by Flynn Vince
“I don’t need your commentary, Braman—I just need the drugs. I’m having a few financial problems and this is going to take care of them.”
“Screw you!”
Rapp had to admit that this guy was starting to grow on him. Despite that, he slammed the butt of his Glock into Braman’s nose and walked out, bolting the steel door behind him.
• • •
Rapp straightened, stretching his back and looking around him at the cluttered storage room. Fortunately, it had a set of rolling doors that the DEA had put back in working condition. He’d been able to back his SUV up to them and load about five hundred pounds of coke, which was now covered by a dirty tarp weighted down with a couple of shovels. In the unlikely event he got pulled over, he’d just look like he was on his way back from Home Depot.
He finished changing into clean clothing while the dull ring of metal started on the other end of the building. Apparently, at least one of the three DEA men had recovered enough to free himself and go to work on the door imprisoning them.
Rapp slipped into the vehicle and pulled out, accelerating to a speed that allowed him to crash through the chain link gate. Not surprisingly, Carlos Esparza’s surveillance drone wasn’t far behind.
CHAPTER 26
NORTH OF HARGEISA
SOMALIA
SAYID Halabi shut down the computer on his improvised desk, watching the cave descend into gloom as the screen went black. He had scoured every report about the drug operation at the San Ysidro mall and found nothing even hinting that something unusual had been found among the confiscated drugs. Now most of the stories were about the sophistication of the tunnel structure and the profitability of the narcotics trade.
It was exactly what Carlos Esparza had told him to expect. A few of the individual packages would be randomly selected for testing and then the entire shipment would be destroyed. The chances of the brick containing anthrax being chosen were diminishingly small. But small was very different than nonexistent.
If the bioweapon were found, it was extremely unlikely that the discovery would be reported to the public. Kennedy would maneuver from the shadows, using the information she gleaned from the intercept to trace the bioweapon back to its source. And when she succeeded, she would send Rapp. It was how they operated. And it was how so many of his brothers had been martyred.
The Frenchman was completing another batch of anthrax, but Halabi had begun to question whether it had ever been important. He’d told himself that it was a necessary distraction to keep Kennedy blind to his real goal.
But was it?
He wanted so desperately to outsmart Irene Kennedy. To outfight Mitch Rapp. To ensure that the American people knew, as they slowly suffocated, how easy it had been to defeat them. He wanted Kennedy and Rapp to understand that he had been pulling their strings the entire time. That they had been the defenders of the walls when they had finally fallen.
Ironically, the semidarkness allowed him to see with unprecedented clarity. In Yemen, he’d already made the mistake of not striking when the moment was at hand. Allowing Rapp to escape had been an inexcusable tactical error, and he wouldn’t compound it by underestimating the threat the man posed. Halabi knew that every moment he hesitated was a moment the CIA man could use to destroy him.
The cave that housed the weapon that would annihilate the West was within the reach of America’s specialized weaponry. A single bombing run could incinerate the deadly virus incubating in his people’s bodies. And he would likely die with them, arriving at the feet of God having failed once again.
There was no choice but to accelerate his timetable forward. Rapp was coming. He could feel it. Speed was the critical component now. Not complexity.
Halabi reached for the notebook at the edge of his desk, opening it and running his fingers across Gabriel Bertrand’s elegant script. He had read the annotated Arabic translation that had been prepared for him, but there was something about seeing the original that created a compelling sense of history. Would this book one day be enshrined in a holy site commemorating the fall of the West?
Bertrand called the disease he’d discovered Yemeni acute respiratory syndrome, a laughably innocuous name for something that was about to reshape the world. Symptoms typical of a mild flu tended to appear within two days of exposure. Onset was fairly slow, with the illness generally not turning severe for another five days. For those who reached that point, around seventy percent would be dead within a week, a mortality rate thirteen times higher even than that of the Spanish flu, which decimated the world population in the early twentieth century.
Even more unusual was how easily it spread. Under normal conditions, the pathogen could survive on surfaces for as much as seventy-two hours. And, according to Bertrand’s extensive calculations, even relatively trivial contact with the virus produced an infection rate of over fifty percent.
It was incredible how clumsy and ineffective the armies of the West now seemed. In comparison to the weapons created by God, they were nothing. Even the nuclear arsenals that so terrified the world were pitiful by comparison. Used against a major population center, they could achieve little more than a sudden blast, a few hundred thousand casualties, and a lingering radiation zone that could be easily contained or avoided.
The careful and purposeful release of YARS would spread through the highly mobile and densely populated West like a wildfire. Casualties would be tens—perhaps hundreds—of millions. The highly integrated and interdependent modern world would collapse as the specialized people who kept it running fell ill.
The medical system would be the first to be overwhelmed as workers abandoned it out of fear of being infected. Then law enforcement, who were critical to holding back the violence and avarice simmering just beneath the veneer of Western civilization.
Power grids would falter, as would the elaborate transportation systems that brought food and other critical products. Militaries would be called back from their imperialist missions in the Middle East and Asia to try to control the upheaval, but their close living conditions and contact with the public would make them even more susceptible than the general population.
Even after the contagion had run its course, the long-term effects would be immeasurable. The West’s entire economic system, based on the slow growth of populations, would collapse. Homes, businesses, and entire cities would be abandoned. Open democracies, utterly incapable of returning their countries to order, would be replaced by insular dictatorships.
Of course, the death toll in the Middle East would be significant as well, but the effects would be less far-reaching. Larger cities like Cairo and Riyadh would be wiped out, but they had become godless cesspools and deserved their fate. Disconnected rural areas would take fewer casualties and were far less reliant on the complex web of technologies that kept the modern world functioning. Once free of the oppressors and colonists, the Muslim people would unite in the service of Allah. They would wage jihad on a mortally wounded West and extend the new caliphate across the globe.
The law of God, and not that of man, would once again reign supreme.
CHAPTER 27
SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
USA
THE GPS on Rapp’s phone called out the next turn and he veered left onto a dirt track that wound through Joshua trees and flowering ocotillo. There was still about an hour of sunlight, which would be just about what he needed.
It was a little more than a mile to a stucco building whose ochre color and organic shape allowed it to blend into the desert landscape. Probably a little bigger than he needed and in terrain that was a little more open than he would have liked, but beggars couldn’t be choosers.
He stepped out of the SUV and glanced at the sky, struck by the irony that it was his turn to worry about overhead drones. Nothing. The cartel’s model plane had followed him from the DEA outpost to the pavement but had been behind when he’d accelerated to highway speeds.
Rapp retrieved a remote from a lockbox near
the front door and used it to access the garage. Mixed in among the beach chairs, mountain bikes, and coolers were a number of brand-new shovels and picks, as well as a locker filled with enough military-grade weaponry to take over a small African nation.
He pulled the SUV in and entered the house to see if Claudia’s thoroughness extended to the fridge. As expected, it did. One of the benefits of having a French logistics coordinator was that you always got the good stuff. High-end cheese, homemade pasta sauces, fresh bread . . .
And alcohol-free beer.
He swore under his breath and explored the house while dialing his phone.
“Are you there?” Claudia said, by way of greeting.
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“Could be worse. The walls are thick and the windows are either glass block or barred. Power’s off-grid and batteries are topped off. Kind of a complicated interior layout, which would work for me if I was planning on staying inside, but I’m not. It’d be too easy to get trapped in here and a few Molotov cocktails would be enough to set the place on fire.”
“It was the best I could do at the last minute. You said you wanted remote and it doesn’t get much more remote than that.”
“Since I can’t stay in here, where do I go?”
“Scott’s men have you set up on the perimeter. There are diagrams on the tablet on the counter. The usual password.”
“What about the DEA guys?”
“I called in an anonymous tip to the police. They’re on-site now and have called ambulances for three injured men. So at least we know they’re all alive.”
He’d been careful with the placement of his shots and had chosen frangible ammunition that would hit like a ton of bricks but not penetrate their vests. Of course, the science of shooting people in the torso and not killing them was a fairly inexact one. In fact, he might have just invented it.
Rapp grabbed one of the nonalcoholic beers and sat down at the kitchen table. “Any luck setting up a drug deal?”
“No bites yet, but I set a good price and the word’s getting around. I wouldn’t be surprised if we have at least one offer by tomorrow morning.”
He nodded and took a pull on the watery beer substitute. Claudia was using her old contacts to let people know that a couple hundred kilos of high-quality coke had just come on the market. The fact that the seller was an unknown necessitated a discount deep enough to get fringe players involved. The sale, though, wasn’t the point. The goal was to get enough chatter going that Carlos Esparza found out that his stolen product was on the auction block.
While it was true that government confiscation was just another cost of doing business, the theft and attempted resale of his property was an entirely different animal. When a government agent turned criminal, the rules changed. The kid gloves came off and Rapp would now be treated just like anyone else who had stolen from the cartels.
“Do they know where I am? I lost the drone when I got on the highway.”
“I imagine they have a pretty good idea. They have people all up and down these roads that they could have called on. And I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re doing something similar to what I just did—looking online for properties that were recently rented for the short term. I’m still gathering intel on Esparza’s cartel, but it seems to be much larger and more sophisticated than when Louis and I dealt with them. About half their business is in marijuana trafficking, though, and they’re getting hurt badly by legalization.”
“So a perfect candidate for a business partnership with Middle Eastern heroin traffickers.”
“Very much so. The cartels see this as their primary avenue for growth. As the U.S. cracks down on oxycodone, those addicts are looking for a replacement. Esparza’s cartel is targeting the middle-class suburban market—painkiller addicts who have no contact with the underworld or drug dealers. He seems to be trying to create a reliable product that looks and works very much like pharmaceutical-grade oxycodone. But for his plan to work, he needs a reliable supply of high-quality opiate.”
“That actually sounds like a pretty solid business plan. You should turn Steven on to it. He’ll probably want to buy stock.”
“Like I said, Mitch, Esparza’s a psychotic. Not an idiot.”
“And how’s my life going?” he said, changing the subject.
“Poorly. Your brother’s put you at the center of a massive web of illegal and collapsing investment schemes. You’ve got inexplicable inflows and outflows of tens of millions of dollars, a huge mortgage on your house, and involvement in a Russian real estate scam that implicates you in the death of Tarben Chkalov. Many of these things are actually real and currently under investigation by the authorities in various countries. What Steven’s managed to accomplish in such a short time is incredible. He’s a true genius. Did you know he can multiply four-digit numbers in his head?”
“Yeah. He’s always been able to do that. Who knows about this?”
“I’ve anonymously sent files to the FBI, CIA, SEC, IRS, and a few congresspeople, including Christine Barnett.”
“So, in a nutshell, I’m broke and under investigation for a bunch of illegal activities that I’m not smart enough to understand.”
“Yes. But that’s not all.”
“No?”
“No. When I found out what you’ve been up to, I drained what few bank accounts you had left and ran. I’m now hiding out in southern Texas, fearful of your reprisal.”
“That is pretty bad,” he said, feeling more ambivalent than he should have about Claudia and Steven’s thoroughness. His survival unquestionably depended on the convincing destruction of his life, but hearing it laid out in black and white was pretty sobering.
“There’s more.”
“More?” he said, feigning enthusiasm. “Really?”
“I’m not alone here in Texas. I left you for another man. In fact you know him. Scott Coleman. After working so closely together, a relationship evolved between us. He’s here now ready to protect me should you ever find us. In fact, he and Anna are out back grilling dinner. Would you like to talk to him?”
“No.” Rapp looked around the empty kitchen, trying not to think about her and Coleman flipping steaks while he waited for either the FBI or a cartel hit squad to show up on his doorstep.
“Mitch? Are you still there?”
“Yeah.”
“You asked me to do this to you.”
“I know.”
“And the moment you shot those DEA agents, you passed the point of no return. There can’t be any holes in your cover or questions about your motivations.”
“It had to be done,” he reassured her.
“No, it didn’t,” she said, some of her carefully constructed calm starting to crack. “We could have—”
“Claudia . . . Not now, okay? I don’t have much light left and I have a lot of work to do. For all I know, Esparza has fifty men sitting at the end of my driveway waiting for sunset.”
“I’m sorry, Mitch. I shouldn’t have said anything. I was being selfish.”
“Don’t worry about it. We’ll talk later.”
He disconnected the call, wondering if what he’d just said was true. If they would ever talk again.
Rapp tossed the bottle into the sink, hearing it shatter against the porcelain. He’d made his decision and there was no changing it now. Time to focus.
CHAPTER 28
THE CAPITOL COMPLEX
WASHINGTON, D.C.
USA
IRENE Kennedy felt her pace slow as she approached Senator Barnett’s office. The emergency meeting was originally scheduled to take place in the White House but when rumors about Mitch Rapp had begun circulating, the location had abruptly changed. And when those rumors had turned toxic, the president suddenly discovered a conflict that wouldn’t allow him to attend. Not surprising, but disappointing. And a bit foreboding.
She passed through Barnett’s outer office and was motioned to an open door at the
back. Inside she found Barnett standing in the middle of the imposing space, speaking quietly with the head of the DEA.
Her handshake with Woodman was tense and perfunctory, but Barnett dispensed with the pleasantry entirely, instead walking to a small conference table. Kennedy was surprised, having assumed that the politician would take a position of authority behind her desk. The purpose of the move became clear when Woodman took a seat to the right of her. The only remaining chair was a rather austere wooden one directly across from them.
The battle lines had been drawn.
“When was the last time you spoke to Mitch Rapp?” Barnett asked.
“I’m not sure exactly. A few weeks? Around the time the president asked him to stand down.”
Barnett made a show of writing her response down. “You’re certain?”
“If you need a precise date and time, I can check my phone records and provide you with one.”
She didn’t seem that interested. “Are you aware that Mr. Rapp was sent to interrogate the two men who smuggled the anthrax across the U.S. border?”
“Sent? By whom?”
“I assume by you.”
“I can assure you that isn’t the case, Senator.”
“So you’re saying you had no involvement in those orders?”
“I think we’ve already established that.”
Clearly Barnett was less interested in what was happening with the DEA and ISIS than she was with understanding who could be blamed and how it could help her quest for the presidency.
“Are you aware of what happened during Rapp’s questioning of the two suspects?”
“I’m not.”
It was actually true. There was a significant amount of loose talk swirling around the Beltway, but it would have been unnecessarily dangerous for her to look into it. For the first time in her career, ignorance seemed to be the best course.
