitchen level, to the door opposite the east emergency exit.
Opening the door just a crack he saw a man in a contractor’s uniform leaning against the wall less than ten feet away. The man spotted the open door immediately and he reached for his pistol holstered high on his right hip.
McGarvey pulled the door all the way open and raised his pistol. “I’ll kill you right now,” he said in a low voice.
The contractor’s hand stopped just above the butt of his pistol. He was weighing his options, and it was obvious in his eyes.
“Who else is up here with you?”
“I’m alone,” Hanson said.
“You had a partner when I saw you in Frankfurt,” McGarvey said. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
“As you wish,” McGarvey said, and slipped out of the service corridor to where the contractor stood, batted the man’s hand away from his gun, and pulled it out of its holster. It was a 9mm SIG-Sauer. McGarvey dropped it to the carpeted floor and kicked it away.
“Now what?” Hanson asked, tensing his muscles, getting ready to spring.
“We’re going for a walk,” McGarvey said, roughly hauling the man around, and shoving him from behind.
“Bloody hell,” Hanson said, but McGarvey jammed the muzzle of the big silencer hard against the base of the man’s head, and they headed slowly to where the corridor turned right.
At the corner, McGarvey suddenly shoved Hanson away and stepped to one side as Sandberger’s other bodyguard stationed at the elevator realized that something unexpected was happening, and he grabbed for his pistol.
McGarvey fired two shots, both hitting Alphonse in the head, knocking him backward against the wall where he collapsed to the floor, leaving a bloody streak as he fell.
Hanson spun on his heel and started to charge, when McGarvey turned and pointed the gun at the man’s head, and the contractor pulled up short.
“Lie to me again and you’re dead.”
“You’re going to kill me anyway,” Hanson said.
“No need for it, unless you were personally involved in the murders of my son-in-law, wife, and daughter.”
“No,” Hanson said, and McGarvey believed him.
“Your boss has the answers. So what we’re going to do, is knock on his door and you’ll tell him whatever you need to say to get him to open up. Then you can go.”
“Right.”
“I have no beef with you. Unless you do something stupid you can walk away from this thing. But time is short, so make your decision.”
“No choice, do I?”
“No,” McGarvey said.
“You can’t be lucky every time, you bastard,” Hanson said, but he headed down the corridor, past Alphonse’s body lying in a heap, to Sandberger’s suite. He started to knock on the door, but then backed off.
McGarvey saw that the door was open and he pulled Hanson back. “Tell him I’m down.”
Hanson was clearly nervous now. But he turned back to the door. “Mr. Sandberger, it’s me, Brody. We got him.”
No one answered. Hanson started to turn back but McGarvey bodily shoved the contractor into the suite, and stepped aside out of what he expected would be the line of fire. And he was right.
Something that sounded like a silenced, heavy-caliber automatic weapon opened up, the bullets slamming into Hanson’s bulletproof vest, but at least one hitting the contractor in the leg and another in the face just above and to the right of the bridge of his nose.
The firing stopped, and McGarvey stepped over Hanson’s body and entered the room. Sandberger at the open slider was trying to reload, but McGarvey, still moving forward, fired one shot, hitting the man in the right thigh, dropping him to the floor.
“There’ll be people all over the place up here, because someone must have heard something,” McGarvey said. “So I don’t have much time. Does Admin have a contract with the Friday Club.”
“Fuck you,” Sandberger said.
McGarvey fired a second shot, this one destroying the man’s kneecap, and Sandberger cried out.
“Who killed my family?”
“You’re a dead man.”
McGarvey stepped closer and placed the muzzle of the silencer on Sandberger’s forehead. “Your people did it to cover up whatever the
