Pam and Ayesha had dinner at a KFC a few blocks from the motel, while Volker and the others spread out to two different places to get something to eat. They were all dressed in ordinary street clothes—jeans and pullovers or baggy shirts.
Their weapons were still back at the motel where they would meet at nine sharp for their final orders. They wanted to minimize the time on the streets when they were armed in case of a routine traffic stop.
The cell phone in Pam’s hip holster buzzed. It was the special program in which the contact information on the remaining twenty-two Neptune Spear SEALs was stored. Every call to their numbers showed up on her phone. Earlier she had intercepted the phone calls from Otto Rencke. This time the call to Tony Tabeek came from Rautanen’s house phone.
“Yo, Tank, this is the Ratman.”
“You got the same call from the CIA?”
“Yeah. Why I called. We’re going to try to head off the shit over at my place. Bait and switch.”
“I’m listening.”
“You know the apartments up the block from here?”
“Yeah?”
“Got a guy named McGarvey, ex-CIA. He figures that I’m number one on their hit list. He’s going to set up at the apartments, and when they come in he’ll be at their six.”
“If that complex is what I think it is, your guy’s got balls.” Tabeek said.
“It is and he does,” Rautanen said.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nada. Just giving you the heads-up, because he thinks you might be next after me.”
“What about the captain?”
“Cole? He’s a pussy. We’re on our own, man. Keep a sharp eye.”
“You too,” Tabeek said.
Pam hung up.
Ayesha was staring at her. “What is it?”
“Tonight’s operation just got easier,” Pam said.
She speed-dialed the other four, Volker first.
“Problems?” he asked.
“Just the opposite. Get back to base. We’re a go.”
She gave the same message to the others, and she and Ayesha got in the Fusion and headed back to the motel. It was a weeknight, but traffic was still heavy. The bars and other dives that always surround a military base like a cloud of meteors were already busy with guys who were off duty.
“Tell me what’s going on,” Ayesha said. She seemed excited, a glow in her eyes.
“McGarvey’s made a mistake,” Pam said. “He thinks he’s set a trap for us, but instead he’s the one who’s backed into a corner.” She explained what she’d overheard and what her plan was.
“Is he that foolish?” Ayesha asked.
“He wouldn’t be if he knew that I was monitoring the phone calls to all the ST Six guys.”
“He’s CIA—he must have a lot of resources at his disposal. Enough to possibly predict that you have the ability to monitor such phone messages. Maybe he’s set a trap for you.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Pam said angrily. But something nagged.
“I was married to an intelligence officer who knew all about the CIA, and who liked to tell me about his days. And McGarvey did find us at the Rawalpindi house.”
“This time is different.”
“How so?” Ayesha asked, her tone insinuating and irritating.
“There will be me and four of my operators.”
“We had you, my husband, and four dacoits, plus we had the woman as a hostage, and we were on familiar ground, and yet McGarvey managed to win the day. What makes you think this evening will be any different?”
“Your husband wasn’t a field officer, and the dacoits he hired were amateurs. In the end both you and the woman were liabilities.”
Ayesha looked out the window as they pulled in to the motel’s parking lot. “Your kind always has excuses.”
Pam slammed on the brakes at her parking spot. “I don’t need your shit!”
“But you need my money.”
“You’re staying here until we’re back.”
“I’m going as an observer.”
Pam was on the verge of killing the stupid woman herself and putting the body in a Dumpster somewhere. “What if you get yourself shot by McGarvey or the CIA bitch at Rautanen’s, or even one of my guys? How the hell do I explain it to the ISI? We’ll need the money to continue with the op after tonight.”
“They’ll probably be glad to get rid of me,” Ayesha said. “Believe me, they’re just as interested in finishing this thing as you are.”
“I don’t have a spare weapon to give you, even if you knew how to use it.”
“As it turns out, I’m a fine shot. My husband taught me.”
Pam looked at her in the dim light. “There is an American expression that I learned when I lived here. You might take heed. Be careful what you wish for—you just might get it.”
* * *
Volker and the other three showed up at Pam’s room ten minutes later. They were pumped, ready to shoot someone.
“It’s a go for tonight as I expected it would be,” Pam told them. “But it’s likely to be much easier than I first thought it might be. For starters we won’t have to split our forces.”
Her original plan was to have one of her operators make an attack on one of the SEALs who lived within ten minutes’ driving time of Rautanen’s house with the idea of luring McGarvey away. Pam and the other three would be standing by, and as soon as he walked out of the house they would nail him.
“What has changed?” Volker asked.
Pam told him about the intercepted phone calls, including the one that Rautanen had made to Tabeek—one of the operators who’d been on Chalk One.
“It could be a setup, if he knows we’re monitoring their calls.”
“Even if he does, he’s going to do exactly what we wanted him to do in the first place. Only he’ll believe that we’re making an assault on Rautanen’s house. He won’t expect us to come up on him from all directions, leaving him no way out. The Americans in the first Iraq war talked about shock and awe. Well, we’re going to give the bastard a shock-and-awe campaign that he won’t walk away from.”
“What about the rest of the operation?”
“McGarvey’s first, and then we reevaluate the situation in front of us,” Pam said. “But if it looks as if it’s falling apart, we’ll do a one-eighty and get out. You have your escape routes and documents. Drop the weapons in place—they’re untraceable—and walk away.”
“There is a lot of money you promised us,” Heiser said.
“Trust me: once McGarvey has been eliminated the operation will continue. Perhaps not tonight, perhaps not until the dust settles, which it eventually will. But we will finish what we started, one SEAL operator at a time.”
“Okay, what’s the tactical plan?” Volker asked.
“I’ll show you,” Pam said and she brought up a map on her smartphone, shifting the view to the side of the apartment complex facing Rautanen’s house. “The lake is north and the SEAL’s house is east of the apartments, so we’ll come in from the west and split up once we spot him.”
“Will he be outside or inside one of the apartments?”
“Unknown,” Pam said, and Ayesha interrupted her.
“I’ll go in first and do a recon,” she said, and the others simply looked at her.