Free Blood Pact (McGarvey) by David Hagberg

that was a century and a half old.
    Taking care with his movements McGarvey went down to the dock where a twenty-three-foot center-console Boston Whaler with a big outboard motor had been kept on a lift. He’d spotted it a couple of times out of the water and covered when he’d been working on his own boat. But he’d never seen it in the water. It was gone.
    The fourth operator had not bothered to grab his passport. It likely meant that they’d set up an escape hole somewhere not too far north where they’d left more documents and everything they would need to travel back to Spain without arousing the suspicions of any TSA agent. Covering their asses. Standard tradecraft.
    McGarvey debated going after him, but it would only result in another shoot-out. To prove what?
    He stuffed the pistol in the waistband of his slacks and headed back to his house, the expression in the woman’s eyes as she knew that she would die stuck in his head.

 
    FIFTEEN
     
    Cabello shut off the engine just at the ICW green marker 49A, and listened for the sounds of someone following him. In addition to the sailboat, McGarvey had a RIB dinghy with a big outboard that was perfectly capable of coming this far this soon. But nothing was behind him.
    Less than three miles north of the surveillance house, he was just off Siesta Key where a series of red and white private markers showed the narrow channel to the docks behind six rental properties, all but two of them vacant because of the low season. One of them, a small bungalow, had been set up as their escape route.
    “Make no mistake about it, Señor McGarvey is an exceedingly dangerous man,” Major Pedrosa Prieto, their handler at Torrejón Air Force Battle Air Command outside Madrid, had warned them. “Tread with very great care, for he is a man supremely capable of killing you given the proper circumstances.”
    But they had not tread with care. Accidentally killing the two students had been a serious mistake on Emilio’s part. Doni had been right; McGarvey had cared very much about the kids, so much so that he had refused to listen to reason about the danger he was in.
    Because of it she and Emilio were dead, and most likely Felix too. Now it was up to him to get back to Madrid, though how he was going to explain losing their computer and surveillance equipment was beyond him at the moment.
    He restarted the very quiet four-stroke Honda and slowly picked his way down the channel to libertad, freedom, what they called their escape route, stopping every fifteen or twenty meters to listen.
    “Is he some kind of a hero, then?” Emilio had asked.
    “More like an avenging angel,” Major Prieto said. “I don’t know all of the details, but apparently one of his first assignments for the CIA—a kill outside of Santiago, Chile—went bad through no fault of his, and his government left him hanging in the wind. When he got back home, his wife divorced him and he went to ground somewhere in Switzerland. From that point, for whatever arcane reason, Señor McGarvey became a champion of what were, in his mind, just causes.”
    “Don Quixote,” Donica had offered, and everyone but the major had laughed.
    “With respect, Lieutenant,” he’d said.
    All six houses were dark when Cabello tied up at the dock, bow and stern, not bothering with spring lines because if all went well he would be on his way to Miami within less than a half hour.
    He took a rag out of the port coaming box right at his elbow and wiped down everything he’d touched—steering wheel, shift lever, throttle, key and key float—and headed across the sloping lawn to the house. Clean khakis, white shirt, dark blazer, and loafers were waiting for him in one of the closets, along with an overnight bag of toiletries and changes of clothing, plus a passport under the name of Castaneda Trujillo, a wallet with matching documents—driver’s license, national health card, photographs of a nonexistent family, even a love letter